Kat Eschner
CNBC
Toronto, ON, Canada
Contact Kat
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Kat:
Unilever helped massively pollute the oceans. Here is its plan to end the destruction
Plastic pollution is a big problem, not just for sea animals, but consumer giant Unilever. Its 400 brands including shampoo label TRESemmé have taken a big toll on the oceans. Now Unilever is remaking materials and supply chains, an effort that goes all the way up to the CEO. → Read More
Genetically Modified Tomatoes Give Fish a Futuristic Hue
Researchers developed a tomato rich in pigment to give farmed fish a healthy pink glow. → Read More
Scientists Learn How a Common Anesthetic is So Good at Squashing Depression
New research into why the anesthetic ketamine works to treat depression is reframing scientific understanding of the debilitating disease, and proving that we’re still learning how to treat it. Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago exposed rat brain cells to ketamine, finding that the drug worked to... → Read More
Research Says Your Dog's Dreams May Be a Lot Like Yours
Science suggests that dogs, like humans, dream about real things that they’ve experienced. → Read More
What Frankenstein Can Still Teach Us 200 Years Later
An innovative annotated edition of the novel shows how the Mary Shelley classic has many lessons about the danger of unchecked innovation → Read More
Women Were Better Represented in Victorian Novels Than Modern Ones
Big data shows that women used to be omnipresent in fiction. Then men got in the way → Read More
In the 1930s, This Natural History Curator Discovered a Living Fossil–Well, Sort of
Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was convinced she'd found something special in a pile of fish, but it took some time for her discovery to be recognized → Read More
The Most Notorious Poet in 18th Century America Was An Enslaved Teenager You've Never Heard Of
Phyllis Wheatley was a prodigy, but her ultimate fate reflects the gross racial disparities of 1700s America → Read More
How Mark Twain’s Hatred of Suspenders Drove Him to Invent
Under his given name, Samuel Clemens, Twain held several patents → Read More
Five Things to Know About French Enlightenment Genius Émilie du Châtelet
She was brilliant and unconventional, but her life had a tragic end → Read More
George Washington’s Hard Death Shows the Limits of Medicine in His Time
He’s one of the United States’s most revered figures, but his last hours were plagued by excruciating illness → Read More
Charles Darwin’s Grandfather Was Famous for His Poems About Plant Sex
Erasmus Darwin’s poetics influenced his grandson’s vision of nature → Read More
This 1940s Solar House Powered Innovation and Women in STEM
As far back as the 1940s, people were worried about running out of fuel. The sun seemed like a feasible alternative → Read More
The First Thanksgiving Parades Were Riots
The Fantastics parades were occasions of sometimes-violent revelry → Read More
How a New Accent Overturned BBC Tradition and Messed With the Nazis
A man with the name of Wilfred Pickles brought regional dialect to the BBC as part of an anti-Nazi-propaganda strategy → Read More
Students Allied Themselves With Robin Hood During This Anti-McCarthyism Movement
The students of the Green Feather Movement caused an on-campus controversy at the University of Indiana → Read More
John Philip Sousa Feared ‘The Menace of Mechanical Music’
John “The March King” Philip Sousa knew a thing or two about popular music. That’s why he foresaw our age of earbuds and the CDs, eight-tracks and records that came before it. And he wasn’t on board for any of it. In a text titled “The Menace of Mechanical Music,” Sousa, who was born on this day in 1854, let loose on what he saw as the threat. His 1906 essay warns that mechanical music is… → Read More
How New Printing Technology Gave Witches Their Familiar Silhouette
You’ll see them tomorrow, and you may have been seeing them for weeks: witches. It’s the month of Halloween, after all, and spooky symbols are everywhere. But you may not know where that witchy silhouette comes from. The familiar witchy silhouette actually comes from early modern European pamphlets. Without the transformative power of cheap printing that arose in the 16th century, it’s hard to… → Read More
JFK Faked a Cold to Get Back to Washington During the Cuban Missile Crisis
The president was in Chicago when he got the news that he needed to make a decision → Read More
John Z. DeLorean Thought He Was Designing the Car of the Future
Instead its almost-instantly out-of-date styling made it a legend → Read More