John Dickerson

John Dickerson is co-anchor of "CBS Evening News" and anchor of "CBS Evening News Plus." He is also a Contributing Writer to The Atlantic and is co-host of the Slate Political Gabfest.

  • 03/25/2023: In the days of easy poison

    When people dropped dead for any variety of reasons, it was much easier to poison your enemies,and have your murder written off as just another one of those episodes where a person was dropping dead because people dropped dead all the time. This seems to have been what happened. In the case of. William Longespee the First Earl of Salisbury.

    File:William Longespée.jpg - Wikimedia CommonsHubert De Burgh and Billy Long, as no one called him, got crosswise with each other. They were both loyal subjects to the kings during the 13th century. But De Burgh didn’t think Longespee was sufficiently loyal. They had a set-to and ultimately De Burgh backed down. To make it up to Longespee, De Burgh invited him over to his house for a feast. Several days after the repast, Longespee turned up dead.

    Oh well, people die all the time in the Middle Ages. It is, after all, the 13th century and the lines at the pharmacy for leaches were notoriously long, even for nobles.

     

    Fine. Then, in 1791, during the refurbishment of the Salisbury Cathedral, William Longespee’s tomb was opened and the mummified corps of a rat was found in his skull. The rat displayed serious arsenic poisoning.

    The mummified rat is still on display at the cathedral because it was assumed that the rat died from the arsenic that was placed in Billy Long’s dinner by Hubert De Burgh.

     

    More from the Salisbury Journal.

    This entire episode was kicked off by a notation I found in one of my notebooks from June, 1990 when I was traveling through England as a junior in college:

    Notebook rat skull

    • More Notions

  • 03/01/2023: New words from Dictionary.com that I like

    rage farming noun. Informal. the tactic of intentionally provoking political opponents, typically by posting inflammatory content on social media, in order to elicit angry responses and thus high engagement or widespread exposure for the original poster. 📝 This term was coined in 2022 (in the form rage farmed) by investigative reporter John Scott-Railton. Read about some other terms for […]

  • 02/27/2023: How to solve the work week.

    From Business Insider: “I do ‘Bare Minimum Mondays’ at work.” The TikTok creator and startup founder Marisa Jo Mayes says it helps her beat the “Sunday scaries” and avoid burnout — and it has completely changed her life. Find out more. If enough TikTok influencers can work really hard to brand not working at all […]

  • 02/25/2023: We Still Smoke the Water Pipe

    I found a quote in one of my notebooks from the second year of the Iraq war (3/20/2005). “Life goes on,” Hayawi says. “We are in the middle of a war, and we still smoke the water pipe.” This feels like a universal message to me. After some work in the shop with the search […]

  • 02/25/2023: A Conversation with Tim Frye on what's changed since the invasion of Ukraine

    I talked to Timothy Frye, the Marshall D. Shulman professor of post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University, for “CBS News Prime Time” about how Russia’s war in Ukraine has changed global energy, the economy and politics.    

  • 01/08/2023: House GOP Learned How to Govern

  • 12/14/2022: Did someone have inside information?

    60 seconds before CPI number came out there was significant trading activity: Bloomberg thinks someone got the news!

  • 12/14/2022: Reality and columnists are two different things.

    “The world is much worse than it would have been had the virus not emerged, and that’s not the fault of columnists you disagree with.” Matt Yglesias.

  • 12/13/2022: Spies Just like us.

    The Ruskies next door. Our story on it on CBS News Prime Time can be found here.

  • 12/13/2022: Sam Bankman Fried not instilling confidence.

    “Like I, like, kind of vaguely knew, kind of, sort of maybe, um, on a qualitative level what was going on.” — Sam Bankman Fried on Unusual Whales podcast on movement of customer funds from FTX to Alameda without permission. via Dealbook

  • 01/01/1970: Meetings can be a black hole that sucks your soul from your body. Priya Parker describes how to make them more intentional.

    I have long been obsessed with intention in even the mundane tasks in life. Priya Parker has put intention into gatherings and meetings. I talked to her about her book and her ideas on Prime Time 3/16/23 as a part of our shifting workplace special. We wanted to talk to her because if the workplace […]