Patrick Kiger
Patrick J. Kiger has written for HowStuffWorks since 2008 covering a wide array of topics, from history and politics to pop culture and technology. He worked as a newspaper reporter for the Pittsburgh Press, and the Orange County Register in California, where he covered one of the biggest serial murder cases in U.S. history, and also as a staff writer at Baltimore Magazine. As a freelancer, Patrick has written for print publications such as GQ, Mother Jones and the Los Angeles Times, and on the web for National Geographic Channel, Discovery News, Science Channel and Fast Company, among others. In recent years, he's become increasingly interested in how technological advances are altering urban life and the design of cities, and has written extensively on that subject for Urban Land magazine. In his spare time, Patrick is a longtime martial arts student and a fan of crime fiction, punk rock and classic Hollywood films.
RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS
It is a mind-blowing amount.
Palm oil has become one of the most widely used substances on the planet, but its cultivation has been an environmental and human rights disaster.
Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) is a controversial possibility in the effort to slow the rate of climate change.
The 2018 California wildfires have called attention to the private firefighting industry. Can anyone hire a private, personal firefighting team?
You could call dopamine the most misunderstood neurochemical in the brain. It's allegedly the cause of people getting addicted to drugs, chocolate or video games. But what does really dopamine do?
The number 137, which is significant in multiple applications, has long been an object of fascination for physicists, mathematicians and mystics.
These days, you can do a lot more at a transit hub than simply catch a train or a bus.
It could reach an altitude of more than 10,000 feet. But where it will fall, nobody knows.
The Constitution allows Supreme Court justices to be impeached by the House and put on trial by the Senate, but it's only happened once and that was in 1805.
A killer smog 70 years ago helped lead to the first federal air pollution laws.
Britain has voted to leave the European Union, a group of 28 European countries. What does the EU do and why would countries want to leave — or join — it?
Chemical flavorings interact with the solvents in vaping liquids, forming dangerous new compounds. And that's before they're even heated.
Microplastics in our poop indicate that even our food supply isn't safe from our plastic problem.
Can a moon have a moon of its own?
CBD is an extract of the cannabis plant. It won't get you high, but it's being touted as a remedy for a whole range of health problems.
A lone winner in South Carolina picked the magic Mega Millions numbers to win the $1.537 billion jackpot on October 23, 2018.
The famous 1954 letter in which Albert Einstein rejected the concept of God may soon be sold for $1 million or more at auction.
Back in 2006, the International Astronomical Union decided to demote Pluto to the status of a dwarf planet. A new historical study challenges that designation.
When most people think of NASA, they probably think of astronauts and the Kennedy Space Center. But there's a whole lot more to this 60-year-old organization.
Anders' Earthrise and 8 Homeward are the two moon craters recently named in honor of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, the first NASA mission to orbit the moon.
