Newly discovered materials from Pompeii are offering fresh insight into how Roman builders produced concrete that has endured for millennia. Nearly 2,100 years ago, the ancient architect Vitruvius wrote that the Romans mixed lime with water before adding other materials. But recent analysis suggests a different sequence. Researchers led by Admir Masic at MIT found that Roman builders used a “hot-mixing” method, first combining dry ingredients such as volcanic ash and lime fragments before adding water. The heat released during this process caused lime pieces to expand, helping seal cracks as they formed. That conclusion was initially drawn from samples taken in 2023 from a 2,500-year-old city wall in Priverno, Italy, and is now reinforced by fresh evidence published in the journal Nature Communications.
True Spies
Me And The Mullah
How do you recruit a source who won’t take your money?
In 2011, DIA officer Shawnee Delaney sat down in a bare safe-house room with one of the strangest targets of her career: a mullah, a Muslim religious leader and legal scholar, with close ties to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. She needed intel that could help the US hunt bin Laden, but the meeting started with two problems. She couldn’t find a single obvious thing they shared, and she had to work through an interpreter.
The mullah spoke for hours. And Shawnee kept asking him questions directly, waiting through long pauses as the interpreter caught up. Slowly, she found a bridge: his kids, their education, and a shared sense of humor. Over a handful of long meetings, the rapport clicked. But recruitment still stalled at the final gate. Shawnee kept sliding him cash, money for time, yet he always smiled, thanked her, and refused. Without a payment and receipt, she couldn’t formalize him as an asset. So she hunted for a new lever, and after months, she finally thought she’d found it...
Join Shawnee Delaney in this week’s podcast selection, 'Me And The Mullah', on a journey of trust-building when every standard technique fails.
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How does a lake return to the driest place in North America?
An ancient lake has reappeared in California’s Death Valley National Park after the wettest autumn the region has ever recorded. Long before the valley earned its name, meltwater from glaciers in the Sierra Nevada flowed downhill into Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. That steady supply once sustained Lake Manly, a vast body of water nearly 100 miles long and around 600 feet deep. As the climate dried and the valley transformed into an extreme desert, the lake vanished, leaving behind salt flats and record-breaking heat.
But Death Valley received 2.41 inches of rain between September and November this year. The rainfall was enough to refill parts of the basin, creating a much smaller, shallower version of Lake Manly. And it’s not its first comeback. In 2023, Hurricane Hilary dropped more than two inches of rain in a single day, briefly turning the desert floor into a paddling destination for kayakers.
What does architecture look like when it refuses to behave?
Over a career spanning more than six decades, Frank Gehry became one of the most influential and recognizable architects of the modern era. Early on, Gehry pushed against architectural convention, experimenting with unexpected materials and irregular shapes at a time when clean lines and restraint dominated the field. That instinct followed him to much larger stages. The celebrated Canadian-American architect, whose buildings bent steel, expectations, and entire skylines, passed away on December 5 at the age of 96.
His 1997 Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is a pinnacle in museum design. The building gave rise to the so-called “Bilbao effect,” the idea that a single cultural landmark can kick-start economic and civic renewal. Gehry went on to design some of the world’s most iconic cultural spaces, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. Awarded nearly every significant architectural honor, he remained an innovator throughout his career.
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What happens when Hollywood hands its biggest characters to a machine?
Disney announced it will invest $1 billion in OpenAI, becoming the first major studio to license a large slate of its characters for use in OpenAI’s models, including its video-generation platform, Sora. The three-year deal covers more than 200 characters across Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars, allowing users to create short, social-style videos inside Sora and ChatGPT.
The agreement comes with guardrails. Disney isn’t licensing likenesses or voices of actors, and it restricts depictions of drugs, sex, alcohol, or cross-brand mashups. Disney will also have the option to curate select clips for Disney+, while the broader service is expected to launch in early 2026.
For OpenAI, the partnership opens the door to some of the most recognizable intellectual property in entertainment, pushing its creative tools deeper into mainstream culture. For Disney, the deal signals a practical shift toward using generative AI across its businesses, from internal tools like ChatGPT to new interactive formats built around its franchises. The announcement landed just one day after Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Google over alleged AI-related copyright violations.
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