"Required reading for residents and tourists alike... A myth-buster of a book that breaks down the misperception that diversity is an import good in the province."
— Jenn Thornhill Verma, Atlantic Books Today“The sensory worlds of the Hittites, Akkadians, Neo-Assyrians, and late Neolithic Halaf culture are explored in essays by different authors within this interesting, well-researched, and attractively designed work.”
— T. Doran, Choice2025. "How a Boxing Day riot in the 1880s changed Newfoundland politics." CBC NL. December 26.
2025. "Pet parenting is a modern trend with ancient roots." CBC NL. December 20.
2025. "A tragic shipwreck, a heroic rescue: The 150th anniversary of the Waterwitch." CBC NL. November 29.
2025. "Don’t Let It Break Your Heart: Managing Expectations When Writing for Change." WordWorks 2025 (2): 22. August 21.
2025. "Current N.L. wildfires reminiscent of the devastating summer of 1961." CBC NL. August 17.
2025. "New Study: Ozempic May Lower the Risk of Alzheimer’s." PsychologyToday.com. June 30.
2025. "Research Says: Let Your Teen Sleep In." PsychologyToday.com. June 29.
2025. "Loss of Smell Is an Early Warning Sign for Alzheimer's." PsychologyToday.com. June 19.
2025. "Moose aren't a native Newfoundland species — but they were brought here to save one." CBC NL. May 18.
2025. "You've heard of a Christmas tree — how about a May bush?" CBC NL. May 4.
2025. "Pitching the Big Leagues: How a Professional Setback Helped Me Break into Major Markets." WordWorks 2025 (1): 9. April 24.
2025. "#ElbowsUp: Why have Canadians chosen hockey as the symbol of our national unity?" CBC NL. March 29.
2025. "Furey follows tradition: All of N.L.'s elected premiers have resigned while still in office." CBC NL. March 1.
2025. "When Newfoundland charged tariffs on Canadian goods, the cost of living was through the roof." CBC NL. February 15.
2025. "This isn't the first time American leaders have suggested annexing Canada." CBC NL. January 19.
2025. “The historic case for leaving your Christmas decorations up until February.” CBC NL. January 3.
2024. "From the solemn to the silly: What exactly are the 12 days of Christmas?" CBC NL. December 27.
2024. "Beyond Santa: Some of the world's other Christmas gift-bringers." CBC NL. December 22.
2024. "Embracing the 'No': Rejection Is the Necessary Evil of Traditional Publishing." WORD Magazine: 5.
2024. "The Best Way to Talk to a Child in Pain." PsychologyToday.com. September 30.
2024. "What Your Favorite Movie Genre Reveals About Your Brain." PsychologyToday.com. September 25.
2024. "Back-to-School Sensory Overload and How to Prevent It." PsychologyToday.com. September 12.
2024. "Illegal to be ’ugly’? The history behind one of America‘s cruelest laws." National Geographic. August 9.
2024. "Antidepressants and Heat Stroke Risk: What You Need to Know." PsychologyToday.com. June 20.
2024. "The elite ancient Greek fighting force made up entirely of gay couples." The Washington Post. June 1.
2024. "Teens Who Are Good Friends Become Great Parents." PsychologyToday.com. May 22.
2024. "Could You Recognize Your Dog by Scent Alone?" PsychologyToday.com. April 15.
2024. "Does Sense of Order Distinguish Humans From Other Animals?" PsychologyToday.com. March 31.
2024. "The 'cousin deficit' is why chosen family is so important to millennials and Gen Z." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. March 31.
2024. "Why Disliking a Partner's Smell Could End a Relationship." PsychologyToday.com. March 30.
2024. "Childhood Trauma Increases the Long-Term Risk of Chronic Pain." PsychologyToday.com. January 20.
2023. "Blue Light May Not Be Keeping You Awake After All." PsychologyToday.com. December 31.
2023. "Scent Diffusers Improve Memory in Seniors." PsychologyToday.com. December 31.
2023. "Red and green with a bit of literal gaslighting: The story of our Christmas colours." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 25.
2023. "Bannerman Park's biggest tent city happened 131 years ago in the wake of a stunning fire." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 17.
2023. "A Poor Sense of Smell Is Linked with Depression in Seniors." PsychologyToday.com. December 17.
2023. "The quest for the Northwest Passage was based on philosophy, not evidence." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 10.
2023. "Half an hour later in Newfoundland: The origin of Canada's 30-minute time zone." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. November 4.
2023. "The More Things Change..." WORD Magazine: 5.
2023. "Why is the English language packed with nautical slang?" CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. October 22.
2023. "One Narcissistic Trait You Probably Haven't Heard Of." PsychologyToday.com. September 28.
2023. "Dying People May Remain Conscious an Hour After Flatlining." PsychologyToday.com. September 25.
2023. "Newfoundland's Labour Day has its own distinct history." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. September 4.
2023. "Fighting an aggressive weed made me realize my garden is full of invasive species." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. August 26.
2023. "5 Offbeat Tricks for Cooling Down In High Heat." PsychologyToday.com. July 27.
2023. "The dying tradition of the funeral cortege." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. July 23.
2023. "Charles III boasts least impressive hairdo of all King Charleses." Defenestration. July 12.2023. "This phantom island was once believed to lie in the Strait of Belle Isle." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. July 2.
2023. "How to Use Music to Reconnect with a Dementia Patient." PsychologyToday.com. June 30.
2023. "Could You Be Time Blind?" PsychologyToday.com. June 29.
2023. "Three other submersibles visiting Titanic almost suffered the same fate as Titan." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. June 25.
2023. "Three other subs visiting Titanic almost suffered the same fate as Titan." The Weather Network. June 25.
2023. "Newfoundlanders aren't the only baymen out there." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. June 17.
2023. "Mental Illness Makes You Age More Quickly." PsychologyToday.com. May 24.
2023. "Waiting for Sheila's Brush? Here's some of N.L.'s other weather lore." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. March 24.
2023. "Waiting for Sheila's Brush? Here's some of N.L.'s other weather lore." The Weather Network. March 24.
2023. "Why Some People Just Have No Rhythm." PsychologyToday.com. March 22.
2023. "How Newfoundland became the first country in the Americas to adopt daylight time." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. March 11.
2023. "How Nfld. became the first country in the Americas to adopt daylight time." The Weather Network. March 11.
2023. "Elephants Speak in Voices Too Deep to Hear." PsychologyToday.com. February 8.
2023. "How to Tell if You're a Super-Recognizer." PsychologyToday.com. January 23.
2022. "Guns, parades and superstitions: A host of forgotten New Year's traditions in N.L." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 31.
2022. "For most of history, we haven't had abortion laws, and we don't need them now." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 28.
2022. "The places where witches, not Santa Claus, are the Christmas visitors." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 26.
2022. "How do pandemics end? COVID-19 could end several ways, and they're all messy." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 4.
2022. "Craving Fatty Foods? Your Intestines May Be to Blame." PsychologyToday.com. September 30.
2022. "Babies Can Taste Their Mothers' Food in the Womb." PsychologyToday.com. September 29.
2022. "When good intentions go wrong: A Newfoundland pony's death should teach us all a lesson." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. August 21.
2022. "Abortion is ancient history: A medical story that dates back further than you might think." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. July 23.
2022. "What to Do When Your Child Has Sensory Processing Disorder." PsychologyToday.com. July 23.
2022. “Wave over wave: How water imagery has helped us understand (and predict) disease.” CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. May 2.
2022. "How the Ukraine crisis reveals our racial empathy gap." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. March 12.
2022. "From Nalujuit to the Yule Cat, here's a look at the monsters of the holiday season." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. January 1.
2021. "Yowling cats and murdered frogs: The bizarre Victorian origins of Christmas cards." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 26.
2021. "A is for … ox? How the Latin alphabet is descended from Egyptian hieroglyphs." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 18.
2021. "Like polio, the long-term impact of COVID will be measured in disability." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. September 26.
2021. "A mystery in Victorian London paved the way for the techniques we use to track COVID-19." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. September 12.
2021. "This isn't the first time a pandemic has made the rich even richer." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. August 22.
2021. "The last time the Olympics went viral." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. August 1.
2021. "The century-long debate over vaccine passports." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. July 25.
2021. "A century ago, there was a race against time to fight a deadly outbreak." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. July 11.
2021. "Today's vaccines are the result of centuries of experimentation." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. June 20.
2021. "Germ warfare: Weaponizing an illness is older than you might think." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. June 6.
2021. "Pandemic Stress Supercharges Personal Growth." PsychologyToday.com. May 27.
2021. "Learning a pandemic lesson: Here's one habit we now avoid like the plague." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. May 23.
2021. "Why do we call it 'Jiggs dinner,' anyway?" CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. May 9.
2021. "The story behind the blistering speed of COVID vaccine development." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. May 2.
2021. "Why have Indigenous communities been hit harder by the pandemic than the population at large?" CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. April 25.
2021. "Think wearing masks in everyday life is a new concept? Think again." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. April 4.
2021. "When is a face not a face?" PsychologyToday.com. March 31.
2021. "Writing in isolation: How pandemics can lead to wonderful art." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. March 21.
2021. "Plague upon the waters: How a disease-ridden steamboat spread yellow fever." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. March 7.
2021. "Canadian Teenager Wins New Prize at Prestigious Prix de Lausanne." The Dance Current. March 3.
2021. "An election in a pandemic? Let's take and old, old-school look at that." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. February 28.
2021. "Why Your Mind Can See Faces Where They Don't Exist." PsychologyToday.com. February 10.
2021. "Pandemics and labour: COVID-19 isn't the first time there's been upheaval at work." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. February 6.
2021. "Made in BC Celebrates 15 Years with an Interactive Virtual History." The Dance Current. February 3.
2021. "Quack cures: How fraudulent claims and pandemics sadly go together." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. January 24.
2021. "LEGO Braille Bricks Help Blind Children Learn to Read." PsychologyToday.com. January 17.
2021. "The Christmas season, not Hallowe'en, was once considered the spookiest time of year." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. January 1.
2020. "It's Not Autism. It's Sensory Processing Disorder." PsychologyToday.com. December 31.
2020. "Say Goodbye to 2020 by Screaming into the Void." PsychologyToday.com. December 31.
2020. "Having Strange Dreams During the Pandemic? You're Not Alone." PsychologyToday.com. December 30.
2020. "Health-care workers and everyday heroism: A case study in curbing disease." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 20.
2020. "Pandemic shaming is far from a new problem." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 6.
2020. "From hard pants to consumptive chic: How pandemics influence fashion." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. November 22.
2020. "Being high-risk for COVID complications looks different than most people think." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. November 15.
2020. "Here's why disease outbreaks create perfect conditions for the rise of conspiracy theories." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. November 8.
2020. "Athletic Art." (Feature) The Dance Current (Nov/Dec): 20-23.
2020. "The kids are all right: We can learn about resilience from children in earlier pandemics." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. October 25.
2020. "If we want to reform our police forces, we have to overcome their history of racial violence." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. October 17.
2020. "A brief history of bubbling: Why quarantine habits are much older than you might think." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. October 4.
2020. "What's Another Word for Pandemic?" Word Magazine. October 1.
2020. "Most Authors Can Hear Their Characters Speaking to Them." PsychologyToday.com. September 30.
2020. "Horror Fans Cope Better with the Pandemic, Study Finds." PsychologyToday.com. September 30.
2020. "In the Brains of Foot-Painters, Feet Become Hands." PsychologyToday.com. September 23.
2020. "Plague doctors and PPE: Today's gear has nothing on the medical garb of the Renaissance." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. August 23.
2020. "A pandemic is a perfect time for serious social change." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. August 16.
2020. "This extinct N.L. dog is the ancestor of all modern retrievers." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. August 2.
2020. "On our own: Social distancing is making our loneliness visible." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. July 19.
2020. "COVID’s Assault on Senses More Extensive than First Thought." PsychologyToday.com. June 30.
2020. "The Myth That Endangers Black Lives." PsychologyToday.com. June 8.
2020. "The Ode to Newfoundland, just not as you ever heard it." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. May 31.
2020. "Is Craft Booming in COVID Because We're Starved for Touch?" PsychologyToday.com. May 23.
2020. "Adaptive Dance Teacher Adapts to a Virtual Classroom." The Dance Current (online). May 7.
2020. "Tanya Burka: The Science of Silks." The Dance Current (May/Jun): 9-10.
2020. "Pandemic groceries: 1 person, once a week may be the ideal, but it shouldn't be the law." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. April 26.
2020. "NL’s Last Great Pandemic: Lessons from the 1918 Flu." TheIndependent.ca. April 15.
2020. "In a public health crisis, let's look at an unsung hero: the sidewalk." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. April 12.
2020. "Loss of Smell or Taste Could Be a Symptom of COVID-19." PsychologyToday.com. March 26.
2020. "Officials Discourage Ibuprofen for Symptoms of COVID-19." PsychologyToday.com. March 17.
2020. "You don't need to travel to Ireland to find fairies." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. March 15.
2020. "Sorting out the confusion of service dogs — and the rights they hold." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. February 23.
2020. "10 Songs That Will Give You Chills." PsychologyToday.com. February 12.
2020. "Have You Ever Had a Skin Orgasm?" PsychologyToday.com. February 11.
2020. "In the midst of adversity, NE Avalon health care workers continue to show heart." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. February 2.
2020. "This Shirt Enables the Deaf to Feel Music." PsychologyToday.com. January 16.
2020. "When every January is dry: The surprising appeal of living without alcohol." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. January 11.
2019. "Celebrate Christmas the old-fashioned way: with drunken mayhem." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 21.
2019. "Church attendance is diminishing as multiculturalism is rising, and that's no coincidence." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. October 21.
2019. "When friends marry friends: Why one-time officiants are becoming a thing." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. September 22.
2019. "Burlington Tooshkenig Brings Rare Indigenous Art Form to Newfoundland and Labrador." Newfoundland Quarterly Online. September 13.
2019. "From Dildo to Witless Bay: Where did N.L. get its unusual place names?" CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. September 1.
2019. "All the lovely Juanitas: How did a Spanish name find such popularity in Newfoundland?" CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. July 21.
2019. "Gender neutrality doesn’t hurt children – it’s part of our history." The Globe and Mail. July 4 (online), July 6 (print).
2019. "Tea, Travel, Track and Field: Meet the Owners of Formosa Tea House." Newfoundland Quarterly Online. June 6.
2019. “Why do we call Middle Eastern dance ‘belly dance’?” Edinburgh University Press Blog. May 23.
2019. "Let's it hear for the nans: Here's why we all need a (grand) Mother's Day." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. May 11.
2019. "Chilling with Brent Beshara." Newfoundland Quarterly Online. April 18.
2019. "There's value in preserving religious structures — even for the religiously unaffiliated." CBC Opinion. April 18.
2019. "The college admissions scandal is shocking, but the rich have always bought their way into elite universities." National Post. April 4.
2019. "In the shadow of Mount Cashel: The tipping point of disillusionment with the Catholic Church." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. March 17.
2019. "Priests and pastors shoulder a huge emotional burden, but they're burning out ... alone." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. January 20.
2018. "Chill out, folks; there's no need to be so defensive about Christmas." CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. December 26.
2004. "So You Want to Go to Grad School." Laureate Handbook. Montréal, QC: Millennium Foundation of Canada. Published under the name Ainsley Dicks.
2003. "Aislinn and the Problem with Names." Queen’s Feminist Review 11: 21-23. Published under the name Ainsley Dicks.
2003. "Where the Seas Roll Up Their Thunder." Culture Shock 3: 9-10. Published under the name Ainsley Dicks.