Tom Head, Ph.D.

Author • Blogger • Scriptwriter

Selected Articles by Tom Head

If you'd like to see some samples of my work, or just want a little reading material, here's some of what I've been up to over the years.


About.com (2006-2015)


I served as About.com's Guide to Civil Liberties through the purchase by the New York Times Company and the repurchase by IAC. For those of you who came of age online over the past decade, it's hard to overstate how important About.com was to the pre-Wikipedia Internet, and to the writers who found a steady income covering specific niche topics online. It was a dream gig, and I was very lucky to have it. I don't think I appreciated just how lucky I was to have it at the time, or how much the industry was about to change.

While I was running the site, it was the world's largest online civil liberties news and reference portal. But this isn't really a testament to my skill as much as it is to the lack of competition; Wikipedia eventually ate our lunch, and that's as it should be.

That doesn't mean our About.com content isn't still useful and/or entertaining. Two of the brands that inherited About.com's intellectual property, LiveAbout and ThoughtCo, still host some of the articles I wrote during my About.com years. Here's a selection:
 
I owe much of my career to About.com; it gave me a platform, taught me how to produce high-quality content on a regular basis, and made me familiar with fundamental Internet marketing strategies like SEO. I wouldn't be where I am today without the opportunities About.com gave me, and I'll always be grateful for that. 
 

Mysterious Universe (2014-2015)


Sure, blogging for an Australian paranormal podcast might seem like a strange fit for me now, but you didn't know me when I was 10 years old and working through the entire paranormal section at my local library, stack by stack. I don't think I missed any recorded UFO sightings or alien abduction accounts. It's not that I believed all of it even then (after all, I was reading Asimov and Sagan, too), but the appeal of holding together all these disparate, contradictory experiences in my mind at once gave me a high. It still does. That's one of the things that drew me to religious studies.

Here are a few of my posts. You might notice some recurring themes:
 
Mysterious Universe is still going strong, and if you like what I wrote above I can't urge you strongly enough to check it out. They're delightful folks and always treated me fairly.


CMUSE (2015)


As you can clearly tell from my interest in civil rights history and fringe science topics, classical music has always been a passion of mine. I'm grateful to the site's editor, the outstanding violinist Liviu Craciun, for providing the sort of expert editorial guidance that allows somebody with my far-ranging background to dabble in his field of expertise. I'm proud of the work we did.

Some of my writing from CMUSE:
 
CMUSE is doing better than ever, and if you like what I wrote for the site you should give it a visit.
 

Miscellaneous Writing 

    

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