Raven 23
Presumption of Guilt
On September 16, 2007, a team of Blackwater security contractors opened fire in Nisour Square, Baghdad. Seventeen Iraqi civilians were killed. What followed was one of the longest, most convoluted prosecutions in American legal history — ending, after a decade, with convictions that were themselves overturned on appeal.
Raven 23 is the proof-of-concept that demonstrated what Think Again Studios could do in long-form audio — a case study in how a story becomes a verdict becomes a national argument about the rules of war, the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and what presumption of innocence actually means in practice.
The companion book by Gina Keating was published by HarperCollins/Broadside Books.
The Poisoned Chalice
The Rushdie Fatwa and Its Geopolitical Consequences
On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie. The conventional reading of that moment is religious — a clash of civilizations over free expression and blasphemy.
The argument of The Poisoned Chalice is different. The fatwa was a political act disguised as a religious one — a deliberate geopolitical move whose consequences are still unfolding thirty-five years later. The through-line from Khomeini's declaration to the rise of political Islam, the transformation of Iran's foreign policy, and the shape of the world we now inhabit is direct and largely untold.
This is the project that brings everything together: the journalistic instincts that built Walden's education campaigns, the narrative architecture that drives long-form film, and a story with genuine geopolitical stakes.