Friday, March 13th, 2026

Welcome to Friday’s edition of The Pennant. To listen to this newsletter, click the “Listen Online” link in the top right corner of this email.

In the wake of Ted Carter’s resignation, The Ohio State University has appointed a new president. Find out who it is below in the Top of the Fold.

Also, be sure to check out our guest Letter to the Editor at the bottom of today’s edition.

Chuck Jones, the former FirstEnergy chief executive officer, and Michael Dowling, the senior vice president of external affairs, are on trial for allegedly bribing a Gov. Mike DeWine appointee, former Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Chairman Sam Randazzo, with $4.3 million. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

On Wednesday, state Sen. Jon Husted took the witness stand to be questioned about his longtime working relationship with FirstEnergy and a dinner he had with Dowling and DeWine in December 2018. Husted claimed he does not "recall anything that was discussed during the meeting."

In the past, state Sen. Jon Husted has received more than $3 million from FirstEnergy, though he has not been charged with any wrongdoing. You can find the full case breakdown here.

On Thursday, Ravi Bellamkonda was named president of the Ohio State University.

Bellamkonda had been serving as executive vice president and provost of the university, a position to which former President Ted Carter appointed him. At the time of his hiring, Carter called him the “right individual” for the job.

Before joining Ohio State, Bellamkonda served as provost at Emory University.

Find the complete statement made by Ohio State University here.

Good news, home chefs. Food researchers, recipe inventors, and at least one woman who named her children after fruit have cracked the code on poached eggs. The secret? Stop trying.

For generations, home cooks have tortured themselves trying to replicate that restaurant-quality poached egg that somehow always looks like a team of gastronomic engineers assembled it directly from the chicken. Culinary celebrities such as the volatile Gordon Ramsay and the more volatile Chrissy Teigen have spent years dropping poached egg wisdom on social media, offering tips such as using a shallow sauté pan, adding a drop of vinegar, or straining the eggs first. All sound advice. All apparently pointless.

Enter sous vide cooking, which is French for "you will probably screw this up." This method involves placing an egg, still in its shell, into a temperature-controlled water bath and letting science do the work you were never qualified to do in the first place. Restaurants have been quietly using this method for years, which explains why their eggs Benedict look like they belong in a food museum and yours belong on an episode of "Dr. Pimple Popper."

The trend exploded in the early 2010s, fueled by wellness culture, Instagram food artists, and the endorsement of Gwyneth Paltrow, the acclaimed actress who starred in "Shallow Hal" and "The Pallbearer." Yes, the same woman who named her daughter Apple and her son Moses and sells candles on the internet that smell like things we will not describe here in the food section. If Gwyneth is involved, you know it is healthy and very, very expensive.

The good news is that sous vide requires almost no skill. The bad news is that it requires a sous vide machine, which costs considerably more than just going to a restaurant and ordering a poached egg. You know, like a normal person.

The Ice cream industry is going through a midlife crisis. It is not a new flavor. It is not a trendy, yet healthy dessert topping founded by a YouTuber with a cookbook deal. It is a hack, which is the internet's word for an unconventional tip, and it comes from that great repository of human knowledge and judgment known as TikTok.

Millions of people, it turns out, are drizzling, and in some cases enthusiastically pouring, soy sauce over their ice cream. Yes, the condiment responsible for making takeout fried rice taste like a block of salt lick.

This is a real thing, and you can get more information here.

Following the destruction of Europe and Germany's defeat in World War II, top Nazi officials fled, hid, or took their own lives. Among those who did not escape was Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Hitler's second-in-command, who surrendered to American forces and was sent to stand trial in Nuremberg alongside other senior party officials in what became the first criminal tribunal of its kind in history.

The new Netflix film "Nuremberg" follows Army psychiatrist Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley, played by Rami Malek, as he attempts to get inside the mind of Goering, portrayed by Russell Crowe, and other Nazi officials in the months surrounding the landmark trials. Written and directed by James Vanderbilt, whose credits include "Zodiac" and "The Amazing Spider-Man," the film explores the psychological portrait of men responsible for some of history's greatest atrocities.

Viewers who enjoyed similar films such as "Operation Finale," "Anthropoid," or "Conspiracy" will find familiar territory here.

I work for a major bank, and I spent most of the last two weeks helping a Federally Qualified Health Center set up credit card processing across its locations. These centers serve the uninsured and underinsured, so their offices are planted in some of Columbus's poorer ZIP codes: East 17th Avenue, East Main Street, Parsons Avenue, and others. They have no locations in Worthington, New Albany, Dublin, or Upper Arlington. That's not an accident. That's the point.

Sandwiched between those visits, I had a routine checkup with my doctor in suburban Columbus, a practice I've been going to for years. The difference between those two experiences was not subtle. It was not a matter of degree. It was night and day.

I'm not talking about the quality of care or the dedication of the staff. I'm talking about the environments themselves. Go sit in the lobby of one of those inner-city offices, then drive out to Dublin and sit in a comparable private practice waiting room, and tell me with a straight face that one isn't more immediately conducive to a sense of wellness, dignity, and possibility. You can't.

And it doesn't stop at health care. There's a library near the Parsons Avenue location, and there's a library in Dublin. Visit both in the same afternoon and tell me which one offers its patrons a broader range of resources, programming, and opportunities. The answer will be obvious before you've made it through the front door.

None of this is meant to diminish anyone. People grow up on Parsons Avenue and West Broad Street and go on to do extraordinary things, but we have to be honest with ourselves: that is the exception, not the rule. The systems, the spaces, and the resources that surround a child from their earliest years shape the arc of their life in ways that individual grit and talent alone cannot always overcome.

Privilege begets privilege. Poverty begets poverty. The ZIP code a child grows up in is not just an address. It is a predictor of their health outcomes, their educational opportunities, and their economic trajectory. Until we reckon honestly with that fact, we will keep congratulating ourselves on the exceptions while ignoring the rule.

Are you in favor of school vouchers?
- Yes - 50%
- No - 25%
- Undecided - 25%

The Pennant welcomes letters to the editor and guest columns from readers. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity, and AP style. The Pennant reserves the right to verify all information contained in submissions before publication.

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