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How Rebecca Solnit Explains Things
With the arrival of her new “anti-memoir” (her term) The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit has now written 14, arguably 17, books. (It depends on how you count the co-authored ones.) That is more than a...
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Bigger Than Money
Was it the moon? Something was shining down on Rose. She could also hear a sharp, staccato sound—like dishes shattering or a broken toy falling down stairs. No, she realized, it was laughter, human...
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Tao Lin Interviewed by a Character in His Book
About two months ago, I got an email from Tao Lin telling me that I was going to be featured in his new novel, Taipei. I had last spoken to him three years earlier, when I interviewed him for “2.5 IRL...
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You Can’t Kill the Little Mermaid
In August, the Little Mermaid, the famous bronze statue in Copenhagen, Denmark, will turn 100. The centenary is apropos, as mermaids are again a big thing. A number of Twilight-like young adult...
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Nathalie Atkinson’s Nancy Drew Fixation
Shelf Esteem is a weekly measure of the books on the shelves of writers, editors, and other word lovers, as told to Emily M. Keeler. This week’s shelves belong to Nathalie Atkinson, who is an award...
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Unease at the Stampede's Indian Village
In 1912, Guy Weadick founded what would become “the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth,” a rodeo even then of gigantic proportions both in size and bravado. Today, the Calgary Stampede is a ten-day...
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In the Loop: The Space Between Vine and Instagram
Wandering around London’s Tate Modern gallery a few years ago, I found myself starting to bore—until I saw Bruce Nauman’s “Double No.” The installation was two screens of looping video in which a...
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The Mob Began to Think and Reason
Reading accounts of social movements written by outright conservatives can often feel strangely refreshing. Particularly when one is used to dealing with liberals. Liberals tend to be touchy and...
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Making the 1%’s Escape Fantasies Work For You
Earlier this week, private rocket company SpaceX released a video of something new under the sun: the company’s reusable rocket taking off on its tail, hovering and then landing back on its tail like...
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Like Hypnotized Chickens
The best way to hypnotize a chicken is to tuck its head under its own wing, thereby mimicking the posture of sleep. Rock the chicken back and forth and gently set it on its feet. The record for...
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The Absurdity of Espionage
In 1973, the American expatriate writer Harry Mathews, often presumed to be a CIA operative due to his wandering travels and independent means, decided to play along. Taking on the archetypal Cold War...
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On Silicon Valley’s Intrinsic Altruism and Other Lies it Tells Itself
Late last week, as a strike by the transit rail service BART slowed down Bay Area commuters, Marketplace published a piece about the “philosophical divide” between Bay Area residents.“If I had more...
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Why On Earth Do We Keep Having Kids?
Even before the current crisis, Egypt had a problem: it has long been a populous nation with an iffy economy. Mubarak was all about cajoling Egyptians into having fewer children; in the 1990s, state...
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Ira Glass on David Rakoff
This American Life host Ira Glass remembers his friend David Rakoff, and shares his personal iPhone footage of David recording the audio book of his posthumously published Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die,...
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Funny But Not Beautiful, Beautiful But Not Smart
“Perhaps there is no hope left for the whole of humankind,” wrote Cookie Mueller, “not because of the nature of the epidemic, but the nature of those it strikes.” Cookie learned about AIDS in July...
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White America’s Long Goodbye
If you’re old enough, you may remember a time when it was said the Republican party would have to make peace with its electoral defeats, and reach out to segments of the public that it had ignored or...
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This American Life Turns 500
Since its premiere in 1995, This American Life has made an entire medium vital again. While it has a small audience compared to more institutional public radio shows (about three million people tune...
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When Our Turn-Ons Don’t Match Up With Our Politics
“What turns you on?” is perhaps a question replaced by a better and more accurate one: what are your symptoms? It’s only then, phrased in the terms of the analyst, that gingerly responses—like “I’m...
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This is Why US Prisoners Are Starving Themselves
The first time the US experimented with solitary confinement in a supermax prison facility, the concept was abandoned as barbaric and retrograde.Two hundred years ago, in Pennsylvania and New York,...
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What Went Wrong This Week For ... Broccoli
Welcome to Well, That Sucked, our weekly compendium of exactly what it sounds like. Thrown in this week’s garbage: a wretched vegetable that no one likes unless it’s in Chinese food and even then,...
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