Carolyn Wells

Jason Bittel’s essay explores the rather wonderful fact that packrats are avid collectors. Even better, their personal museums help researchers piece together mysteries. It’s a heart-warming story. In a study of the Chihuahuan Desert in the American Southwest and northern Mexico, ancient packrats were found to have collected remains of everything from 9,000-year-old pocket gophers […]

A fascinating, and graphic account of the hair transplant industry in Istanbul. Alex Hawkins going under the knife himself for a first-hand perspective. Until a few months ago I had never considered a hair transplant. They conjured images of hair plugs, toupees, or clumps that looked as if they were taken from your back or […]

Eve Fairbanks deftly explores the harsh reality of farms being returned to Black people in post-Apartheid South Africa — finding they are set up to fail. As segregation deepened throughout the 20th century, much of the fertile, rain-washed land had been given to white people, while the barren peaks and hot, dry, malaria-ridden lowlands were […]

Lyndsie Bourgon takes a sedate journey through the life of Pearl the peacock, a lady who came to represent a town’s identity. Every Thursday, the peafowl could be seen chasing the garbage truck. Their droppings littered the streets, and their shrill cries echoed throughout the quiet town.

Walter Cassidy openly admits to becoming obsessed with finding the first man to die of AIDS in his local area. Upon tracking down his sister, he sensitively uncovers his story. He avoided the paranoia, fear, loneliness, rejection and hate so many gay men experienced in those years when the epidemic hit the community so hard; […]

Matt Sullivan conducts a deep exploration into the story of Larry Rudolph, a larger-than-life character who is at best an adulterer, and at worst a murderer. Larry fooled around, longtime former friends and co-workers say, like he hunted big game: for sport at first, and, as he became a minor celebrity in the incestuous world […]

A beautiful account of the remaining growers of the pink apple in Marche, Italy. Agostino Petroni’s descriptions will leave you ready to pack your bags for a visit. The earthquake, then the COVID-19 pandemic, reduced the small flow of tourism to the region. Yet Fayers believes that pink apples keep pulling people to those lands—a […]

Pippa Bailey explores the fascinating business of defining a word. The Oxford English Dictionary remains, in many ways, a Victorian phenomenon, born in an era of remarkable innovation: of railways and steelworks, anthropology and anaesthesia, Charleses Dickens and Darwin. It is difficult, now, when the thought of consulting a paper dictionary seems so analogue, to […]

Gloria Liu finds unexpected beauty in being naked outside, after a lifetime of resisting. Part of the fun is the sense that you’re getting away with something, she acknowledges. But the other part, she says, is reversing the shame around nudity that many of us, especially women, learned growing up.