Carolyn Wells

“We came to this decision because we like whales. The more we learnt about them, the more we liked them, mixing thrilling scientific discoveries with new-minted mythologies about the wise and gentle giants of the deep. Humans had fallen in love with both the realities and the fantasies of whales, and so we decided to […]

“Timberlake had clearly come to a realization: His formerly marketable silence no longer flies. But his apologies felt to many like a belated, hollow attempt to take a stand after decades of studious neutrality.”

“Another reason for surfing’s lag behind the times may simply be that, until recently, it could languish in the obscurity that comes with being a relatively tiny, navel-gazing subculture.”

“As 9 a.m. loomed, with workers getting pressured by supervisors, assistants, and managers, we would scurry to stow faster, lifting heavier and heavier bags, finding whatever way to meet our quotas. It didn’t matter that the work was ultimately now unsafe—the point was to meet our precious, all-important deadline.”

“As the last ancient forests of British Columbia disappear, species like the northern spotted owl are going extinct. With only one breeding pair left in the Canadian wild, activists say the choice is between profit and preservation.”

“When I think about it too hard, I’m not sure if these amusing offerings are adorable little art pieces or the soft underbelly of late-stage capitalism. What I do know is that I want to give Jellycat my money and fill my home with quirky, squeezable objects.”

“Despite the range of out-there theories he hears about D.B. Cooper, Kaye considers it very different from, say, looking for Bigfoot, where ‘you’ll never make any progress because it’s not there.’ Cooper, on the other hand, ‘is actually there, he’s actually a person, he actually did it.’ Twelve years from first dipping a toe in […]

By day 14, Mile Marker Zero was nearing the end, but the river was taking its toll. With the new support boat on the water and a huge push from an Ohio River raging from the rain, it should have been racking up time. But it wasn’t. The record was slipping away. Two days after […]