Choosing Mother India By Pam Mandel Highlight “People insist that only an idiot would move from the land of the dollar to the 68-times-weaker rupee.”
How Adidas Took Over the Sneaker Game with a 50-Year-Old Shoe By Matt Giles Commentary Introduced in 1969, the Adidas Superstar has become the most coveted shoe in the sneaker game.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko: The Siberian Cowboy Poet By Pam Mandel Highlight “It makes sense that a person would come from another culture and do their poems, because everybody at Elko thinks they’re from another culture.”
How Should a German Be? By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight In Harper’s, Yascha Mounk examines how recent Islamic immigration challenges many Germans’ core idea of their national identity.
Decolonizing Education in South Africa By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight South African students of color are working to improve the conditions of education in a country that, twenty years after apartheid, is still rigged for the white minority.
Circus, Interrupted: Watching an Accident at Cirque du Soleil By Pam Mandel Commentary Circus work can be punishing, and for the performers of Cirque de Soleil, extreme safety measures don’t always prevent fatalities.
Building In the Shadow of Our Own Destruction By Colin Dickey Feature Those who would build enormous structures—skyscrapers, bridges, border walls—should do so with an eye toward their eventual ruin.
‘Turn Off Your Brain and Just Trust Instinct’: Q-Tip on the Evolving Sound of Hip-Hop By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Kyle Kramer, editor at Noisey, talks with A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip about staying true to himself while evolving with the sound of hip-hop.
‘London Was, But Is No More’ By Michelle Weber Highlight A loving, fascinating, melancholy, rollicking look at how technology and globalization are transforming urban spaces.
The Anatomy of a TV Show: How ‘The Americans’ Is Made By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Caroline Framke shadowed the crew of FX’s Cold War spy drama The Americans during the production of season four episode “Clark’s Place” and explained how the show was made.
20 Years of Talking in Maths and Buzzing Like a Fridge By Michelle Weber Highlight Radiohead’s OK Computer is 20 years old this year, and Anwen Crawford pens a lovely review-slash-analysis-slash-ode to this enduring album.
Leave Them Alone! A Reading List On Celebrity and Privacy By Em Perper Reading List Why do we feel like we own celebrities—not just their art or their products, but their images and their personal lives?
Why Don’t You Just Get One of Those Creative Jobs? By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight At The Paris Review, writer and creative director Glenn O’Brien narrates the comic struggle of artists who decide to go into advertising.
Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind By Michelle Weber Highlight Sam Kriss, in a post he calls his “magnum opus” in The Outline, explores the age-old warning not to stare directly at the sun.
Searching for the Lost on Public Land By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight At Outside, the disappearance of a teenage runner in Colorado brings up the question: Who searches for the people who disappear on American public lands?
Don’t Fear the Painter, or the Tyranny of Whiteness By Michelle Weber Highlight In Chromophobia, David Batchelor explores color theory and argues for the West’s historical fear of color.
How Jazz Singer Baby Esther Jones Became Betty Boop By Krista Stevens Highlight Gabrielle Bellot explores the original inspiration for Betty Boop—a black jazz singer with an iconic style and voice.
Not Giving Up on the Dream By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight In the Los Angeles Times, Jeffrey Fleishman profiles two young Angelenos trying not to break down as they try to break into show business.
The Roots of Cowboy Music: ‘This Is the Music We Made. This Is the Land We Made.’ By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Commentary Oakland writer Carvell Wallace travels to Elko, Nevada, for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering and reflects on what it means to be black and American.
Godwin’s Law, Trump’s Era By Pam Mandel Commentary “When we use Nazi imagery to describe Trump, nuance is lost.”
Living In These Curated Times By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight At The Baffler, Thomas Frank looks at the pros and cons and history of what we call “curation.”
The Mike and Carol Brady Art Collection By Pam Mandel Highlight “One element that survived the entire duration of the show is the set of mixed media pieces covered with things you might find in a pair of pants.”
R.E.M.’s Political Songs Still Resonate Today By Matt Giles Commentary The band was never afraid to push social activism through their music.
Where Cult Fame and Real-Life Tragedy Intersect: ‘Zelda: Majora’s Mask’ By Krista Stevens Highlight How an alternate, fan-made, sinister storyline for Zelda: Majora’s Mask called Ben Drowned connects to the online suicide of 12-year-old Katelyn Davis.
The Face of Mass Deportation By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight At Guernica, journalist J. Malcolm Garcia profiles forty-eight-year-old Sixto Paz, a roofer with a family and no criminal record who moved into a church to avoid deportation.
A History of American Protest Music: How The Hutchinson Family Singers Achieved Pop Stardom with an Anti-Slavery Anthem By Tom Maxwell Feature “Get Off the Track!” borrowed the melody of a racist hit song and helped give a public voice to the abolitionist movement.
The David Letterman University of Excessive Self-Deprecation By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Talking late-night television, retirement, and putting comedy in service of our nation, with the great David Letterman.
So Many Food Writers Under the House-Made Polenta Sun By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight At The Ringer, Bryan Curtis examines how food writers became the rock critics of our time.
Of the Parade, But Not In the Parade: The Mardi Gras Flambeaux By Michelle Weber Highlight Louisiana Rien Fertel explores the complex history of New Orleans’ flambeaux — the men who carry the torches that light the way for Mardi Gras parades — in Oxford American.
Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London By Longreads Feature How women writers and artists, from Virginia Woolf to Sophie Calle, found inspiration and freedom by navigating cities on foot.
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