“The idea seems to be that we all live in the great database in the sky, occasionally summoning aliens with our minds.” Emily Harnett explores Silicon Valley’s appropriation of UFO culture.
Books
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Science & Nature, Story
‘I Cannot Name Any Emotion That Is Uniquely Human.’
According to primatologist Frans de Waal, we don’t like to admit that animals, especially apes, have emotions just like ours, and science has become better at studying apes’ behaviors than human ones.
Posted inBooks, Crime, Essays & Criticism, History, Nonfiction, Story
Jill the Ripper
True crime’s massive gender gap (95% of murderers are male) isn’t really one that needs fixing. And yet, since the beginning, a steadfast minority of Ripperologists have argued that Jack was really Jill.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
How To Hide An Empire
Daniel Immerwahr says studying the history of the Greater United States opens our eyes to how “racism has shaped the actual country itself. The legal borders of the country, but also the borders of the heart.”
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, Fiction, Story
If Only There Were Someone Who Would Listen
Dror Burstein’s “Muck” sets a difficult course through themes of power, pita bread, and invasion, mixing up the biblical past and the just-as-lamentable present.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Food, Profiles & Interviews, Story, Writing
Helen Oyeyemi on ‘Gingerbread,’ Fairy Tales, and What Self-Branding Is Doing to Childhood
“I was thinking a lot about childhood as this special status, an almost endangered status … that is eroded the more that we start thinking of ourselves as these units of value and worrying about what we’re worth.”
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, First Chapters, Nonfiction, Story
Even the Dogs
In an excerpt from her memoir, T Kira Madden recalls a harrowing adventure with her parents.
Posted inBooks, Editor's Pick, Essays & Criticism, First Chapters, Nonfiction
Even the Dogs
In an excerpt from her memoir, T Kira Madden recalls a harrowing adventure with her parents.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Nonfiction, Story
Los Angeles Plays Itself
In this land of constant reinvention, a longtime resident walks the streets to understand what the city was and what it’s becoming.
Posted inBooks, Current Events, Fiction, Story
A Citizen Is Obliged To Listen
When a refugee flees to another country and claims asylum, she is, in effect, petitioning the state to listen to her story.