A nature writer in Los Angeles tackles her genre’s fundamental problems, which is also the problem of how modern Americans relate to the natural world. And yes, there is nature in L.A.
Editor’s Pick
Posted inEditor's Pick, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction
The Reappearing Act
In the aftermath of an eating disorder, Audrey Olivero builds a new relationship with her body — through knife-throwing.
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Remains
As she recalls a trip to Peru, the body of a mummified girl sacrificed for the safety of the Incans over 500 years ago, and the frustrating neurological condition that steals her memory and strength, Jacqueline Alnes mines the topography of female identity and the stereotypes that erode our self image.
Posted inEditor's Pick
A World Without Clouds
Global warming is disastrous, global warming without (or at least with far fewer) clouds would be much worse. Natalie Wolchover speaks to scientists who are studying periods of cloudless warming in the Earth’s past, and simulating what a future where the clouds were to vanish once again would be like.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Latest Diet Trend Is Not Dieting
Instead of counting calories and using weight as the barometer of health, intuitive eating encourages people to eat what they want when they feel hungry and dispense with notions of “good” and “bad” food. Guilt and shame only lead to overeating.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Trauma Floor
Facebook has thousands of people in contract centers around the world reviewing questionable content. They make a bit above minimum wage to watch people get stabbed or shot, read hate speech, and watch conspiracy theory videos — at massive personal cost and without the support and perks of actually working for Facebook.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Greeter
At age sixteen, the daughter of a wealthy Florida couple with chemical dependencies found herself facing her uncertain future, tangled in a web of trauma, self-harm, sexual objectification, and leaning on her tight relationships with other young women. This essay is part of the author’s forthcoming memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Color of Money
After her book, So You Want to Talk About Race, becomes a bestseller, Black author Ijeoma Oluo offers to build her white mother a home with her earnings and learns how race can affect the ways adult children care for their aging parents.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Johnny Rotten, My Mom, and Me
Kimberly Mack recalls the ways in which rock music bonded her with her African American mom, and how those fierce sounds helped them cope with the poverty, violence, and despair both outside and inside their Brooklyn home.
Posted inEditor's Pick, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction
Johnny Rotten, My Mom, and Me
Kimberly Mack recalls the ways in which rock music bonded her with her African American mom, and how those fierce sounds helped them cope with the poverty, violence, and despair both outside and inside their Brooklyn home.