All Hail the Rat King By Adrian Daub Feature From Martin Luther to The Nutcracker, Germany’s original national nightmare was a tangled knot of writhing rats.
Responding With Weapons to Racism in Colorado Territory By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Reexamining the motives of Felipe and Vivián Espinosa, two of the American West’s most brutal killers.
‘The American People Have Been Constantly Lied To’ By Krista Stevens Highlight “U.S. officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it.”
Where are the Gay Ladies of Cambodia? By Lindsey Danis Feature Honeymooning in Cambodia, Lindsey Danis and her wife seek refuge in queer spaces, but struggle to find the acceptance granted to male travelers.
The Octopus’ Branding Makeover: From Devil-Fish to Brilliant Invertebrate By Krista Stevens Highlight “Each arm, with its own brain inside, moves completely independent of the others. So much so that arms have been known to steal food from each other.”
All Hail the Inventor of the Crock Pot: Irving Nachumsohn By Krista Stevens Highlight Irving Nachumsohn invented the crock pot so that his family didn’t have to use the stove to prepare dinner on hot summer evenings. You’re welcome.
Let Me Show You the World By Iman Sultan Feature Almost everything you think you know about Aladdin is wrong.
‘By Choice, and Not By Choice…Time Is Going To Change You.’ By Zan Romanoff Feature Nina MacLaughlin discusses her retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. “[In] my very vague high school memories…there was no discussion of the fact that this book is just rape after rape after rape.”
Whose Boots on the Ground By Kiley Bense Feature We invest a great deal of collective energy in commemorating our war dead. But do we remember them?
“Labor-Saving” Kitchen Gadgets End Up Creating More Work for Women By Ben Huberman Highlight Instand Pot: great. Dover eggbeater? Not so much.
The Corpse Rider By Colin Dickey Feature “I could see the ghosts,” recalled Lafcadio Hearn about his early childhood. Late in life, he became a celebrated chronicler of Japan’s folk tales: stories of strange demons and lingering visitations.
‘I Was Interested in the People Who Are Stuck With These Memories.’ By Victoria Namkung Feature Steph Cha discusses her new novel “Your House Will Pay,” the LA Riots, the Korean American Angeleno community, her 3,600 Yelp reviews, and pushing back against gatekeepers in publishing.
‘Writing This Book Was a Weird Séance ’: An Interview With Deborah Levy By Tobias Carroll Feature “If you have the depth, the surface can be as light as it’s possible to make it…I don’t mind that ‘Swimming Home’ is sometimes described as a ‘beach read’ — actually that’s a triumph.”
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Orchids By Katy Kelleher Feature Sometimes a flower is just a flower, and sometimes it’s a powerful vehicle for giving free rein to our worst colonialist and misogynist impulses.
Queens of Infamy: Njinga By Anne Thériault Feature The Portuguese colonizers of West Central Africa learned it the hard way: you mess with the Queen of Ndongo and Matamba at your own peril.
“We’re All Still Cooking…Still Raw at the Core”: An Interview with Jacqueline Woodson By Adam Morgan Feature “When I look at that dress and how much intention went into the making of it…it’s like we want to have something that can’t be destroyed, because so much of the past has been destroyed…”
Mathematics as a Cultural Force By Jessica Gross Feature Historian Amir Alexander on Euclidean geometry’s far-reaching effects.
Downsizing the American Black Middle Class By Bryce Covert Feature Government jobs helped thousands of Black families move into the middle class. Now, increasing calls for government privatization are pushing them back out.
In the Age of the Psychonauts By Longreads Feature Three psycho-spiritual “events” of the 1970s — involving Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, and Terence and Dennis McKenna — had a strange synchronicity.
‘Nobody in This Book Is Going to Catch a Break’: Téa Obreht on “Inland” By Ryan Chapman Feature ‘The history of the West is a deeply turbulent one… that kept the living population in a constant state of unrest. I thought this constant state of unrest must be true for the dead as well.’
I’ll Be Loving You Forever By Rebecca Schuman Feature My best friend and the New Kids on the Block, 30 years later.
‘Horror Is a Soothing Genre … It’s Upfront About How Scary It Is To Be a Woman.’ By Laura Barcella Feature Sady Doyle discusses the connection she draws between society’s monstrous treatment of women and woman’s archetypal monstrosity.
Mountains, Transcending By Ailsa Ross Feature “Ever since I was five years old,” wrote opera singer–turned–Buddhist lama Alexandra David-Néel, “I craved to go beyond the garden gate, to follow the road that passed it by, and to set out for the Unknown.”
Nashville contra Jaws, 1975 By Longreads Feature In their time, “Jaws” and “Nashville” were regarded as Watergate films, and both were in production as the Watergate disaster played its final act.
Reading Lessons By Irina Dumitrescu Feature You never stop learning how to read — probably because you also never stop forgetting how to read.
A Minor Figure By Longreads Feature While searching for photographs that depict black young women and girls living free in the second and third generations born after slavery, Saidiya Hartman finds a disturbing image.
A Once and Future Beef By Will Meyer Feature Beef is a major culprit of the climate crisis, but if you want to consider beef’s future, then look to its past. The industry’s tactics have not changed as much as you might think.
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Mirrors By Katy Kelleher Feature Mirrors are sparkly and shiny and hypnotic. They’ve fascinated us for thousands of years. And they might show us a lot more about our society’s misplaced priorities than we care to see.
The No. 1 Ladies’ Defrauding Agency By Rose Eveleth Feature What a 19th-century scammer can teach us about women, lying, and economic boom-and-bust cycles
A Manson Murder Investigation 20 Years In the Making: ‘There Are Still Secrets’ By Zan Romanoff Feature ‘Everything that Manson did with his women was exactly what the CIA was trying to do with people without their knowledge, in the exact same time, at the exact same place.’
