Historian Tiffany Watt Smith argues that schadenfreude, the joy we derive from another’s misfortune, is just a natural part of the very complex emotional responses we have as human beings.
Profiles & Interviews
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
‘I Believe That Silence Is Ineffective’: Devi S. Laskar on Invisibility and American Terror
Laskar’s debut novel imagines an alternate ending to an incident from her real life: When law enforcement agents raided her home, and confiscated her unfinished novel, what if she had refused to comply?
Posted inBooks, Culture, Feature, History, Profiles & Interviews, Story
The Precarity of Everything: On Millennial (Blacks and) Blues
Reniqua Allen — the author of It Was All a Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America — on Black millennials, millennial burnout, and hope in a time of uncertainty.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
‘I Spent Two Years Researching Before I Wrote a Single Line’: Geeking Out With Marlon James
Man Booker winner Marlon James immersed himself in African myths and history, so he could use that world as a springboard for a new fantasy series.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
‘I Knew It Was Not My Correct Life, Because It Asked Me To Mute My Voice.’
Reema Zaman on deciding she would no longer live to please men, and how women’s self-esteem and self-love is a revolutionary act of dissent.
Posted inArts & Culture, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Accidental Music History: How Jeff Gold Saved Rare Iggy & the Stooges Recordings from the Dump
Sometimes this is how musical history gets saved.
Posted inBooks, History, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
‘I Inherited Luck’: Bridgett M. Davis on Her Family’s Life in the Numbers
In a new memoir, novelist Bridgett M. Davis reveals that her mother was a Numbers operator in Detroit from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
Forming Relationships with the Road: An Interview with Tom Zoellner
The right tour guide can breathe life into the most boring stretch of highway.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Science & Nature, Story
Pam Houston on Coming Clean, Climate Change, and ‘Writing Deeply Into the Grasses’
Pam Houston’s new memoir is an ode to her beloved ranch, but also deals directly with the harrowing moments of childhood abuse that her fictional characters have been living through for years.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Sports, Story
Benoit Paire, Tennis Solitaire
Thessaly La Force hangs out with the lonesome, racquet-smashing Frenchman.