Although Murphy and Price [Michael Murphy and Dick Price, Esalen’s founders] actually met Aldous Huxley only once, in January of 1962 when the author visited them briefly in Big Sur shortly before his death on November 22, 1963 (the same day, it turns out, that JFK was assassinated), his intellectual and personal influence on the […]
Quotes
Posted inQuotes
Kalief Browder, Jailed at Rikers for Three Years Without a Trial, Commits Suicide
Last fall, we featured Jennifer Gonnerman’s New Yorker story, “Before the Law,” an investigation into a crippled legal system that left 16-year-old Kalief Browder imprisoned on Rikers Island for three years, waiting for a trial that never happened. Browder had been charged for a crime based on shaky evidence. Gonnerman’s story made it onto our […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Herr Blatter, Have You Ever Taken a Bribe?’
In a recent piece for the Washington Post, Michael E. Miller profiled Andrew Jennings— a doggedly obsessed, “curmudgeonly” investigative reporter who helped expose the FIFA scandal that brought down Sepp Blatter. According to Miller’s piece, if Blatter’s downfall can be traced to a single moment it was when Jennings grabbed the microphone at a Zurich press conference after […]
Posted inQuotes
‘Why Don’t Pure Loves Meet?’ On the Radio in Afghanistan
In this beautiful piece from Matter, Mujib Mashal takes the reader to the Afghani airwaves, into the hearts of its listeners. From the complications of arranged marriage to online dating woes, the youth of Afghanistan have a lot on their minds. DJ Ajmal Noorzai solemnly shares their stories on his program, The Night of Lovers.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Emptiness of Offense
At Salon, Laura Miller interviews the incomparable novelist Mat Johnson about his new book (Loving Day), as well as satire in the time of the internet, the righteousness of the offended and mixed-race identity.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Russian Information War
“The point is to spoil [the internet], to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it.” –Adrian Chen, in The New York Times Magazine, on Russia’s massive troll army—and their plot against him. Read the story
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How the Clinton Foundation Was Born on a Private Plane En Route to Davos
Chevy Chase was on the plane with Bill Clinton. So was a former president of Brazil. The founders of Google. A former president of Mexico. And John Cusack. They were all going to Davos, the Swiss resort that holds an annual conclave of the wealthy and powerful. The jet — arranged by a Saudi businessman […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Chaotic Nature of Working at Victoria’s Secret
Shopping mall staples rely on “call-in” shifts, and the legality of this system, which may prevent part-time employees from finding other work and pursuing higher education, is in question.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Spelling Skills and the Meaning of the American Dream
In 1931, the historian James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream as “a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.” His book, The Epic of America, may have popularized the term, but the dream dates back at least to […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
This Queer Hoosier Loves Her Home State
Don’t punish Indiana’s citizens for one governor’s decision, Ashley C. Ford implores. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, supported almost exclusively by Governor Mike Pence, doesn’t reflect her Indiana.