Taffy Brodesser-Akner

A fun, ranging package about Generation X. It includes essays on Evan Dando, The Rules, John Singleton, Grunge music and fashion, CK One, among other 90s touchstones,  plus a piece in which Caity Weaver rewinds 25 years to 1994 and spends a week only using what limited technologies existed then.

A ranging, damning expose of unresolved sexual discrimination and harassment suits at Sterling Jewelers — and other popular jewelry chains under the Signet Jewelers Ltd. umbrella — following a two-year investigation.

A moving tribute to Margot Kidder, as told through the words of her daughter, Maggie McGuane.

Cooper’s new film is ultimately about the way commerce can ruin art, which is why he won’t answer the personal questions Taffy Brodesser-Akner asked him. It makes this profile kinda meta, you know?

“Inside the growth of Goop — the most controversial brand in the wellness industry.”

“Most of the people who have complaints with me aren’t reading me,” says Jonathan Franzen, but he’s a process guy. He doesn’t read anything by his readers. They could write the book on reading him, but he wouldn’t read it and neither would they.

The beach-bum version of Jimmy Buffett has become a huge brand® with financial interests in foodstuffs, hotels, casinos, and even adult living communities. Buffett is the original escapist who has long escaped his original slacker identity. A businessman wrapped in a Hawaiian shirt, he’s worth more money than Bruce Springsteen. (Not bad for a guy who only had one top ten song, compared to Springsteen, who has had 12.)

In recounting the history of America’s obsession with thinness, Taffy Brodesser-Akner explores her own struggles with weight loss and the weight loss industry. She relates how “diet” has become a four-letter word, out in favor of a new form of personal imprisonment — “eating clean,” “getting fit, and “being strong” — none of which offer any magic in a lifetime of struggle between body acceptance and losing weight.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner travels to Israel to reexamine the soup of her youth and the gap between memory, desire, and (ugh) reality.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner goes to Iceland in search of relief and discovers that the island nation, with its quirky puffins and lunar landscape and crowds upon crowds of American tourists, lends itself well to the pursuit of escape.