The Believer

A rogue group called the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is moving cuttings and seeds from California’s ancient sequoia north to Oregon to save the species from the coming effects of climate change. But should they? Maybe in a world faced with global environmental disaster, the old rules no longer apply.

One Australian examines her life and Australia’s history, wondering whether her country’s fixation on stories of missing children, particularly missing females, is simply its way to avoid confronting its colonial origins, where indigenous Australians were treated as invisible.

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.

““You too have your tools,” wrote Kafka in a passage about fear, and I thought of that line whenever I was scared: I will get through this. I can talk to friends, write about it. Years later, I came across a different translation of the same text: “You too have your weapons.”

Musician Raphael Saadiq talks about soul music and his own career’s longevity.

Steve Silberman’s deep-dive into Bill Evans, one of the most enigmatic figures in jazz, is a fantastic read that examines the intersection of what happens when virtuosic talent inexplicably falls short. Silberman also probes his own obsession with ‘Nardis,’ a complex arrangement which Miles Davis, who employed Evans as a member of his sextet, said the pianist could play “the way it was meant to be played.”

When the author’s high school friend supposedly dies from accidental drowning, he doubts the official story, but his academic mind soon leads him down a dark path, and through an examination of conspiratorial thought itself.

During the eight years after Haiti’s catastrophic 7.0 earthquake, a litany of opportunistic mega-church preachers have become popular and rich comforting the healing nation. They often battle each other for market dominance and battle Haiti’s indigenous Vodou tradition to gain more followers, influence and money. Many Haitian evangelicals and white foreign missionaries view Vodou as a demonic practice, but in a country continually enslaved and exploited, Vodou offers a source of autonomy and liberation from outside control.

Manson bloggers, the world of murder fandom, and the philosophy of being — can you ever escape who you are, or were?

Examining the music of the female orgasm and the orgasmic language of music.