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“Empty spaces on maps were so terrifying to ancient mapmakers that they filled them with decorations, fictional landscapes, and monsters. We moderns miss the beautiful monsters, but what if they never actually disappeared? What if the monsters were always part of the map, part of mapping itself?” After many months of hearing about how great […]
Recommending excellent stories by Charlotte Higgins, Lex Pryor, Michael Hardy, Elissa Altman, and Brad Phillips.
“Ronald was my mother’s uncle, a fashion designer who fled Texas for New York at 19. I met him only once. In my memory, we are sitting on the front porch, the hairs standing up on my arms as the sun wanes. His head is bent over a piece of paper, sketching my 7-year-old face. […]
“There’s a damaging disconnect between the lionized figure of the firefighter and the reality of the men and women who fight more fire than anyone.”
The Black Panther Party was founded in Oakland in 1966 as a way to address police brutality throughout the city, but its work expanded beyond the streets. In its early years, the Panthers did a lot of work in the community, with many women in leadership roles. At one point, writes Suzanne Cope, the author […]
“I left Trip House at 8:12 on Saturday morning, having not been murdered, and drove to the Magic Kingdom. The woman at the ticket window asked if I’d come to Disney World to celebrate anything special, and I laughed. If I answered that question truthfully — using unmagical words like ‘genital,’ ‘student loan,’ and ‘gentrification’ […]
“There’s something about losing yourself in a communal experience that’s immensely appealing in this age of virtual meetings and not-so-social media. We want to see the artists we love in person. We want to believe they’re singing directly to us.” Elizabeth Blackwell, a regular commentator on cultural phenomena (check out her Reality TV and Pivotal […]
“My treasured memories, I’ve learned, are all subsidized by a massive Fish Industrial Complex—one that has taken a toll on all sorts of insects, invertebrates, frogs, and salamanders.” In the summer of 2014, Alex Brown went on a life-changing backpacking trip in the Colorado wilderness. On that trip, he caught 50 trout, keeping a few […]
“When I listened, I didn’t know if it was something I entered, or something that entered me. If it was within me or if it was me. Do you remember being 16 and loving a song? Of course you do. It felt like that. It felt like everything.” This week, we’re featuring “On (the) Sublime,” […]
How a a wrong turn led to the largest peacetime disaster in American naval history.
