“Despite the headlines that came after the election calling this country ‘Trump’s America’—and there were many—I won’t call it that, or see it that way. And regardless of your politics I’ll ask you to join me. This is our America. It’s our America to write in, and our America to write.”
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Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
The Family That Would Not Live
What can haunted houses and their history tell us about American history and culture? Writer Colin Dickey sets out across America to investigate America’s haunted spaces in order to uncover what their ghost stories say about who we were, are, and will be.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Magic of Archives: A Reading List
Stories about the importance and changing role of archiving—an oft-misunderstood or overlooked science.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
On Female Friendship and the Sisters We Choose for Ourselves
Essayist Chloe Caldwell on the “sisters” we choose for ourselves, and her close relationship with her surrogate younger sister, Cheryl Strayed’s daughter Bobbi.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Year and a Day in a Mars Simulator: Reflections at the Halfway Mark
Sheyna Gifford, mission physician for NASA’s sMars simulation, reflects on her year-and-a-day “off-planet,” six months in.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Unapologetic Women
‘See What Y’All Can Work Out’: The State of Empathy in Charleston
Charleston’s—and our nation’s—systemic racism, through the lens of the Dylann Roof trial.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Understanding the ‘Swiss Cheese Model’ of Error
The human lapses that occurred after the computerized ordering system and pill-dispensing robots did their jobs perfectly well is a textbook case of English psychologist James Reason’s “Swiss cheese model” of error. Reason’s model holds that all complex organizations harbor many “latent errors,” unsafe conditions that are, in essence, mistakes waiting to happen. They’re like a forest […]
Posted inBlog Post, Nonfiction
Beautiful Nowheres: ‘No Man’s Sky’ and the 500th Anniversary of ‘Utopia’
Five centuries after Thomas More’s classic was first published, we still dabble in perfect-world-building.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
A Conversation With Dan Ariely About What Shapes our Motivations
Dan Ariely on building an understanding of how humans behave from the ground up.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Nonfiction, Story
Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London
How women writers and artists, from Virginia Woolf to Sophie Calle, found inspiration and freedom by navigating cities on foot.
