In Li’s luggage, [FBI] agents found two large Pop Weaver microwave popcorn boxes. Buried under the bags of unpopped snack kernels were roughly 300 tiny manila envelopes, all cryptically numbered—2155, 2403, 20362. Inside each envelope was a single corn seed. In Ye’s luggage, agents found more corn seeds hidden amid his clothes, each one individually […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Breaking Elgar’s Enigma: Cryptographic Genius or Crackpot?
In New Republic, Daniel Estrin writes about how a former insurance adjuster claims to have solved the 118-year-old cryptographic mystery of the hidden message in Edward Elgar’s infamous Enigma Variations.
Posted inNonfiction, Op-Ed, Story
What Thomas Jefferson Taught Me About Charlottesville and America
University of Virginia grad Joshua Adams believes that if you want to understand the recent violence there, look back at history and the school’s complicated founder.
Posted inUncategorized
Donald Trump’s War With the Past
The president willfully ignores, rewrites, or rejects history just as we have begun to truly interrogate the trauma of the Civil War.
Posted inFood, Nonfiction, Quotes
The Most Amazing Chef You’ve Never Heard of is a Zen Buddhist Nun
Jeong Kwan has no restaurant, no customers, and no cookbooks, yet her vegan cuisine earns rave reviews from Michelin-star chefs.
Posted inCurrent Events
Are Regular Russians Ready to Take On Vladimir Putin?
The Russian election is one year away, but taking on a ruthless autocrat may not be welcomed by a generation looking for stability and security.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
The Immigration-Obsessed, Polarized, Garbage-Fire Election of 1800
A madman versus a crook? Unexpected twists? Fake news? Welcome to the election of 1800.
Posted inCurrent Events, History, Nonfiction, Story
American Dolchstoss
The German “stab-in-the-back” myth springs back to life in America, this time through scapegoating over lost jobs.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Rise of Embalming
Ironically, it was this desire to be close to the dead that ultimately helped usher bodies out of the home. Embalming—which advanced as a science around the same time as the Civil War—allowed for the corpses of men who had died on far-off battlefields to return home for some semblance of the Good Death. “Families […]
Posted inNonfiction, Op-Ed
What Thomas Jefferson Taught Me About Charlottesville and America
University of Virginia grad Joshua Adams believes that if you want to understand the recent violence there, look back at history and the school’s complicated founder.
