“He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Why was he forgotten?”
Search results
A Year in Reading and Our Top 5
“Some of my favorite stories this year have made me more open to new outlooks and solutions for restoring and supporting the earth. They challenge me to pay more attention to the natural world, and to remember that we’re all connected, even to the tiniest and simplest forms of life.” “One observation on its own […]
Mulling Desire, Honoring Murdered Women, and Our Top 5
I had no idea that the hot, tingly pain of blood returning to a frozen extremity is called the screaming barfies, until I read “What Is a Body For?” by Diana Saverin.
The Joy of New Words and the Week’s Top 5
“Yet I still doggy paddle in impostor syndrome. For I am not a biologist or cetologist, nor an oceanographer. I am just a woman with a pen, a profound love for water, and an eye for noticing patterns in the currents, eddies, and swirls of living.” Sometimes words aren’t enough. Or, at least, existing words […]
Uncanny Testimony
As the last Holocaust survivors approach the end of their lives, an AI scholar grapples with technology that promises to freeze them in time.
The Star Essay
“…a writer strives to constellate, to make sense of seemingly disparate and unrelated notes or events.”
How to Love a Swamp (and Our Top 5)
“But here’s the thing about swamps: They don’t go down easy. Swamps don’t protest, they insist.” I recently completed a road trip across the Canadian prairies, traveling through the mountains to the southwestern coast of British Columbia. I was relaxed at the wheel, and I enjoyed the chance to think, unencumbered even by radio stations along […]
What Are Memories, Anyway?
The brain is a funny thing. You give it the right cues of depth and immersion, and something that would otherwise be a memory of an image becomes a memory of an experience.
Sinead O’Connor Remembers Things Differently
“The mainstream narrative is that a pop star ripped up a photo of the pope on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and derailed her life. What if the opposite were true?”
(Alleged) Kings of the Con and the Week’s Top 5
“[T]he most compelling tales of grift aren’t the ones that depend on technology: the bottomless library of fraud-ready photos; the platforms that let anyone claim to be an epidemiologist or electoral fraud whistleblower; the software that can plop your face onto another person’s. No, the tales that captivate us most almost always reveal a person’s longing.” […]

