In this beautiful personal essay, Josh McColough recounts a road trip with his daughter along the coast of California and makes poignant observations about humanity and our vulnerable environment. Still, we too often move through life not considering our size and stature relative to forces and objects that humble us. Geologic time. Plate tectonics. A […]
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Posted inEditor's Pick
Mother Sauce
“It proves Johnson’s point that following a recipe is not just an iterative act, but a creative one.”
Posted inUncategorized
Our 500th Edition! (And the Week’s Top 5)
“The alchemy between rescuer and rescued is strange: like a romantic relationship, only faster moving. The euphoria of starting simply at hello, I’m here to help before moving on and culminating at what feels like deep attachment.” We may be happy that this is the final newsletter of January (come on, spring!), but we’re thrilled that it’s […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Failed Hunt for Meaning in Wartime Ukraine
“You don’t forget your first bombing…Then, it’s scarily mundane.”
Posted inUncategorized
The Enduring Joy of Maps (and the Week’s Top 5)
“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 […]
Posted inUncategorized
A New Series, An Unknown History, and the Week’s top 5
“Minstrelsy shows you one hand, convinces you of one thing—the thing you can see most vividly—while something else works behind the scenes. That something is something only those who are tapped into a specific kind of pain, a specific kind of quest for freedom that has failed before but is not worth abandoning, might understand.” […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Great Canadian Baking Show Is a Pile of Wet Dough
“The CBC promised a homemade alternative to The Great British Bake Off. The show we got has nothing meaningful to say about the country.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Law of the Sea
“Down in the deep, the legal distinction between land and sea no longer holds.”
Posted inNonfiction
‘We Deserve So Much More Than Police, Prisons, and Jails’: Scalawag Takes On Emmy-Winning Television
We recommend these incisive essays on Abbott Elementary, The White Lotus, and The Dropout in Scalawag’s series on pop culture and justice.
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Day in the Life of an Oak Tree, from Mistle Thrush in the Morning to Mice at Midnight
“The pollen of the catkins is sweet on the proboscis of the oak-mining bee, too.”
