In the Toronto Star, Sandro Contenta travels to the Bahamas to attend “SharkSchool” where a man named Erich Ritter teaches a one-week course on how to swim safely with sharks. Over the course of his reporting, Contenta learns that 63 people have been killed by sharks in the past decade, while scientists have estimated that […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why So Many Teams at the World Cup Have Players Who Share a Birthday
At BBC Magazine, an examination of the “birthday paradox” using the World Cup as an example. The birthday paradox goes like this: Mathematically, in any group of 23 people there is a 50% chance that two people will share a birthday. At the World Cup, there are 32 squads with 23 players on each team. […]
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Tony Gwynn: 1960-2014
“The best thing for me has just been the passion of wanting to play. The challenge of stepping in the box, the challenge of trying to be successful. When I started out, I guarantee you nobody figured I would be where I am today. Nobody. Not even myself. Maybe there’s something that makes you want […]
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Vera Nabokov, Eugen Boissevain, Leonard Woolf: On Spouses Who Supported Their Famous Partner's Writing Careers
At the Atlantic, Koa Beck writes about the spouses of famous writers who supported their partner’s writing careers, often devoting their lives to it. Vera Nabokov epitomized this: She not only performed the duties of cleaning and cooking expected of her as a wife in her era, but also worked as her husband’s “round-the-clock editor, […]
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‘I Got to Know a Father’s Love for the First Time at Age Thirty’
Mark Warren wrote in Esquire about how, at age 30, he finally experienced a father’s love through Dieter, his father-in-law.
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The Science of Suppressing Traumatic Memories
I had come to his house, in this sunny spot between Ben Gurion Airport and the Mediterranean coast, for an unlikely reason: not long ago, after decades of unwavering silence, Sigmund Schiller spoke about his Holocaust experience. “People talk about ‘Sophie’s Choice’ as if it were a rare event,” he said. “It wasn’t. Everybody had […]
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The Subconscious Cues That Guide Visitors Through The World’s Busiest Airport
In a recent blog post for The Atlantic, David Zweig spoke with wayfinding expert and airport-sign designer Jim Harding about his work on the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson. According to Hartfield, the highest mark of success in Harding’s work is invisibility: if his job is perfectly executed, “you will never think of him or his work.” In Harding’s work, no […]
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The Memories of Dad We All Want to Have
When I was 3, my parents tried to plop me into a ski resort day care so the three of them could explore the mountain, but apparently I refused to sit around rearranging blocks with those other babies. My mom tried unsuccessfully to position me between her legs and launch me onto my own skis, […]
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Video Games and Their Potential for Storytelling
At The Awl, Maria Bustillos talks to Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward about the magic behind his wildly popular cartoon series that’s beloved by both children and adults. Here, Ward talks about his love of video games and their potential for storytelling: Oh man, the intensely emotional storytelling in games like ‘Gone Home’… it’s through […]
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What It's Like to Lose Your Arm
I’d always heard amputees talk about the stares and the acute awareness of being viewed as different. During my first shoot for the NewsHour with one arm, I was wearing a blazer when I met a researcher I was to interview. She left the lab, and I took my jacket off. When she returned, it […]