Recent college graduate Elise is in debt—she can’t even afford her antidepressants—although she doesn’t tell her boyfriend, Tom, nor does he know about her longtime eating disorder. Elise is grateful for the opportunity to make good money with Salt of the Earth Sugar, plus she sees harvest work as “a real life experience. Something they […]
A central paradox of the modern era is that we are becoming more unhappy even though, compared with hunter-gatherers, “the comforts, safety, and ease of our existence make us the equivalent of multimillionaires.” So says von Hippel, a longtime professor of psychology, who delved into sociology, anthropology, and biology for some answers. He argues that […]
Chloe Barnes wants nothing more than to build up a healthy clientele for the weed-themed bakery she started in Azalea Bay, California, when her Grandma Rose needed help with the side effects of chemotherapy. So, she reluctantly agrees to be interviewed by podcaster Calista Bryant on the Azalea Bay episode of Starch Nemesis. Calista, who’s […]
New York Times journalist Watkins writes with exactitude and compassion, digging deeply in archives to capture a high-stakes tale that played out internationally during the early 1970s, when the Northern Irish sectarian war against British domination (the Troubles) was at its brutal extreme. While the Provisional IRA received a new generation of recruits due to […]
The story begins by likening words to people: specifically, the way each word is unique and lovely just the way it is. Every word does something no other word can, and when different words meet, “Words are like kids / Who see each other / And begin to play.” The author underscores the anxiety words […]
The German philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) remains famous today for his Marxist critiques of popular culture as well as for a prose style as intricately knotty as a macrame vest. Among his most characteristically memorable pronouncements was this: “The critique of culture is confronted with the last stage in the dialectic of culture […]
This clever mashup includes actual 18th-century women pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny, not to mention Blackbeard’s son, Tobias, legendary pirate Calico Jack, and a whole host of captains (Ahab! Crunch! Hook!). Woebegone mermaid Mary falls in love with a boy she rescues and becomes human to be with him. Alas, he turns out to […]
In humanity’s space-colonizing future, would-be Mars settler Michelle Arensen tries to put the suicide of her father behind her, working with her husband and brother to build a lasting Red Planet base. Suddenly, a bizarre phenomenon engulfs Michelle and other women on the expedition who find themselves held prisoner by faceless, noncommunicative humanoids. After a […]
Noted political scientists Pierson, author of Winner-Take-All Politics, and Schickler, author of Racial Realignment, draw on their extensive scholarship to examine various periods of American history during which polarization was particularly virulent, yet held largely in check until the 1960s by the regional diversity of political mechanisms and institutions of state political parties, media, and […]
Tomorrow marks a momentous occasion for an East Asian–presenting child with pale skin and straight black hair: a musical performance in front of a crowd of people. “But there are thousands of butterflies fluttering in my tummy,” the child tells us. White-outlined butterflies surround the youngster. “I believe in you,” Papa says as he hands […]