Latest
June 8, 2022
“A Catastrophic Loss of Faith in America” | An Interview with Pankaj Mishra
The Drift
Over the past few months, each day has brought devastating new reports from the war in Ukraine. Beyond the horror and grief, it’s been difficult to know quite how to react — and how to interpret the mainstream commentary. We’ve wondered, at times, if there’s a reason we feel a bit out of the loop, as if everyone else is having a conversation for which we’ve missed the subtext. Maybe...
June 14, 2022
The Audacity of Nature Docs | What Barack Obama's Our Great National Parks Leaves Out
Chanelle Adams
We begin on the beach in Hanauma Bay, Hawaii. Small waves lap against the shore as the camera lands on a recognizable face. “I grew up in Hawaii,” says a barefoot Barack Obama. “This was my backyard.” Unlike his successor Donald Trump, Obama has largely stayed above the political fray. Now, as narrator of Our Great National Parks, a five-part Netflix docuseries that premiered in April, he’s dipping his toe...
June 9, 2022
All in the Family | Amy’s Kitchen and America’s Shadow Workforce
Erik Baker
Santa Rosa, California is exactly the kind of place where you’d expect to find the heart of a natural foods empire. It is, in several senses, green. An hour’s drive north of San Francisco, the largest city in California’s Wine Country is surrounded by state parks in the Mayacamas Mountains that separate Sonoma from Napa Valley. Dating back to Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), generations of Hollywood filmmakers...
June 13, 2022
Sick to Our Stomachs | Why Does Everyone Have IBS?
Natasha Boyd
Recently, a friend related a humiliating anecdote: he had been having digestive problems, and his gastroenterologist requested detailed reports about his bowel movements. Instructed not to be squeamish about painting an accurate picture, he composed a long missive about the consistency, color, and frequency of his eliminations — only to realize that he had sent the email to his employer, instead of his doctor. He apologized profusely, and received a...
June 14, 2022
Scenes from a Crisis | Selfishness Switches Genders
Oscar Schwartz
Midway through Joachim Trier’s film The Worst Person in the World, Julie, the main character, finds herself lost and unsure how to move forward on life’s path. She recently turned 30, works in a bookshop, and lives with her boyfriend, Aksel, in a tastefully furnished apartment in downtown Oslo. He is in his 40s, a successful comic book illustrator whose gentle, nerdishly charming demeanor belies a moderately deviant imagination. Aksel...
June 14, 2022
All Kinds | Fiction
Hannah Kingsley-Ma
When Sal had her baby, I watched her breastfeed her son in her living room. I asked Sal what it felt like. She looked at me and raised her eyebrows. Has anyone sucked on your nipples before? she asked. Sal! I screamed. Sal told me that when she breastfeeds around men she knows, they always ask her if she’s tasted it. They say it in a low whisper, urgent and...
June 14, 2022
Hollywood Tours | Fiction
Madeline Cash
Al Friedman and his mentally-ill cousin painted a decommissioned school bus to say HOLLYWOOD TOURS. They charged tourists $10.00 or ¥1,186.24 or £7.64 and drove them on a 3.5-mile loop of the hills. The price was well under market rate for the industry, said Al. He spoke to the tourists through a headset. “Kurt Cobain used to live there,” said Al, and so on. Al had been dishonorably discharged from...
June 14, 2022
A Fable | Poetry
Robin Myers
Once something closed around them like a basket and there they stayed for a long long time, falling in love with the tragic slats of light across their faces. They could see each other better now, the world gone a threat of latticed volumes past the reeds. Even then they didn’t promise anything, why would they have promised, aren’t vows meant for the giant to hear, and where was he.
June 14, 2022
Polytopes | Poetry
Kevin Holden
nephilim antiphonal twelve tone as if there could be such a thing anticomb the pollen a yellow shivering to take your seraphim & synapses the spaces between oh a raven a crow an owl show me the backside of the databarn 1 Yettabyte of brain oh come on now you would say super computer cum on my face azeotrope howling clarity or akashic field rose tone row you say...
June 14, 2022
Poem in Which I’m Called Unknowable Despite Near-Constant Nudity | Poetry
Kindall Fredricks
And fuck if all the bats didn’t just slide under the bridge like dropped wallets. So what if I have nothing to say about the vocabulary of flowers—those pinheaded gossips sunning their perms mid workday with bees sticking out of their pistils like earbuds. Every word I have to give is wrapped in tinfoil and tastes like a fridge. There are no valleys sunswept in my chest, no dreams shaking...
