The Antihero Trilogy, Part 2
There’s a scene midway through season 2 of Mad Men (set in 1962) in which Don and Betty go to a Memorial Day celebration at a country club. Veterans are...
Quantifying colonialism
Another week, another news article. An unsustainable pace if I also want to write a book, so this is it for me and news for a while (I hope). I wrote about a...
Forensic anthropology’s race problem
I’m pausing the Antihero Trilogy to share a story I published this week, about a debate roiling in U.S. forensic anthropology. For decades, forensic...
The Antihero Trilogy, Part 1
Over the course of the pandemic, my husband and I have watched and/or rewatched the three antihero dramas credited with defining the Golden Age of...
How should a writer write?
I’m thinking a lot about how I want and need to structure my days. Not just my workdays, but especially my workdays. And most especially my writing days,...
On Indigenous voices and diverse sources in journalism
This week I wrote about a new paper on human footprints found in White Sands National Park, which possibly date to as far back as 23,000 years ago. This is a...
Against the American Dream
Hello! I took an unplanned late-summer vacation from the newsletter, because, well, I didn’t feel like doing it for a while. I’m trying to honor my own...
Simone Biles is our hero
You don’t need more words and thoughts from me, a person who knows very little about gymnastics or even sports, about Simone Biles’s decision to withdraw...
In praise of Schedule Send
I hate email. (I know, I’m writing an email newsletter. We contain multitudes.) I don’t even get that much of it. For me, email is not so much a time suck as...
My latest feature
I’m delighted to share what I hope will be my big story of the year (maybe of my life?): a deep dive into the history and future of the Morton Collection, a...
The conquistadors’ music
Listening to a world transformed
Feel weird about your pandemic body? Read this
I hear rumors that some people are vaccinated and back out in the world. (Not me, yet! Fingers crossed for August.) Chances are you look a little different...
The gift of enough
Hello! I took a few weeks off from the newsletter to finish a challenging first draft of a feature story, and then to…not write for a weekend or two....
Why journalists are quitting
Today I want to share an article I’m so glad somebody finally wrote: “The COVID Reporters Are Not Okay. Extremely Not Okay.” The brave soul to take this on...
Burning up
Like every knowledge (or maybe just media) worker, I’ve been thinking about this article on the so-called YOLO economy for the past couple weeks. It’s about...
The easy way out
I don’t write much about yoga, because as proudly corny as I’ve become over the last year and change, I still have my limits. It’s also a part of my life...
The problem with self-help
I have a lot more work than I expected this weekend, so I’m just popping into share an article that’s relevant to our interests, and that I almost missed but...
A life you can cope with
Toward the end of Wintering, author Katherine May talks to a woman named Dorte who lives with bipolar disorder. Dorte struggled with the condition for many...
On Wintering
I’ve been circling an uncomfortable fact in this newsletter for about a year: I’ve loved quarantine. There are people and places I miss desperately, and I...
Deprogram yourself
I often say my best productivity hack was going to therapy. I started because I’d reached a point where work should have been going more and more...