We Keep Us Safe: On Antifa
This past Saturday, Donald Trump announced that his administration would be deploying federal troops to Portland, OR, authorizing the military to use “full...
September Book Club
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where my editor David Swanson and I discuss what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid...
The Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I discuss what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers. As...
Ministry of Violence
James Dobson is dead, leaving behind the legacy of poisoned politics he created, and countless children and adults who live with the pain of surviving the...
Princes of the City
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I discuss what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers. This...
Let Us Now Praise Eater.com
If you’ve been reading this newsletter long enough—and bother clicking through the links—you may have noticed that Eater.com is an invaluable resource for...
A Queer Shoulder to the Wheel
A version of this piece was originally published in Flaming Hydra, an art collective I'm proud to be a part of. Then I let David loose to edit as he does so...
The Great Sword Heist of 2025
Your regular sandwich feature has been held up by a robbery. Quite seriously, I couldn’t focus on pastrami this week because … my entire sword collection was...
July Culture Chat
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I discuss what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers. BECOME...
Notable Sandwiches: Pastrami Preview
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where David and I invite you to pull up a table at the moveable feast that is Wikipedia’s List of Notable...
Donald Trump's Dictator Chic
Last week, the hoax-busting website Snopes felt compelled to fact check the Oval Office. Specifically, a reader had written in, asking whether a viral photo...
Introducing... the Sword and the Sandwich Book Club!!
This is an announcement, and also a plea. I know times are hard all around, but it’s a particularly dismal time to be a journalist of any stripe right now....
Notable Sandwiches #131: Panuozzo
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where David and I invite you to pull up a table at the moveable feast that is Wikipedia’s List of Notable...
Who Benefits from Destroying the Department of Education
This week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump Administration can go ahead with its ambitious, ruinous plan of gutting the Department of Education, firing...
Notable Sandwiches #130: Panini
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where my intrepid editor David Swanson and I take our seats at the big strange table that is Wikipedia’s List...
That Tears Shall Drown the Wind
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsedUpon the sightless couriers of the air,Shall blow the horrid deed in...
Everyone Is Welcome to My Mountains
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I discuss what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers. This...
Notable Sandwiches July 4th Special: Barbecue
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, led gently by my brilliant and long-suffering editor David Swanson, wade through the rough waters of...
Writing into the Wreck
I, for one, never asked to live in a collapsing empire. The feeling of what you thought to be solid ground turning to a shower of scree under your feet, the...
Notable Sandwiches #129: Pan Bagnat
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the movable-feast where my editor David Swanson and I pull up a chair at the strange table that is Wikipedia’s List of...
How to Survive Midsummer in New York
Tuesday, the greatest city in the world experienced one of its hottest days, and one of its coolest nights. By midday, temperatures in New York topped 100...
June Culture Chat
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I discuss what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers. BECOME...
Notable Sandwiches #128: The Princess and the Pambazo
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the movable-feast where my editor David Swanson and I pull up a chair at the strange table that is Wikipedia’s List of...
Identity Sprain
Trump’s birthday parade In her masterpiece Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, the Nobel-Prize winning author and oral historian Svetlana Alexievich...
A Sunflower with Her Face in the Middle
Sometimes your world shrinks wildly: to the precise diameter of your mom’s aortic valve, for example, or the too-minute value that shows up on the pulse...
Notable Sandwich Special: Literary Heroes
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, where my editor David Swanson and I pull up a chair at the strange table that is Wikipedia’s List of Notable Sandwiches...
You Are What You Eat
Casey Means, Influencer General Casey Means, the Trump administration’s new nominee for Surgeon General of the United States, has a prescription for America....
Notable Sandwiches #127: Open-Faced
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the movable-feast feature where my editor David Swanson and I pull up a chair at the strange table that is Wikipedia’s...
On A.I.'s Artificial Incompetence
To even the most casual reader, a newspaper’s annual publishing schedule can be numbingly familiar, from the “look at the year ahead” in January, to the...
May Culture Chat
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I discuss what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers. BECOME...
Notable Sandwiches #126: Num Pang
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, your host, along with my editor David, lay out the multifarious and strange feast that is...
The Poisoning of the American Mind
The winds at Cape Denison on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, photographed by Frank Hurley, 1912 In the emptiness of Antarctica, on a desolate stretch...
Notable Sandwiches Special: 1909 Flashback Edition
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the series in which I, alongside my editor David Swanson, stumble through the strange and ever-shifting document that is...
A Golden Age of Conclaves
By David Swanson “Das Konklave” by Hans Makart, 1864 The term conclave dates back to the 1268 papal election in Viterbo, Italy, which lasted so long that the...
So You Want to Learn About Polar Exploration
Welcome to our regular feature for paid subscribers! This is for you, the elite, to enjoy extra content, because you are kings, queens and gender-neutral...
Notable Sandwiches #125: Naan
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the moveable feast my stalwart editor David Swanson and I lay out for you every Friday, where we chronicle Wikipedia’s...
How to Not Get Poisoned in America
The minute I saw that Robert Kennedy Jr., a notorious disease-loving health crank, was going to be responsible for the nation’s health—and the health of its...
Notable Sandwiches #124: The Muffuletta
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where David and I play host at the strange, overladen table that is Wikipedia’s List of Notable Sandwiches,...
April Culture Chat
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I write about what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers....
Disability, Eugenics, and the Value of Human Life
The eugenicists Your worth is not tied to what you can do. Your worth is not tied to your health. Your worth is not tied to all the things you can do...
Notable Sandwiches #123: The Mother-in-law
By David Swanson Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my intrepid editor David Swanson, go down to the crossroads that is...
Into the Arctic
If I had to come up with a metaphor for my mind over the last few months, a wooden ship bound in pack ice would be a good one: wracked by pressures that...
A Brief Leave-Taking
This newsletter is a two-man high-wire act, with David and I working in tandem as writer and editor—and sometimes switching roles. It needs both of us to be...
TLDS January Culture Klatsch
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I write about what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers....
Notable Sandwiches #121: Montreal Smoked Meat
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my intrepid editor David Swanson, move through the fragrant boughs of the variegated grove...
Counter-Programming with Food and Poetry
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I write about what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers. I'm...
Notable Sandwiches #121: Monte Cristo
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my noble editor David Swanson, plunge fearlessly into the mysteries of Wikipedia’s List of...
An Archival History of Los Angeles
Welcome back to Culture Club, a feature where David and I write about what we’ve been reading, watching, playing, and listening to, for paid subscribers....
Notable Sandwiches #120: Montadito
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, where I, alongside my heroic editor David Swanson, tilt at the windmills that comprise Wikipedia’s List of Notable...
On Moss, Rock, Lichen, and Survival
“Moss. Roots” by Ivan Shishkin Lately, I’ve been looking at the life cycle of moss. I found myself instantly lost in a thicket of botanical terminology—from...