Andy Mulvihill and Jake Rossen
Do you miss the heady early days of the pandemic when we were all watching Tiger King? Well, the story of New Jersey’s Action Park provides the same lurid draw and distraction. Back in the “good old days” before things like safety laws and OSHA, …
Witold Szablowski
A cook is often one of the most intimate relationships a rich or powerful person may have. Both from living in close proximity. But also, the rich and powerful must trust their cook to not murder them. In turn, these cooks find themselves carefully well-compensated, but also …
Kevin Kwan
In the dark days of Covid-19, any small distraction is so very welcome. Sex and Vanity is a slab of gooey chocolate cake with those fancy chocolate curls all over it. The relatively straight-forward story of “girl meets boy, falls for boy, then fights it like crazy to …
Author Bill Dedman stumbled onto the story of the lifetime while realty surfing out of his price range. WAY out of his price range. When a fantastically expensive mansion, empty for decades though well-maintained, caught his eye, he became intrigued. Dedman soon found other properties like this, scattered around the …
Troy Hess
Hess’s photography collection is the work of years of exploration, down back roads and through abandoned communities. The decline of the dairy industry in Wisconsin is well known, despite our continued insistence on calling ourselves “The Dairy State.” But the days of huge families running a (somewhat) profitable …
John Hodgman
Hodgman is one of those comedians you probably have heard of, but may have a hard time recalling what exactly he was in. He would like to remind you. Which is fine, because John Hodgman is the sort of storyteller that can make the most mundane and awkward …
Michael Palin
If Michael Palin, of both Monty Python fame and former president of the Royal Geographic society, turns his eye to a topic, you know it will be good. The Erebus and Terror are two ships that have gripped the imagination for over a century. The two old warships …
Ron Johnson
Author Johnson, is best known for his book The Men Who Stare at Goats, later a Hollywood movie. His other books are no less far afield and equally fascinating, including The Psychopath Test. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, published 2015, is the book of the …
Alexander Langlands
For those of us who like working with our hands, there is nothing as satisfying as making a useful and beautiful object we can use for years. Cræft, being skilled at creating unique, hand-made items sourced from nature locally, has nearly disappeared. Once, being a craftsperson who could …
Lois Sherr Dubin
Photos by Kiyoshi Togashi and Michael Waddell
When you think “southwest” or “Navajo” jewelry, you probably think big honking belt buckles, silver conchos (flatted “platters” of silver), and chunky turquoise rings at tourist shops. This style of jewelry is mostly knock-offs of the fantastic artistry created by …
Caitlin Doughty
The magnificent, hilarous and always fascinating mortician Caitlin Doughty (Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes) is back with another intriguing look at death.
Death is inevitable. But the way Americans and many in the west act, it is something shameful …
Jon Ronson
There is something utterly gripping and fascinating about psychopaths. The idea that someone is without morals or compassion, no internal brakes, repels and intrigues us. What if we didn’t have that little voice in our head telling us not to do something? What if we could do whatever …
Lisa Birnbach with Chip Kidd
Julia Chaplin
Finding our “tribe” in a melting-pot country like the US can be difficult. With every option available, finding “your” people is often a relief. These tribes, peopled with members drawn to each other by some basic fundamental values, soon spawn off an entire …
My Life as a Rajneeshee, and the long journey back to freedom
Jane Stork
Netflix made a huge splash with their multi-part documentary, Wild Wild Country, about the Bhagwan cult. While a lot of the focus was on Bhagwan and his loyal secretary Sheela, another member Jane Stork (formerly known …
You can’t help but compare Marsh to Agatha Christie as a grande dame of murder. After all, Marsh invites you to with the quote “It’s time to compare Christie to Marsh instead of the other way around.” – Dily Winn, New York Magazine printed on all of her books.
The …
John Kenney
There’s is something about the word “poem” that makes the average American recoil. Add “love” on there, and we’re rolling our eyes and getting out the barf bags. But wait! You haven’t read Kenney’s magnificent, hilarious, and deadly-accurate collection of poems. This is not the book you get …
