The front and back cover of an edition of Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young

Sick of Streaming? Try This Really Long Cult Novel

Marguerite Young's Miss MacIntosh, My Darling is a dense fusion of poetry and prose. One critic says it's unjustifiably forgotten.
A typist wearing an influenza mask in 1918

How Tucson Enforced Its 1918 Mask Requirement

During the influenza pandemic, the Arizona city's police force fined and arrested people for not wearing face masks.
A man texting at night in his home

Why You Want to Text Your Ex in Quarantine

The psychology behind your urge to connect.
An abbey cellarer testing his wine. Illumination from a copy of Li livres dou santé by Aldobrandino of Siena, late 13th century

When Monks Went Undercover to Steal Relics

Because relics were understood to be capable of working miracles, any relic that was stolen must have wanted to be.
A Waffle House in Augusta, Georgia on March 30, 2020

Waffle Houses Mean Way More Than Waffles in Disasters

The restaurant chain and FEMA work together in calamities like tornadoes and hurricanes, for good reason.
Bernadette Mayer

Everyday Life, Revisited—with Bernadette Mayer’s Memory

In the poet’s work, the small and ordinary rise to the level of heroic adventures. If we value human life, then we should value what makes up a life.
A Pace College student in a gas mask "smells" a magnolia blossom in City Hall Park on Earth Day, April 22, 1970, in New York.

The First Earth Day, and the First Green Generation

The first Earth Day took place fifty years ago, so most people don't remember how it happened or what it accomplished. It's time for a look back.
People wait in line to enter a supermarket which has limited the number of shoppers due to the coronavirus on April 10, 2020 in Brooklyn, NY

COVID-19 Is Hitting Black and Poor Communities the Hardest

The viral pandemic is underscoring fault lines in access to care for those on margins.
Medical workers take in patients at a special coronavirus intake area at Maimonides Medical Center on April 07, 2020 in the Borough Park neighborhood of the Brooklyn, NY

Viral Racism, Universal Antivirals, and Weird Dreams

Well-researched stories from Slate, The New Yorker, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Playwright Terrence McNally in 2010

How Terrence McNally Reimagined the Danse Macabre

The centerpiece of the prize-winning Love! Valor! Compassion! is a rehearsal for an affirming staging of Swan Lake—in drag.