Skip to content
Up the Junction by Nell Dunn

Up the Junction: A Place, A Fiction, A Film, A Condition

In addition to a New Wave hit, Nell Dunn's 1963 book about young women in a poor London neighborhood inspired a Ken Loach adaption that helped shift British attitudes toward abortion.

Read Before You Go

Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Arctic circle, Norway

Svalbard: Seeds of Hope

The Arctic archipelago is a bellwether for global climate change, but it also offers a safety net in a planetary disaster scenario.

Conversations on Intellectual Humility

Four hands working together with shapes

Can Intellectual Humility Save Us from Ourselves?

Intellectual humility is defined as a willingness to admit you’re wrong. It could be just the idea for our self-righteous times.

The Where We Were

Eileen Gray, 1914

Eileen Gray: Architect In Her Own Right

Without formal training as an architect, Gray created magnificent designs that sensitively blended traditional craft with a modern aesthetic.

Suggested Readings

Bayaka people in the Dzanga Sangha Ndoki reserve, Central African Republic rainforest

Mobile People, Asteroid Fighters, and Frank Oppenheimer

Well-researched stories from Nautilus, Knowable Magazine, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Most Recent

One knight consoling another knight on the ground

The Swooning Knights of Medieval Stories

In romantic literature of the fourteenth and fifteen centuries, fainting wasn’t just for ladies.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Benedictus_Spinoza._Line_engraving_by_W._Pobuda_after_(A._P._Wellcome_V0005578.jpg

Nice Guy Spinoza Finishes…First?

The Dutch Jewish philosopher Spinoza died in 1677, which is when the battle to define his life—and work—began.

More Stories

Read Before You Go

Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Arctic circle, Norway

Svalbard: Seeds of Hope

The Arctic archipelago is a bellwether for global climate change, but it also offers a safety net in a planetary disaster scenario.

Conversations on Intellectual Humility

Four hands working together with shapes

Can Intellectual Humility Save Us from Ourselves?

Intellectual humility is defined as a willingness to admit you’re wrong. It could be just the idea for our self-righteous times.

The Where We Were

Eileen Gray, 1914

Eileen Gray: Architect In Her Own Right

Without formal training as an architect, Gray created magnificent designs that sensitively blended traditional craft with a modern aesthetic.

Suggested Readings

Bayaka people in the Dzanga Sangha Ndoki reserve, Central African Republic rainforest

Mobile People, Asteroid Fighters, and Frank Oppenheimer

Well-researched stories from Nautilus, Knowable Magazine, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Long Reads

A rose, Zéphirine Drouhin, against a black background

What Do Gardens and Murder Have in Common?

Writers have long plotted murder mysteries in gardens of all sorts. What makes these fertile grounds for detective fiction?
Camellia sinensis

Camellia sinensis: Labor and the Tea Plant

Consumed as tea around the world, Camellia sinensis raises questions about plantation labor practices and the environmental impact of monocultures.
JT Roane alongside the cover of his book, Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place

Historian J.T. Roane Explores Black Ecologies

Considerations of climate change and environmentalism have for too long paid no mind to where Black people live and in what conditions.
Mason's Island

Island in the Potomac

Steps from Georgetown, a memorial to Teddy Roosevelt stands amid ghosts of previous inhabitants: the Nacotchtank, colonist enslavers, and the emancipated.

This kind of “I don’t see race” perspective often comes from Black people who hold just enough wealth and privilege to be insulated from racism’s worst features.

The Indelible Lessons of Erasure

Coal burning power plant with pollution in a twilight situation.

Not All Forms of Carbon Removal Are Created Equal

The carbon market and offsetting system have created “carbon cowboys” and perpetuated forms of neo-colonialism and other inequities.
An illustration of a globe being heated over a fire on a spit

Grilling the Globe

Could meat taxes help to curb over-consumption of beef and mitigate climate change?
People gather at the Federal Reserve building to call on financial institutions to divest from fossil fuels on the ninth anniversary of Superstorm Sandy on October 29, 2021 in New York City.

Divest or Invest? A Climate Change Question

Divestment from fossil fuel corporations is a common call of climate activists, but divesting could be counterproductive to efforts combating climate change.