Puppets at the Hands of Water: Sex Workers in Mongla, Bangladesh
17 minutes
On a summer afternoon in 2022, I made the long drive from Jessore to Mongla, a port city in southern Bangladesh. My route took me through Bangladesh’s...Step Away
by Kata Beilin
13 minutes
The time of hard-earned success had arrived, and Eve was receiving more invitations to give presentations than she could possibly accept. Her salary h...The Unbearable Weight of Displaced Weather
by Mike Hulme
11 minutes
Through apps, webcams, and other forms of digital mediation, the weather is always with us. Yet, more significantly, it is not just “our” weather that...The Nutmeg’s Curse
by Amitav Ghosh
8 minutes
The story of The Nutmeg’s Curse (2021) begins almost exactly 400 years ago, in a very faraway place—so far away that very few of you are likely...
Killing a Baboon: Applied History and the Anthropocene Ape
by Sandra Swart
36 minutes
#JusticeForRaygun is trending in South Africa. He was a young male baboon who had left his mother’s troop and set off, on a journey to adulthood. This...The Place of the Moon
15 minutes
The same Moon rises everywhere, but, for me, the Moon is part of the US West. It rose over my first house near Logan, Utah; three houses in Tucson, Ar...“Everybody Talks About the Weather”
16 minutes
One summer day in 1966, the 23-year-old secretary Margot Müller was serving coffee at the McCann advertising agency’s Frankfurt office. In the confere...Avian Escapees and Budgie Snugglers
28 minutes
Late one evening soon after I had arrived in Australia for a sabbatical, I was out strolling with my daughter through a Sydney park, seeking relief fr...
Fishing for Sharks
by Miles Powell
18 minutes
Today, the most potent symbol for shark conservation is arguably that of a finned shark—staring out helplessly from black eyes with its appendages sli...“We Have Always Known”: On the Trails of People, Plants, and Humboldt
by Paula Ungar
12 minutes
I am trying to focus on my writing, I really am. But my phone buzzes again. This time, the message is difficult to ignore. I see a photograph of my be...
Seeing with a Forager’s Eye: A Conversation with Martin Saxer
by Martin Saxer and Christof Mauch
17 minutes
Martin Saxer leads the research project “Foraging at the Edge of Capitalism,” based at the Rachel Carson Center (RCC). When this project began, he rem...In the Teeth of History: Dental Decay in the Longue Durée
by Frank Zelko
28 minutes
In recent years, I have been writing a book on the history of water fluoridation, a practice that is dental dogma in a handful of countries, particula...