Language
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Nov 19, 2025
How irony can help us walk back our conspiratorial thinking.
Sci-Fi
Nov 17, 2025
Our bodies, our brains, our planet, our women? What their fictional desires reveal about our own failings — and whether 'Pluribus' and 'Bugonia' get it right.
Nov 14, 2025
You are welcome, even encouraged, to spread it around.
Writing
Nov 10, 2025
When a project is about anything and everything, it's also about nothing — and who'd want to read that?
Travel
Sep 12, 2025
My recollection of the past is crisp but scattered. Will a pile of ancient photos make sense of it all?
Violence
Jul 29, 2025
A deadly serious thought experiment.
Pop Culture
Oct 29, 2025
For me, live-action movies and TV will always be secondary.
OMG, subscribe to Trying!
Sep 3, 2025
My brain makes it hard to live in the moment, but there's one place I've found I can truly be present: the highway.
Aug 6, 2025
'I hate poetry,' I used to say, half joking and half serious. But which half was which?
Maculinity
Jul 14, 2025
I'm not a lumberjack, but I'm okay.
Memory
Jul 1, 2025
An argument for the most uncomfortable emotion.
Sep 16, 2025
And it taught me the meaning of life.
Jul 17, 2025
What I learned (or didn't) at Condé Nast.
Jun 19, 2025
A single visit 25 years ago clarified my approach to food.
May 20, 2025
A Tuesday special: Five mini-essays in one newsletter!
Apr 2, 2025
Trigger warning: I am about to use the word "spatchcock."
Jan 29, 2025
Once they brought "ethnic" cuisines together on a single menu. Now they're frozen in time. What happened, and can they be revived?
Jan 28, 2025
For me, learning to cook meant learning to freestyle. Now, when I come face-to-face with precise instructions for a dish, the results aren't always pretty.
Dec 26, 2024
On large-format cooking, and larger-format writing.
Oct 2, 2025
I built my career on artful narratives of adventure. But was I lying to my readers — and to myself?
Jul 24, 2025
How one terrible book of puns opened my eyes to the potential of language.
May 29, 2025
In the mid-1990s, Phuong Anh Nguyen made Q Bar the most important bar in Vietnam—and possibly the world.
May 28, 2025
Celebrity travel shows are the worst, even when you love the celebrity. But they don't have to be bad!
Apr 24, 2025
As a travel writer and a New Yorker, I'm supposed to say "on foot." I'm starting to think that's wrong.
Apr 7, 2025
Please enjoy this email I sent to everyone, written on a flight to Hong Kong, back in 2005.
Nov 3, 2025
But you can still use your stupid brain to try!
Oct 31, 2025
Hundreds of thousands of words later, what's to become of this newsletter?
Oct 23, 2025
His writing shaped my life, and he's now at a literary and cultural apex. But is the mysterious postmodernist's work still any good?
Death
Oct 14, 2025
Don't worry, death isn't coming for you quite yet.
Politics
Oct 3, 2025
Yawning reflections of a radical left Democrat.
The Future
Sep 19, 2025
Does "When in doubt, cut it out" apply to body parts? Asking for, uh, a friend.
Food
Sep 5, 2025
The wild ancestor of today's cattle went extinct in 1627. But, uh, like, what if it didn't?
Aug 26, 2025
It's vulgar. It's offensive. But it's the only term that truly describes our moment.
Aug 25, 2025
The original rock-and-roller has inspired dozens of tunes, but which are worth listening to?
Aug 14, 2025
I've been saving up some choice complaints — just for you, dear reader.
Aug 11, 2025
Why it's so impossible to talk about the subjects that matter.
Aug 8, 2025
We're all antisemites now — even you, even me.
Aug 5, 2025
The end is nigh, dude, but is that any reason to freak out?
Jul 28, 2025
What do you get for the man who has everything?
