Unlikely Blessings
[no-caption] Glenn H. Shepard Jr. When I discovered the poetry of Paul Celan as an undergraduate, I had little idea his words would later guide me through dark…
Tag: emotions
Death as Something We Make
[no-caption] Rouzes/Getty Images Renee (a pseudonym) closed her eyes, lay her head in her brother’s arms, and gently drew her last breath. Minutes before, she had chugged a…
Love Poem for the Shape of the Field
[no-caption] Johannes Plenio/Pexels The sun opens, shutters. The social scientist wants to know where to look, keeps widening her gaze. Over here on the earth, a girl fries…
Does Love Always Come Before Marriage?
Thousands of couples were wed in a mass ceremony in South Korea on February 7, 2020. Some of them had only met a few weeks earlier, after being…
Is the Pandemic Slowing Down Love?
[no-caption] Angus Krieg SAPIENS host Jen Shannon speaks with biological anthropologist Helen Fisher about her research on love, sex, and everything in between. Fisher is the author of…
The Pandemic and the Process of Becoming
Anthropologist Victor Turner’s work on transitional states may shed light on people’s pandemic experiences of the betwixt and between. Pixabay/Pexels As a parent of two kids in elementary…
The Casual Menace of a Trump Rally
After the 2016 U.S. presidential election, supporters of president-elect Donald Trump packed the Giant Center (shown here) for a victory rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Anand Pandian Thin…
Why Do Virtual Meetings Feel So Weird?
[no-caption] Anna Shvets/Pexels It’s morning in Houston, Texas, for Jeremy* and his team of engineers, and nearly evening in a small town north of Bucharest, Romania, for Costa…
When Colorblind Parenting Meets Anti-racism
Author Zeray Alemseged and his daughter attend a Black Lives Matter protest in Chicago. Peter Stamos I watched the uniformed White policeman kneel on the Black man’s neck…
How COVID-19 Is Changing People’s Relationships With Houseplants
“Since when did people start naming plants?” my mother asked me. We were at the dining room table, scrolling through pictures of plants on my iPhone. The photos—close-ups…
What Scars Say About Sex and Stereotypes
[no-caption] Dean Krakel/Getty Images I recently noticed a curious phenomenon playing out on various television series. In Outlander, Scottish heartthrob Jamie Fraser’s back is seared wit…
Can a Robot Guess What You’re Thinking?
What on earth are you thinking? Other people think they know, and many could make a pretty decent guess, simply from observing your behavior for a short while.…
The Problem With Abstract Threats
[no-caption] Angus Greig Everyone seems to have a story about the moment when the novel coronavirus pandemic stopped being an abstract problem “somewhere out there” and started being…
A Curator’s Search for Justice
In October of last year, I found myself with my family in the heart of a sacred forest of the Mijikenda people of Kenya. One of the elders…
Animal Grief Shows We Aren’t Meant to Die Alone
A mother gorilla cradles her dead baby at a zoo in Germany in 2008. Rolf Wilms/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images As the SARS-CoV-2 virus rocks the world, a haunting aspect of…
Grass Trilogy
If you missed the “Introduction to Grass Trilogy,” you can find it here. By Ochirbatyn Dashbalbar Translated by Jessica Madison Pískatá 1. Grass O grass—presently my dear father,…
Introduction to Grass Trilogy
The sacred mountain Altan Ovoo rises in the Dariganga region of eastern Mongolia. Jessica Madison Pískatá I first arrived in eastern Mongolia in August 2011 by way of…
How to Make Climate Change Feel Real
The year is 2018. The world’s leaders are gathered, yet again, to try to solve the crisis of climate change. But this time, the United Nations secretary-general is…
i. will. cross.
I wrote my poem “i. will. cross.” at a site called the Line of Control, the ceasefire line that exists as a de facto border between Indian- and…
Coronavirus and Coping With Death
While sheltering in place in California during the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about my graduation day—but not because it was particularly…
Yoik
Deep in the Arctic Circle, in the far north of Scandinavia, people belonging to the Sámi ethnic group herd reindeer. Nowadays only a minority of Sámi people still…
The Problem of Imagining the Real
As the novel coronavirus sent China into lockdown, my wife and I started to carefully follow the news. China was far away, and it was hard to imagine…
Why Social Distancing Feels So Strange
People stand 6 feet apart while waiting in line for a store in Denver, Colorado. Michael Ciaglo/Stringer/Getty Images Around the world, millions of people are now practicing social…
When Coronavirus Emptied the Streets, Music Filled It
Sardinia is celebrated for its traditional a cappella music and its murals, like this one in the town of Orgosolo that honors pacifist musician Fabrizio De André. Simona…