“She’d have less to worry about if she knew none of these things. But if she knew none of these things, I reason, she also wouldn’t know me.” At LitHub, Rachel Beanland explores whether or not family secrets are ever justified.

“Just as talking about mental health does not make you weak, making a space for people to talk about quitting the PhD does not make more people leave.” At The Thesis Whisperer, professor Inger Mewburn writes about mental health, quitting the PhD, and toxic positivity in academia.

An essay on death, loss, and coronavirus: “The same unknown that makes me nurse the thought of my mother’s death, makes me think of the loneliness of everyone who died of the virus…. For decades, for the rest of their lives they will be imagining the last moments of the ones who left them.”

“Living in Katrina’s wake, I cannot make sense of this haunted world. New Orleans is a place that has survived, but isn’t healing. I can identify. Despite having married the next man who loves me, I am still broken from the last one, who did not.”

Kim Foster’s James Beard Award-winning essay weaves together the themes of family, addiction, and fast food into a beautiful (and heartbreaking) narrative.

“I know that this situation, while ‘oh this again’ for me, is probably novel and once-in-a-lifetime for you. That is, in fact, why I did the job I did for 30 years: so that shortages and lockdowns and shutdowns and uncertainty aren’t life-as-usual for you.” The writer at InBLOGnito shares learnings from years of facing […]

By teaching machines to understand our true desires, one scientist hopes to avoid the potentially disastrous consequences of having them do what we command.

“Being a mother, a woman, a wife and a writer is different from being a writer-writer. It’s possibly more precarious.” This Longreads essay by an anonymous writer — which has gone viral — is about the struggle to write as a woman, a mother, and as the wife of another writer who is jealous of […]

At The Public Medievalist, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne dives deep into the diverse roots of the English language, which “has always been enriched by contact with other languages.”

At Contingent Magazine, Edward Guimont dives deep into the 19th century, and tells the story of the strange European quest to find living dinosaurs in Africa.

Iman Sultan explores the rich storytelling traditions that gave the world Aladdin — but that have been all but erased in the blockbuster Disney versions.

“The impulse to see pregnancy as a sci-fi curiosity turns pregnant people into something that is not human, or at least adds an asterisk to their humanity.” In this longread, Sara Fredman writes about pregnancy, demons, and Stranger Things.

“For all I say I’m envious of my daughter’s freedoms, perhaps the older woman has more leeway, more agency.” Artist Myfanwy Tristram was irritated by her teenage daughter’s extreme fashions — until she took an illustrated journey into their origins.

“Just like the countless options on my office’s hot drinks machine, I fell in love with a fresh sense of possibility — that there was more than one way to live my life.” In this illustrated longread, Candace Rose Rardon reflects on coffee, life, and finding herself, no matter where she is in the world.

At Real Life Mag, Robin James examines silent discos and Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy”: “Silent discos are peak headphone culture. The entire point of a silent disco is to share space but then disavow that sharing by dancing and listening separately.”