long reads
Alternatives to Alternatives: the Black Grrrls Riot Ignored
Nineties nostalgia has transformed the Riot Grrrl movement from the alternative underground to a mainstream obsession. But just like before, black women are being left out.
The Strange Tale of Cult Sludge-Metal Band Iron Monkey
"We knew what we wanted to do and nobody could tell us any other way—a band like that is never going to last."
Guilt-Tripping
In 2010, a friend of mine started a travel magazine and asked if she could publish an article I had written about a Kashmiri tailor, during a month I spent living on a houseboat in Kashmir.
Unaccompanied Miners
On one of my last days in Potosí, I finally managed to arrange a meeting with a child miner who makes his living in the depths of Cerro Rico
How a Group of New Zealander Bikers Planned a Road Trip Across Korea’s DMZ
For the past decade, New Zealanders Joanne and Gareth Morgan have been living the semiretired lifestyle of their dreams, traveling around the world on motorcycles alongside a few of their closest friends.
Unaccompanied Miners - Bolivia's Cerro Rico Mine
Jackson and I were on a mission to find child miners. Jackson was nervous, with good reason—sixty kids died from cave-ins and other accidents in the Cerro Rico in 2008 alone. In a country as poor as Bolivia, just because tourists—or children—are...
The Act of Puking
Vomiting makes some people feel so good that they’ve devoted their lives to studying it. Their ultimate goal is to answer the questions: Why do people blow their grits, and what are we to do about it? The answers are more complicated than one might...
Hot Links: Tweeting Obama's Whereabouts, Flaming Teapots, Octopus Vs. Bird
Catch up on the missed stories you still need to read.
The Sordid Tale of Khalid Shaikh, the Founder-Turned-Attacker of File-Sharing Site YouSendIt
Everyone's worked for a terrible boss at one point or another that they would have loved to take down. It's rare when it actually happens, though. Rarer still is the case of a guy who destroys the company he founded after being given the boot. But that...