MY NAME MEANS “BITTER,” is something I liked to say in high school, back when I was trying things out. It was one of many schticks; another was to look theatrically at the watchband I wore, its bezel ...

MY WIFE, ELIZABETH, CALLS THEM my girlfriends, a joke that quietly hardened into a fact. When I come home from work in the summer, I go directly to the narrow strip of yard between our house and the ...

ONCE, SNORKELING OFF HAWAII’S BIG ISLAND, I was delighted when a dolphin slipped across my legs, his supple flanks cool and sleek as silk. Another juvenile dolphin streaked under my outstretched hand, ...

I HAVE COME TO TAOS, NEW MEXICO, riding the light of long, nearly solstice days. The high desert has been spared fire so far this year. It offers a welcome respite from the already-thick humidity of ...

I HAVEN’T BEEN SLEEPING MUCH LATELY. I’ve read that those of us who don’t sleep well might be the descendants of our ancestral night watchers—those who learned to stay awake or sleep light to keep the ...

Banana Man, photograph by Yubo Dong, ofstudio. Artwork by Narsiso Martinez, courtesy of the artist and Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles. NARSISO MARTINEZ’S mixed media installations focus on the ...

BIGFOOT ISN’T REAL, but black bears are—that’s the subtext of a recent study by Dr. Floe Foxon mapping bear populations relative to cryptid sightings. That study, published in 2024, sparked my ...

I WAS TAUGHT, AS A SCIENTIST, to think logically and empirically, rather than intuitively or spiritually.When I was at Cambridge University in the early 1960s most of the scientists and science ...

We are proud to announce that this essay won the 2026 James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for the best food-related personal essay. You can read some of Erica Berry’s thoughts on winning, and ...

THE CHICKEN WAS UNWELL. She no longer ran to the summons of the leftovers pail to scratch at the compost heap with the other hens. Morning found her in a corner of the henhouse facing the wall, with ...

THE FIRST SOUND IN the universe is joylessly underwhelming: white noise boring through the taffy-stretch of nascent space. The big bang is not a bang but a droning robotic purr, galaxies expanding ...

adrienne maree brown has been on my radar for a while. As a thinker, activist, and teacher, she provides essential insights into how we relate to both human and natural ecosystems. Our conversation ...