Last week, I was famous on the internet…for dressing colorful marshmallow bunnies in cravats and spreading them to the enthusiastic fans of a hit Broadway musical. My friends and I made Hamilpeep. Perhaps your cousin shared it with you? Hamilpeep was our entry into the Washington Post’s annual Peeps diorama contest, in which readers are […]
Month: February 2016
Feb. 22 – 26, 2016 RadioLab doesn’t run climate change stories. Cassie asks her husband, who works for RadioLab, why not. Cassie’s husband explains about anti-stories. Cassie says, “what the hell.” Jennifer was out in the rain and cold, and was on the receiving end of kindness and empathy. She doesn’t care whether her kind […]
There’s a certain category of mundane but distinctly unpleasant discovery: The blueberries you just mixed in your oatmeal explode mold into your mouth at 6 a.m. You read that Donald Trump won the Nevada Republican caucuses. You roll over in bed to find a tick lodged midriff-deep in your shoulder, wiggling about with a tenacity […]
My kids are really into this cartoon called The Octonauts. It’s about a group of undersea rescuers and researchers (there’s a penguin medic, a sea otter marine biologist, a polar bear captain, among others, plus a group of squeaky-voiced creatures called vegimals.) In one of their (and my) favorite episodes, one of the crew members […]
Early in the 17th century, two lions lived in the zoo in Ghent. Their names were Flandria and Brabantia. There were probably other lions nearby. Archduke Albert and his wife, Isabella, ruled the region, now in Belgium, and they had a menagerie at their palace. Having a menagerie was the sort of thing extremely wealthy […]
Being human is hard. Sometimes we treat each other poorly, putting our own feelings or wellbeing first. Mathematical-game models explain the logic behind selfish acts, suggesting that they often make the best sense. (Remember the Prisoners’ Dilemma?) But straight-up logic dismisses empathy. The truth is that deep down, and sometimes even up near the surface, we’re […]
This interview with Radiolab’s senior editor (also my husband) focuses on why the show hasn’t done a story on climate change. It originally ran on May 22, 2014. Since then, Radiolab host Jad Abumrad has spoken the words “climate change” on air . . . as part of an episode on nihilism. Progress? (The show is actually one of my very […]
February 15-19, 2016 Sea glass: a reworked human product returned to the sand from whence it was wrought. There’s less of it now, but you can tell a lot about its origins if you know what to look for. Designer and writer Matt Steel is working on a simplified version of Thoreau’s Walden, and Michelle […]
