Ira Glass is Not My Friend and Some Thoughts on Serial

Last year, I told a story for This American Life (TAL), my favorite radio show. My story was about being so lost in grief over my sister-in-law’s death from cancer that I mistook a pizza delivery guy for an undertaker. My error wasn’t as ridiculous as it seems. The pizza guy had the wrong house, […]

The Last Word, December 1-5, 2014

* Yesterday, Cameron wrote another one of her beautiful essays that make you remember how nice it is to be alive. Or, (in her words), once again she’s vomiting rainbows. “You’re going to have to forgive us our shouting about Europe for now,” says guest poster Chris Lintott, an astrophysicist at University of Oxford, in the wake of […]

Outdoors After Dark

It’s 6 am on an early November morning, and I am tiptoeing up a juniper hillside with a rifle slung over my shoulder. I’m following Adam, my friend and guide, when suddenly he stops. “Listen.” It’s still completely dark, except for the sea of stars above us, which I gaze up at as I stop […]

The Last Word: October 27 – 31, 2014

In the beginning: The week started with Part IV of guest Colin Norman’s every-Monday series on undergoing heart surgery. (Spoiler alert: He lives to write another day.) Next: Craig went looking for a creature from an extinct species—and saw one, sort of. Then: Christie got her gun and went looking for creatures from non-extinct species—and saw them, for real. And: Jessa […]

Forward by Failure

A few years ago, I decided to take up hunting. This was kind of a big deal, because I’d spent the first decade-plus of my adult life as vegetarian. I became a big game hunter for the same reason I raise chickens — to know where my food comes from and ensure that it’s raised […]

Last Word

September 22-26, 2014 Erik makes the case that Donald Trump is actually a performance artist — Andy Kaufman in disguise. Ann explained how it happened that between 1993 and 2013 about 10 percent of American electricity came from the Russian nuclear program. “You don’t just propose an idea,” the man responsible for the program says, “you go do something about […]

Stepping Off the Multi-Tasking Treadmill

Yesterday in the Washington Post, I wrote about how I wanted to love my treadmill desk, but I just don’t. I had high hopes. I’ve been a standing desk user for more than 10 years, long before they were a “thing.” I’m an active, restless person who already spends more than 80 percent of my […]

The Last Word

September 8 – 12, 2014 The week began with a greatest hit from Cameron, a 2011 post that proved to be one of LWON’s most-visited—an ode to an astronomy professor who changed her mother’s life, Then came a new and no less viral post from Erik questioning the professional ethics of another academic, Henry Walton Jones, Jr., a professor of […]