Erratic Monuments to a Melting World
As glaciers melt, they leave behind abandoned rocks and other erratics. This photo essay of the Alaskan wilderness explores how glacial erratics are time travelers, treasure troves, reliquaries, and rubble.
Making the Nation in the Gilded Age: A Conversation with Richard White
To be outside the “home” was a dangerous place to be in Gilded Age America. Richard White tells the story of how the modern nation reluctantly came into being alongside the environmental crisis of the late nineteenth century.
What A Card Game Teaches Us About Moving Through A City
The geography of a city can compel people to behave in predictable patterns. A new card game challenges players to rethink and explore urban spaces.
How Canada’s Scientists Mapped the Arctic North and Weathered the Cold War
In the 1940s and 1950s, atmospheric studies of Canada’s Arctic North were defined by technological failure. Edward Jones-Imhotep tells the story of the Cold War from a new vantage point—that of an “unreliable nation.”
We Are the Seventh Generation: A Conversation with Winona LaDuke
Two centuries ago, Ojibwe people planned for seven generations to come. Today that seventh generation is fighting for the treaty rights their ancestors established and a just, sustainable future.
How the Other Half Loved Nature
A recent book shows Chicago’s turn-of-the-century black and immigrant laborers embraced the great outdoors. Did they have any other choice?
The Immigrants Who Supplied the Smithsonian’s Fish Collection
The Smithsonian’s fish collection preserves not just specimens but the labor and knowledge of immigrant fishermen on the California coast.
When We Repealed Daylight Saving Time
In 1922, 16 states and 137 cities followed Daylight Saving Time—and the rest of the country did not. Repealing Daylight Saving Time only made the map of national temporal borders more complex, causing heartbreak and confusion at the border.
The Case for Ecological Reparations: A Conversation with Jason W. Moore
Making things right in the face of climate change demands that colonialism, race, and gender take center stage in the story of capitalism.
Apocalypse in Watercolor
To reach a broader audience, one artist and physical scientist takes data on environmental catastrophe and renders it beautiful.