A Party Game That Outlived an Empire In spring 1865, Karl Marx sat down in his uncle Lion Philips’ house in Zaltbommel, Holland, and filled out a questionnaire. It wasn’t a political document. It was a “Confessions” game: a semi-jocular parlour pastime that circulated in Victorian England, essentially a personality quiz passed from hand to … Read more
An Igloo the Size of an Apartment Building Drive the Parks Highway near Cantwell, Alaska, and a four-story igloo rises out of the trees, 80 feet (24.4 m) tall and 105 feet (32 m) wide, visible to pilots flying above 30,000 feet. Former Alaska Railroad worker Leon Smith broke ground in 1971, planning 58 wedge-shaped … Read more
Legally Speaking, You’re a Vegetable Here’s a fact with no punchline: the United States Supreme Court once ruled, formally and in writing, that the tomato is a vegetable. Not a fruit. The case is Nix v. Hedden, decided in 1893, and it remains good law today. This isn’t a rumor or a trivia-night myth someone … Read more
The Fourth Expedition Ask someone what they know about Ernest Shackleton, and the answer is almost always the same story: the Endurance, the ice, the impossible survival. In 1914, his ship became trapped off Antarctica and was eventually crushed. Twenty-eight men survived nearly two years stranded on the ice. It is a complete, almost cinematic … Read more
We Will Sue You Into the Ground, Mr. Cohen When Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan hit US theaters on November 3, 2006, the Kazakhstani government was in no mood to laugh. The mockumentary, directed by Larry Charles and starring Sacha Baron Cohen as fictional Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev, … Read more
The Winner Who Walked Away Richer Than You Think Picture a contestant walking off the stage on The Price Is Right in 1972 with a prize package announced at $1,420, a 15-day trip for two to London, Paris, and Rome, plus six Westclox clocks. Now compare that to a 2014 winner taking home a Honda … Read more
The Grin That Isn’t Take a good look at Jack Skellington’s face. Wide jaw, high cheekbones, an upward-curving mouth line. Your brain clocks it as a grin, maybe even a friendly one. And yet the entire plot of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) hinges on the fact that this character is deeply, articulately miserable. The … Read more
America’s Most Overrated Baking Challenge Pumpkin pie carries a ceremonial weight at the Thanksgiving table that few other dishes can match. Home bakers often approach it like a project: clear the afternoon, gather the ingredients, brace for complexity. The cultural gravity is real. The actual cooking? Much less so. A YouTube channel called You Suck … Read more
A Strange Tribe of the Northern Californian Lowlands Picture an anthropologist’s field report describing a tribe whose male members bind a strip of brightly colored silk around their throats each morning before entering their communal structure. The highest-ranking individuals carry a handheld device pressed to their ear, communing with distant invisible spirits. Below them, workers … Read more
The House That Won’t Stand Still Picture a house sitting not on a foundation but on a pivot. As morning light arrives from the east, it faces east. By midday, it has swung south. By late afternoon, it has turned again. Nobody is steering it. The whole thing just follows the sun. This is the … Read more