Places of Power

In May 2005, researchers walked onto a low Bahamian cay called Iron Cay, caught lizards essentially at random, and carried away fourteen of them — one male and one female for each of seven small islands nearby. Every receiving island had been stripped of its lizards a few months earlier, when storm surge from Hurricane […]

Long before drums, before language, before fire had a name, there was the rhythm of a foot meeting the earth — and the earth answering back.

I got to my parents’ house last month and did the thing I always do now, which is nothing. I put my bag down against the wall of my old room and left it there, zipped, for three days. I did not hang anything up. I did not take out the book I was reading

At the end of July, I spent a week at a personal-development retreat in the Spanish countryside, one of those programs built around small groups, long days, and exercises designed to get you talking about things you don’t usually say out loud. When it wrapped, Carlos, the Spanish organizer who’d spent the week holding it

I started thinking about this after a conversation with a stranger in Bangkok. We had only just met, and within what felt like an irresponsibly short amount of time, we were no longer speaking like strangers at all. That happens to me sometimes. Or maybe it happens to everyone and we just pretend it does

By now, I’ve become good at solo traveling. At some point in adult life, you do. Or at least you become good at the version of it that looks convincing from the outside. You book the ticket, find the hotel, carry your own bag, figure out the airport, calculate the transfer, tell people you’re excited,

It was supposed to be a research trip. A few slides, a confident voice, a PowerPoint deck outlining the nuances of emotion regulation. When I booked my flight to Barcelona, I told myself it was just another chance to discuss my research on emotion regulation, meet fellow psychologists, and perhaps enjoy a little overpriced coffee