The Best of The Walrus

The sheer volume of super cheap clothes being advertised to young people is alarming—and terrible for the environment

Forty years after his breakout story, “Johnny Mnemonic,” the father of cyberpunk remains one of the best writers around

«They teach you that in school. What they don’t tell you is that it’s impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information. Fragments that can be retrieved, amplified»

Marie Kondo's decluttering dominance is over. Make way for maximalism, where the more stuff, the merrier

From beet to butterscotch, how far can hummus travel from its origins and still be hummus?

Celebrity chefs, food writers, and home cooks have sneered at pre-cut produce. They’re dismissing those of us with disabilities

As a former violin student, I decided to investigate why so many promising players quit early

Superfans contribute just as much to culture as the male musicians they love. Why haven’t they had the shine they deserve?

I can understand why we cling to stories of Black people thriving. But this way of thinking ignores what has been built on our backs

«Celebrating these achievements instead of examining them is also a distraction from the ways in which the system is not working for us.»

Today, people talk about seeing a therapist like they’re going to the dentist. But our compassion around mental health still excludes the people who need it most

«In mental health discourse, there is a strong underlying message that mental health is one’s own responsibility (self-care, expensive therapy, psychiatric intervention, and so on) and that mental unwellness—including mental illness—is something to be overcome, followed by a return to productivity within a capitalist world.»

I sought the help of an algorithm to figure out how to spend my free time. It made me question my generation’s relationship with leisure

Fads come and go, but how to create a toy that stands the test of time is the billion-dollar question

Machines are putting out astonishingly human-like writing. What does that mean for the future of art?

Smell is often dismissed as the least important sense. But it’s the funk that draws us together

Foreign students are lied to and exploited on every front. They’re also propping up higher education as we know it

With mainstream media uninterested in books coverage that doesn’t get clicks, writers and readers are being left out in the cold