history
America Ruined the Temperance Movement
by Xan Holbrook The Mafia are a disgrace to our species. The true stories of the Mafia – of people too inept to handle laundry, too mediocre to hold someone’s hand or kiss a cheek, yet so brutal as to pull the richest nation’s strings – are at once horrifying,
How Booze Helped Britain Conquer a Quarter of the World
by Xan Holbrook As a people, we Britons are stereotyped according to our drinking habits. This usually falls into the twee joshing about tea, as Americans love to remind us with teeth-grinding regularity. However, it is no exaggeration to say that the British love of alcohol is fabric-of-the-nation stuff. But,
The Strange Economy of Fake Urine
by Hannah Harkness One day, when I was relaying my usual drug-testing rant to a fellow stand-up comic, they responded “Oh yeah, and you can just jump those tests with fake piss anyway. I got a job at a children’s hospital doing that.” Before this point, I’d only ever heard
Who is Gentrification Actually Helping?
What comes to mind when you hear the word gentrification? Your mind may immediately depart from a place of safety and security, only to find itself at a destination surrounded by ill-fated words such as displacement, eviction, and homelessness. With this air of negativity surrounding your mind as it floats
Rediscovering Roosevelt Island
Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, Staten Island. Whenever the term “New York City” comes to mind, we often think of these 5 boroughs. Yet, not much attention is paid to one particular part of New York City – one that has a tramway, one train stop, and has enough inhabitants to
The Truth Behind Žiga Virc’s Film Premiering at Tribeca
In 2012, I was staring at my computer contemplating what I’d just watched. The teaser trailer for Houston, We Have a Problem! left me confused: it claimed Yugoslavia sold its space program to the US in March 1961, two months before president Kennedy announced Americans would land on the Moon
What September 11th Can Still Teach Us About Each Other
I was a little kid when the attacks on the World Trade Center occurred. My Mother got me out of the Catholic school and we ran home to see my dad in the kitchen with the TV on. My interest at the time was on airplanes. I absolutely loved them,