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Electioneering on the Eve of the Virus
Nathan Thornburgh and photographer Shane Carpenter were in New Hampshire last month for their longterm reporting project on the state’s odd presidential primary. In hindsight, it looks more surreal than ever. It is unnerving to look at the pictures at this moment, in this week. Photographer Shane Carpenter and I have been working on a longterm project about the New Hampshire presidential primary for four election cycles spanning 16 years, but the things I’ve come to love about the campaign up there—the intimacy of retail politicking, the electricity of the big rallies—now just trip alarms in my mind. All the handshakes. All the pressed flesh, the leaning in, the campaign buses filled with coughing staffers, the moist microphones, the communal pens at the polls. The collective spittle of a ...
R&K Insider: World without Travel edition
This is a great time for people who are interested in soup and masturbation. Greetings from Day 6 of Austria’s quarantine lockdown. Travel has always been a privilege and a luxury. Despite being a well-traveled, far-flung bunch, we tried to never take that privilege for granted—but all our worlds just got smaller, fast, and it’s breathtaking. We believe in the power of travel to remind us that the world map is sometimes no more than a cruel geographic lottery—all the more so right now—and of the simple truth that a country’s people are not their governments. So it takes a rare thing for us to tell people not to go, pack, leave, experience. But we are. Stay home. If Ireland can close its pubs 36 hours before St Patrick’s Day, you can do without spring break in Clearwater, Florida ...
Pepe Raventós: Forever sparkling wine
This week on The Trip podcast: Pepe Raventós and 500 years of Catalan winemaking. It’s early winter, it’s a baby lamb on a hill in one of the oldest wine estates in the world. It’s a little green glade under a canopy of trees, a horse paddock, a nearby river, a full view of the sawtoothed mountain range they call Montserrat, where the eternal soul of the Catalan people lives in collapsing grottos under limestone cliffs. This week’s guest, Pepe Raventós, is the 21st generation of his family to work this estate. And this here is the perfect place, the perfect vista, from which to contemplate the calm and everlasting nature of things. Especially now, from self-quarantine in New York City, when the news cycle seizes in the chest like a heart attack, when the only thing we know is that we have ...
17 megadiverse countries of the world
We profile the world’s megadiverse countries, from obvious contenders like Ecuador and Brazil to one or two surprise entries It should be comforting to know that a mere 17 countries hold more than 70% of the world’s species. It should be easy to rally this small group of ‘megadiverse countries’ to protect the planet’s extraordinary biodiversity. Alas, some of these countries are also the world’s biggest consumers and polluters. In July 2000, the UN’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre recognised 17 megadiverse countries which hold the majority of Earth’s species and high numbers of endemic species (i.e. those unique to an area or country). To be termed megadiverse, a country must have at least 5,000 of the world’s plants as endemics and have marine ecosystems within its borde...
Map projections of the world: which one is the best?
We explore the most common map projections of the world, how they work and which one is the best Kia is usually described as the geek in our relationship. She’s the one with a computer science degree, she’s the one with the editor’s eye and she’s the Star Trek fan who describes herself as Seven of Nine… which is cool apparently? A friend of hers recently described her as “the one who puts the apostrophe in rock ‘n’ roll”. That said, I have a few streaks of geek in me too. I’m a bit of a history nerd and can talk at great length about photography lenses and filters. But above all, I love maps. One day, perhaps when we win the lottery and can afford a house with more than one bedroom, I will have a cartography room dedicated to my scores of Ordnance Survey maps, my collection of outdated cla...
Happiest countries in the world 2020
The happiest countries in the world 2020 have been ranked in the latest World Happiness Report. For the third year running, Finland holds on to top spot Happiness is a nebulous thing; hard to grasp and harder to hold onto. Scientists, economists and philosophers have defined it through the ages as a combination of different things, among them health, wealth, companionship and security. Various indices attempt to rank the happiest countries in the world on an annual basis. The World Happiness Report from the UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) is particularly interesting as it ranks 153 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. The SDSN employs an international group of economists, neuroscientists and statisticians to survey citizens on their subject...
The travel that changed me: Jini Reddy
From trekking in Nepal to exploring Iran and Pakistan, author Jini Reddy regales us with tales of the travel that changed her If ever there were an international woman of mystery, she’d likely be a lot like Jini Reddy. A British author and journalist, Reddy has lived in London, Montreal, Hong Kong, Provence and Tbilisi. She has travelled to the Kalash Valleys in Pakistan under armed guard, completed the Annapurna Circuit on a whim and bedded down in a men’s hostel in the daunting city of Delhi. As an author, Reddy has won a British Guild of Travel Writers Awards for her debut Wild Times and was recently named one of National Geographic’s Women of Impact. In her new book, Wanderland, Reddy combines nature writing, personal reflection and memoir to chart her search for the magica...
Star struck: exploring the world’s Dark Sky Reserves
International Dark Sky Reserves are protected areas that offer exceptionally starry nights. We review the 16 places that hold this hallowed status They sound like something out of Star Trek, these ‘Dark Sky Reserves’ – like they may have been conjured one evening in a lively LA writers room. Unlike the ‘Delta Quadrant’ or ‘Delphic Expanse’, however, International Dark Sky Reserves actually exist. We at Atlas & Boots hadn’t heard of them until our recent trip to New Zealand‘s Aoraki Mackenzie, one of the world’s 16 Dark Sky Reserves. Governed by the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), Dark Sky Reserves are defined as follows. A public or private land possessing an exceptional quality of starry nights and nocturnal environment that is specifically protected for its scientific, natu...
Multi-Frame: Q&A with Sarah Palmer
Photographer Sarah Palmer on her process, blending images at Trump rallies, and accessing Celine Dion without a press pass. Canadian photographer Sarah Palmer’s unique double-exposure photography blends the emotion and theatrics of politics, sports, and even music into complex and nuanced imagery. It’s a niche she’s developed over years, and has employed for clients such as Buzzfeed News, The Walrus, and The Washington Post. But that wasn’t always the case. Palmer, who talked to R&K from her home in Toronto, still remembers her first portfolio review, in which a top photo editor told her she’d never get hired for the style because it was too ‘out there.’ “It just crushed me,” Sarah said. “But it also just pissed me off, because I thought, ‘Yeah, well I’m going to.’ And so then I just k...
The Chief Rabbi of Barcelona
This week on The Trip podcast: Mexican-born Rabbi Daniel Askenazi on leading Barcelona’s Jews. There are few things in Western Europe older than the Jews of Spain. They were there in biblical times, under the Moors, and afterward. Then came Torquemada and the inquisition and for six centuries, the only Jews in Spain were crypto-Jews, who hid their faith until it was all but lost. And now, the Jews are back in Barcelona, and their leader, the chief rabbi of Barcelona, is a big bear of a man, a beer-drinking Mexican who was raised on gefilte fish tacos (that is apparently a thing) and has charmed his new community. How do I know? My cousin, actually, Julie from southern California, is a part of that community, has been for decades as she and her Syrian-Argentine husband, have raised a family...
Matt Goulding: The Writer’s Life in Barcelona
This week on The Trip podcast: Writer Matt Goulding on his city, his life, and his work. A warehouse toward the edge of Barcelona. On the loading dock they smoke cigarettes sprinkled with hash, and drink beers from plastic cups. Inside, a hundred or so people stand toward the stage, nodding thoughtfully to a mashup hiphop and acid jazz. Beards, knit hats, urban scarfs. This is a early-aughts reunion episode, starting with this concert, the one-night revival of long-dormant open-mic series from years ago in Barcelona. One of the MCs who used to frequent those nights years and years ago is back on the mic. It’s Matt Goulding, who still calls Barcelona home, and is still writing, is writing, at least part of the time, as my partner and co-founder at Roads & Kingdoms. I’ve had a lot of dri...
A Death in Harlem
After losing her grandmother to COVID-19, marketing executive Tamika Hall then had to take over for vanishing hospice services in Harlem and help lead her father to the best death she could. It seems to me that the story of this pandemic is as much as anything, a story of the failure of technology. Not just the big healthcare failings or smaller infrastructure glitches like the busy signals I’ve been getting while trying to make calls from my New York apartment, but social technology, the innovations that we built to specialize society and to put distance between us and some of our oldest enemies: sickness, fear, death. Those social technologies seem to have withered away in so many places when we needed them most. That is what happened to Tamika Hall, who lost her father to cancer and her...
