The Tulip Age
The story of how the humble bulb became embroiled in the conflict between the forces of globalization and tradition.
Grobalization
International Relations
Of Tulips and Turbans
“Tulip” and “turban” are doublets, or words having the same etymological origin.
The Line Podcast
The Line, Ep. 14: Raising Excellent Sheep
A spirited discussion with a panel of experts reveals a link between the educational arms race and increasing class anxiety.
Material Culture
The Stories our Flowers Tell
The clues to a culture’s origins can often be found in its gardens.
The Jungle
Trop Picks: Tulips
The science behind how tulips “remember” winters past.
Bad Gals/ Boys
A Mind of Her Own: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
An upper class Englishwoman pronouncing on the oppression of native women who take the veil would likely be of little interest to readers of this site, but Lady Mary (like her namesake on Downton Abbey) had ideas of her own.
Immaterial Culture
Body Language
In Asia, our hands speak another language.
The City
Hygiene and the City
The modern metropolis: a heady cocktail of sex, technology and high finance, with an undertone of sewage.
Bad Gals/ Boys
Yayoi Kusama: An Artist for the Anthropocene
To step into an Infinity Mirror Room is to lose one’s finite self in infinite reflections. It is also to experience reality as Kusama sees it: the self as a part of the environment, not apart from it.
The Jungle
Trop Picks: The Sex Life of Bananas
Oh yes, I’m going there, and it’s not what you think.
The City
The Generic City
The Generic City is a city free of context, history and identity. It is a blank slate, allowing its inhabitants to make of themselves what they will.
The Jungle
An Elephant Named Indira
Before panda diplomacy, there was elephant diplomacy.
The Jungle
Zootopia
Why are native fauna given the short shrift at institutions supposedly dedicated to conservation and “edutainment”?
The Line Podcast
The Line, Ep. 13: Are We Slave Drivers?
Is the way we treat our domestic help morally defensible? We put three tai tais on the hot seat.