Top Stories
Stories in Humans that you’ll love, handpicked by our team.
This Is Me... Now
Like many, witnessing the events leading up to and during the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020 changed me. In the past, comments about other’s perceptions of my Blackness made me feel disconnected from other Black people. However, seeing the ever-growing list of names and faces of beautiful Black men, women, and children meeting horrific ends at the hands of police, neighborhood watchmen, and the occasional Karen, along with other injustices, forced me to not only take back my Blackness from those people but own it.
Jonathan ApolloPublished 4 days ago in HumansGrace in the Soup Kitchen and the Parking Lot
My city has been deeply scarred over the last few years. Many businesses have closed and are boarded up, and countless people are on the streets, in tents, near busy roads, and in residential neighborhoods. The officials seem incapable of doing much to remedy this crisis.
Ute Luppertz ✨Published 8 days ago in HumansThe Greener Grass
“I wonder if the people that were never fully able to commit to me would have loved me more if I was prettier.” It was earlier this morning I saw this anonymous note posted on an edgy, introspective page on instagram. I’m sad to say that the message resonated with me immediately when I saw it.
The Rise of Anti-intellectualism
I saw a video months ago of a man criticizing writer and director Jordan Peele and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. His main complaint was that Peele’s films were too complicated for the average moviegoer to comfortably consume. He goes on to say that the average moviegoer doesn’t want to google hidden meanings or watch the film 2-3 times to notice small details.
Olivia BarkerPublished 10 days ago in HumansIt's Okay
“The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I'm not going to let myself pull me down anymore.” ― C. JoyBell C. I was inspired by my body today. It took me so many years to stop hating myself and just love my body for what it is- and that is my body.
Chloe Rose Violet 🌹Published 25 days ago in HumansLove Undisneyfied
Boy and girl meet, usually from different worlds. They fall fast, and though forced apart by dastardly villains, clashes in class, or cultural disapproval, they overcome the odds and are united at the end, to live happily ever after...
Joe O’ConnorPublished 27 days ago in HumansI Married a Dragon
My wife is a polymath and highly accomplished research scientist who skipped high school to attend college at the age of 14 which speaks to her intellectual capabilities. She holds a masters degree in microbiology and immunology from the University of Virginia and has a long list of publications as both lead author and co-author in the peer reviewed scientific literature, including a most recent second authorship in the prestigious journal Science. She has worked with highly dangerous pathogens for much of her career, and is a recognized expert on Yersinia pestis (Bubonic plague), and Bacillus anthracis (Anthrax). Lest you think she is some pale skinned lab nerd who has spent her entire life locked in a lab chained to a bench, she has also been a field biologist. She worked for five years in the Daintree Rainforest in Australia chasing down the source of mycobacterium ulcerans, cause of a terrible skin disease that plagues indigenous populations there. The Daintree is often called the most dangerous forest in the world, and is not a place most people would want to visit for a day, let alone work in, five to seven days a week for five years.
Everyday JunglistPublished 24 days ago in HumansLoving the Unlovely
We often talk about love as if it is something beyond our comprehension. Something divine or ethereal that cannot be touched or seen. We talk about it in hushed tones or scream about it, but usually when it feels distant. When we feel it slipping away.
S. A. CrawfordPublished 29 days ago in HumansLaLa Land
Steven takes me to see LaLa Land the day after Ellie leaves New Haven. He's seen it already, but that's ok: he'll love it all the more for seeing it again. He promises. In the uber to the theater, he gushes over Ryan Gosling. I stare in numb horror at the conspicuous neon glare of my hospital socks through the straps of my Birkenstocks.
I'm Still Learning About Systemic Effects
I'm still learning about the effects of systemic racism. One of the mistakes I, like many white Americans, have made is believing we've come close to solving the embarrassing racial problems that have been plaguing our country since its inception. The mistake comes not from believing that many (though nowhere near all) Americans no longer discriminate on the basis of skin color, but in failing to understand the myriad of complicated issues arising from ever present layers of discrimination throughout our history.
Kenny PennPublished about a month ago in HumansA Parade of Shoes
Shoes! So many shoes! Worn, black running shoes bounding past; shiny, red stilettos tap, tap tapping on by; white slides gliding along; steel toe caps clomping back in the opposite direction. Numbly I gaze at my feet… hunched over, my head a leaden kettlebell propped between my clammy hands… elbows resting on skinny knees.
Angie the Archivist 📚🪶Published about a month ago in HumansPain and Deceit
Why are the most impactful moments in love also the most painful ones? In fact, a lover’s betrayal might be the very best prompt to self-actualization. It will force you to launch a full body scan to evaluate all the feelings and sensations you are experiencing and it will push you to analyze them in extensive details, making a poet out of you. Perhaps that is why I do not hate my ex so much.
Lily SéjorPublished about a month ago in Humans