The Kinfolk Long Listen

Until a few years ago, astrology sat alongside crystal balls and Ouija boards as an eccentric, outmoded form of spirituality. Now, horoscopes are a mainstay of online media, advice columns and even dating profiles. Debika Ray charts astrology’s cosmic journey back into the popular consciousness and learns why a non-hierarchical, culturally inclusive system of belief makes perfect sense to so many. This essay appeared in Kinfolk Issue Thirty-Four in Winter 2019.

The diet industry mines the deep seam of emotion that surrounds our eating habits to sell a precision-calibrated hope that morality, appearance, lifestyle, wellness—almost anything, really—can be improved if only we put different things in our mouth. Such advice usually nourishes insecurity more than it does the body. It turns out that the history of bad dieting advice is long and strange and full of charlatans out to profit from our gullibility. It’s also a perfect example of the old adage, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Harriet Fitch Little examines its evolution. This essay appeared in Kinfolk Issue Twenty-Six in Winter 2017.