The Journalist Who Photographed the Burning Monk

The Man Behind an Iconic Vietnam War Image Captured ‘the Ugliest Events of Our Time’

While President John F. Kennedy was talking by phone with his brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, on the morning of Tuesday, June 12, 1963, he suddenly exclaimed: “Jesus Christ!”

The president’s outburst had nothing to do with their conversation. Rather, he was responding to a photograph taken the day before, splashed on the front pages of the newspapers just delivered to him. The photo showed 73-year-old Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc engulfed in flames on a street in Saigon, South Vietnam while sitting calmly—it seemed—in the lotus posture. He hoped …

by Ray E. Boomhower | June 8, 2023

Boxers Know the Power of an Entrance

The Way a Fighter Steps Into the Ring Communicates Everything From Pride to Protest

by Rudy Mondragón | May 22, 2023

The first time I really paid attention to boxing ring entrances—the long, celebratory walks fighters take from their dressing rooms to the ring before a bout—was in 1992, when I …

Neo-Burlesque Slaps Glitter on Feminism and Makes It Shine

A New Generation of Women Has Found Liberation Dumpster Diving in the ‘Freedom Trash Can’ of the Miss America Protest

by Lynn Sally | March 9, 2022

Blush! I scream at my reflection. More blush!

I am backstage at the Miss Coney Island USA pageant caking on makeup. My actual eyebrows have been glued down—a technique learned from …

Why Divestment Defeated Apartheid and How It Might Help Beat Climate Change

The Money Didn’t Matter. The Movement Did

by Zeb Larson | February 17, 2022

The environmental activist and writer Bill McKibben estimates that climate divestment—the movement to pressure universities, churches, and other institutions to stop investing in, and thus profiting from, carbon-emitting companies—has removed …

When Kazakhstan Turned Off the Internet

Did a Five-Day Crackdown and Flood of Misinformation Send a Message to Activists or Ignite a Movement for Political Reform?

by Colleen Wood and Sher Khashimov | January 20, 2022

This was no ordinary internet blackout. For five days, the ninth largest country in the world was a black box.

On the evening of January 5, 2022, we set our respective …

The Beloved Bard of Solidarity

Jacek Kaczmarski Wrote the Soundtrack for Poland's Cold War-Era Resistance Movement

by Justine Jablonska | May 26, 2021

A microphone on a stand; a man with a guitar. The waiting audience is restless, shifting in seats as he tunes his instrument. He speaks one word—Kołysanka, lullaby in Polish. The …

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