Magazine Archives

How to Make Friends in Outer Space

When Carl Sagan's team sent two gold-plated records into space in 1977, it wanted to make alien contact. Forty years later, those time capsules are hurtling beyond the reaches of the Solar System, still seeking intelligent life.

Louise Fabiani

From a perch in the Matthews Range, members of the Samburu, a tribe of semi-nomadic pastoralists, look down at the Namunyak Wildlife Conservancy, which they're working to protect from elephant poachers.

Field Notes: Looking Out Over Matthews Range in Kenya

Matthews Range, Kenya: From a perch in the Matthews Range, members of the Samburu, a tribe of semi-nomadic pastoralists, look down at the Namunyak Wildlife Conservancy, which they're working to protect from elephant poachers.

Pacific Standard Staff

There’s a Name for That: The Emotional Seesaw

According to a recent research, law enforcement often leverages a powerful psychological susceptibility—the "emotional seesaw effect"—that potentially has widespread application.

Peter C. Baker

Author and political commentator Van Jones.

A Politics of Compassion: An Interview With Van Jones

The author and vocal CNN commentator on Donald Trump, spirit quests, and the Nelson Mandela factor in political activism.

Rubén Martínez

Letter From the Editor: Concrete Results

Introducing Pacific Standard's August/September 2017 issue.

Nicholas Jackson

Objects That Matter: The Disposable Camera

Kodak embraced the ideals of the Progressive Era early on, aggressively marketing cameras to women from the outset with the launch of advertisements featuring the Kodak Girl—a pretty, camera-wielding woman—in 1893.

Elena Gooray

How Three Photographers Use Instagram to Share and Inform Their Work

Photos that demonstrate how the social media platform also functions as an artistic space.

Pacific Standard Staff

Qayyarah, Iraq, 2016: Farmers flee ISIS territory with their herds of sheep.

Documenting the Anguish of War: An Interview With Photojournalist Paolo Pellegrin

After more than two peripatetic decades of assignments in the Balkans, Lebanon, Palestine, and Afghanistan, among many other places of conflict, photographer Paolo Pellegrin is still out there.

Pauline Eiferman

When the Desert Pushes Back Against Human Engineering

Five landmarks in the American Southwest illustrate the limits of engineering the environment to human favor.

Kate Wheeling

Editor in Exile

One of her reporters disappeared, a machete was lodged in her office door. Then came the death threats. As the top editor at the Maldives Independent, Zaheena Rasheed fought for the truth even as those in power worked against it.

Lois Parshley