Mark Mann

Shifting Baseline Syndrome is undermining our ability to recognize dramatic changes in biodiversity and the climate The solution isn't quick or easy but it starts with paying attention.

If there’s one thing our society insists upon, it’s productivity. We’re all supposed to be achieving as much as possible, in the shortest time possible. For many of us, our sense of self-worth can come to depend on it. Productivity isn’t a dirty…

Recently I was sitting with my one-year-old son on the sofa in his bedroom as he looked out the window. He watched the street, and I watched him. At some point, I realized I was gazing at his expression with the same fascination that he bestowed on…

Forest bathing has long been a trending topic in the media, but if you bring it up casually among friends or family, the response is often skeptical. In my experience, people are more likely to be offended by the concept of forest bathing than…

In 2008 newspapers started reporting on a hot new trend in civil disobedience: guerrilla gardening. The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, and Reuters all published features on the movement, which saw feisty urbanites sowing wildflowers and planting…

In the two years that I apprenticed in a stained glass studio, I designed and built many windows, though only one was any good. Most were crap, a few were okay, but one in particular was genuinely nice. Beautiful even: a strange and self-possessed…

Shifting Baseline Syndrome is undermining our ability to recognize dramatic changes in biodiversity and the climate. The solution isn’t quick or easy, but it starts with paying attention. To be honest, I always hated birds. I could never stand their…

Sometime that feels pretty recent, the internet turned into an actual talent show. Social media always felt performative, and now, with TikTok ascendant and Facebook/Instagram “challenges” rampant, that tendency has finally bloomed into a moral…

I started to pray when I learned my wife, Jocelyn, was pregnant. She did, too. We held hands every night and called down to the bottom of that deep, dark well where the little ember that would be our child clung. I had long ago given up praying to a…

The Camino de Santiago trail has drawn millions of people with its promises of absolution, discovery, and healing This article was published over a year ago. Some information may no longer be current. The pilgrims in León are easy to spot. They…

The first time I smoked pot, it didn’t work. That’s what I told my friend in the parking lot, as he flicked the roach and we turned back toward our college dorm in upstate New York. He wandered off, and then it hit me. Next thing I knew, I was…

Experts say there's an increase of violence in porn, and the uptick has contributed to the epidemic of porn addiction. Why do men get off on seeing women get hurt? Restlessly pacing the halls of online pornography, sooner or later you see things you…

When I was a child I wrote a script for my life. It went like this: "Be nice and go to heaven." Then one day I saw an ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes in a magazine. It was simple, a picture of a man and a woman smoking on a fire escape. They weren't…