Bette is a 32-year-old woman who lives in London and works in finance. 

Jia: Hi Bette! How are you?

Bette: Hi! I’m good. I’ve been thinking about this interview all week like, “Hmm, should I put in loads of fake narrative to keep my friends from finding out that it’s me?” And then I came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be a big deal even if they did find out. So I’m feeling a bit more freed up!

So your friends don’t know you’re a virgin? 

No, they don’t. And objectively, at my great age — I mean, I’m ancient – I know that it really means so little. It [...]

“Everything had been taken by the movers, save for one computer power cable, lying in the middle of the empty office, no power outlet or computer case nearby. The words Mac #1 were written on the cable in black marker, and had been boldly legible at one time, but were now faded and smudged to near invisible. A mover lifted the limp cord up to his partner and shrugged, then tossed it in an empty garbage can.”

“The mug shattered on the kitchen floor, but Emily was too busy to clean it up. Guests walked over and by the shards as she waived them away from the mess, imploring them [...]

Eric and Jeff Rosenthal are ItsTheReal, and they have a mixtape out today.

Okay, so how would you explain ItsTheReal to someone who has no idea who you are?

ERIC: You mean like half our family tree?

JEFF: I'm Jeff. That's Eric. Collectively, we're ItsTheReal. We used to describe ourselves as two idiots with a camera, but now I guess we're just two idiots at the moment. For the past six years or so, we've called ourselves 'hip-hop sketch comedians.' It's a niche.

ERIC: We've filled the internet with a ton of content, from sketch videos, to longform interviews on our Hypemen podcast with Jensen Karp, and our ridiculous [...]

1. Washing Machine

As late as 1886, many women were hauling water into their homes between eight and 10 times a day. And yet, we look back on those bygone days in our moments of laziness being all “Why do I have to shower three times a week, people used to perpetually marinate in their own filth!” This was apparently not for lack of trying. Fervent was our desire to be 10 kinds of clean — exhibit the birth of the washing machine! They used to just be mechanized scrubbing boards! Some people had to use gasoline powered ones! Regardless, each machine remained a wonder. Gone were chapped hands, in [...]

1. Labyrinth Bowie

Many of my generation were spurred out of our sexless youths and into adolescence at the site of Bowie as Jareth, the codpiece frontin', owl-turnin’-into, Gem-hairstyle-bogarting Goblin King who wanted nothing so much as he wanted to make Jennifer Connelly’s underage Sarah kiss him forever in an Escher-inspired room of stairs. Sarah, for reasons unknown, denies herself the carnal knowledge of Bowie’s splendor, and opts instead for saving her snotty baby brother. Also there are songs and Muppets.

Get This Look: 

In November, Melissa Faustine Chang went to Cuba.

Edith Zimmerman: Cuba! How easy is it to get there nowadays? Or, what was your progress?

Melissa Chang: It wasn’t too bad, actually — I spent a lot of time on internet forums researching, but you just need to fly to a gateway city (I flew through Cancun), then either buy your ticket to Cuba at the airport or, as I did, buy tickets in advance from a Mexican travel agency that ran my credit card through Belgium. The difficulty lies mostly in the planning. Internet is sparse in Cuba, so it’s hard to get in contact with people or book any [...]

A couple years ago, Megan Bernard biked from Eugene, OR, to San Francisco.

Edith Zimmerman: Megan! You biked for 10 days alone on the Pacific Coast. If my life depended on that, I would either die, or at the end of 10 days be walking alongside the bike a mile from where I started. Biking is horrifying madness, I don't know where people like you come from, but I will grudgingly accept that you exist. [Pause for rebuttal.]

Megan Bernard: Ah, here's the thing, though — riding a bike gives you transportation plus immersion into your surroundings plus autonomy. Go where you want to go, when you want to [...]

What sort of snacks do they have?

Snacks so far have been entire meals. So a pizza with four friends is a snack, four plates of pasta is a snack (for four), comically large bruschetta (by NYC standards) is a snack. An entire ball of mozzarella is a snack. I also have no self-control. Cocktails come with giant baskets of potato chips, or olives, or peanuts, or all three. I can't stop eating.

Are the jeans really better in Italy?

I don't know, I've been avoiding looking at attractive or well-dressed people, because of how I look and feel after how much I've consumed. But in a good way. Sort [...]

AHP: The first time I heard Tracy Chapman I was in grade school. My mom was playing her CD on the massive boom box we kept in the kitchen to facilitate family dance parties. I couldn’t decide if I loved these songs or if they were just making me feel something, but I was positive they were sung by a boy. My mom showed me the CD cover. My 9-year-old self was still unsure.

SE: Your mom was kind of hip, because MY mom, when she found a Tracy Chapman CD on my bedroom floor when I was fourteen, looked at the cover, sneered, and said, “No wonder you’re suicidal [...]

I've been a published fiction writer for the past 12 years and haven't published a new book in 10 of those, which is not to say I haven’t written more material, it’s just that everything I write is consistently, unanimously rejected. I don't normally advertise this information, but it's routinely extracted from me. In bars, at dinner parties, even minding my own business on airplanes or among close friends — everyone wants to give me advice. Maybe you should become a schoolteacher? A paralegal? How about a nurse? A nurse in a psych ward? 

Because advice-giving can be contagious — once you get some, you really want to give some [...]

Look amazing day & night.

Collect your candle wax in this glass vase.

Watch Nicolas Cage perform John Cage's 4'33".

Say hello to Kim Kardashian's baby bump.

Reach your full potential this year!

Attempt one colorful makeup moment a day.

Turn toward warming soups and away from raw salads. 

Diana Clarke recently traveled through Lithuania and Poland.

Edith Zimmerman: Okay. Lithuania and Poland. Why there? And where specifically?

Diana Clarke: Well, I study Yiddish and writing, and Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania (called Vilne in Yiddish) was once known as "the Jerusalem of Lithuania," because it was the center of Yiddish literary and intellectual culture before World War II. It was very much the place I had mythologized to myself as the origin-point of my identity. Poland, obviously, was also a big Yiddish center (although the Polish Yiddish dialect is different, and much harder for me to understand — not that that's relevant, given that there are basically no [...]

We were being driven to Hollywood in the drummer's mom's minivan. We were two 16-year-olds and a 14-year-old in one awful-sounding punk band called Lime Rickey. I was by far the weakest musician, but I was the lead guitarist, the leader, even though I'd discontinued my guitar lessons the second I'd learned enough to get by and before even learning what a bar chord was — that's how eager I was to just get up on some stage and earn strangers' love.

We'd never even been to a punk club, but we were going to play our first show in one. I don't recall how I'd heard of this [...]

By now, we’ve hopefully heard every sordid detail in the Manti T’eo scandal and maybe checked out a couple episodes of MTV’s Catfish, so the idea that someone would invent a fake identity and/or jump into a cyberlationship isn’t all that shocking — or at least it probably shouldn’t be.

But what about the idea of inventing a fake illness?

Taryn Wright is a day-trader from Chicago who in her spare time runs the website Warrior Eli Hoax. The blog was originally founded to expose the saga of JS Dirr and “Warrior Eli," and has since uncovered multiple cases of hoaxers inventing sick relatives to garner attention for themselves. [...]

Marc Escañuelas is currently traveling around the world. 

Edith Zimmerman: Marc, you are traveling around the world alone for 500 days. What! How did you get into this incredible situation?

Marc Escañuelas: I got on a plane! A Taiwanese plane that was mostly empty so I got a whole row to myself. In all seriousness, nothing about this trip was planned. I've been traveling on and off for several years but never longer than a few months. I turned 30 at the end of 2011 and just felt kinda stuck and decided I needed/wanted a reboot.

What did you leave behind?

Pretty much everything including my connection to reality. [...]

Emailing with author Maggie Shipstead. Edith Zimmerman: Maggie! Okay. You travel a lot, but I know you recently (?) went to Bali. How and why was that?

Maggie Shipstead: So, I was in Bali from mid-November to mid-December of 2011. It was a time when I otherwise didn't really know what to do with myself. A friend of mine had just been to Bali and posted the most amazing pictures, and I was like, "Me too!" I found a little guesthouse online in a town called Ubud that I rented from an American woman who's lived there for 15 years — it was really pretty and nice. I [...]

Edith Zimmerman: Jonny, you just quit your job. I'm going to send you a bunch of questions and you will hopefully respond to them, and I apologize in advance if the questions don't link up with the responses immediately preceding them, but maybe you can use your amazing editorial skill to link them up?

Jonny Diamond: If you'd taken your time, Edith, to do a little research, you'd note that central to my resignation was the desire to do more writing, and less editing. So no, I won't be helping you edit this email Q and A into a flowing, coherent conversation.

Perfect. So, you ran The L Magazine [...]