Susan Orlean (born October 31, 1955) is an American journalist. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992, and has contributed articles to Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Outside. Read full biography of Susan Orlean →
When I was a kid, phone calls were a premium commodity; only the very coolest kids had a phone line of their own, and long-distance phone calls were... →
You could go crazy thinking of how unprivate our lives really are - the omnipresent security cameras, the tracking data on our very smart phones, the... →
I don't turn to greeting cards for wisdom and advice, but they are a fine reflection of the general drift of the culture.
Unlimited choice is paralyzing. The Internet has made this form of paralysis due to option overload a standard feature of comfortable modern life.
I want a chainsaw very badly, because I think cutting down a tree would be unbelievably satisfying. I have asked for a chainsaw for my birthday, but... →
When a machine can do something better and faster than a person can, I am happy to let the machine do it.
Why, I wonder, should the popularity of a news story matter to me? Does it mean it's a good story or just a seductive one?
Election Day outside of big cities is different. For one thing, there are so few people in my town that each individual vote really does matter, and... →
To my great surprise, Twitter is not housed in a silver pod that orbits Earth at supersonic speeds, vacuuming up and then dispersing digital bits of... →
In my perfect world, we would establish perhaps four national zoos of unimpeachable quality and close the rest of them.
I am of mixed minds about the issue of privacy. On one hand, I understand that information is power, and power is, well, power, so keeping your... →
When I was a kid, Halloween was strictly a starchy-vegetable-only holiday, with pumpkins and Indian corn on the front stoop; there was nothing... →
I rarely listen to commercial radio, and when I do, I'm shocked by how many ads there are, and how annoying they are, and how bad the radio... →
Susan Orlean (born October 31, 1955) is an American journalist. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992, and has contributed articles to Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Outside.