Heather Schwedel


Thank you for following the trail of breadcrumbs I scattered across the internet to this, my (not very frequently updated, I'm afraid) website. I’m a staff writer at Slate, and below you’ll find some of my favorite clips, organized by topic. (Background by Stefanie Jasper.)

Life and Trends
The Dark Fate That Awaits Every Wordle Player
“Tall Zoom Energy” Is Cursing Co-Workers Who Are Finally Meeting in Person
A Teen Magazine Icon Is Shattering Her Legend, One Jaw-Dropping Confession at a Time. Why?
How Pfizer Became the Status Vax
Teens Explain the VSCO Girl—and Why You Never Want to Be One
The Devilish Magic of Halo Top
Everyone Likes Red and Pink Candies Best

Arts and Entertainment
The Weirdly Specific Trend That Has Taken Over Women’s Fiction
Did a Beloved Indie Movie Really Cause a Googly Eye Shortage?
The Vexing Penis Mystery That Haunted Me After I Saw One of the Year’s Dark-Horse Oscar Hits
The Other Zoom Hopes You Didn’t Forget About It
The Truth About the Rumor That Scandalized Cheer Fans in Season One
How a Supposedly Feminist Twist in TV Romances Became an Inescapable Cliché
On Fleabag, Hair Really Is Everything
The Great Middle School Sex Movie
Why Warhol Became the Symbol for Characters With Big Bank Accounts and Bigger Egos
A Star Is Born’s Forgotten Tragedy: Jackson Maine’s Hatred of No-Show Socks

Celebrities
Do Any Women in Gen Z Really Lust After Leonardo DiCaprio?
A Comprehensive Explanation of Why Taylor Swift Fans Seem Ready to Commit Homicide on Jake Gyllenhaal
QAnon Has Really Ruined Things for Taylor Swift

Internet Culture
A GIF Within a GIF of Another GIF
What Happens When a News Site Bans Its Writers From Twitter?
In the Era of TomKat and Brangelina, WhosDatedWho.com Was Inescapable. The Web Moved On—but the Site Is Still Here.
The Twitter Invoice
“Dunking” Is Delicious Sport

Design
Plastic, It’s Fantastic
How a Certain Clear Phone Became a Cultural Obsession
How Letterboards Took Over America
The Louies Are the Oscars for Greeting Cards. But in a Paperless Era, What’s to Celebrate?
Why Do So Many of This Year’s Book Covers Have the Same Design Style?

Politics, Kind Of
Hinge in the White House
The Selfie Line Life
I Found the Exact Moment When Bernie Sanders Became 78

Q&A's
An Interview With a 13-Year-Old Whose Anti–Jake Gyllenhaal Protest Earrings Have Swept Her Middle School
The Man Who Is Actually Getting a Free Krispy Kreme Vax Doughnut a Day
The Year’s Most Coveted Halloween Decoration Is Actually Worth the Hype

First-Person Humor
Licorice Pizza, the Making Of
Why, Oh Why, Did I Purchase and Wear This Mask of My Own Face?
For the 30th Anniversary of When Harry Met Sally, I Watched My Friend Fake an Orgasm at Katz’s Deli


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