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Best of 2023

The Smart Set Staff — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 12:30:00 +0000

In between deliberating over submissions and brainstorming accompanying artwork for the well-crafted memoirs and cultural critiques sent to The Smart Set throughout the year, we also like to discuss and cheerlead for our favorite movies, headlines, books, TV shows — and even dog breeds and reptiles. We skipped reading about Prince Harry’s ‘todger,’ questioned why […]

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best of 2022

The Smart Set Staff — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 11:30:00 +0000

2022 was a year. I saw an apt TikTok where the creator said they can no longer remember a time when reflecting upon the end of the year was joyful. I seem to be seeing that refrain echoing on my timelines and in my circles, a sense of relief that 2022 is concluding. But even […]

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Our 2021

The Smart Set Staff — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 19:47:45 +0000

Another year. 2021 was a series of starts and stops, movement and disruption. And despite moving quickly, the year itself felt incredibly long. Again, we tried to make and find space. These were just a handful of things we enjoyed in 2021: Anna’s Top Three Plant care I used to be someone who could barely […]

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What We Did with 2020

The Smart Set Staff — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 12:30:04 +0000

I am not one for New Year’s optimism. The past three years have been marked with “Worst Year” ribbons, but like Alex Forrest, 2020 was not to be ignored. In February, I began to see reports of a virus that promised to be a global pandemic, soon after I read Ed Yong’s 2018 Atlantic essay […]

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From the Archives

The Smart Set Staff — Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:16:36 +0000

Over the past few months, we have witnessed a surge of protests in response to police brutality against Black people, housing inequality, sexual harassment and assault, and in solidarity with frontline and essential workers (and this is just a microcosm of a network of issues being challenged). We are working within our college and institution […]

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Our 2019 Faves

The Smart Set Staff — Tue, 31 Dec 2019 00:10:42 +0000

As we approach the end of 2019, we always like to spend some time thinking about all the things we read, watched, listened to, accomplished. The following are just a handful of joys we came across this year. While other outlets keep to only evaluating media or events that emerged within the year, we open […]

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BEST OF 2018

The Smart Set Staff — Mon, 31 Dec 2018 14:07:22 +0000

We started our “best of” practice in 2016, when it struck us that we were all pretty cool people who liked a lot of stuff. Most of our editorial meetings become exchanges of the movies, music, books, articles, podcasts, and tv shows we’re watching and loving. We have had informal office townhalls on Bob Dylan, […]

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Best of 2017

The Smart Set Staff — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 17:17:33 +0000

This year was ripe with political conversation and conflict. That’s a given. At The Smart Set, we reflect on the things that brought us joy this year. These were the texts in which we found comfort: the noise control from the constant squawkings of pundits and politicians invading our spaces, from the bad feelings and […]

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Law & The Reporter

The Smart Set Staff — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 16:02:09 +0000

In August 2014, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery was in Ferguson, Missouri covering the protests over the police shootings of Michael Brown. On August 13, his third day on assignment, Lowery was arrested at a McDonalds: a moment captured on a video that quickly went viral. The Missouri protests spread across the country, morphing into […]

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Best of 2016

The Smart Set Staff — Mon, 26 Dec 2016 14:00:52 +0000

We asked our staff to pick their favorite contributions to popular culture that we encountered in 2016. From books, to movies, to a YouTube concert video, we enjoyed a lot of beauty and truth in a year unlikely to be remembered for either. “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in,” […]

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