Go read this story about the ‘heat gap’ deepening the world’s divisions

I will never look at a cantaloupe the same way again, thanks to Vann Newkirk II’s latest story in The Atlantic, “Earth’s New Gilded Era.” The fruit brings back some of my favorite summer memories with my mom, who makes a juice with it that Filipinos lovingly call “melon” — pronounced with a long, rolling L (“mell-lown”) so that the name is as satisfying to say as the juice is to drink on a hot day.

Newkirk’s story is a tale of two cantaloupes: he follows the fruit’s journey from the fields where it’s harvested by people working in scorching heat, to a hotel breakfast buffet where the melon is a refreshing snack for summer vacationers. The contrast is just one illustration of the many ways heat will draw the lines between the world’s...

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