41 Questions For The Technologies We Use, and That Use Us
We all know by now that Zoom causes fatigue, social media spreads misinformation and Google Maps is wiping out our sense of direction. We also know, of course, that Zoom allows us to cooperate across ...
3 Aug 202157min
Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Fight Over U.S. History
You’ve heard plenty by now about the fights over teaching critical race theory and the 1619 Project. But behind those skirmishes is something deeper: A fight over the story we tell about America. Why ...
30 Jul 20211h 17min
Ross Douthat Has Been ‘Radicalized a Little Bit, Too’
Am I too panicked about the future of American democracy?My colleague Ross Douthat thinks so. He points to research suggesting that voter ID laws and absentee voting have modest effects on elections a...
27 Jul 20211h 7min
How Blue Cities Became So Outrageously Unaffordable
Joe Biden’s economic agenda is centered on a basic premise: The United States needs to build. To build roads and bridges. To build child care facilities and car-charging stations. To build public tran...
23 Jul 20211h 8min
Our Workplaces Think We’re Computers. We’re Not.
For decades, our society’s dominant metaphor for the mind has been a computer. A machine that operates the exact same way whether it’s in a dark room or next to a sunny window, whether it’s been worki...
20 Jul 20211h 8min
Ibram X. Kendi on What Conservatives—and Liberals—Get Wrong About Antiracism
“What if instead of a feelings advocacy we had an outcome advocacy that put equitable outcomes before our guilt and anguish?” wrote Ibram X. Kendi in his 2019 book “How to Be an Antiracist.” “What if ...
16 Jul 20211h 5min
How Octopuses Upend What We Know About Ourselves
I’ve spent the past few months on an octopus kick. In that, I don’t seem to be alone. Octopuses (it’s incorrect to say “octopi,” to my despair) are having a moment: There are award-winning books, docu...
13 Jul 202156min
Critical Race Theory, Comic Books and the Power of Public Schools
Eve Ewing’s work as a sociologist, poet, visual artist, podcaster and comic book writer manages to do two things that are often in tension: it gives us a clear picture of how race, power and education...
9 Jul 20211h 26min
