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
Best of: What ‘Drained-Pool’ Politics Costs America
In February, I spoke with Heather McGhee. I’ve been thinking about the conversation ever since. “The American landscape was once graced with resplendent public swimming pools, some big enough to hold ...
6 Jul 20211h 8min
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy Wants You to Be Bad at Something. It’s for Your Own Good.
Recently, I picked up Jeff Tweedy’s “How to Write One Song.” It was a bit of a lark. Tweedy is the frontman for Wilco, one of my favorite bands, but I’m not a songwriter, and I don’t plan to become on...
2 Jul 20211h 11min
Why Do We Work So Damn Much?
Historically speaking, we live in an age of extraordinary abundance. We have long since passed the income thresholds when past economists believed our needs would be more than met and we’d be working ...
29 Jun 20211h 22min
