Israel on the Brink: Understanding the Judicial Overhaul, and the Protests Against It
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed law changing the judiciary is described as a reform. To opponents, it’s a move to gut the independence of the Supreme Court as a check on executive power—a...
7 Apr 202332min
Brooke Shields on the Sexualization of Girls in Hollywood
In the late nineteen-seventies and into the eighties, Brooke Shields was one of the most famous and most controversial people in America. At age eleven, she appeared in the film “Pretty Baby,” playing...
4 Apr 202320min
Jon Meacham on How the Trump Fever Breaks
In 2018, at the midpoint of the Trump Presidency, the journalist and historian Jon Meacham wrote a book called “The Soul of America,” warning of the gravity of Trump’s threat to democracy. This was ha...
31 Mar 202330min
Who Was H. G. Carrillo? D. T. Max on a Novelist Whose Fictions Went Too Far
H. G. Carrillo was a writer’s writer—not a household name, but esteemed in literary circles. He began writing later in life, and was in his mid-forties when his first novel, “Loosing My Espanish,” was...
28 Mar 202332min
Jia Tolentino on the Ozempic Weight-Loss Craze
The prescription drug Ozempic was designed to help people with Type 2 diabetes manage their disease, and, under the name Wegovy, to treat obesity. But it has been embraced recently as a tool for weigh...
24 Mar 202317min
How the Culture Wars Came to the Catholic Church
The pontificate of Pope Francis, which just reached its tenth year, has brought a greater willingness to engage with modern issues. Francis has addressed Catholics on the climate emergency, arguing a ...
21 Mar 202321min
What if the Supreme Court Ends Affirmative Action?
In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appears likely to strike down affirmative action, in a decision expected by this summer. The practice of consideri...
17 Mar 202328min
Trans Activist Janet Mock Finds Her Voice
Janet Mock first heard the word “māhū,” a Native Hawaiian word for people who exist outside the male-female binary, when she was twelve. She had just moved back to Oahu, where she was born, from Texas...
14 Mar 202325min
