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The Sun Interview
Mind the Gap
Melissa Deckman on the Challenges and Strengths of Gen Z
The lion’s share of Gen Z organizing on the Left is being done by young women, because they care passionately about the issues. I think there’s less of that drive among young men. Instead there’s a sense of rootlessness. We’ll have to see whether that actually translates into conservative voting behavior or support for certain policies.
October 2024
Blind History
Tiffany Griffin on America’s Narrow View of Africa
China is racist. Russia is racist. The US is racist. . . . Africans need to bet on each other. The Black Diaspora and the Global South need to bet on and support each other.
September 2024
Returning
Suzanne Kelly on Green Burial and the Embrace of Mortality
The fact is, “green” is the way we buried our dead over 150 years ago in the US. It’s the way many Indigenous peoples in North America have cared for their dead. This other, more recent, method is the anomaly.
August 2024
A Seat at the Table
Aviaja Lyberth Hauptmann on Indigenous Arctic Foodways in an Industrialized World
The terrible emotions I was filled with are the truth of what it means to be alive. When you live, something else dies. Even if you only eat plants, animals die for you to be able to eat. We do not talk about that often enough.
July 2024
Home Sick
Emily Kenway on the Health-Care Crisis No One’s Talking About
Once we start to recognize that most of us will, at some point, have to step out of our professional role to provide care, then we have to transform how we’re running our economies. At the moment, our economies are relying on these hidden tragedies that befall women behind closed doors. All to keep the wheels of industry turning.
June 2024
Two Guys Walk into a Bar
Kliph Nesteroff on the Evolution of American Comedy
But I’m talking about joke structure; you’re asking about the purpose of comedy as a whole. When my first book came out, people would ask me in interviews, “Why is comedy important?” I don’t know that it is. There are lots of people, believe it or not, who don’t care about comedy. And they can live to the age of eighty or ninety.
May 2024
Down in the Valley
Wendy Liu on the Tech Industry’s Power to Divide Us
Once I saw the development of new technology in class terms—how a particular kind of technology gives one group of people power over another—it started to feel more sinister.
April 2024
Is This Desire?
Clarissa Smith on the Intersection of Human Sexuality and Pornography
Being honest or open about your Pornhub habits is not the same as telling someone, “I’ve just seen Call My Agent! on Netflix. I think you’d like it.” Part of the reason for that is that most people don’t spend terribly long on Pornhub.
March 2024
Tangled Avenues
Wade Graham on the Interlocking Challenges of the Modern City
Cities are social, so they have the same problems we do. The mistake we always make in our culture is thinking that cities are somehow separate from us and that if we conceive of the right design for them, they will magically relieve us of our problems. By investing this theoretical power in cities, we can avoid confronting the flaws in the way we have built the world: with inequality and oppression and systems that make some people’s lives miserable while other people’s lives are good.
February 2024
Under Fire
Thor Hanson on How Animals and Plants are Adapting to a Warming World
We’ve got changes playing out now with astounding rapidity. Biologists can see natural selection occurring over the course of a field season. . . . Studying these adaptations can help us identify the issues that are most important and the species that need the most help. This may not make us worry less, but it can help us worry smarter.
January 2024
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