Contrary to hopes for a tidy conclusion to the COVID-19 pandemic, history shows that outbreaks of infectious disease often have much murkier outcomes—including simply being forgotten about, or dismissed as someone else’s problem. | Continue reading
In a sweeping new history of Western philosophy, Jürgen Habermas narrates the progress of humanity through the unfolding of public reason. Missing from that story are the systems of violence and dispossession whose legacies are all too visible today. | Continue reading
The UK government’s ultra-cautious approach to “evidence-based” policy has helped cast doubt on public health interventions. The definition of good medical and public health practice must be urgently updated. | Continue reading
Contrary to the boosterism of billionaires, the need for space colonization must be argued for, not assumed. And the arguments aren’t good. | Continue reading
As policymakers debate the right response to COVID-19, they must take seriously the harms of pandemic policies, not just their benefits. | Continue reading
A new book reveals how deeply the Washington-backed Indonesian mass killings of 1965 reshaped global politics, securing a decisive victory for U.S. interests against Third World self-determination. | Continue reading
The pandemic risks turning immigration detention into a death sentence for many, yet the Trump administration has rejected calls for mass humanitarian release, and continues to deport infectious detainees to Latin America. | Continue reading
For the sake of both science and action in the COVID-19 pandemic, we need collaboration among specialists, not sects. | Continue reading
Sidewalk Labs would have turned a large plot of Toronto’s public land into a private lab for data collection. Cities need better digital governance to protect against such attempts. | Continue reading
Proptech is leading to new forms of housing injustice in ways that increase the power of landlords and further disempower tenants and those seeking shelter. | Continue reading
With few restrictions and no tracing of the disease’s spread, the government is relying upon Swedish character and traditions to see it through the pandemic. But behind this exceptionalism lies a worrying social compact between state and citizen. | Continue reading
Mortality rates typically fall during economic downturns. But the unprecedented features of the COVID-19 shutdown suggest that trend might not hold this time. | Continue reading
As Wisconsinites are forced to vote during a pandemic, it’s worth recalling the 2011 Wisconsin Uprising, and the valuable lessons that can be gleaned from labor organizing in the face of disaster. | Continue reading
Unlike most places in the world where people get buried where they lived, for over two millennia people have traveled from far and wide to die in Jerusalem. But now the city is running out of graves, and against the backdrop of the Israel–Palestine conflict, burial is often a pol … | Continue reading
It’s easy to interpret the disorder of our COVID-19 response through the lens of unpreparedness or partisanship. But that misses the complex legal structure of emergency governance. | Continue reading
In his sweeping new history, the economist systematically demolishes the conceit that extreme inequality is our destiny, rather than our choice. | Continue reading
Our long-term goal must go well beyond the Senate bill to build a more resilient economy. | Continue reading
We must act now to support families and businesses. Greatly expanding U.S. unemployment insurance is an obvious way to go—in part because the system is already up and running. | Continue reading
An ancient pilgrimage route inspires a project of cooperative storytelling which pairs writers with detained immigrants. | Continue reading
The artist exploded the idea of what a book can be. For him, it was not a thing, but an instrument—something to do something with. | Continue reading
Political hobbyism takes well-meaning citizens away from pursuing power. | Continue reading
The artist’s inventive contributions to some forty children’s books—increasingly hard to find—are gorgeous, witty, endearing, and inimitable. But thanks to recent reissues some are back in print, to be enjoyed once again. | Continue reading
We live in Philip K. Dick’s future, not George Orwell’s or Aldous Huxley’s. | Continue reading
Debt’s ubiquity is a burden, but also an opportunity. | Continue reading
Until recent decades, Dickinson was most often depicted as a sentimental spinster or reclusive eccentric. A new biography and TV show reveal instead a self-aware artist who created a life that defied the limits placed on women. | Continue reading
Appeals to the biological facts conceal a deeper contest over political equality—and scientific authority itself. | Continue reading
A growing chorus says that science has shown free will to be an illusion. But it actually has offered arguments in its favor. | Continue reading
How other countries’ constitutions protect against political free-for-alls. | Continue reading
For the sake of justice and democracy, we need a progressive wealth tax. | Continue reading
By using a variety of ploys to manufacture doubt, a whole industry of science-for-hire experts helps corporations put profits over public health and safety. | Continue reading
Designed as a bucolic working-class suburb of St. Louis, the nearly all-black town of Centreville now floods with raw sewage every time it rains. “Bring us back some help,” residents say, living through an environmental horror that evokes centuries of official disinterest in blac … | Continue reading
There are two problems with anger: it is morally corrupting, and it is completely correct. | Continue reading
We need greater democratic oversight of AI not just from developers and designers, but from all members of society. | Continue reading
We need greater democratic oversight of AI not just from developers and designers, but from all members of society. | Continue reading
The protests have been critiqued for their rejection of classic nonviolence—but that may help explain why they has been so successful. | Continue reading
Two new books about machine creativity mostly reveal how little appreciation we still have for the full range of human creativity. | Continue reading
In the 1940s and ’50s, the general public understood and agreed upon Keynesian economic principles. Today, we can learn a lot from the popularizing efforts that led to that consensus and long-lasting economic success. | Continue reading
In the 1940s and ’50s, the general public understood and agreed upon Keynesian economic principles. Today, we can learn a lot from the popularizing efforts that led to that consensus and long-lasting economic success. | Continue reading
Prosecutors use a system of “strikes” to engineer nearly all-white juries. Eliminating this system would not only make juries less racist, but also bring us closer to the original intent of the jury system. | Continue reading
Many revere Latin as the soul of Western civilization. But its beauty should not blind us to the horrors of its history. | Continue reading
Moral thinking about debt has fluctuated throughout U.S. history. Today’s calls for cancellation suggest it may be poised for transformation once again. | Continue reading
The “scientific method” of high school textbooks does not exist. But there are scientific methods, and they play an essential role in making scientific knowledge reliable. | Continue reading
30 years after the Wall, the story of Berlin's anarchist utopia. | Continue reading
Political hobbyism takes well-meaning citizens away from pursuing power. | Continue reading
There is a reason why economists tend to believe in markets. | Continue reading
Far-right leaders often call for one nation united under one language. At the same time, they have always been good at using translation to spread their politics. | Continue reading
Most people see the benefits of empathy as too obvious to require justification. | Continue reading
Most people own things they don’t really need. It is worth thinking about why. | Continue reading