These Are The People In Your Neighborhood

Nextdoor, a hyperlocal social-media platform, highlights petty grievances—and proves that Americans have more in common than they think.

Sam Shepard Saw It All Coming

The family battles he described foreshadowed our current national crisis.

The Stock-Buy Back Swindle

American corporations are spending trillions of dollars to repurchase their own stock. The practice is enriching CEOs—at the expense of everyone else.

Why The Police Fail To Catch Serial Rapists?

What new research reveals about sexual predators, and why police fail to catch them.

How Walking Became Pedestrian

Glorified for its creative benefits, the pastime has become yet another goal-driven pursuit.

The Original Huckster

P.T. Barnum taught us to love spectacle, fake news, and a good hoax. A century and a half later, the show has escaped the tent.

Wait A Minute!

Instantaneous communication can be destructive.We need to tweak our digital platforms to make time for extra eyes, cooler heads, and second thoughts.

The Metamorphosis

AI will bring many wonders. It may also destabilize everything from nuclear détente to human friendships. We need to think much harder about how to adapt.

Raj Chetty's American Dream

The economist whose work dispelled the myth of social mobility in the U.S. Has a plan to make it a reality.

The Crisis In Democracy

The national constitution center, in Philadelphia, is a monument to the benefits of pessimism. The center, which is situated across an open expanse from Independence Hall, is a superior educational institution, but, understood correctly, it is also a warning about the fragility of the American experiment.

The Brutal Truth About Climate Change

William T.Vollmanns latest opus is one of the most honest and fatalisticbooks about global warming yet written.

Nietzsche's Guide To Better Living

If philosophy can serve as therapy, its not by offering solace but by jolting the soul.

How AI Could Give Rise To Tyranny

Artificial Intelligence could erase many practical advantages of democracy, and erode the ideals of liberty and equality. It will further concentrate power among a small elite if we dont take steps to stop it.

The Personal Cost Of Black Success

Two men chronicle their rise into the meritocratic elite, exposing pernicious myths and brutal realities along the way.

Women Are Angry. Now What?

Rebecca Traister Invokes Fury To Unify Women In A Battle Against Men, But Being Mad Can Prove Divisive, Too.

Newt Gingrich Says You're Welcome

He turned politics into a vicious blood sport, broke Congress, and paved the way for Trumps rise. Now hes reveling in his achievements.

Can The Pentagon Weaponize The Brain?

The Pentagons R&D arm, DARPA, gave us drones and the internet. Now the agency has a new mission: to fold computers into the brain and nervous systemor maybe vice versa. Silicon Valley is eating all of this up.

The Next Populist Revolution

Establishment Democrats believe that poor immigrants and their children will be part of an emerging majority. They could be very wrong.

How Ice Went Rogue

A long-running inferiority complex, vast statutory power, a chilling new directive from the top—inside America’s unfolding immigration tragedy. 

May It Please the Court

In more than a decade as a trial lawyer, I’ve watched in frustration as male attorneys rely on a range of courtroom tactics that are off-limits to women. Judges and juries reward men for being domineering— and expect women to be deferential. This cultural bias runs deep and won’t be easily overcome. I have the trial transcripts to prove it.

Donald Trump Builds His Autocracy!

Will American democracy survive Trump? And will the midterms matter?

A Warning From Europe

Polarization. Conspiracy theories. Attacks on the free press. An obsession with loyalty. Recent events in the United States follow a pattern Europeans know all too well.

Losing The Democratic Habit

Americans once learned self-governance by practicing it constantlyin lodge halls, neighborhood associations, and labor unions. As participation in these institutions has dwindled, so has public faith in democracy. To restore it, we must return democratic practices to everyday life.

Adison Vs. The Mob

The founders designed a government that would be insulated from the heat of popular sentiment, but they didnt anticipate the unbridled passions of the digital age.Here show the constitutional order can survive.

Measles As Metaphor

What the disease’s return tells us about America’s ailing culture.

Carry Me Back

Race, history, and memories of a Virginia girlhood.

The Trouble With Dentistry

You likely don’t need to go to the dentist every six months. Those microcavities might heal without a filling. And you may want a second opinion before getting that root canal. An inquiry into a profession that’s much less scientific—and far more prone to gratuitous procedures—than you might think.

You Buy It, You Break It

How private equity is killing retail

Pop Culture's Failure To Rage

Why songs and TV shows are full of postelection angst about feeling impotent, complicit, despondent— and what a more constructive future of protest art might look like

The Lessons Of Henry Kissinger

The legendary and controversial statesman criticizes the Obama Doctrine, talks about the main challenges for the next president, and explains how to avoid war with China.