Category: Features

Why Culture Cannot Be Our Politics

There has not been a time in recent memory during which the liberal cause was in more desperate need of something new. In an election where the GOP nearly imploded before running Donald Trump as its candidate, the Democrats got swept. As the current iteration of the Democratic party is woefully short of leadership and… Read more »

The Dodgers are the Best Team No One Can Watch

Despite a horrific stretch of play over the past month, the Los Angeles Dodgers are sitting pretty with a 99-57 record, nine games ahead of their closest competitor in the National League West. Fangraphs’ projections have them ending the season with over a hundred wins and the best record in Major League Baseball. Those same… Read more »

Explaining the “Failing” Fourth Estate

Post-truth, fake news, the failing New York Times, very fake news, and “democracy dies in darkness.” Politics has never been more obsessed with the medium through which it is reported. Since President Trump took the oath of office on the west front of the Capitol, periphery of his right eye trained on the sparse Washington Mall… Read more »

What Syria Needs Now

On September 10, 2016, the U.S. State Department announced that it had struck a breakthrough ceasefire agreement with Russia in Syria, the site of a conflict that has in recent months rekindled Cold War tensions long-thought to be extinguished. The much-lauded deal promised a stop to all hostilities between Syrian rebels and the Assad regime,… Read more »

The Pop Culture Matrix

Disclaimers: Big data might save the world, but this exercise is entirely subjective. Any references from before 2008 come from covers of Us Weekly that we saw in the grocery store. Names that appear on the matrix might more accurately be associated with public perception of the individual rather than with their true character (e.g.,… Read more »

The Fatal Flaw of Border Security

Maria Ochoa will not forget the day in June 2007 when her party stumbled upon human remains while searching for an undocumented immigrant in the southern Arizona desert. We were looking for a young woman that had stayed behind with her uncle and her husband because her uncle had become ill. She was seven months… Read more »

The Insidious Myth of In-Person Voter Fraud

As American democracy faces its greatest test, its core is rotting. Legislation disguised in the name of electoral integrity is making it worse.

The Brave New World of Gene Editing

Biotechnology has progressed faster than our society’s ability to understand it. Our newfound powers raise serious ethical questions.

Losing the Game

American professional sports have a tendency to get wrapped up in grand narratives. The N.B.A. star who was homeless in high school but now makes millions on the court. The baseball team that makes an improbable and unprecedented September run. The hat trick. The Cinderella story. The Hail Mary. Professional sports have also created the… Read more »

To Save Our Athens

Can an ancient historian’s masterwork provide the keys to defeating ISIS twenty-four hundred years later?