history
America's 250th: Looking backward and forward
America has been divided for 250 years. If we make it to 500, will we be still having the same arguments or will we have outgrown them?
On America's 250th anniversary, let's remember Roger Williams
A pioneer of religious liberty reminds us why secularism is the better way.
Odds and ends: The roaring twenty-twenties
We're repeating historical patterns from a hundred years ago, in more ways than one.
Odds and ends: Ancient Greece and sexual identities
The ancients thought of sexual behavior as a phase of life, not an immutable identity. We can learn from that idea.
An evergreen reminder: This too shall pass
There is comfort in impermanence.
Book burning in the digital age
The right has long felt that some of our history needs adjustment. How far will they go?
When the future forgets the past
Knowledge disappears easily.
The future-history we want, and the future-history we deserve
Is it any wonder that we’re lousy at imagining any futures but complete apocalypse or vague utopia?
How do we talk about impending doom so that people will listen?
Books like ‘The Ministry for the Future’ offer a useful vocabulary for hashing out solutions to our overheating world.
On ‘tomorrow sorrow’: How we grieve the future today
Humans have the capacity to grieve the world ahead, knowing how much is going wrong today. But tomorrow sorrow can make us stronger actors.
Our secular struggle with medically assisted dying
Reading Time: 14 minutes Suffering from chronic pain, a friend’s grandmother took her own life when I was 18. I was over when my friend and her mother heard the news. I will never forget the character of her mother’s grief. She was devastated to lose her own mother, yes. But she was even more devast
What fifty years of struggle can teach us, going forward
Reading Time: 9 minutes The year is 1973. In January, Richard Nixon is sworn in for his second term as president, the US officially withdraws from its conflict in Vietnam, and an investigation into the Watergate break-ins expands from the burglars to the statesmen. In the coming months, Nixon will o