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Countering racism is essential to the formation of a just and equitable society — so how can we fight it?
Have we lost the ability to find common ground? Does national civitas need a reboot?
The coronavirus crisis is impacting poor, low-income, and people of color disproportionately.
A leading voice on antiracism, Ibram X. Kendi says countering racism is essential to the formation of a just and equitable society — so, how can we fight it?
The professional sports industry in the United States has historically been a man's game. Men have held leadership roles, designed competition formats, chosen which sports stories get elevated, and dictated how athletes are treated. What if pro sports were owned, designed, and run by women? It's already happening, in part, because fans are demanding it. But in the midst of...
Like all technology, artificial intelligence can be used for good, and it can be used for evil. What little federal regulation the United States has governing technology and the internet was written before artificial intelligence existed in its current form, and as a society, we’re flying blind and in way over our heads as we enter this next phase of digital life. What cou...
Author Evan Thomas on the complex and confounding President Nixon.
For adults, the pressure to drink at social engagements, work events, restaurants or almost anywhere outside the home can feel constant. Recent research has found that “no amount or kind of alcohol is good for your health,” and a wide variety of health problems can be linked to drinking. The growing “sober curious” movement offers people a way to think about cutting down o...
So much of adult life is about learning the rules and then using those rules to navigate the world. We become certain that we know what we know — that we’re right, and we’re safer and more secure that way. But certainty, argues neuroscientist Beau Lotto, might actually be one of society’s biggest sources of emotional and physical unwellness. Certainty causes us to have les...
Societal problems like income inequality have emerged from a financial system that has taken a wrong turn, says Harvard finance professor Mihir Desai.
We could look at people who veer off society’s dominant tracks into moral gray zones as simply bad, or damaged, or living the consequences of bad choices. But from the inside, people always have reasons for doing what they do, and when all the cards are on the table, morality can become murkier. New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe is fascinated by what drives people who...
After more than two decades of research, tax scholar Dorothy A. Brown discovered that America's tax system is not color-blind. In fact, societal racism is deeply embedded in it. From attending college to getting married to buying a home, Black Americans are financially disadvantaged compared to their white peers.
Journalist Thomas Friedman says countries around the world are undergoing a stress test thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.
Biographer Walter Isaacson's latest book tells the story of biochemist Jennifer Doudna. She helped develop a controversial tool that has the power to transform the human race. CRISPR can edit genes to cure diseases but can also be used to create designer babies.
Technology has changed the way we think and interact with one another, and social media platforms are intentionally engineered to be addictive and manipulative. Those messages are in the documentary "The Social Dilemma," which was created by Jeff Orlowski's filmmaking company Exposure Labs. "Big social," says Orlowski, is transforming our information ecosystem. He tells Vi...
Shira Stutman is senior rabbi at a historic synagogue that’s doing innovative things.
We live in a global era and what happens thousands of miles away can deeply affect our lives.
Does it feel like the quality of our national discourse has gone down in the last several years? You’re not the only one who’s noticed. It’s not individuals who have gotten stupider, says NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, but it’s our collective intelligence that’s suffering. Institutions aren’t getting as much done, and leaders are making rash decisions under the pr...
We try our whole lives to avoid pain and suffering and when it does show up, we try to solve it. In her new book, No Cure for Being Human, religious scholar Kate Bowler says we try to out-eat, out-learn, and out-perform our humanness. Truth is, bad things do happen to good people and if we're going to tell the truth, we need one another. As someone who lives with cancer, B...
We try our whole lives to avoid pain and suffering and when it does show up, we try to solve it. In her new book, "No Cure for Being Human," religious scholar Kate Bowler says we try to out-eat, out-learn, and out-perform our humanness. Truth is, bad things do happen to good people and if we're going to tell the truth, we need one another. As someone who lives with cancer,...