Ideas

Put Anthony Fauci in a Dunk Tank

The three populist pillars of a new approach to vaccinating America: beer, bacon, and lottery tickets

Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up

Today’s economic conditions are not just holding Millennials back. They are stratifying them, leading to unequal experiences within the generation as well as between it and other cohorts.

American Kids Can Wait

The U.S. should delay shots for children until global vaccine-manufacturing capacity significantly expands and the crisis in India subsides.

The Lost Month That Haunts the World

And points to how we prevent the next pandemic.

I Tell My Patients Not to Mask Their Kids Outside

For most young people, the social and emotional benefits of taking masks off outdoors greatly outweigh the personal and public-health advantages of keeping them on.

Unearthing an Origin Story for Gentrification

The growth of the medieval city of Angkor involved wealthy elites pushing people off the land they had made valuable.

3 Explanations for the Vaccine Slowdown

Daily shots are plummeting. Why?

America’s Is-Ought Problem

The job of a news reporter today is to declare what you can’t yet know to people convinced that they already do.

On Substack, You Can Never Go Too Far

The popular newsletter service is changing the media business—and selling soap operas to people who think they’re above soap operas.

Why Confederate Lies Live On

For some Americans, history isn’t the story of what actually happened; it’s the story they want to believe.

COVID-19 Lays Bare the Price of Populism

A raging outbreak in Brazil threatens gains against the virus.

The Man Who Should Be Merrick Garland’s Role Model

The new attorney general has inherited a department plagued by scandal, just as Edward Levi did in 1975.

I Wanted to Find Humility in Hunter Biden’s Book

Everyone in recovery falls the same distance to the bottom.

I Want My Mutually Assured Destruction

How 1980s MTV helped my students understand the Cold War

The Unfolding Disaster in Arizona

The question isn’t whether it can end well, but how exactly it will end badly.

The Anti-consumption Weirdos of Nomadland

I surprised myself by enjoying this sad movie about old people working seasonal jobs.

Somebody Has to Do It

Facebook’s made-up court is filling an enormous legal void.

Liz Cheney Has Only Herself to Blame

The representative from Wyoming is taking a stand against an authoritarian streak in the Republican Party that she helped cultivate.