History
Are We Really “Alone Together”?
Middle-class Americans have alternatively immersed themselves in and withdrawn from public urban spaces.
Privacy is Not Dead—It’s Inevitable
The internet has become an environment of total tracking and total control.
In Defense of Narcissism
When narcissism was pathologized, reformers were labeled as narcissists and discontent swept under the rug.
Which Radical Ideas Come True?
Two radical notions in the early 1970s, having a black president and permitting homosexual marriage, have pretty much come to pass.
Political Hatred in Argentina
Guardian journalist Uki Goñi discusses his career reporting from Buenos Aires.
Afghanistan’s Misguided Economy
In 1978, Afghanistan had achieved food security for a population of 15 million. Today, Afghanistan is extremely dependent on aid and imports.
Libertarianism Is Very Strange
Outside the fantasy novels of Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein, libertarianism does not make much anthropological or historical sense.
Lost Radicals
The internationalism of black radicals was an alternative to a universalism that wasn’t universal.
Inventing the Social Network
Social media is only the latest development in a long history of community support.
What Adam Smith Can Teach Us About Incentives in Higher Education
His vision of human nature favored neither the brutish realism of Thomas Hobbes nor the wide-eyed optimism of Francis Hutcheson.
Learning Sympathy
The success of humanitarian appeals is not a given of human nature. They work because we have come to sympathize with the suffering of others, distant and alien.
Round and Round
A wheeling book of aspirations and frustrations, London: A History in Verse offers us a literary treasury: a record of the city, a roll of its events.
Direct Expression
An interview with the dissident poet and essayist Kirill Medvedev about a new Russian left.
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