The Rural Coronavirus Crisis to Come
The news that Berea College was closing sent a wave of confusion and fear through the campus. “Some of my friends were in their dorms, and they just heard people screaming when they found out,” Lily, a...
View ArticleToward an Economic Democracy
The most fundamental tragedy of the coronavirus crisis is human. It is lives being lost. Somewhere close behind is the feeling of desperation shared by working people. In an economy where it is...
View ArticleRight-Wing Ghouls With Graduate Degrees Take on the Pandemic
The power of a pithy phrase to sway the ignorant is not to be underestimated. This is one of the less-urgent lessons of President Trump’s recent reversal on whether the coronavirus pandemic is really...
View ArticleWhat Climate Grief Taught Me About the Coronavirus
I’ve been crying a lot. So much I worry that my neighbors can hear me through the plaster walls of my apartment building in the South Bronx.The hardest part of every day is when my eyes first open and...
View ArticleThe Cult of the Shining City Embraces the Plague
President Donald Trump answered questions Tuesday afternoon for a Fox News virtual town hall surrounded by a frame of graphics. In the lower right-hand corner a box documented the market’s delirious...
View ArticleGive Me Capitalism or Give Me Death
I don’t remember doing it, but at some point in the last week I must have turned on my Apple News alerts. “The Dow fell more than 900 points on Friday,” one read. Then another: “Who will be saved, and...
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The Ethical Failures of Modern Architecture
Even if you haven’t heard of Bjarke Ingels, you’ve probably seen his work. The Danish designer is perhaps the world’s most successful living architect. He has designed parks, apartment buildings, four...
View ArticleAn Emergency Decades in the Making
How does an outbreak evolve into an epidemic and finally a pandemic? In Episode 4 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene discuss how the coronavirus crisis has been...
View ArticleHow Andrew Cuomo Became a Media Darling
A consensus has started to emerge in the media: Cable news networks must stop airing the president’s daily coronavirus briefings in full, which are dense with dangerous quackery. “There is a very real...
View ArticleAmerica’s Eldercare System Is a Tinderbox
One of the earliest signs that the coronavirus was about to overtake the United States was the February outbreak at a nursing home facility outside of Seattle. At the Life Care Center in Kirkland,...
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The Other Latif and the Radiolab Problem
The Other Latif—a new serialized podcast and radio show by Latif Nasser, a producer at the WNYC subsidiary Radiolab—is about a case of overlapping identities. After discovering that a detainee at...
View ArticleThe Deranged Push to Get Americans Back to Work
Reports began emerging earlier this week that President Donald Trump has been getting restless about the severity of the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, worrying both that the crisis...
View ArticleWhy Politicians Can’t Stop Talking About “Folks”
Any recent history of “folks” in political discourse must begin with Barack Obama, who used the word more than twice as often as any other president, according to a BuzzFeed analysis. When discussing...
View ArticleThe Climate Crisis Will Be Just as Shockingly Abrupt
As governments around the globe debate how to respond both to the coronavirus itself and the economic chaos it has unleashed, a theme that’s come up over and over is how to prioritize what makes it...
View ArticleTwo Weeks in an Oligarchy
Two Sundays ago, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, devoted YMCA member and erstwhile presidential hopeful, reluctantly closed the city’s public schools after pleas from multiple city officials and...
View ArticleProtecting Native Elders in a Pandemic
The coronavirus has reached every state in the country, and the impact on Indian Country is no different as the virus has spread quickly through tribal nations. Healthcare systems in Native...
View ArticleDarling, Let’s Do Coronavirus in the Hamptons This Year
Goldman Sachs co-head of investment banking Gregg Lemkau wants to disabuse you of any notion that working from his summer home in Hawaii is all it’s cracked up to be. Lemkau complained on Twitter this...
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The Bonkers Appeal of The Tiger King
In retrospect, Carole Baskin probably should have taken it more seriously the day her mailbox exploded with snakes. A self-appointed champion for the rights of big cats, Carole received those snakes...
View ArticleRent Strike Nation
Last week, the head of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, James Bullard, predicted that in the second quarter of 2020, the U.S. economy could see a 30 percent unemployment rate and a 50 percent drop in...
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The Caged Ballot
A week before last Thanksgiving, a group of Republican attorneys gathered at the tony Madison Club a few blocks from the Wisconsin State Capitol to learn what they could do to help reelect President...
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