Sacred Monotony
This thing that I had avoided for years, that our entire culture avoids, turned out to be, overused but accurate word, transformative.
Society & Culture
Stop Trying So Hard!
Oliver Burkeman wants us to work four hours only, relax about to-do lists, and realize what we expect of ourselves is already impossible
Christmas Creep Has Left Us Confused
Like children, we rush the season, celebrating each holiday long before it arrives and growing sick of all of them. Sure, greedy retailers—but does the problem go deeper?
We Drink So We Can Trust Each Other
The three-martini lunch, once standard, turned scandalous in the seventies, hastily replaced by light beer and wine coolers. Then came a defiant resurgence of glam cocktails and cigar bars, followed by a wave of sober-curious shaming....
Architecture Can Heal Us
Our everyday environment “used to be quaint and quirky,” Vishaan Chakrabarti writes. “Now it is mundane and monolithic.”
The National Archives Deletes Our Problematic Past
Slavery, the Holocaust, Japanese internment camps, the birth control pill--all much too messy and confrontational to remember.
Saying Grace
It is heartening (and this is a measure of where we have been) to remember that civility is not dead, not abandoned, not impossible, not a waste of breath.
Election Day in a Small Town in Southern Illinois
“Both the media and the politicians benefit from keeping us divided. They push us to the extremes, because that is where the clicks and the money are.”
Conclave Breaks the Seal of Secrecy
This extraordinary film reveals the Vatican’s secretive and shadowy aspect, easily seen as sinister but felt by insiders as plain necessity.
Is It Time to Drop the Penny?
That tiny copper disc has become irrelevant, an annoyance, yet one with a rich history. Does it still have a point to make?