Episodes

Yesterday, The Talking Heads , today, Dylan. The Great Man’s Jewish identity has long been overshadowed by his pantheistic status as American prophet. So when, for example, at the beginning of his biopic “ A Complete Unknown ...

Do The Talking Heads, the quinessential art school band of the East Village scene of the 1970’s, still matter? Very much so. At least according to the band’s biographer, Jonathan Gould , who believes that The Talking Heads re...

What does it really mean to be a “good woman”? For the controversial podcaster and writer Elise Loehnen , female goodness is a misery trap. And so reclaim their happiness, to make themselves whole, Loehnen says, women need to...

“Let me tell you about the very rich”, Scott Fitzgerald once said. “They are different from you and me”. One way they are different, the New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos reports, is that they own yachts - very very big, exp...

It all began in 2019 at DeadSpin where Megan Greenwell was editor-in-chief. She had her dream job at the sports publication she'd always loved, leading a profitable digital media company with a devoted readership. Then the cu...

25 years after serving as the bridge between the Web 1.0 and 2.0 revolutions, Google stands at the vortex of another technological revolution. The company's new AI mode threatens to destroy the "simple bargain" that has susta...

Happy NO KINGS DAY! Today, as nationwide protests sweep America, historian and activist Mark Bray argues that Trump and his MAGA movement represent a type of American fascism rooted in the country's long history of racist bac...

So what, exactly, is libertarianism? Spike Cohen , the Libertarian Party's 2020 vice presidential nominee, boils it down to "the principle of human respect"—treating people as individuals, not as what he calls "tax cattle." S...

According to Deborah Baker , author of Charlottesville: An American Story , America has become the Charlottesville of the Unite the Right Rally of August 12, 2017. Baker, who grew up in Charlottesville in the shadow of Jeffer...

Postmodern Patrimonialism. That’s the term Brookings Institution scholar Jonathan Rauch uses to describe Trump's second presidency, arguing it represents a 21st century model of running government as if it’s his own personal ...

FreedomFest , America’s annual celebration of libertarian values, begins tomorrow in Palm Springs. According to FreedomFest’s CEO Valerie Durham , there’s something quintessentially American about her libertarian creed. Attra...

Karen Hao has been warning us about Sam Altman’s OpenAI for a while now. In her bestselling Empire of AI , she argues that the Silicon Valley startup is a classic colonial power, akin to Britain’s East India Company. Like tho...

Do we get the nonfiction we deserve? LATimes book critic Bethanne Patrick wrestles with this question through five new books that both mirror and address our fractured psyche. From Melissa Fibos’ choice of celibacy over toxic...

Is the promise of AI abundance Silicon Valley’s biggest lie? That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare argues that while AI will inevitably reduce human labor and increase productivity, the real question isn't economic—it's abo...

No, I’m not amused. Today’s Trump vs Musk social media wrestling fiasco is one more example of how digital media is actually bemusing ourselves to death. Walter Lippmann , the brilliant but emotionally detached journalist who...

Revered by some, vilified by others, Ibram X. Kendi is America's most controversial anti-racism scholar. In this wide-ranging and frank conversation, the bestselling author of How to Be an Anti-Racist discusses his foundation...

Do we get the serial killers & heroes we deserve? The always generous literary critic Bethanne Patrick uses five new non-fiction books to respond to this rather absurd question. From French women resisting Nazis at Ravensbrüc...

Black swan events used to be considered as one-of-a-kind events signifying something rare and exceptional. Today, however, we may be drowning in black swans. That, at least, is the view of global venture investor Christopher ...

Popeye might have gotten strong from eating spinach, but for the family of C.F. Seabrook, New Jersey’s narcissistic patriarch of industrialized farming, spinach has been a curse. In his new book The Spinach King: The Rise and...

That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare argues we're “accelerating” toward an age of “abundance” in which AI and automation will slash production costs to near-zero, freeing humans to pursue hobbies instead of jobs. I’m less ...

Revenge has become Donald Trump’s brand. That, at least, is the view of James Kimmel Jr , author of The Science of Revenge , who argues that revenge has become America’s “deadliest addiction”. When we feel wronged, he says, o...

It’s not just the MAGA or the Woke crowd. According to Greg Lukianoff , CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ( FIRE ), free speech in America is under existential threat from all political sides. While h...

As one of the most illustrious rock stars of the sustainability movement, Tim Jackson suggests that we must “f**k the patriarchy” to get beyond capitalism. In his new book, The Care Economy , Jackson argues that our growth-ob...

We Must Save the Books. That’s Michael Kimmage’s SOS message from Trumpian Washington in this issue of Liberties Quarterly . Kimmage , former director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, describes the surreal experi...