Technology and the Golden Age of Taxonomy

Alone in the forest, the modern person might find it difficult to identify a beech tree. Compared to indigenous shamans who forage thousands of medicinal plants, we are deeply disconnected from nature. But even if our personal understanding of...

Weekly Roundup and the Harassment of Professor Kathleen Stock

Before you read this week's articles, I'd like to draw your attention to the distressing harassment that one of our contributors, Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, has been subjected to on her campus. Posters...

Instagram's Mental Health Emergency

Facebook has recently paused the development of their “Instagram Kids” project after a whistleblower leaked internal documents showing that Facebook's own research finds a link between poor mental health and Instagram use. “We make body image...

Guns, Germs, and Steel is a Powerful Anti-Racist Book. So Why Doesn’t the Left Love It?

It has been 30 years since the publication of Jared Diamond’s first book, The Third Chimpanzee, and it has survived the test of time well. It examines the evolutionary foundations of human behaviours, and, in particular, looks at the differing...

A Peek Inside Corporate America’s Ascendant Woke-Industrial Complex

In one of my favorite episodes of South Park, two sleazy salesmen try to sell shoddy vacation condos in the glitzy ski town of “Asspen” to the lower middle-class residents of South Park. Their sales pitch is simple: “Try saying it, ‘I’ve got a...

The Good Death—Cancel Culture and the Logic of Torture

Cancellation is a public execution, during which a person is pilloried and destroyed. But while we have become used to the cycle of manufactured outrage that preludes every cancellation, the desperate public apologies, and the devastating...

The War on Porn: Cancel Culture on Steroids

The recent decision by OnlyFans—one of the world’s biggest adult industry brands—to stop selling sexually explicit content took everyone by surprise. Social media reacted with amusement, many people suggesting (quite accurately) that this would be...

As US Schools Prioritize Diversity Over Merit, China Is Becoming the World’s STEM Leader

All three of us are mathematicians who came to the United States as young immigrants, having been attracted by the unmatched quality and openness of American universities. We came, as many others before and after, with nothing more than a good...

When You’re Diagnosed with Autism—by TikTok

Do you ever seek reassurance, overspend, get angry over small things, fear abandonment, or pretend to be happy? If so, you might be suffering from anxiety, self-harm, ADHD, a wounded inner child, and something called “smiling depression”—at least...

Listening to Literature—What We Gain and Lose with Audiobooks

I couldn’t finish Ulysses. This was 1994, the year after I’d graduated from Arizona State University with an English degree, and the year that my rock band started providing a living from playing gigs in Tempe. Both of these events...

Historical Racism Is Not the Singular Cause of Racial Disparity

Even before the crescendo of Black Lives Matter last summer, the operative view among progressives was that historical racism is the overriding cause of racial disparities between black and white Americans today. The progressive ethos on race is...