Spiderweb Capitalism October 25, 2022 In 2015, the anonymous leak of the Panama Papers brought to light millions of financial and legal documents exposing how the superrich hide their money using complex webs of offshore vehicles. Read More
Trust in a distrustful world October 18, 2022 US politics faces a serious trust deficit. MAGA Republicans don’t trust RINOs, leftist Democrats don’t trust their centrist colleagues, Republicans don’t trust Democrats (and vice versa), and trust in major social institutions has been weakening for decades. Read More
What is viral justice? An interview with Ruha Benjamin October 11, 2022 In spring 2020, Ruha Benjamin received a DM on Twitter from her literary agent Sarah Levitt: “I’m hungry to read anything you have.” Inspired, Benjamin began writing and spent the first few months of the pandemic conceiving what would become her new book, Viral Justice. Read More
Office hours with Ruha Benjamin October 04, 2022 For this month’s Office Hours, I’m delighted to share wisdom and inspiration from Ruha Benjamin, author of the forthcoming Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want. Read More
Book Club Pick: Viral Justice October 03, 2022 Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Read More
Young, Gifted and Diverse: Q&A with the authors August 22, 2022 Despite their diversity, Black Americans have long been studied as a uniformly disadvantaged group. Read More
Listen in: Work Matters August 17, 2022 Low-wage workers make up the largest group of employed parents in the United States, yet scant attention has been given to their experiences as new mothers and fathers. Work Matters brings the unique stories of these diverse individuals to light. Read More
Why work matters August 09, 2022 The United States is one of the most unfriendly places in the world to have a child, especially for low-wage, working parents. To date, our current policy initiatives for working families focus on giving parents time away from work to cope with family responsibilities, with policies such as parental leave, sick time, and scheduling flexibility. Read More
Office hours with Karen Levy July 26, 2022 I am delighted to announce Office Hours, a new Ideas feature that we will share every other month. I spend quite a bit of time talking to authors about recent research—and eventually, we share the end result with you, in the form of a book. Read More
The millennial generation housing calamity July 20, 2022 No single issue has catalyzed younger adults more than housing. Wealthier millennials cannot buy a home with the same ease their parents did, middle class millennials pay tremendous rents to live in cities with good economic opportunities, and the poor of the same cohort experience rampant housing insecurity: couch surfing, living in their cars, and, most disturbingly, sleeping in tent colonies or right on the pavement of cities like Los Angeles and New York. Read More
Margaret Cohen on The Underwater Eye April 12, 2022 In The Underwater Eye, Margaret Cohen tells the fascinating story of how the development of modern diving equipment and movie camera technology has allowed documentary and narrative filmmakers to take human vision into the depths, creating new imagery of the seas and the underwater realm, and expanding the scope of popular imagination. Read More
Does Skill Make Us Human? March 30, 2022 Skill—specifically the distinction between the “skilled” and “unskilled”—is generally defined as a measure of ability and training, but Does Skill Make Us Human? shows instead that skill distinctions are used to limit freedom, narrow political rights, and even deny access to imagination and desire. Read More
Listen in: Work Pray Code March 25, 2022 We all want our jobs to be meaningful and fulfilling. Work Pray Code reveals what can happen when work becomes religion, and when the workplace becomes the institution that shapes our souls. Read More
Carolyn Chen on Work Pray Code March 16, 2022 Silicon Valley is known for its lavish perks, intense work culture, and spiritual gurus. Work Pray Code explores how tech companies are bringing religion into the workplace in ways that are replacing traditional places of worship, blurring the line between work and religion and transforming the very nature of spiritual experience in modern life. Read More
Joseph Ewoodzie Jr.: “The neighborhood is no longer what it used to be” February 09, 2022 “The neighborhood is no longer what it used to be. The experience of blackness is not either.” Joseph C. Ewoodzie Jr. explains how talking to Jacksonians about their food choices helped him to understand more about their changing racial and cultural identities. Read More
