Editor’s note, June 25: The following is an updated version of an essay that originally ran in Vox in May. We are republishing it with revisions in light of the Supreme Court’s decision overruling Roe

In the early years of the 1980s, I was fooling around with a novel that explored a future in which the United States had become disunited. Part of it had turned into a theocratic dictatorship based on

Public health touches on all aspects of our lives, not just during a pandemic and not just with infectious diseases. Thanks to your feedback, this newsletter will continue with COVID updates but will

An indus­tri­alist might soon purchase Twitter, Inc. His substan­tial success launching reusable space­craft does nothing to prepare him for the challenge of building social spaces. The latter calls o

Bill Maher fans, get ready to clap your heart out. The Real Time host, whose new HBO stand-up special #Adulting airs April 15, is a self-identified liberal who likes to complain about political correc

For years, analysts have debated whether the United States incited Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interventions in Ukraine and other neighboring countries or whether Moscow’s actions were simply u

When Neil Young said he’d take his music off Spotify if it kept streaming the podcaster Joe Rogan, I doubted he was trying to deplatform Rogan. I assumed he was just telling the company, “I don’t need

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Last month, Allison P. Davis wrote a widely read article in New York titled “A Vibe Shift Is Coming.” In it, she posited that the third year of our pandemic would rev

Two-thirds of the way through his claustrophobic 2021 comedy special Inside, Bo Burnham briefly strips away all the humor and launches into “That Funny Feeling.” It’s an intimate, quiet song that draw

Meg Yates, better known as Meg Superstar Princess, hangs outside an Office magazine party last week. Photo: The Cobrasnake This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendati

In the late 1990s, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which was established by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, made a deal with multiple TV networks to include anti-drug

Perhaps you’ve heard: Everybody hates their job now. “No One Wants to Work,” The New York Times Magazine declared on its cover in February. In the issue, the writer Noreen Malone explained that amid “

Today is Yom ha-Shoah, Israel’s day of commemoration for the Holocaust and Europe’s millions of murdered Jews. Because of its enormity, trying to encapsulate the Holocaust often feels like an exercise

Updated at 4:03 p.m. on March 8, 2022. The United States reported more deaths from COVID-19 last Friday than deaths from Hurricane Katrina, more on any two recent weekdays than deaths during the 9/11

I was asked at short notice to fill in for a speaker in Stanford's EE380 course who had to cancel. Below the fold is a hastily updated version of a talk from last December. Update 28th February: the v

Here’s how you do it. Build a platform which relies on cultural creation as its core value, but which only sees itself as a technology platform. Stick to this insistence on being solely a “neutral” te

Updated at 3:21 p.m. ET on December 9, 2021. Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will

The Editorial Board Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now Jan. 1, 2022 Credit...Nina Berman/Redux By The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and

Guest Essay Trump Isn’t the Only One to Blame for the Capitol Riot Jan. 4, 2022 Credit...David Butow/Redux By Mr. Nwanevu, a journalist, has covered the assault on voting rights in Texas and elsewhere

One of the oddities of getting old is bearing witness as the pop culture you used to think would always be beyond reproach slowly slides out of favor. As millennials age into the solid middle of the c

A Sunbeam Radiant Toaster. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge My colleague Tom once introduced you to a modern toaster with two seemingly ingenious buttons: one to briefly lift your bread to check it

Conservatives in America have, in recent months, used the idea of freedom to argue against wearing masks, oppose vaccine mandates, and justify storming the Capitol. They routinely refer to themselves

The Opinions Essay Opinion The Rule of Six: A newly radicalized Supreme Court is poised to reshape the nation By Associate editor | Updated December 2, 2021 at 6:30 p.m. EST | Published November 28, 2

Jon Stewart is back, and it’s a little bit weird. Stewart’s new TV series, The Problem With Jon Stewart on AppleTV+, is a news-comedy hybrid, and sort of a loose update of the format Stewart pioneered

Most blockbusters have sequels. Apparently, that's also true in economics. A new study by David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson offers another installment in their epic China Shock saga. You might

Early on the evening of October 23, 2019, I took a tour of the Lorraine Motel. I’d been to Memphis, Tennessee, several times before, and I’d come back to speak at the National Civil Rights Museum, whi

Photo:Eamonn M. McCormack (Getty Images) Dave Chappelle is the last of a dying breed. He knows this, and he seems very preoccupied with the ever-approaching spectre of change. His latest work has part

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Library of Congress and Getty Images Plus. As the United States struggles to distribute and administer COVID-19 vaccines, we’re looking back at the history of va

Gabort71/iStock/Getty Images Plus Here’s a fun game I’ve played with fellow woodsgoing types over the years: How much would you pay to get vaccinated against Lyme disease? I generally settle on a numb

Update: After this story published, Facebook took down two of the five troll-farm pages we identified. In the run-up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebook’s most popu

Jack Poulson has developed an encyclopedic knowledge of how tech companies are evolving into military contractors. Tracking such intricate connections has become a full-time—though unpaid—job for the

Miley Cyrus vowed not to have a baby on a “piece-of-shit planet.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mused in an Instagram video about whether it’s still okay to have children. Polls suggest that

When I wrote last week about how northern Idaho was surging with COVID cases, to the point that hospitals had triggered a plan to ration medical care, I got a slew of correspondence from people there

This is the weekend edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing. Hamden

Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Peter Jennings. Photo illustration by Slate. Images via NBC, CBS, and ABC News. Today, they often act like clowns. Some pass along conspiracy theories on cable television,

Democrats look like they’re the ones with the greater share of political power in America today, holding both the White House and Congress. So why do they so often seem weak and ineffectual, while Rep

A dispatch from the summer of 2021. 6 min read· Aug 17, 2021 -- Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, CA, March 2020 I wonder if they’ll believe us when we tell them how bad it got. In my mind, when I

After George Floyd’s murder, when sweeping criminal-justice reforms seemed more possible than ever, many Black Lives Matter activists and their allies settled on a rallying cry: “Defund the Police.” T

In January of 2001, a startup news website broke a huge technology story: A charismatic millionaire was secretly developing an incredible invention, one that would change the world, in his lab in New