Violent Ends
On death, change and new forms of life at the end of wilderness.
Conservation biologist Chris D. Thomas finds new forms of life born into this warming world - as (some) species adapt to the new conditions created by climate change, humans must adapt the way we view and interact with nature to reflect a new understanding of time, change and stewardship of the natural world.
Chris is the author of Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction from PublicAffairs.
The body still comes first: What happens when Black athletes stand up.
Journalist Howard Bryant explores the protest politics of Black athletes in America - as a historical committment of the country's highest profile Black workers towards the communities that raised them, and the subject of intense backlash from an ownership class pushing sports, and culture at large, towards unquestioning authoritarianism.
Howard is the author of The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism from Beacon Press.
A very long, mostly uninterrupted, human history of inequality.
Historian Walter Scheidel traces the long twin histories of economic inequality and violence throughout human history - as a cycle of rising wealth disparity and brutal, leveling shocks have followed us since the dawn of agrarian civilization - and explains why peaceful solutions to today's inequality won't be found in the past, but must be built in the future.
Walter is the author of The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century from Princeton University Press.
Your phone is a snitch and your privacy laws aren't helping you.
Writer Cyrus Farivar explains why yesterday's privacy laws are no match for today's surveillance technology - as our devices generate massive quantities of data on our locations and activity, a patchwork of 20th century laws and 21st century workarounds from corporations and the state expose us to the threat of perfect, secret surveillance.
Cyrus is the author of Habeas Data: Privacy vs. the Rise of Surveillance Tech from Melville House.
Goodbye, Jon Schnepp.
In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen mourns the death of his friend, the tall, Jew-fro'd artist / editor / writer / filmmaker / dreamer / creator / nerd / aesthetist / figurine purchase enabler / gravitational wave / happiness spark Jon Schnepp.
