“Alice Gregory on Finding a Uniform”

“When the weather permits — and it does in New York from September to May — I wear a black cotton turtleneck, skinny blue jeans that (crucially) are not tight and a pair of black boots. My hair, I have decided, is my main accessory. If it’s cold and dry, I wear a…

“The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics”

“The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it…

“Nicole Cliffe: How God Messed Up My Happy Atheist Life”

“Like many atheists (who are generally lovely moral people like my father, who would refuse to enter heaven and instead wait outside with his Miles Davis LPs), I started out snarky and defensive about religion, but eventually came…

“The Team of Men Behind Rachel Brewson, the Fake Woman Whose Trump-Fueled Breakup Went Viral “

“Brewson wasn’t a publicity stunt, but an attempt to make money. The character was created by an (all-male) team of internet marketers interested in pushing traffic…

“How America Outlawed Adolescence”

“Kenny’s case did not receive much attention from officials because it was not unusual. Her arrest was based on a law against “disturbing school,” a mysterious offense that is routinely levied against South Carolina students. Each year, about 1,200 kids are charged…

“The cult of memory: when history does more harm than good”

“while alert to the possibility that history can be abused, as it unquestionably was in the Balkans in the 1990s, most decent people still endorse George Santayana’s celebrated dictum: “Those who cannot remember the past are…

“Doubling Up Prisoners In ‘Solitary’ Creates Deadly Consequences”

“With a toilet, sink, shelf and beds, the men were left with a sliver of space about a foot-and-a-half wide to maneuver around each other. If one stood, the other had to sit. They could palm both walls without fully…

“The Myth of the Barter Economy”

“This historical world of barter sounds quite inconvenient. It also may be completely made up.

The man who arguably founded modern economic theory, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, popularized the idea that barter was a precursor…