Political polarization gets discussed constantly, usually in abstract terms about institutions, algorithms, and party realignment. Those analyses are valuable, but they float above the level where most of us actually experience the problem. For most people, polarization is not a chart. It is the relative at the dinner table you can no longer talk to, …
Continue reading “How to Actually Talk to Someone Who Votes Differently Than You”
Coverage of the shift away from fossil fuels tends to come in two flavors. One is triumphant: solar and wind are now cheaper than coal, electric vehicles are surging, the future is clean and it is arriving fast. The other is despairing: emissions keep rising, the targets keep slipping, nothing is changing fast enough. Both …
Continue reading “The Energy Transition Is Real, and It Is Going to Be Messier Than Anyone Admits”
We have started, finally, to talk about loneliness as a serious issue. Public health officials describe it in the language usually reserved for disease, citing research that chronic social isolation raises the risk of early death by an amount comparable to smoking. That framing has done useful work in getting people to take it seriously. …
Continue reading “The Loneliness Epidemic Is a Public Problem Wearing a Private Mask”
The standard advice about misinformation is to be skeptical and check your sources, which is a bit like telling someone to be healthy by eating well and exercising. True, useless, and lacking any of the specifics that would actually let you do it. After years of watching smart people fall for false claims, including myself …
Continue reading “Becoming Harder to Fool: Practical Habits for a World Full of Misinformation”
Among all the dramatic stories competing for attention, one of the most consequential trends of our era unfolds almost silently, because it happens at the pace of human lifetimes rather than news cycles. Across much of the world, populations are growing older, and in a growing number of countries, shrinking outright. Birth rates have fallen …
Continue reading “The Quiet Revolution of Aging Societies and What It Demands of Us”
