Politics

Could Longtermism Cause Short-Term Damage?

Could Longtermism Cause Short-Term Damage?

William MacAskill’s What We Owe the Future is an audacious plea to help our future humans with longtermism thinking, but it is blind to what we need now.

Why Do Voters Want Women Candidates to Be Like Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope?

Why Do Voters Want Women Candidates to Be Like Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope?

Ten years after Parks and Recreation’s campaign-focused season 4, real-world female political candidates still liken themselves to Leslie Knope. Is that the kind of candidate 2022 needs?

The Making of Our “Viral Underclass”

The Making of Our “Viral Underclass”

The Viral Underclass digs into capitalism, Big Pharma, “Gay-Inc.” and other factors surrounding Covid-19 and HIV that force a greater toll on the already marginalized.

It’s Time We Hung Out at Joe’s Garage with Frank Zappa Again

It’s Time We Hung Out at Joe’s Garage with Frank Zappa Again

As extremist minorities corrode social liberties, it’s time to take our rusting democratic values to Joe’s Garage where Frank Zappa waits with his sleeves rolled up.

Embodying the Mexico-US Border with Virtual Reality and Other Imaginings

Embodying the Mexico-US Border with Virtual Reality and Other Imaginings

Iñárritu’s VR experience Carne y Arena, Vizcarra’s documentary La Línea, and Rivera’s sci-fi film Sleep Dealer create unconventional imaginings of the Mexico-US border.

The Russo-Ukraine War Is a Mediated War – Not Just a War on the Media

The Russo-Ukraine War Is a Mediated War – Not Just a War on the Media

How the Russo-Ukraine War generated a media dimension of its own and how it linked the myths of the past century to the challenges of our own.

SFIFF 2022: ‘Emily the Criminal’ Director on Rejecting the American Dream

SFIFF 2022: ‘Emily the Criminal’ Director on Rejecting the American Dream

Director John Patton Ford discusses his debut feature Emily the Criminal, a critique of American society borne within the death of the American Dream.

Comics Artist Darryl Cunningham Puts Vladimir Putin in Perspective

Comics Artist Darryl Cunningham Puts Vladimir Putin in Perspective

Comics Artist Darryl Cunningham’s latest nonfiction graphic novel, Putin’s Russia, puts Vladimir Putin’s rise to power in simple and clear perspective.

SFIFF 2022: Director Daniel Roher on Navalny, Master of Russian Politics

SFIFF 2022: Director Daniel Roher on Navalny, Master of Russian Politics

Director Daniel Roher met face-to-face with the intensely intelligent and deeply motivated Alexei Navalny and together created a film that compels global political action.

What to Make of Kremlin-Defying Alexei Navalny?

What to Make of Kremlin-Defying Alexei Navalny?

Daniel Roher’s compelling documentary Navalny intimately reveals the consequences of challenging Vladimir Putin’s autocratic Russia.

On Ireland’s Painful Emergence into the Modern World

On Ireland’s Painful Emergence into the Modern World

Fintan O’Toole’s lucid history of Ireland, We Don’t Know Ourselves, is a vivid telling of how his country’s culture of silence and repression was broken open.

Chuck Klosterman’s ‘The Nineties’ Reads Like a Complex Murder Board

Chuck Klosterman’s ‘The Nineties’ Reads Like a Complex Murder Board

Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties glosses subjects like Green Day, the Green Party, and Alan Greenspan like an insanely complex, cross-eyed inducing murder board.