Motherhood, Rural Decline, and Phoenix
I’ll be logging off the internet for a few weeks and thus pausing these Water Dippers. I aim to resume them in early August....
Maurin, Partisanship, and Myth
"Ideas and Historical Consequences." Mars Hill Audio released the full version of an old interview with John Lukacs. FPR readers can up for a...
Math, Antitrust, and Work
“Computers Can’t Do Math.” David Schaengold has a clear and provocative essay on the differences between computer “thinking” and human thinking: “we can be...
COVID, ChatGPT, and PFAS
“The Cultural Roots of Our Demographic Ennui.” Patrick Brown argues that affluence—what regular FPR contributor John de Graaf labeled “affluenza”—lies behind many of our...
Lobsters, Resilience, and Scouting
“DIY.” Bud Smith details the joys of fixing anything that’s broken with the help of the Internet: “YouTube has all the right answers and...
Patriotism, Realtors, and Men
“The Big AI Risk Not Enough People Are Seeing.” Tyler Austin Harper draws on Ivan Illich to distinguish between technologies that empower us and...
Reading, Undset, and Tariffs
“Hope for the Organization Kid.” Joshua Hochschild revisits David Brooks’ classic 2004 essay on college students and considers what’s changed in the two decades...
Andrew Petiprin On Popcorn With the Pope
Andrew Petiprin is co-author of a new book from Word on Fire called Popcorn With the Pope, which examines all the movies on the...
Reading, Chatbots, and Home
“Our Draymond Green Problem.” Elizabeth Stice draws on Draymond Green and Hannah Arendt to consider what responsibilities we might have for our allies: “What...
Ghost Stories with Nancy French
Longtime ghostwriter Nancy French tells her own tale in Ghosted: An American Life. French was raised in rural Tennessee and would later provide the words...