Avoiding Demagoguery, Quantification, and the Dire Hose
“How to Protect America From the Next Donald Trump.” While proposals to abolish the Electoral College are popular at the moment, Bryan Garsten recommends...
Useless Reading, Bothies, and Davos
“Fables of School Reform.” The lead of Audrey Watters’s essay says it all: “Over the past five years, more than $13 billion in venture...
Important Elections, Art Vandals, and Going Home
“This Is Not the Most Important Election of Our Lives.” Here in Pennsylvania, there’s a lot of talk about the upcoming election that will...
Technological Failures, New Localism, and More
Each week, I’ll try to post links to recent essays and stories that might interest Porchers. If you have additional essays to recommend, please...
Salmon, Hope, and Climatism
“A Great Historian’s Inner History.” Jeff Reimer reviews Peter Brown’s Journeys of the Mind and describes the particular genius Brown has for imagining the...
Wendell Berry Interview, Life after Liberalism, and More
“The Agrarian Life with Wendell Berry.” Bryan Wood and Mike Kline from Back to the Roots Podcast conduct a long interview with Wendell Berry....
Facial Recognition, Urban Dreams, and Rhetoric
“The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It.” Kashmir Hill details the workings of a new facial recognition app for the New...
Baseball, Liberty Hyde Bailey, and more
“Quit Trying to ‘Fix’ Baseball: Its Leisurely Pace Is Just What Our Society Needs.” Gregory Hillis tells Rob Manfred (and the rest of us)...
Compliance, Bourbon Tourism, and Sequoias
“No More 'Normal.' How to Live after the COVID Apocalypse.” I reflect on the themes of our upcoming conference and Chris Arnade’s book in...
The End of the World, Pawpaws, and Local Journalism
“Not That Brothers K.” Ken Sundet Jones praises David James Duncan’s brilliant novel on the thirtieth anniversary of its publication: “It’s about American angst,...