Tag: human beings
12 Readers on What the Rest of the World Does Better Than the U.S.
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week I asked, “If you could change one thing about the culture of your country by adopting a practice or attitude or folkway from another country, what would you change and why?”
Meg recommends “the Japanese practice of bowing,
We’re About to See How Serious America Is About Returning to the Moon
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—The south pole of the moon is a stunning place. Towering mountains are bathed in perpetual sunshine, and the lunar dust, fine as powder, gleams in unfiltered light. Plunging craters exist in permanent shadow and hide pockets of ice in their gray rock, the water frozen and undisturbed for as long as 3 billion years.
It is here, somewhere along this silent terrain, that NASA wants to land a new crew of astronauts. Like those who came before,
She Wouldn’t Exist if Not for Her Friend’s Family
Each installment of “The Friendship Files” features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship. This is the 100th and final installment of the series.
This week she talks with two women who were brought together by an extraordinary act of courage: During World War II, Clémentine Lestang’s great-grandfather, a member of the French resistance, rescued Meredith Moseley’s grandfather, a U.S. Army pilot, after he
Ukraine and the Words That Lead to Mass Murder
In the terrible winter of 1932–33, brigades of Communist Party activists went house to house in the Ukrainian countryside, looking for food. The brigades were from Moscow, Kyiv, and Kharkiv, as well as villages down the road. They dug up gardens, broke open walls, and used long rods to poke up chimneys, searching for hidden grain. They watched for smoke coming from chimneys, because that might mean a family had hidden flour and was baking bread. They led away
How Two Internet Nemeses Became Friends
Each installment of “The Friendship Files” features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship.
This week she talks with two former online adversaries who became friends. They met arguing in the comment section of a Facebook forum dedicated to promoting science, where each thought the other was misguided. When they started chatting privately, and eventually met up in person, they found more common ground
The Sisterhood Between Single Mothers
Each installment of “The Friendship Files” features a conversation between The Atlantic’s Julie Beck and two or more friends, exploring the history and significance of their relationship.
This week she talks with two women who forged a friendship in crisis. When Sarah’s husband left her for another woman—while she was pregnant—she turned to her colleague Theresa, who was raising a daughter alone. They became so close that when Theresa chose to have a second child, Sarah was
Liberation or Folly? Your Takes on Artificial Wombs
Earlier this week I asked readers, “What do you think about artificial wombs? Are they ethical? Desirable? Should they be a priority for scientists? If they become advanced enough to be viable, would you ever use one? How would a world in which they were available differ from ours?”
Kaitlin, who favors artificial wombs, has been thinking about this subject for a long time, and sees it as a clash between equality and identity:
I was a 16-year-old girl when
How to Find Happiness When You’re Suffering
As we wind down this series, a paradox remains in our pursuit of happiness—joy comes to those who have known pain. In order to overcome struggle—breakups, illness, even death—we must first accept and acknowledge its inevitability. Exploring the darkness of our suffering may seem counterintuitive, but often it’s the only way to see the light.
In this week’s episode, Arthur C. Brooks sits down with BJ Miller, a palliative-care physician, to uncover how we can face our deepest fears, why
Timothée Chalamet’s Turn in ‘Dune’ as Sci-Fi’s ‘Special Boy’
A desert planet. An empire spanning the galaxy. A young boy burdened to be its savior. The 1965 novel Dune’s influence on Star Wars is obvious, but Frank Herbert’s work has echoed throughout all of modern science-fiction storytelling.
With the director Denis Villenueve’s big-budget, star-studded epic now giving it a proper film adaptation, how does 2021’s Dune play more than a half century after the novel was first published? With so many hero’s-journey imitations since, does its “chosen one”
Review: ‘The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity’
Many years ago, when I was a junior professor at Yale, I cold-called a colleague in the anthropology department for assistance with a project I was working on. I didn’t know anything about the guy; I just selected him because he was young, and therefore, I figured, more likely to agree to talk.