Tag: real world
Greta Gerwig’s Lessons From Barbie Land
This article contains spoilers for the film Barbie.
As soon as I asked a question about Ken, my call with Greta Gerwig dropped. When the writer-director of Barbie returned, she had no idea what happened. I suggested that of course merely mentioning Ken—the pining and overlooked doll played by Ryan Gosling—would cause a failure of some sort. Gerwig agreed. “The world was like, I don’t care,” she joked.
But the world cares very much about the movie he’s
What Is Up With the Weight-Loss Industry?
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.
Question of the Week
In “The Weight-Loss-Drug Revolution Is a Miracle—And a Menace,” my colleague Derek Thompson grappled with the rise of the drug Ozempic, the latest in a long line of much-hyped ways to lose weight and perhaps the
Why People Sacrifice Happiness for Addiction
When the behaviors we thought would make us happy don’t, we’re forced to bridge the gap between where we are and where we want to be. But our happiness goals are often stifled by the disease of addiction—and its complex neurochemical influence on our desires.
A conversation with psychiatrist Anna Lembke helps us understand the gap between the cravings that drive us and the happiness we seek.
This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is hosted by Arthur Brooks.
19 Readers on the Rise of Dating Apps
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, a person who came of age in the online era tweeted this question: “Literally BAFFLED as to how people found love before dating sites and social media. Was settling the norm? Or did everyone just happen to
Is It Worse to Ban a Book, or Never Publish It?
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.
Question of the Week
Is there class prejudice in the United States? If so, describe how it works. What are some specific examples? Is it underrated or overrated as a problem? How have you personally experienced or engaged in class
Mass Shootings, Young Men, and What Can Be Done
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. Every Monday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
What do you think about guns, the right to bear arms, gun deaths, and gun policy?
Conversations of Note
Yesterday an 18-year-old gunman killed at least 19 elementary-school children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas,
Maria Ressa: ‘Where Is the Line Where Immoral Becomes Evil?’
Editor’s Note: In yesterday’s keynote at Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy, a conference hosted by The Atlantic and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, Maria Ressa compared the impact of social media on our information ecosystem in recent years to that of an atom bomb: destructive, all-consuming, irreversible. Afterward, Ressa sat down with Atlantic executive editor Adrienne LaFrance to discuss Rappler, the news site she co-founded in the Philippines; press freedom; social-media platforms; and how journalists and audiences
Maria Ressa: How Disinformation Manipulates Elections
In the Philippines, we’re 33 days before our presidential elections. Filipinos are going to the poll and we are choosing 18,000 posts, including the president and vice president. And how do you have integrity of elections if you don’t have integrity of facts? That’s a reality that we’re living with.
I put all of this stuff together in a book, and this is part of the reason you’ll see these ideas over and over. And the question I really want
Our First Preview of How Vaccines Will Work Against Omicron
And there it is, the first trickle of data to confirm it. In the eyes of vaccinated immune systems, Omicron looks like a big old weirdo—but also, a kind of familiar one. That’s the verdict served up by several preliminary studies and press releases out this week, describing how well antibodies, isolated from the blood of vaccinated people, recognize and sequester the new variant in a lab. The news is … well, pretty much the middling outcome that experts have
COVID-19 Long-Haulers Are Fighting for Their Future
While watching the scientific community grapple with long COVID, I have thought a lot about a scene in The Lord of the Rings. Faced with impending doom, the hobbits Merry and Pippin ask the powerful treelike ents for help. But despite the urgency of the situation, the ents are slow. They meet for hours, and after a lot of deliberation, they announce that they’ve agreed that the hobbits are not orcs. The hobbits, who already knew that, are