Social Media Bans Make Good Business Sense
It’s now been pretty much established that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube aren’t committed to the fundamental principle of free speech. All these social media companies have blocked individuals whose opinions…
Native Son. Film Review
I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also something much more than that. So are we all.—James Baldwin HBO’s 2019 film adaptation of…
Memory and Identity: A Letter Exchange with Gurwinder Bhogal
My interest in the freelance writer and fellow Areo contributor Gurwinder Bhogal was originally piqued by his tweets: a series of gnomic utterances about the slippery nature of identity and…
What if I’m Wrong: Should Doubt Be a Sacred Value?
In my previous essay for Areo magazine, I claim that curiosity is sacred and that we should elevate curiosity into what Jonathan Haidt calls a “sacred value,” by honoring Richard…
The Sex Recession
The number of Americans not having sex has reached a record high. Similar declines in sexual activity have been documented in Britain and Japan. Young men are driving this recession—whether willingly…
Let’s Change the Nature of Public Debate: An Introduction to Letter
Many people are nostalgic for the days when letter writing was commonplace. When they describe these longings, they usually cite the physical aspects of the experience: the movements of the…
Human Cultural Evolution: A Letter Exchange
In a recent exchange of letters, hosted on the platform Letter.wiki, Massimo Pigliucci and David Sloan Wilson explored the question of whether multi-level selection theory, a school of evolutionary biology,…
The Crisis of White Identity. Book Review
“We need to talk about white identity. Not as a fabrication designed to maintain power, but as a set of myths and symbols to which people are attached: an ethnic…
Dogma Is Not Confined to the Cathedral
My fellow nonbelievers, Whether you call yourself an atheist, an agnostic—or even spiritual but not religious—there’s a decent chance that you weren’t raised to accept such a position. Many of…
Semantics and the Need for Good Explanations
Semantics have long played a role in the culture wars. As we grapple with the implications of concentration camps, identity politics and postmodernism, we are in desperate need of a…
A. C. Grayling’s The History of Philosophy. Book Review
In Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s The Grand Design, the authors take aim at that most seemingly irrelevant of fields: philosophy. They pose some of the big questions about the…
Why We Need Whiteness Studies
Five years ago, the conservative Charles Murray and the liberal Robert Putnam agreed on something. Murray is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and is most widely known for…
The Strangest Fandom on the Internet
Christian Weston Chandler is a celebrity, though why may not immediately be clear. He’s never written a bestseller, recorded a platinum album, invented or discovered anything of note, or committed…
Journalism’s Armchair Psychology
While I’m not sure whether the AP specifically prohibits it, I would like to petition all journalists not to psychologize subjects when they have no evidence for their claims. If…
Chernobyl and the Soviet State
When reactor number four of the Chernobyl power plant overheated and exploded in the spring of 1986, few understood the environmental and political fallout that would result. Though many in…
Fully Automated Luxury Communism
Book Review. Aaron Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto. (Verso Books, 2019) Aaron Bastani, co-founder and public face of Novara Media, and public advocate for the Corbyn project, is…
Why Confrontation Is Not the Best Way to Effect Regime Change in China
Over the past week, protests once again shook the streets of Hong Kong, as tens of thousands occupied the region’s CBD. Many of them were university students like myself, and…
Censorship on Facebook and YouTube
Facebook is a private company: therefore, it can enforce its rules without having to ask anyone for permission. Changes in policies do enrage a few users, but, overall, Facebook has…
