Towards a Free and Open Internet
It has become popular lately to call for the breakup of so-called Big Tech. Such calls have come from Senator and Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, the…
Culture & Media
148 posts
Andrew Yang’s “The War on Normal People.” Book Review
Tech entrepreneur and nonprofit aficionado Andrew Yang is by far the most interesting presidential candidate of recent memory—and there is not even a close second. After the two minutes of…
Politics vs. Aesthetics: Why Great Art Cannot Conform to Our Political Views
Percy Bysshe Shelley proclaimed poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Today, that distinction belongs to Twitter mobs. Dispensing mob justice in brief and brutal 280-character decrees, these sneering Solons…
Netflix Has Their “Han Shot First” Moment with 13 Reasons Why
Netflix recently announced they have bowed to pressure from complainants arguing that their show 13 Reasons Why’s graphic portrayal of a youth suicide was insensitive. Netflix have stated that they plan to…
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…
Let’s Change the Nature of Public Discussion: 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…
A Preview of “What is Post-Modern Conservatism?: Essays on Our Hugely Tremendous Times.”
In 1989, a young scholar named Francis Fukuyama published an essay with the provocative title “The End of History?” in the National Interest. He argued that, with the fall of…
Hippocratic Oath for the Culture War
It starts with a tweet, perhaps, or a brief video clip. Someone, somewhere, has violated your core values—those of every correct-thinking person. How could this have happened? Not only were…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Bridging Our Political Divide: Uncivil Agreement by Lilliana Mason. Book Review.
Over the last few years, it has become increasingly difficult to talk politics with people we disagree with. These conversations can swiftly become hostile beyond what would reasonably be expected…
Documentary Photography: A Long-Form Art Form Amid the Culture Wars
The intensive use of photographs by mass media lays ever fresh responsibilities upon the photographer. We have to acknowledge the existence of a chasm between the economic needs of our…
A Stout Heart: Thomas Paine and His Legacy
Tom Paine is a paradoxical figure. He was one of the great men whose fierce scribblings made an indelible mark on the course of several major events: most notably, the…
