Culture

Facing the Sixth Extinction

Facing the Sixth Extinction Facing the Sixth Extinction

Species are disappearing before our eyes.

Jul 30, 2025 / OppArt / Paula Hewitt Amram

Jay Leno at the 2021 Britweek Luxury Car Rally in Los Angeles.

Jay Leno’s Phony Case for Balanced Comedy Jay Leno’s Phony Case for Balanced Comedy

The former Tonight Show host thinks a dose of bothsidesism will punch up the late-night scene.

Jul 30, 2025 / Ben Schwartz

A man in a collared shirt and tie rides a motorcycle in Little Rock, Arkansas.

“Declared Intention”: My Immigration Story, and Ours “Declared Intention”: My Immigration Story, and Ours

Like many Americans, I may only be one generation away from birthright citizenship—a concept that defined this country’s promise for so many immigrants.

Jul 30, 2025 / Robert Pinsky

Essex Hemphill, 1991.

Essex Hemphill’s Poetry of Belonging Essex Hemphill’s Poetry of Belonging

He was an artist and activist who found in his verse a tool for both community and agitprop.

Jul 30, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Felsenthal

100 Monkeys

100 Monkeys 100 Monkeys

Check out all installments in the OppArt series.

Jul 29, 2025 / OppArt / Steve Brodner

An episode of “Shark Tank,” 2015.

Is Pitching a Novel All That Different From “Shark Tank”?  Is Pitching a Novel All That Different From “Shark Tank”? 

Alex Higley’s True Failure, which dramatizes one man’s dream to pitch his business idea on reality TV, slyly compares this bathetic task to publishing literary fiction.

Jul 29, 2025 / Books & the Arts / Ben Sandman

The Wrong Amazon Is Burning

The Wrong Amazon Is Burning The Wrong Amazon Is Burning

The wrong ice is melting.

Jul 28, 2025 / OppArt / Anonymous

A community member holds a candle by the “Say Their Names” art installation cemetery with headstones representing Black people killed by police, during a vigil marking the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's death, at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2025.

It Has Never Been Easy to Be Both Black and American It Has Never Been Easy to Be Both Black and American

The administration knows that subduing history as it is doing works to keep people of color in this country disunited and at odds with each other.

Jul 28, 2025 / Keenan Norris

W.G. Sebald, 1999.

Before Sebald Was Great Before Sebald Was Great

By looking at his early work, we can better understand who the German writer was beyond his persona as the melancholy intellectual and serious man of letters.

Jul 28, 2025 / Books & the Arts / David Schurman Wallace

A four-panel comic from Action Comics 8, 1939. Superman destroys slum housing to force the government to build public housing for the poor.

The New Deal and the Popular Front Gave Us Superman The New Deal and the Popular Front Gave Us Superman

The real Man of Steel wasn’t woke, but he was radical.

Jul 25, 2025 / Jeet Heer

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