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Fighting COVID-19: Australia’s (Largely Untold) Success Story

Published by Claire Lehmann

On Friday, May 15th, pubs around Sydney re-opened after being closed for two months, a development that caused one delighted Sydneysider to observe: “Clinking that first glass… felt like...

May 30, 2020

COVID-19, Top Stories

Moving Away from Meat Means Welcoming the New ‘Flexitarians’

Published by Ari Blaff

Author and animal-rights activist Jonathan Safran Foer recently argued in a New York Times essay that the COVID-19 pandemic represents a turning point in society’s attitude to eating meat....

May 29, 2020

Activism, Animal Rights, Bioethics, Environment, Health, How We Live Next, Top Stories

How Innovation Works—A Review

Published by Logan Chipkin

A review of How Innovation Works and How it Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley, Harper (May 19th, 2020), 416 pages. If you are reading this, then you are...

May 29, 2020

Review, Science / Tech, Top Stories

Remembering My Friend Peter Beard

Published by Geoffrey Clarfield

Peter Beard, internationally renowned photographer, author, railroad-fortune heir, and socialite, died last month. Or possibly in March. Beard (b. 1938) had been ill, and suffering from dementia. He wandered...

May 28, 2020

Animal Rights, Memoir, Obituary, Top Stories

Hypocrisy, Cynicism and Tara Reade

Published by Abigail Shrier

Four years after Tara Reade briefly worked as a staffer for then-U.S. Senator Joe Biden, I occupied a similar office in the same town. The summer of 1997 saw...

May 25, 2020

Ronan Farrow’s Botched Journalism is Troubling. The Response to It Has Been Worse

Published by Jonathan Kay

On January 9th, during jury selection for the sex-assault trial of Harvey Weinstein, Ronan Farrow tweeted that a “source” with knowledge of the proceedings had told him that “close...

May 25, 2020

Activism, Entertainment, Feminism, Journalism, Top Stories

COVID-19, Top Stories

Fighting COVID-19: Australia’s (Largely Untold) Success Story

On Friday, May 15th, pubs around Sydney re-opened after being closed for two months, a development that caused one delighted Sydneysider to observe: “Clinking that first glass… felt like...

COVID-19, Education

COVID-19 Has Exposed Critical Weaknesses in Global Higher Education

The traditional educational services sector in the United States, and world at large, was not prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, including institutions of higher education, leading to significant disruptions...

Activism, Animal Rights, Bioethics, Environment, Health, How We Live Next, Top Stories

Moving Away from Meat Means Welcoming the New ‘Flexitarians’

Author and animal-rights activist Jonathan Safran Foer recently argued in a New York Times essay that the COVID-19 pandemic represents a turning point in society’s attitude to eating meat....

COVID-19, Health, World Affairs

How New Zealand Is Beating COVID-19

Things are getting back to normal in New Zealand. In the past two months, every time I have been to my local supermarket the rules have changed. At the...

How We Live Next, Podcast

PODCAST 91: Oxford’s Thomas Hale on Measuring the Variation in Government Response to COVID-19

Thomas Hale, Associate Professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, talks to Jonathan Kay about a new research project aimed at comparing international policy responses to the COVID-19...

How We Live Next, Top Stories

Drop Anchor: How COVID-19 Will Kill the Cruise Industry

Last week, Air Canada announced it was cutting its workforce by at least half, effective next month. This is not surprising, since flight attendants can’t do their jobs when...

May 30, 2020

America’s Black Communities Are Suffering. Violent Protests Will Make the...

Protests sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin—an act that...

by Zaid Jilani

May 29, 2020

COVID-19 Has Exposed Critical Weaknesses in Global Higher Education

The traditional educational services sector in the United States, and world at large, was not prepared for the COVID-19...

by Christos A. Makridis and Soula Parassidis

May 29, 2020

Moving Away from Meat Means Welcoming the New ‘Flexitarians’

Author and animal-rights activist Jonathan Safran Foer recently argued in a New York Times essay that the COVID-19 pandemic...

by Ari Blaff

May 29, 2020

How Innovation Works—A Review

A review of How Innovation Works and How it Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley, Harper (May 19th, 2020),...

by Logan Chipkin

May 28, 2020

When I Was in Love with a Comparative Literature Student

She said she did not believe there was such a thing as love—not because she was embarrassed by sentimentality,...

by Max Diamond

May 28, 2020

Remembering My Friend Peter Beard

Peter Beard, internationally renowned photographer, author, railroad-fortune heir, and socialite, died last month. Or possibly in March. Beard (b....

by Geoffrey Clarfield

May 27, 2020

A Bolt in the Dark

The scene is of the world falling apart: It is the late spring of 1942. We are in the...

by Erik Sheagren

May 25, 2020

Ronan Farrow’s Botched Journalism is Troubling. The Response to It Has Been Worse

On January 9th, during jury selection for the sex-assault trial of Harvey Weinstein, Ronan Farrow tweeted that a “source”...

by Jonathan Kay

May 25, 2020

Captain Cook and the Colonial Paradox

On April 29th, 1770, a longboat from the Royal Navy bark Endeavour grounded on Silver Beach at Botany Bay...

by Adam Wakeling

May 24, 2020

Do We Really Want a New Cold War?

Fear has been making some pretty foolish policy decisions in the last few months. In the US, the decision...

by James Hankins

May 23, 2020

The Fight over Alternative Education

Articles in college alumni magazines, even in the Ivy League, are usually puff pieces about academic programs and professors....

by Charlotte Allen

May 22, 2020

How New Zealand Is Beating COVID-19

Things are getting back to normal in New Zealand. In the past two months, every time I have been...

by Sean Welsh

May 17, 2020

Capitalism or the Climate?

Can environmentalism and capitalism sustainably coexist? An influential movement of climate activists view capitalism and environmentalism as antithetical. According...

by Saul Zimet

May 17, 2020

Cold War Now or Hot War Later

One might have expected the COVID-19 crisis to produce an inflection point at which agreement was finally reached about...

by Brian Stewart

May 17, 2020

Return to ‘The Unheavenly City’

The late senator, statesman, sociologist, and New Yorker Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously observed that, “The central conservative truth...

by Craig Trainor

May 14, 2020

Towards a Better Urbanism

The pandemic has brought panic to the once-confident ranks of urbanists promoting city density. At a time when even...

by Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky

May 10, 2020

After the Virus: The Way We Live Next

How will we live, or be forced to live, after the pandemic? “I don’t know” is—according to Paul Collier,...

by John Lloyd

May 7, 2020

The Case for a Mandatory COVID-19 App

COVID-19 offers governments no attractive policy options. Those in power are in a no-win situation. The choice is not...

by Sean Welsh

May 6, 2020

Barney Rosset and the Unending Struggle to Read Freely

It is by now a familiar truism that the Internet—and social media, in particular—has awarded the intolerant, the narrow-minded,...

by Kevin Mims

May 5, 2020

Poultry Farming, COVID-19, and the Next Pandemic

I Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906 to expose the horrific conditions in American factories at the turn...

by Matt Johnson

May 4, 2020

Risk, Uncertainty, and COVID-19 Strategies

Former World Bank President Jim Yong Kim recently argued that “[n]o one in the field of infectious disease or...

by Timo Ehrig and Nicolai J. Foss

May 3, 2020

The Hole-Digging Theory of Political Conflict

In Russia we have a saying: “Don’t dig a hole for another because you’ll be the one that falls...

by Konstantin Kisin

May 2, 2020

Decadence and Depravity in Louisville, Kentucky

Fifty years ago today, Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman drunkenly negotiated the pitfalls of Louisville’s Churchill Downs, home...

by David S. Wills

May 1, 2020

Human Challenge Trials—A Coronavirus Taboo

The idea is as simple as it is apparently repulsive: allow human challenge trials (HCTs) under which “low risk”...

by William Wiebe

Woody Allen’s ‘Apropos of Nothing’—A Review

Published by David Evanier

A Review of Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen, Arcade Publishing (March 2020) 400 pages Rolling Stone has pronounced Woody Allen’s new memoir, Apropos of Nothing, “horrendously ugly.” The...

April 21, 2020

Books, Recommended, Review

The Coming Age of Dispersion

Published by Joel Kotkin

As of this writing, the long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic remain uncertain. But one possible consequence is an acceleration of the end of the megacity era. In its...

March 25, 2020

COVID-19, Economics, Health, Politics, Recommended

Conceit and Contagion: How the Virus Shocked Europe

Published by Bruno Maçães

The World Health Organization announced last week that Europe is now the epicentre of the new coronavirus epidemic. As the announcement was made, many countries in Africa and Asia...

March 14, 2020

COVID-19, COVID-19 Updates, Recommended