reader-essay

By Sarah Norberg Maybe everyone grows up underappreciating or even resenting their hometown. I distinctly remember complaining with my friends in high school about the limitations of Folsom, California — a suburb east of Sacramento — where we had grown up in privilege: boring, upper-middle class bourgeoisie with top performing public schools,

By Yash Sharma Regardless of their politics, everyone has a view on immigration. More often than not, people support legal immigration over illegal immigration. Both sides also generally agree that highly skilled immigrants are a valuable asset to the U.S. economy. I would even say most people who immigrate

By Carl Crawford  For my tenth birthday, my grandfather got me the Ken Burns documentary, Baseball. I do not know why my grandfather decided that a Ken Burns documentary was an appropriate gift for a child; I assume it was something he thought he might find of use during his

By Anonymous MD Editor's Note: This article is an updated version of a previously published piece by Anonymous MD that makes use of footnotes. Scroll to the bottom to see the references. I am a physician, a husband, and a father. I am a religious man; my faith

By Bill Merritt I grew up in Georgia during the Civil Rights era and have some experience with the way open primaries can go awry. One of the first ballots I ever cast was in the 1966 gubernatorial primary. Being Republican I, naturally, cast it in for Democrat Lester Maddox.

Or rather: most of us are partially right, but some of us are more right than others

By Elias Leventhal The abysmal mental health of modern teenagers seems to be on a lot of people's minds. It's a constant presence in the news cycle, a disturbing rumble underneath the higher-pitched whines of the current crises du jour. Commentators have proposed scores of possible

By John Randolph When I was a kid, I was terrified of spiders. My darkest moment came while on fifth grade summer vacation at my friend Jack’s cottage. We had lugged his raft — a sturdy, homemade bundle of wood and foam and cordage — from winter storage to the beach

By Mo Perry This piece has been slightly edited from Mo’s substack, The Unfurling, where it originally appeared. My eye’s been twitching for weeks. I’ve been putting myself in an uncomfortable space on purpose. My eye twitches, and I let it twitch. I notice it — there it