May 21, 2020
Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach
The force of art to rescue a world breaking down; the power of music in particular to heal people one by one, perhaps all together: this was Yo-Yo Ma’s breathtaking...| More
May 14, 2020
Coronavirus Conspiracism
What we’re learning again in coronavirus time is that when the medical system stumbles in a pandemic – and when the media machinery, the chattering class stumbles on top it...| More
May 7, 2020
COVID’s Cold War?
The coronavirus may have arrived just in time to punctuate a 50 year turn in the grand tide of events. It could mark, that is, a fresh fixation in American...| More
April 30, 2020
Public Health Across the Pacific
There’s a shocking big truth in those coronavirus numbers – hidden in plain sight, as the saying goes. It comes down to this: China and various neighbors in East Asia...| More
April 23, 2020
Questions of Leadership
The Andrew Cuomo Daily Show has become the high ground of coronavirus talk: all kinds of numbers, trend lines, and family feeling, too. The Donald Trump Show has typically been...| More
April 16, 2020
The Many Faces of Ferrante
This is a rerun, prompted by the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, based on the “Neapolitan Novels” of Elena Ferrante. Ferrante’s identity remains beguilingly unknown, but she has put so...| More
April 9, 2020
Viral Inequality
The curve of the coronavirus is bending. Just in the awful American swath of the grim COVID reaper, we have entered peak season with some flattening of the rising case...| More
April 2, 2020
The Pandemic’s Path
How did it happen? And who’s accountable? Seems now a lot of people saw it coming. Stephen King wrote his viral bestseller The Stand 30 years ago; Bill Gates put...| More
March 26, 2020
Profits or People
Week 4 was when dollar signs kept turning up, and up, astonishingly: price-tags on the virus’s damage, price-tags on fighting it. The bailout of bailouts came in at $2.2 trillion...| More
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