The Case for Lowering the Voting Age
If the standard we hold for who can vote is the consent of the governed, why shouldn’t children be included?
The End of American Film Censorship
The Hays Code, a censorship system that saw movies as "business, pure and simple," kept Hollywood on a short leash... until a 1952 Supreme Court decision declared it unconstitutional.
What the White House Needs to Know about Managing “Screen Time”
White House officials, like parents, are learning how limiting screen time can lead to better focus. But what does "screen time" really mean?
The Language Wars
As a society becomes increasingly unstable, linguistic innovation happens more rapidly.
The Glamorous Tradition of Hollywood Lifestyle Advice
For more than a century, Hollywood has been offering Americans lifestyle advice on how to live better, and the public has been gobbling it up.
How Trump’s Twitter Presidency Hijacked Hopes For E-Democracy
The first live-tweeting presidency resembles the broadcast-era version of democracy more than the kind of democracy the internet was supposed to enable.
Very British Villains (and Other Anglo-Saxon Attitudes to Accents)
What do peoples' accents really reveal about them? The villainous British accent crystallizes the love-hate special relationship between the US and the UK.
Foreign Intervention… in the American Revolution
Foreign powers have been interfering in our politics since day one, when we welcomed it from France, Spain, and the Netherlands.
To Fix Fake News, Look To Yellow Journalism
Fake news has plenty of precedents in the history of mass media, and particularly, in the history of American journalism.
Phyllis Schlafly and the Meaning of Antifeminism
From today’s vantage point, many of the anti-feminist ideas Phyllis Schlafly espoused sound extreme. But are they?