Good Enough to Eat? The Toxic Truth About Modern Food
“It makes no sense to presume that there has been a sudden collapse in willpower across all ages and ethnic groups since the 1960s.” What has changed? Food processing — and food marketing.
‘If It Gets Me, It Gets Me’: The Town Where Residents Live Alongside Polar Bears
Churchill, Manitoba, is 1,000 miles north of Winnipeg. It’s connected to the rest of Canada only by rail, it clings firm to its arctic identity, it has a polar bear jail, and it’s worried that rising sea levels will change everything.
‘I couldn’t deal with it, it tore me apart’: surviving child sexual abuse
Tom Yarwood was assaulted by his musical mentor, an unnamed celebrated conductor, more than 20 times over the course of three years. Thirty years later, telling the story hasn’t become any easier.
‘It’s Not Rair, Not Right’: How America Treats Its Black Farmers
Sugarcane is Louisiana’s most lucrative, stable crop, yet lending discrimination, fraud, vandalism, and intimidation keep putting black farmers out of business. It isn’t just sugarcane.
The American Civil War Didn’t End. And Trump is a Confederate President.
In her new column for The Guardian, Rebecca Solnit makes a solid argument that Donald Trump’s presidency, and his fervent support from white racists, mark an attempt of the Confederacy to rise again.
On Washington’s McNeil Island, The Only Residents Are 214 Dangerous Sex Offenders
A legal mandate keeps Washington state’s most dangerous sex offenders in a controversial facility known as a civil commitment center. ‘Civilly committed’ means detained indefinitely. It’s a community safeguard because these men are likely to repeat their violent sexual crimes, but does civil commitment protect the general public?
The Real Goldfinger: The London Banker Who Broke the World
Rowland Baring, governor of the Bank of England between 1961 and 1966, found the Bretton Woods system — which controlled the exchange of currency and used gold-backed US dollars as an “impartial” international currency — both unethical and damaging to the City of London. Many agreed. When banker Ian Fraser changed the way the global economy worked, his system allowed for the unprecedented concentration of wealth that we see today, and it created the destructive gap between rich and poor.
Is Compassion Fatigue Inevitable In an Age of 24-Hour News?
The information age has exacted a high emotional cost, but lately, as one horror piles on another, things have become especially taxing.
Where Even Walmart Won’t Go: How Dollar General Took Over Rural America
In small towns across Kansas, residents and community leaders grapple with the increasingly ubiquitous presence of America’s fastest-growing retailer.
‘It’s nothing like a broken leg’: why I’m done with the mental health conversation
Hannah Jane Parkinson responds to so many empty refrains encouraging mentally ill patients to just ask for help, a beyond frustrating suggestion “when you’ve been asking for help and not getting it.”