For The Point, where I am also an editor, I've written the following:
For The Atlantic magazine:
For The New York Times:
For the Chronicle Review:
For the Times Literary Supplement:
For the LA Review of Books:
Most recently I've edited and co-wrote the introduction for The Point's anthology, The Opening of the American Mind: Ten Years of the Point.
I also co-host the magazine's—dormant—Podcast, "Rather be Reading." You can find us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and PlayerFM. In previous episodes we've discussed what it means to be a public intellectual, the #MeToo movement and moral education, the digital humanities, the problem with trying to get our desires to conform to our ethical and political principles, Occupy Wall Street and Larry David.
- On the Aesthetic Turn (July 19, 2023) - On how to approach art once we stop trying to justify it in moralistic terms, and on the possibility that it is not "for" anything at all.
- On Mobs (February 19, 2023) - On the difference between collective thinking and action and the zombie hoard. With Becca Rothfeld.
- Motherhood and Taboo (January 14, 2021) - On The Lost Daughter, and the alleged taboo on the representation of unnatural mothers
- On Choosing Life (September 7, 2019) - On the idea that it is unethical to bring children into a world threatened by climate breakdown. With Rachel Wiseman.
- On Left Straussianism (May 22, 2019) - On the elitism inherent in refusing to air disagreements with one's "allies" publicly. With Jon Baskin.
- On Denialism (January 14, 2019) - On political rhetoric and the danger inherent in trying to deny the very existence of projects and practices that have become the targets of criticism (e.g., "identity politics"), rather than defending, evaluating and proposing a new vocabulary for discussing them. With Jon Baskin.
- I Am Madame Bovary: “Cat Person” and the dark pleasures of empathy (April 23, 2018) - On the relation between reading with empathy and reducing works of art (and people) to their moral failings.
- Iowans, Unite! (February 8, 2016) - On my (day of) work in electoral politics.
For The Atlantic magazine:
- The Paradox of Slow Love (February 14, 2022) - On the tension between people's romantic plans and family trajectories.
For The New York Times:
- How to Reopen the American Mind (October 22, 2020) - On why the “crisis of the humanities” won’t be solved within the cloisters of academia alone: to live up to the mission of the humanities we must recover our trust in the broader public’s capacity to think. With Jon Baskin.
- Now Is As Good a Time as Any to Start a Family (April 30, 2020) - On whether it a good idea to try to start a family during the year of the plague.
For the Chronicle Review:
- We Deserve Better From Our Public Intellectuals: On Kate Manne's new book, incels and the perils of public philosophy (December 2, 2020)
- The Nature of Thought (April 14, 2020) - On why Irad Kimhi's Thinking and Being is the best philosophy book of the past decade.
- Giorgio Agamben's Coronavirus Cluelessness (March 23, 2020) - On theory's collapse into paranoia and what it is we are really sacrificing our pleasures and freedoms for.
- The Case for Admissions Lotteries (September 13, 2019) - For the Chronicle's forum on meritocracy and higher education I wrote about why the current admissions system has all the vices of an aristocracy, and none of the virtues; and defended an alternative.
- Fanning the Flames while the Humanities Burn (May 20, 2019) - On why acknowledging and mourning the rapid decline in humanities enrollment and employment does not imply nostalgia for an exclusionary past, but a commitment to the life of the mind.
For the Times Literary Supplement:
- Finite Variety (October 4, 2019) - On Martin Hägglund's This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, and why our finitude - the threat of failure, the prospect of death - cannot carry the burden of rendering our lives meaningful all by itself.
For the LA Review of Books:
- Confession is Just a Special Form of Bragging: On Fleabag (July 30, 2019) - On guilt, absolution and the refusal to confess as a way of reclaiming lost agency.
Most recently I've edited and co-wrote the introduction for The Point's anthology, The Opening of the American Mind: Ten Years of the Point.
I also co-host the magazine's—dormant—Podcast, "Rather be Reading." You can find us on iTunes, SoundCloud, and PlayerFM. In previous episodes we've discussed what it means to be a public intellectual, the #MeToo movement and moral education, the digital humanities, the problem with trying to get our desires to conform to our ethical and political principles, Occupy Wall Street and Larry David.