Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Smartphones broke dating. AI might finish the job.

Humanity may be scrolling its way out of existence.  Across the globe, fertility rates are plummeting. In 2023, the average number of births per woman worldwide fell beneath 2.1 — the minimum level necessary for averting population decline (also known as the “replacement rate”). And this collapse is not concentrated in just a handful of […]

I don’t want children. I do want children. What should I do?

Editor’s note, June 7, 8 am ET: We’re bringing you some of our best-loved Your Mileage May Vary columns while Sigal Samuel is on parental leave. The one below originally published on November 3, 2024. This unconventional advice column offers you a unique framework for thinking through moral dilemmas. It’s based on value pluralism — the idea that […]

Don’t let being a renter stop you from home improvement

The internet is full of ambitious people, particularly when it comes to home improvement. You will find people installing an entire kitchen themselves, buying and renovating an abandoned house, or even digging a series of tunnels under their home. And even renters are getting in on the DIY game. Take Imani Keal: The Washington, DC-based […]

The most hopeful cancer news in years

In a darkened convention hall in Chicago on May 31, a Harvard oncologist named Brian Wolpin stood at a podium and in a voice that sounded as if he was reading from the phone book, recited a set of numbers that brought a roomful of cancer doctors to their feet for 42 seconds. Adam Feuerstein, […]

How Virginia Democrats are coping with their redistricting defeat

Virginia’s plan to redraw its congressional maps to create as many as four new Democratic seats is dead, struck down by the state supreme court. Its impact on Virginia politics, though, is still being felt — and nowhere more visibly than in Virginia’s First District.  The district, which covers much of Virginia’s coastline and includes […]