When I was about 7, Los Angeles public schools shifted to a “year-round” schedule. The effect, for my elementary school, was a shorter summer break (boo), and an extra-long winter break (also, it turned out, boo).  That year, my parents enrolled me in “winter camp,” which was like summer camp but less fun. It was […]

If you follow the news about gun violence in America, you know that there’s a lot to be pessimistic about.  Guns were already a major public health concern when the pandemic hit and the murder rate skyrocketed. The surge in homicide in 2020 and 2021, research has shown, was best understood as a surge in […]

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today. The sharp decline in child mortality rates is one of the great global success stories of the past several decades.  In 1990, nearly 13 million children died before their […]

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Vox’s member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today. The pod looked like a tanning bed from another planet: a human-sized chamber, white and sparkly purple with a clear glass door, resting on an inclined platform. Previously, it […]

The media does not give you an accurate picture of the world. This isn’t to say that we’re not reporting the truth or that we’re making facts up. Rather, our profession has a natural tendency to accentuate the negative because the negative is usually what we mean when we think of the news.  Reports of […]