‘Going For Broke’: Life on the Edge By Those Who Live It
Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World’s Richest Country turns to the real experts on economic hardship in America: those who live it.
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Poet and Critic Cynthia Cruz on the Cost of Upward Mobility in the Arts
Cruz considers the melancholia of working-class artists like Jason Molina and Amy Winehouse who find a way into a middle-class world but lose their sense of self.
“We are all Rachel Dolezal”: on Asad Haider’s ‘Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump’
Among other critiques of identity politics, Haider believes that we each can slip between identities at will. Indeed, it's a universal human condition.
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“Pounding Humility into You Permanently”: On Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain was loved not for his wit or charming temerity, but for confronting us with our own alienation and cultural isolation.
‘They Came to a City’ for a Vision of Utopia
J. B. Priestley's sense of social conscience permeates every frame of They Came to a City.
Norman Lear’s ‘Cold Turkey’ Satirizes Nixon, Narrowmindedness, and Tobacco Addiction
The humor in Norman Lear’s Cold Turkey goes hand-in-paw with the blunt, vulgar symbolism of a dog’s lifted leg in the opening credits.
Informed or Inflamed? Author Steve Almond Talks About How We Consume Trump
With the recent release of Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country, Steve Almond talks in-depth about the US president whom most parents wouldn't even let on the playground -- and about his beef with the American left.
Walk a Comfortable Mile in All Kinds of Shoes
If you can't make it to the Bata Shoe Museum, then pick up this oddly thrilling explanation of things we already suspect about footwear.
‘I, Tonya’: Sympathy for a Tabloid Villain
This biopic about ice skater Tonya Harding is a slashing, kickass comedy about class warfare, media manipulation, and one of history’s stupidest criminal conspiracies.
Why Isn’t American TV Comedy Funny (But British Comedy Is)?
Why isn’t American TV comedy funny? It’s as if Americans are afraid to find anything funny about their reality.
Fantastic Negrito’s “Working Poor” Is the Soundtrack to Summer of 2016
America’s working poor exist in a shadow cast by the harsh light of prosperity. Fantastic Negrito’s “Working Poor” speaks from those shadows, creates light within that space, and insists on being heard.