The Natural World
A special issue on science; financing professional sports on your tax dollars, Unproductive Labor, and politics
"The Ancient Wrasse", a detail from the frontispiece to The Aquarium (1856). Courtesy of Public Domain Review
Public Seminar, week of June 10, 2021
Science in Question
Marek Eby, “The Story of the Sputnik V Vaccine: Vaccine nationalism and Cold War tropes abound.” (June 9, 2021)
John Ehrenreich, “The Covid Lab-Leak Debate Is Destructive: We don’t need to know the origins of Covid-19 to know how pandemics start—we need to know how to contain them and why our natural world is now more lethal.” (June 9, 2021)
Jacob Browning, “What Computers Can Explain: About how humans learn.” (June 9, 2021)
Michaël Fœssel, “Back to Belief: To believe in science – or that the aim of science is to deceive us – is to confuse opinion with belief.” (June 9, 2021)
The Public Debt
Pat Garafolo, “The Las Vegas Raiders and a Raid on Nevada’s Finances: Sports and debt in the desert.” (June 7, 2021)
Podcasts
Luke Merger and Pete Sinnott, “For Only $184 million You Can Have a Bespoke Labor Category For Your Business: A Conversation with Alex Press about Gig Work,” Unproductive Labor, Episode Two. (June 7, 2021)
Our Columnists
Claire Potter, “Why Maya Wiley Could Be New York City’s First Woman Mayor: Now the top progressive in a Democratic mayoral primary that no one can poll, her error-free campaign and progressive chops could push this first-time candidate over the line.” (June 7, 2021)
John Stoehr, “The Business PACs Are Back in Business: Surprise! One-party rule might be profitable.” (June 8, 2021)