november 1993

I’m an economist. I love data and evidence. I love them so much that I write books about data-based parenting. When questions arise about how to support parents at work (for example, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter), my first impulse is to endorse paid parental leave. Mountains of data and evidence show that paid leave is good for children’s health, and for mothers in particular. I am more than comfortable making a data-based case for this policy.

But experience, rather than pure data, leads me to believe that what happens after paid leave is nearly as crucial—that is to say, what happens when Mom and Dad return to the office. We need to normalize the experience of parenting while working.    

The crazed pursuit of college admissions helps no one thrive. And while the Varsity Blues admissions scandal shines a light on families that break the rules, it’s time to consider the unhappiness of families that play by them. While competition for seats may be inevitable, students scramble to do ever more to get into college—and give away more of their childhood to do so. This competition might seem a problem only for middle class and wealthy families. But students of modest means suffer most when applying to college becomes an endless list of tasks requiring time and other resources.

As the CEO of the College Board, I see this arms race up close. We administer the SAT, a test that helps admissions officers assess the reading, writing, and math skills of students across the country and around the world. We also administer the Advanced Placement program, which helps students earn credit for college-level work they do while in high school. We know these tools to be useful, but we also see how they can contribute to the arms race. The College Board can and will do more to limit the excesses—more on that below—but there is more at stake than which tests kids take or don’t take.

Disney’s 1992 classic Aladdin is one of the greatest cinematic arguments for the storytelling potential of animation, which is perfectly expressed through the character of Genie. As voiced by Robin Williams and rendered in two dimensions, he’s a slapstick genius who can conjure anything, appear in any shape or size, and gleefully defy the laws of physics. For years, animation was the only way such a fantastic character could exist on-screen, but in 2019, visual effects have advanced enough that audiences can see a gigantic blue version of Will Smith try to give the same performance. Technological progress has clearly gone too far.

Guy Ritchie’s live-action remake of Aladdin, the latest in a long line of Disney revivals of its own greatest works, exists in the same nostalgic sphere as recent hits such as Beauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book. It’s a garish, special-effects-laden extravaganza that still manages to feel tossed-off and half-hearted. The film is entirely devoted to the property it’s adapting, but its mimicry underlines just how pale an imitation it is. The only participant really trying to energize the project is Smith, who—poor man—has to spend much of his screen time transformed into a rubbery CGI monstrosity who’s impossible to take seriously.

I own three pairs of noise-canceling headphones. Two go over my ears, enveloping them in cozy tombs of silence. One pair consists of earbuds, one of which I jam into my ear to block out the world while I use my other ear for phone interviews. Besides the noise-canceling kind, I have headphones for basically every activity I do. In fact, I recently came to the disturbing realization that there’s rarely a moment of my day when my ears are not filled with or covered by something.

Like many other Americans, I now wear AirPods all day at my desk to combat the awful tyranny of the open office. Since they don’t cancel noise, they provide me with writing music while allowing me to listen up for my bosses. I don’t like exercise classes and their preselected, generic playlists, so instead I work out with headphones and listen to my own special running mix, the contents of which can be disclosed only upon my death. (Let’s just say the dream of the ’90s is alive on my Spotify.) I like to listen to podcasts while I cook, so the earbuds come in handy while I chop and sauté. And I can hook up headphones to a Roku when I want to watch a depressing foreign TV show and my boyfriend wants to do literally anything else.

What does it mean when your stomach rumbles? How do our bodies extract nutrients and vitamins from food? Does what you eat affect your mood? Digestion is an invisible, effortless, unconscious process—and one that, until recently, we knew almost nothing about. On this episode of Gastropod, we follow our food on its journey to becoming fuel, from the filtered blood that helps slide food into the stomach to the velvet walls and rippling choreography of the small intestine to the microbial magic of the colon and out the other end. And we do it by visiting the world’s most sophisticated artificial gut at dinnertime—a plumbing marvel named TIM that chews, swallows, squeezes, farts, and poops just like the real thing.

James Carroll, the author of this month’s Atlantic’s cover story, “Abolish the Priesthood,” is famous in certain Catholic circles for his bitter denunciations of the Church. To the well-documented renunciation of his own priesthood years ago, Carroll now adds the claim that, by its very nature, the Catholic priesthood is inextricably tied to clericalism (all priests being clerics, of course), and thus to “its cult of secrecy, its theological misogyny, its sexual repressiveness, and its hierarchical power based on threats of a doom-laden afterlife.” He also argues that in its more pristine first centuries, Christianity had no priesthood and no hierarchy, and so was far more egalitarian.

Reading Carroll, I find not so much a hatred for the priesthood or the Church more generally, but rather a deep misunderstanding of Catholicism, which has resulted in a conflicted love throughout his public life. As a priest myself, I can only hope that he will one day find some peace and reconciliation.

Along the highways of states where support for abortion is at its lowest, it’s not uncommon to see road signs that say choose adoption and similar messages. The signs capture a preferred anti-abortion retort to outcries over abortion restrictions, like the kind Georgia and Alabama just passed: Women with unwanted pregnancies should find adoptive families.

Adoption is a choice that certain women who don’t wish to keep their babies enter into happily. Some women find abortion to be anathema and rule it out among their options for an unwanted pregnancy. And for women considering abortion who ultimately settle on adoption, the process often benefits everyone involved.

Of course, adoption is not a reasonable option for all pregnant women. Some girls and women would imperil their health if they carried a baby to term. Many pro-abortion-rights people believe it is immoral to compel a woman to carry a pregnancy she does not want, especially if that pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. And some studies show that abortion is medically safer than childbirth.

Human history is riddled with people whose limited credentials have not stopped them from successfully hawking miracle cures and religious salvation, but Grigori Rasputin stands out as a talented wellness grifter even now. After arriving in St. Petersburg in the early 1900s, Rasputin ego-massaged his way into the upper echelons of Russian society, charming the rich and influential to access ever-greater levels of power until he reached the ruling Romanovs, the family that had been in control of Russia for more than three centuries.

Most of what historians know about what Rasputin actually did to ingratiate himself—or what skills he actually had—has been passed down through mere rumor and legend. What’s clearer is that the Romanovs apparently considered Rasputin’s abilities so indispensable to the health of their son and the legitimacy of their government that he was allowed to run roughshod over their court and alienate the trust of the public, hastening the Bolshevik Revolution and the Romanovs’ deaths.

Back in 2007, Donald Trump sent the newly sworn-in speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, a letter celebrating her ascension.

“Nancy—you’re the best. Congrats. Donald,” the entertainer wrote, Politico reported in 2011. The correspondence between the two has taken a more combative tone recently, which makes the current moment all the stranger: Pelosi might be the biggest barrier between President Trump and an impeachment inquiry right now.

Pelosi has made her personal opposition to impeaching Trump clear. In March, for example, she told The Washington Post, “I’m not for impeachment … Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”

Smith College’s annual commencement ceremony begins like any other: Graduating seniors at the women’s liberal-arts college are called up one by one to collect their diploma from the president. Perhaps some students exchange a wink with the regalia-clad honorary-degree recipients nearby as they stride across a platform overlooking the dorms they’d for years called home; others may pause to flip their cap’s tassel while blowing a kiss to the sea of parents who have long awaited this milestone commemorating their daughter’s metamorphosis from undergraduate to alumna.

Except the moment, technically, hasn’t happened quite yet: The name, degree, and accolades printed inside each padded holder seldom belong to the woman who receives it. They very likely belong, rather, to one of her nearly 700 classmates.