Category Archives: Essays

SKEPTIC MAGAZINE —– SUMMER 2026 PREVIEW

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SKEPTIC MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘The Conspiracy Grift’

Skepticism and the Attention Economy

We founded Skeptic magazine and the Skeptics Society in 1992, partially in response to a market demand from consumers and the media for a scientific and rational response to increasingly tantalizing claims of the paranormal and supernatural, ESP and Psi, telepathy and telekinesis, NDEs and OBEs, ghosts and poltergeists, astrology and psychics, cryptozoology and strange creatures, haunted houses and mysterious places, UFOs and aliens, conspiracy theories and cults, and a litany of anomalous psychological experiences people reported.

Anti-Woke, or Just Wounded? A Typology of Two Types of Anti-Woke Intellectuals

I’m a humanistic weirdo, and as such I’m not sure where I belong in this modern culture war. I love truth and reason — I’ve built a career on them — but I belong to a humanistic tradition that refuses to stop at the head and leave the heart out of it. And these days there aren’t many of us. So when I look at the people we’ve come to call “anti-woke intellectuals”—many of whom have written for Skeptic or appeared as guests on The Michael Shermer Show podcast—I don’t see them the way either side wants me to.

Christian Nationalists, Christian Dominionists, and Women’s Rights

HARPER’S MAGAZINE ——— JUNE 2026 PREVIEW

HARPER’S MAGAZINE: The latest issue features memoir from a Quebec garbageman; Katie Thornton on the undying dream of Esperanto; Wyatt Williams on weather modification; Andrew Cockburn on the data-center divide; Kevin Lozano on Bernie Goetz; and a story from Kevin Brazil. 

The Conscience of the City

On the life of the garbageman by Simon Paré-­Poupart

Love Language

[Letter from the Czech Republic]

The undying dream of Esperanto by Katie Thornton

Hard Rain

The battle over weather modification by Wyatt Williams

THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE – JUNE 2026 PREVIEW

cover of the June 2026 Atlantic

THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE: The latest issue features The men who don’t want women to vote, a venture-capital populist, Karl Lagerfeld’s feline heir, and new fiction by Stephen King. Plus the Indianapolis Clowns, how to win on Jeopardy, Lee Friedlander, heartland rock, Denyce Graves, Elizabeth Strout, alien conspiracy theories, the U.S. centennial, and more.

The Men Who Want Women to Be Quiet

A virulent form of misogyny has become the single most important force holding together the American right. By Helen Lewis

The Richest Cat in the World

Did Karl Lagerfeld really leave millions to his blue-cream Birman, Choupette? By Chris Heath

The Venture-Capital Populist

How David Sacks and the new tech right went full MAGA and captured Washington By George Packer

THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE – MAY 2026 PREVIEW

May 2026 Issue - The Atlantic

THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE: The latest issue features America’s best free bread, the cartel Olympics, a billionaire’s private retreat, and why reactionaries are taking over the world. Plus the U.S. gerontocracy, masterpieces of the New Deal, John Mark Comer, Black comedy, the eighth deadly sin, and more.

I Found It: The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America

Thirteen thousand miles. Infinite contenders. One beautiful loaf. Caity Weaver

The Incredible Story of the Cartel Olympics

A Mexican athlete said he was kidnapped and forced to compete for his life in a tournament of gangs. But was he actually playing a different game? McKay Coppins

Someday in Tehran

The heartbreak of hoping for a democratic Iran Laura Secor

History Is Running Backwards

Why reactionaries are taking over the world David Brooks

HARPER’S MAGAZINE ——— MAY 2026 PREVIEW

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HARPER’S MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘How Seniors Became America’s Ruling Class’…

The Old Guard

Confronting America’s gerontocratic crisis by Samuel Moyn

Redshift

Rehearsing for humanity’s future on Mars by Elena Saavedra Buckley

Night Soil

On love, shit, and parking by Kristin Dombek

HARPER’S MAGAZINE —— APRIL 2026 PREVIEW

HARPER’S MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Lessons From An Occupation’….

Thirty-Eight Days of ICE

The story of an occupation by Daniel Brook

Conflict Resolution

Has Russia won the war? by Olivier Kempf

State of Nature

What are conservative environmentalists fighting for? by Gaby Del Valle

Brothers and Sisters

On the fiction of siblings by Christine Smallwood

THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE – APRIL 2026 PREVIEW

April 2026 Issue - The Atlantic

THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘My Year as a Degenerate Gambler”…

Sucker

My year as a degenerate gambler

On a Thursday evening in September, I excused myself from the family dinner table and slipped into my bedroom. I didn’t want my kids to see what I was about to do.

With the door locked behind me, I pulled out my phone and downloaded the DraftKings betting app. I felt a certain thrill as I typed in my debit-card information and deposited $500. The first game of the NFL season was a few minutes away. Anything seemed possible. …By McKay Coppins

What 100 Million Volts Do to the Body and Mind

The odds of being struck by lightning in America in a given year are one in 1.2 million. How does the experience reorient a person’s sense of chance, of fate? By Jacob Stern

The Pete Hegseth Exception

Nearly a year after a national-security scandal erupted on my iPhone, no one in the Trump administration has faced consequences. By Jeffrey Goldberg

The Forgotten Female Pilots of World War II

The WASPs risked their lives flying for the Army. But for decades, the U.S. government refused to recognize their military service. By Ellen Cushing

The Hedgehog Review – Spring 2026 Preview

Humanism in a Posthumanist Age

THE HEDGEHOG REVIEW: The latest issue features ‘Humanism in a Posthumanist Age’ – What we are witnessing today is a cultural swerve away from the informing humanist idealism of the modern liberal democratic project.

Will Human Voices Wake Us?

Antón Barba-Kay

How Antihumanism Turned on Its Authors

Geoff Shullenberger

The Human Condition or the Conditional Human?

David Polansky

Up from Darkness

Alan Jacobs

Essays

The Buried Tombstone, the Melting Iceberg, and the Random Bullet

R.F. Foster

A Matter of Time

Witold Rybczynski

Managing the Facts of Life

Sarah M. Brownsberger

We’ve Been Getting the Ancient Greeks All Wrong

Colin Wells

The Consolations of Simulation

Paul Nedelisky

HARPER’S MAGAZINE – MARCH 2026 PREVIEW

HARPER’S MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Tech Boys In Toyland’- Fear of Girls, Sperm Racing, and Silicon Valley’s Lust for Global Destruction…

Child’s Play

Tech’s new generation and the end of thinking by Sam Kriss

The Plot to Save America

Inside the movement to reindustrialize—and rearm—the country by Maddy Crowell

Out of Light

Caravaggio, La Tour, and the art of attention by Nicole Krauss

HARPER’S MAGAZINE – FEBRUARY 2026 PREVIEW

HARPER’S MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘America Goes For Broke’ – Inside the National Sports Betting Craze…

On Tilt – America’s new gambling epidemic

by Jasper Craven

The Sanctuarium – The Philippines reckons with its war on drugs

by Sean Williams

Another London – Excavating the disenchanted city

by Hari Kunzru