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Culture Trust

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What Bono Does Next Won’t Shock You
May 08, 2015
If you’re looking to make a splash in the oversaturated social-mediasphere, nice is the new rule of thumb. The trendlet—officially dubbed the “Nice Internet” by no less an authority than the New York Times—encompasses videos devoted to cute animals, precocious kiddies, ...

Pep Talks for Spinsters
May 04, 2015
Here we go again! We are in another moment of pondering the benefits of marriage versus those of singlehood, with the all-important corollary question: Should we choose to become parents or go childfree? When I say we, I mean women, of course. As Elissa Strauss, writing for The ...

Nights of the Living Dread
May 01, 2015
This week, the luridly misleading media coverage of the Baltimore uprisings called to mind a fittingly grim narrative template from the entertainment world: shlocky action-horror fare. The strange alchemy by which reportage of Freddie Gray’s murder at the hands of six ...

Free Speech Culture Warriors of the World, Unite
April 29, 2015
It can be hard keeping track of all the awards that PEN America gives out. The organization, devoted to promoting freedom of expression, offers some two dozen, for translations, essays, novels, plays, and seemingly, every single other literary form. (There are two awards for ...

An American Marriage, Revisited
April 24, 2015
Limited Partnership, a new documentary about one of the nation’s first gay couples to be lawfully married, begins with a scene you might find in a legal thriller: an establishing shot of gray-slate courthouse columns gives way to a scrum of reporters positioned nearby. ...

The Mall of American Progress
April 23, 2015
Malls may not be an American monopoly, but America’s not really thinkable without them. They’re where we come together, octogenarian mall walkers and teen Goths alike, as we aim for that perfect, elusive balance between over- and under-stimulation. They’re our own ...

Surge Pricing for Your Entire Life
April 22, 2015
Sometimes, the darkest timeline comes quicker than you expect. Last year, Jathan Sadowski noted that insurance companies were fawning over the Internet of Things—smartphones, fitness monitors, wearable computers, and anything else with a sensor and WiFi—with an eye to ...

The University of Nowhere
April 20, 2015
A cursory look at recent jeremiads on higher education resembles a thesaurus entry for “doom”: Academically Adrift. Education Disrupted. College Unbound. Degrees of Inequality. The Last Professors. It’s no surprise that the latest entry in the field, by Kevin Carey, a ...

The One That Brings You Choices
April 17, 2015
Sizzler has provided white-bread fare above and beyond the cheesy toast you can always find beckoning to you at the self-serve chain’s salad bar. The brand managers at Sizzler HQ also want to remind you that the restaurant is a miniature consumer’s republic in its own ...

Game of Thrones, Meet Tony Robbins
April 14, 2015
I admit it: Game of Thrones’ massive popularity took me by surprise. When I first read George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, I frankly could not understand how it managed to capture its legions of fans. Like many “dark fantasy” writers of the 1980s and ...

Town Without Purpose
April 10, 2015
Call it The Real World: Whatever. That’s the queasy image conjured by the recently announced partnership between Bud Light and Tinder, to amp up the promotional force of the grog merchant’s pop-up party hub “Whatever, USA”—the kind of promotional stunt that Roland ...

He’s the King of Saving the World
April 07, 2015
Let us pause for a moment to recognize how much we as a society owe to Leonardo DiCaprio. I myself became aware of DiCaprio in the glory days of the 1990s, when he ushered “I’m the king of the world!” into our shared vocabulary—his earliest, and perhaps greatest, social ...