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Culture Trust

Columns

The Well-Trod Path: Nick Kristof at Home
February 12, 2015
Having liberated the “better half” of the developing world from gender-based oppression and poverty, the New York Times’s fave do-gooder Nicholas Kristof and his trusty investment-banker sidekick Sheryl WuDunn have set their sights closer to home. Folks on the war-torn ...

London’s Poor Fetish
January 13, 2015
Visit any bar in the hip London districts of Brixton, Dalston or Peckham and you will invariably end up in a warehouse, on the top floor of a car park, or under a railway arch. Signage will be minimal and white bobbing faces will be crammed close, joined together in a Stockholm ...

On Wealth and Women on TV
January 12, 2015
The conflict that kicks off the plot of Gilmore Girls—the early ‘00s teen drama that has had, over the course of the last year, a full-blown, Netflix-driven renaissance—centers around money. Rory Gilmore, the gifted and angelically beautiful teen who comprises one half of ...

Get Up, Light Up (Get Rich)
December 09, 2014
There are celebrity sell-outs in every business—even the drug business. Fans of the world’s most famous reggae icon—once thought to be the herald of a spiritual revolution—might be taken aback to soon find his face smiling up from the packaging of the new “Marley ...

The Glossy Magazines of the Islamic State
December 01, 2014
Every organization now peddles its ideology the same way that Nike and MTV do–mass media. Stormfront is a notorious website for (mostly) American neofascists. The North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) has a website. The American Socialist Party is on Twitter. And ...

Now PBS and Harper’s Both Have a Koch Problem
September 30, 2014
In the October issue of Harper’s Magazine, Eugenia Williamson wrote about the backlash PBS is facing for what viewers and members see as a number of unforgiveable offenses. Her piece, “PBS Self-Destructs” chronicles the protests against billionaire David Koch’s presence ...

Selling a Celebrity Lifestyle
September 15, 2014
“PRESERVE is all of us, together, championing the goods, makers and legends that instill meaning inside the moments of our lives. The curios that cozy our homes, the threads that define our silhouettes, the foods that leave our bellies happy, the projects that mean everything ...

Boston’s Literary Legacy, Mapped and Apped
September 09, 2014
Boston is a rarified city, of that you can be sure. How? Well, it has some of the most prestigious research universities in the country, which attract some of the nation’s greatest thinkers, many of whom have endeavored to write society’s greatest books. Add to that ...

Grassroots and Astroturf School Reform
September 05, 2014
If you were asked to list the great leaders of education reform in America, would many of the names belong to people who achieved riches and fame in some other field? What nascent education reformers Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, and Mark Zuckerberg all have in ...

A Screen-Only School in San Francisco
August 27, 2014
It’s the start of another school year, and soon the same thought will pass through the minds of many college students: “Where is all my money going?” Ben Nelson, former CEO of Snapfish, is trying to prove that the answer to that question has little to do with education by ...

Laurie Penny Speaks the Unspeakable
August 25, 2014
The title of British writer and feminist Laurie Penny’s forthcoming book Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution is somewhat curious. Surely nothing is truly unspeakable these days, provided that it attracts clicks and revenue: the market doesn’t much care what ...

What’s the Matter with New Atheism?
August 14, 2014
  Taken in its original context, Nietzsche’s famous dictum “God is dead” sounds more like a warning than a triumphant boast. When the line appears in The Gay Science, Nietzsche places it in the mouth of a village madman who soon realizes the world is not yet ready to hear ...