Where We Go Next

What does it mean to be vulnerable at scale? To go out on a limb and lay bare not just one's opinions, but the private details of a life? The most effective political writing often exists at the inte…

“Black” is not a synonym for “poor.” But one could be forgiven for thinking that it were based on the way so many people talk about race in this country. The majority of Black Americans are in the mi…

When was the last time you were really, truly curious about something? Something new, different, foreign, uncomfortable, even? And not just a passing glance, or a quick perusal, but a deep, active in…

Policing - as both an action and a concept - has been on the front page and at the front of many of our minds over the last several years, as we've reexamined our assumptions around its utility and p…

The first episode of Where We Go Next was recorded just over a year ago. We've talked about a range of subjects since then - from nuclear power, to mRNA vaccines, from Maslow's hierarchy of needs to …

Should a storyteller's identity define what stories they're allowed to tell? Does our sex, race, or sexuality set the boundaries around either the fictions we can dream up or the nonfictions we inves…

What happens when you're suddenly thrust into the spotlight at the intersection of two of the most pressing topics of our day - the criminal justice system, and the COVID-19 vaccine? Emergency medica…

Being a "heterodox thinker" often involves being exceedingly content with a whole bunch of people disliking you. Sometimes it's people to the Right of you, then people to the Left, and folks who were…

It's good to push yourself to think differently - to reexamine your priors, question your beliefs, and change your mind. But it's not enough to switch from Right to Left, or Left to Right, or from He…

While the United States is now recovering from a year of death, disease, and economic destruction, we still don't know exactly where or how Covid-19 actually began. Molecular biologist Dr. Alina Chan…

Have you ever found yourself so gripped in the throes of a conflict - with a friend, a family member, some stranger online - that you're blinded by a kind of rage that feels like it could overtake yo…

What does it mean to have luck? Good luck, or bad? Is luck something that only happens selectively, or is our entire existence a kind of luck that we've had zero control over? And if that's true - wh…

How do we define our "tribes"? That's a word that gets thrown around a lot these days - political tribes, ideological tribes, religious tribes, national tribes... it's just tribalism all the way down…

How often do you think about how you access the internet? Not in the general sense, but the actual act of accessing it: the descriptive text you read underneath an item for sale, the buttons you clic…

If there's anything we've learned over the last year, it's that it's not enough to get important information right - you have to communicate that information successfully, too. Because if the data yo…

How do you know what's true, and what's false? What's right, or wrong? How do you know... what you know? You likely heard all of it somewhere, and for you to hear it, somebody had to say it. Because …

The vaccines are here, and they're amazing. But there's still so much pessimism and confusion about how effective these vaccines actually are, which ones are "best," and what anyone can actually do a…

These days, when we hear the phrase "growing up," it tends to mostly reference the growth in inches and feet. But for a child to a grow up, they don't just need to physically grow, they need to grow …

Children need adults. They need them for guidance, for discipline, for inspiration, and of course, formal education. But often when we talk about education, our attention is almost exclusively focuse…

In John Rawls' 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, he offers a thought experiment known as the Veil of Ignorance. Behind this veil, no knows who they are. They don't know their race, class, age, sex, pri…