Recent News
Tensions are rising as nations around the world struggle to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus and stave off economic collapse. Meanwhile, in poor war-torn nations like Yemen, the impact of the virus is likely to dwarf current hot…
Just as the Great Depression revealed the precarity of life for many individuals and the massive risk underpinning many economic sectors and institutions, the current coronavirus crisis is drawing attention to the downsides of living in a hyper-…
The plague haunts our imagination as an indelible memory. Yet few of us have any experience of it, even as epidemiologists have noted an uptick in the number of cases in the last few decades to around some two thousand each year.
We know…
Over the past 16 years, my family has experienced four extreme self-isolations. Not just social distancing, but real lockdowns where we had almost no contact with others for months, not just weeks. As is true in the present crisis, we isolated…
Late last month, a conservative website called The Federalist published an article advocating that healthy, young Americans deliberately infect themselves with Covid-19, as part of a national “controlled voluntary infection” strategy…
Acts of physical violence, verbal intimidation, and hate-mongering against Chinese and other Asian Americans are occurring with alarming frequency throughout the country. Since the start of the medical crisis, more than one…
We are demigods of discards – but our copious garbage became a toxic burden only with the modern cult of ‘disposability’.
We are turning the world inside-out. Massive mining operations rip into rock,…
Stanford historian Kathryn Olivarius discusses her research into antebellum New Orleans and how the yellow fever epidemic shaped the region economically and socially – at a devastating and deadly cost.
The uncertainties and anxiety people…
