Articles
We’re building a guide for everyday life, where experts will educate you about our world.
Author Spotlight
Gary M. Feinman is a MacArthur curator of Mesoamerican, Central American, and East Asian anthropology at the Negaunee Integrative Research Center in Chicago, Illinois.
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Jodie Evans is the co-founder of CODEPINK and has been a peace, environmental, women’s rights, and social justice activist for over 50 years.
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Suren Moodliar is the editor of the journal Socialism and Democracy and coordinator of encuentro5, a movement-building space in downtown Boston. He is the coauthor of Dying for Capitalism: How Big Money Fuels Extinction and What We Can Do About It (Routledge, 2023).
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Ashley Berke is co-executive director at Fair Start Movement.
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Thomas J. Barfield is a historian of Central Eurasia and a professor of anthropology at Boston University.
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Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network.
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John J. Berger is an environmental science and policy specialist, prize-winning author, and journalist.
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Katherine Dolan is a writer, editor, and researcher at the Independent Media Institute from Dunedin, New Zealand. She has held previous posts as a senior writer for Fairfax Media Custom Publishing in New Zealand and Lifestyle Magazine in Moscow, and as a copy editor for the U.S. news site NSFW Corp.
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Jenipher Changwanda is a Malawian journalist specializing in gender reporting for the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism.
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Kirsten Tambling is an art historian specializing in 18th-century art.
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Guides
In a democratic society, the power to address the climate crisis lies with the people. And it begins at home, our backyards, our neighborhoods and local communities.
editorsourceareaWhen we think about effective climate action, there are many different factors and options to consider, from working within your local community to advance climate resiliency projects and urging the media to meet its climate commitments, to supporting the growth and popularity of climate fiction. Climate action can also be aided by reframing the climate crisis. Instead of seeing it only through a scientific lens but rather as a form of oppression by the wealthy elite or a matter of children’s rights, the climate crisis can be addressed on a systemic, sociopolitical level.
This guide explores various ways to approach climate action and activism, including concrete examples you can use in your own backyard and local community, plus success stories that can be emulated and reproduced wherever you are.This guide explores the evolutionary origins of aesthetics in humans, otherwise known as bioaesthetics. Bioaesthetics is an interdisciplinary field that bridges biology, psychology, philosophy, and art to investigate aesthetic perception and how we perceive certain forms. Emerging research underlines the fact that our sense of beauty isn't purely cultural and has biological underpinnings.
editorsourceareaOur financial system originated in Mesopotamia, where it was designed to ensure economic stability for a community. Over time it has transformed into something much more predatory.
editorsourceareaWhy do some authors pretend to be someone they are not? Why do they claim experiences that they don’t have? What drives them to create texts and claim that they are ancient? By examining some examples of literary fraud from the modern era, we can gain insight not only into a fraudulent writer’s perspective, but also into readers’ expectations, publishing practices, and what kind of story a culture values.
editorsourceareaConscious consumption, or conscious consumerism, can be accomplished in a variety of ways, such as shopping for food products that avoid harm to nonhuman animals, using green cleaning products, drinking shade-grown, fair-trade coffee and organic wine free of harmful pesticides, driving small electric vehicles over instead of gas-guzzling SUVs, and boycotting fast-fashion brands and businesses that treat workers unfairly.
This guide will help you make buying decisions that are healthier for you, your family, nonhuman animals, and the planet.
editorsourceareaThis guide explores the concept, models, and examples of the peace economy: the giving, sharing, thriving, caring economy without which none of us would be alive. A peace economy is the sharing of resources, a culture of care, and the remembrance that there is enough abundance for all of us on this planet. It is the return to a culture that understands true value and wealth come from nurturing life, love, and joy. We call it a "local" peace economy because it operates at the local level, beginning in the commons. This guide also offers ways to divest from the war economy that is destroying life and well-being on this planet.
editorsourceareaThis guide will take you through examples of the regenerative, moneyless economy that is sometimes called “collaborative consumption.” The moneyless, sharing-based economy creates the opportunity to opt out of the mentality of disposability and the idea that “more is better,” both of which many of us are bombarded with from birth. The regenerative, moneyless economy provides an avenue for anyone to move away from the hoarding nightmare that has led to over-full garages and seldom-visited storage sheds, continent-sized trash islands, and enormous heaps of human waste. It does this by way of peer-to-peer systems set up for people to rent or borrow goods rather than buy and own them individually. It involves collaborative systems that supply people with the things they need, when they need them.
editorsourceareaEnvironmental health is crucial for public well-being as it directly impacts human health. Pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction can lead to respiratory diseases, waterborne illnesses, and other health issues. Maintaining clean air, water, and land reduces the risk of disease transmission and promotes overall health. Additionally, preserving ecosystems supports biodiversity, which contributes to food security and medicine discovery. Sustainable practices safeguard public health for current and future generations, emphasizing the vital connection between environmental and public health.
editorsourceareaIndustrial agriculture, with its heavy reliance on chemical inputs, monoculture cropping, and intensive farming practices, poses a significant threat to the environment and wildlife. The negative impacts of industrial agriculture include wildlife habitat destruction and biodiversity loss, soil degradation, water pollution, antibiotic resistance, major greenhouse gas emissions, and animal cruelty on a massive scale. Sustainable alternatives to industrial agriculture, such as organic farming, small-scale farming, regenerative farming, and veganic farming—offer a better way forward. These sustainable farming practices not only offer a way to produce food while minimizing harm, ensuring a more resilient and sustainable food system for future generations, but can also solve existential problems like climate change.
editorsourceareaThis guide explores the promise and perils of renewable energy. Can renewable energy achieve the emissions cuts we need to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis? Can we avoid an energy crisis if we abandon fossil fuels? What is the dark truth behind bioenergy? Is hydropower a real or false solution? Is the renewable energy transition succeeding or failing?
editorsourceareaNew Additions
Climate change, debt, and development have a caustic relationship, hindering economic justice and national advancement, but solutions exist.
By: John Feffer
These online resources hold crucial information on history, social issues, and activism.
By: Damon Orion
Ringling Bros. has stopped using animals, but hundreds of elephants still languish at circuses and zoos.
Labelled a “cretin” and “imbecile” in his lifetime, the Swiss artist Gottfried Mind had profound talents when it came to drafting the feline form and inspired later French Realists, early psychiatric theorists, and Romantic visions of the artist as outsider.
By: Kirsten Tambling
Listening to birds benefits our mental health, leading to less stress and paranoia.
By: Erika Schelby
This one-year program provides transitional employment, job training, and housing resources for people experiencing homelessness.
By: Damon Orion
Frederick L. Coolidge explains the link between numerosity and language.
By: Marjorie Hecht
As marijuana use grows, accidental intoxication in animals is becoming more common, raising questions about safety, regulation, and the need for better research.
By: Kevin Fitzgerald
Bronze Age burials at Başur Höyük predate Mesopotamian city-states, yet they lack evidence of palaces or complex governance.
For growing numbers of media companies, employee ownership offers journalistic freedom and job stability.
By: Damon Orion
Classics
This article on "the woman question" of the right for American women* to vote appeared in Popular Science Monthly, Volume 49, in June 1896. Two months later, Popular Science Monthly's editors attacked Tweedy's argument in an Editor's Table section titled "Women and Politics," reproduced below for historical context depicting the attitude of most men (and some women) of Tweedy's time:
- "The Monthly has lately given place to two articles on the subject of the demand which is now being made by some women on behalf of their sex to be allowed to participate in political life on a footing of perfect equality with men. One of our contributors [George F. Talbot, 'The Political Rights and Duties of Women'] has tried to show cause why the demand should not be granted, taking the ground that the change would be injurious to society as a whole and particularly injurious to the female sex. The other [Tweedy, below] treats the arguments of the first with scorn, and, if we are not mistaken, betrays not a little of that 'antagonism of the sexes' which nevertheless she declares to be 'unnatural and vicious.' The question is one which ought to be discussed with complete dispassionateness; and we think that on this score there was no fault to find with the earlier of the two contributions, that by Mr. George F. Talbot, in our May number."
The editors go on to dismiss Tweedy's argument because "As long as men alone do the voting, they are supposed to represent the non-voting sex. Every man has or has had a mother, most have one or more sisters, and a very large proportion have wives. Every man's vote, therefore, … ought to express his consciousness of and respect for the family tie." They continue, "What is mainly needed, in our opinion, is the deepening of the sense of trusteeship in men." Nevertheless, the "women agitators," described below by Tweedy, fought on until women won the right to vote with the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment.
✲ It should be noted that the public debate at the time often considered the voting rights of only white women. While women gained the vote in 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, it was not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the right to vote for Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color was guaranteed.By: Alice B. Tweedy
This is a speech by Frederick Douglass given on Monday, July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York. The oration was published as a pamphlet the same year. Annotations were provided by the Wikisource community.
This article on the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (associated with the movement of German idealism) appeared in the Philosophical Review, Volume 16, pp. 488-505, in 1907.
Ellen Bliss Talbot was a professor of philosophy at Mount Holyoke College from 1898 to 1932. From Wikisource:
“According to Dorothy Rogers and Therese B. Dykeman… ‘[Talbot] had a successful academic career, chairing Mount Holyoke’s philosophy department for thirty-two years and teaching part-time for several years after retirement. She published just three books, all on Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1898, 1899, 1906), in addition to her considerable number of articles in the Philosophical Review, Mind, and the American Journal of Psychology. Her commitment to women’s education at Mount Holyoke was unwavering, helping to ensure that the philosophy curriculum met the expectations of her fellow academicians as philosophy established itself as a profession.’ From ‘Introduction: Women in the American Philosophical Tradition 1800–1930,’ in Hypatia 19:2 (Spring 2004): viii-xxxiv.”
From Wikisource:
- “Ten Days in a Mad-House is a book written by newspaper reporter Nellie Bly and published by Norman Munro in New York City in 1887. The book comprised Blyʼs reportage for the New York World while on an undercover assignment in which she feigned insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Womenʼs Lunatic Asylum on Blackwellʼs Island.”
By: Nellie Bly
From Wikipedia:
- “Woman in the Nineteenth Century is a book by American journalist, editor, and women’s rights advocate Margaret Fuller. Originally published in July 1843 in The Dial magazine as ‘The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women,’ it was later expanded and republished in book form in 1845.”
- “The basis for Fuller’s essay is the idea that man will rightfully inherit the earth when he becomes an elevated being, understanding of divine love. There have been periods in time when the world was more awake to this love, but people are sleeping now; however, everyone has the power to become enlightened. Man cannot now find perfection because he is still burdened with selfish desires, but Fuller is optimistic and says that we are on the verge of a new awakening. She claims that in the past man, like Orpheus for Eurydice, has always called out for woman, but soon will come the time when women will call for men, when they will be equals and share divine love.”
In this memoir, Frederick Douglass chronicles life as an enslaved boy in the American South, his eventual escape, and his new beginnings as a free man and abolitionist.
Note: This historical memoir may include outdated and offensive language.
“The Shame of the Cities is a book written by American author Lincoln Steffens. Published in 1904, it is a collection of articles which Steffens had written for McClure’s Magazine. It reports on the workings of corrupt political machines in several major cities in the United States, along with a few efforts to combat them. It is considered one of several early major pieces of muckraking journalism, but Steffens later claimed that the work made him ‘the first muckraker.’” (Source: Wikipedia)
By: Lincoln Steffens
This 1847 memoir was written by prominent activist and writer William Wells Brown to support the abolitionist movement. It chronicles Brown’s cruel treatment as an enslaved man, the horrors that he witnessed, and his multiple escape attempts for freedom.
Note: This book is part of a historical collection and may include offensive language.
The famous novel about government and business corruption in the early 20th century by muckraker author Upton Sinclair.
From Wikisource:
- “The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by author and socialist journalist Upton Sinclair. It was written about the corruption of the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century. The novel depicts in harsh tones the poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the ‘have-nots,’ which is contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption on the part of the ‘haves.’”
By: Upton Sinclair
From Wikipedia:
- “A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South is the first book by American author, educator, and activist Anna J. Cooper. First published in 1892, the book is widely viewed as one of the first articulations of Black feminism. The book is divided into two parts, ‘Soprano Obligato’ and ‘Tutti Ad Libitum.’ Each section contains four individual essays. This book led to the term ‘Cooperian’ being coined when speaking about Anna J. Cooper. It is considered one of the first, full-length Black feminist texts.”
- Overview
- “A Voice from the South compiles a series of essays that touched on a variety of topics, such as race and racism, gender, the socioeconomic realities of Black families, and the administration of the Episcopal Church.”
- “The book advanced a vision of self-determination through education and social uplift for African-American women. Its central thesis was that the educational, moral, and spiritual progress of Black women would improve the general standing of the entire African-American community. She says that the violent natures of men often run counter to the goals of higher education, so it is important to foster more female intellectuals because they will bring more elegance to education. She noted Black women whose accomplishments could rival those of men, including Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Fanny Jackson Coppin, and Edmonia Lewis. Cooper advanced the view that it was the duty of educated and successful Black women to support their underprivileged peers in achieving their goals. Through this view Cooper’s style was deemed ‘Cooperian,’ as a direct comparison to other male canonical theorists. …”
- “A Voice from the South was published during a period that saw a burst of intellectual publications by Black women. Cooper’s book was published the same year as Lucy Delaney’s From the Darkness Cometh the Light; or, Struggles for Freedom, Ida B. Wells’s Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted.”
By: Anna J. Cooper
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