Culture, Identity & Society

Teen Vogue dissolved its politics team in November 2025, one day before a major election. The timing was not accidental. It was a statement, whether Conde Nast intended it to be or not, about which kinds of coverage are considered expendable when the business pressure is high enough. Teen Vogue was not just another youth publication. It was, for about a decade, one of the most consistently serious outlets in American media. It commissioned incarcerated writers. It published g

A protester in Kansas City marches with students from Crossroads Preparatory Academy in 2022. On Thursday, City Council repealed a ban on so-called conversion therapy, a scientifically discredited practice that seeks to “convert” LGBTQ+ minors to a heterosexual lifestyle. On March 31, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 that Colorado's ban on conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ minors violated the First Amendment. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion. Justice Ketanji Br

Graduating undergraduate students are terrified of the labor market they are about to enter. They fear the impact that AI will have on virtually every field, especially in the humanities and creative work. Despite the volume of student concern about the replacement of human talent, a significant number of high-profile educators and professionals remain either oblivious or indifferent to the alarm their pupils are raising. That disconnect came to an uncomfortable head this May

Creatures of the night, stalking through stone-brick towns, clinging to trees, watching through windows. The story of the vampire is universal, shifting between different themes and appearances to adapt to each culture and era. "Vampire" is a broad term with only one true requirement: the consumption of blood. Other supernatural abilities usually accompany this trait, but they are negotiable. The blood never is. Early iterations of what we now call vampires appear across the

Two people I knew in high school earned Associate's Degrees before they ever received their diplomas. Today, one is at UCLA and the other at UC Berkeley, each on track to graduate at least a year ahead of their classmates. Neither spent a dollar on most of their credits. Both were admitted as first-years. This path offers a cheaper, fast-track through college than AP tests. It gives you a significant and directly transferable credit boost while making your college application

Records are flying off the shelves at thrift stores. Printed polaroids are taped to bedroom walls. Zines line the aisles of local bookstores. Gen Z has developed a genuine appreciation for physical media, a sensibility that felt lost in the early days of the internet and digital downloads. The old desire for efficiency has been replaced with something different: a need for tangible, personal memory. Today's teenagers and young adults want something they can hold, not just scr

Public media is not just background noise. It is the news infrastructure that serves places no one else will.

It is not just an aesthetic. The cigarette is back as a prop, a statement, and a cultural signal, and the reasons why tell you something real about this moment.

The Trump administration opened a civil rights investigation into a private women's college for admitting trans women. Legal experts are baffled. The implications go far beyond one campus.

Streaming was supposed to give us more. More stories, more voices, more risk. What it gave us instead was an industry that decided its audience couldn't be trusted. In the era of mobile devices and fractured attention, the way people consume media has shifted fundamentally, and the writing of film and TV has followed. Stories feel flat. Characters explain themselves out loud rather than through the quiet work of performance. Subtlety, it seems, has been declared a liability.

You Were Never Supposed to Feel This Tired There is a kind of exhaustion that feels less like a bad night and more like a pattern. You wake up tired, move through the day tired, and instead of asking why, you correct it. The correction is almost automatic. Coffee. What is striking is not that coffee works, but that we rarely question why we need it to work at all. The fatigue is treated as normal. The solution is treated as routine. That is where the story begins. Capitalism

Markiplier in an interview in NYC. The Beginning of His Journey On March 6, 2012, a college dropout from the University of Cincinnati named Mark Edward Fischbach launched his first YouTube channel. The channel name "Markiplier" is a portmanteau of Mark and multiplier. He originally planned to upload comedy sketches and action videos, but it was his lifelong love of gaming that drove his growth. His first breakout series was "Amnesia: The Dark Descent," which earned him roughl

In the summer of 1969, the Earth felt like a very small place. While the world below was tangled in political unrest and social change, three men were sitting on top of a controlled explosion, waiting to be hurled into the dark. When the Apollo 11 mission successfully touched down on the lunar surface, it did more than win a race. It proved that the limits of human achievement are only as small as our imagination and our willingness to take massive risks. A Decade of Desperat

A Different Job Market Than Before For many young people today, finding a job is not as simple as it was for previous generations. In the past, a high school or college graduate could step relatively quickly into a stable position. The path into the workforce was worn and familiar. That path no longer exists in the same form. The job market is more competitive, more credentialed, and far less forgiving of people who are just getting started. Entry-level jobs routinely require

It can feel, at times, like there is no escape from it. You open the news and the first thing you encounter is a disaster, a tragedy, or a crisis unfolding somewhere in the world. That feeling is not a personal failure or an overreaction. It reflects something real about how information reaches us: bad news travels faster, earns more clicks, and commands more attention. But that is not the whole story. The same week that brought coverage of an attempted school shooting in Okl

Demon Slayer Infinity Castle Anime has become a dominant form of global cinema in the twenty-first century. For many Western audiences, the term is still relatively new. Anime is a form of animation originated in Japan, characterized by distinctive colorful styles, complex narratives, and thematic depth that sets it apart from Western animation. The earliest anime can be traced to 1917, when Japan was heavily influenced by Western animation techniques. The industry did not ga

"It's not you, it's me." In 2026, these words still carry weight. The year is marked by terms like "love bombing," "ghosting," and "options culture," now normalized across dating apps and social media. Someone always seems better. There is always something wrong with her, him, them, or you. But this wasn't always the case. Where did this cultural shift come from? The roots trace back to hook-up culture, amplified by social media trends, celebrity influence, and the digitizati

The term “Astrology Girls” has become a fixture of online discourse over the past few years. It refers, usually with a smirk, to teenage and college-age women who organize their lives around spirituality: collecting crystals, consulting horoscope decks, and making decisions guided by the twelve zodiacal signs. January birthdays are Capricorn or Aquarius. February, Aquarius or Pisces. And so on around the calendar. The label implies that these women are irrational. The reality

A Culture Shaped by Many Influences Caribbean traditions continue to shape families and communities across the world. The Caribbean spans many islands and cultures: Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, and beyond. Because of this breadth, Caribbean heritage is rich and layered. Over hundreds of years, it absorbed African, Indigenous, European, and Asian influences. Each island carries its own customs, yet many Caribbean traditions sh

Before the Trend In the past year, a wave of trends swept across social media: Labubu plush toys from Hong Kong, pistachio Dubai chocolate, and AI-generated Italian brain rot videos. But no trend proved more durable or more widely adopted than matcha, the bright green powdered tea that migrated from niche local cafes to nearly every major coffee chain in the country. What most people ordering a lavender matcha cold foam frappuccino do not know is that the drink they are holdi