An analysis of data from 2017 and 2022 by the Pew Charitable Trusts points to a direct connection between high housing costs and homelessness rates in the United States. Unsurprisingly, a Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury 2024 report stated that the city,...

The late 19th century saw economists, mainly German and Austrian, create a mythology of money’s origins that is still repeated in today’s textbooks. Money is said to have originated as just another commodity being bartered, with metal preferred because it is nonperishable (and hence amenable...

Rigid thinking has been linked to social and professional problems, difficulty in adapting to societal change, and mental health issues that can lead to suicide and mass shootings. ...

When the Eaton Fire began on January 7, 2025, in Altadena, California, it blazed through residential neighborhoods, destroying thousands of family homes. On the morning of January 8, as businesses burned on North Lake Avenue, a group of migrant workers met 2 miles to the...

While in Delhi late one evening, on the drive back to the hotel after a terrific meal in a Kashmiri restaurant, our taxi stopped at a traffic light in the middle of a congested and major intersection. The air is less than salubrious, thick with...

Power in human societies is often viewed as hierarchical, meaning that it’s tiered and ranked. This view doesn’t fully capture the complexity of how power is managed in different cultures. Some societies are not strictly hierarchical but heterarchical, where power is distributed among various groups...

Chicago, Illinois, has a rich history of grassroots organizing. Notable examples are the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council’s efforts to improve local economic and social conditions and the Black Panther Party’s establishment of housing cooperatives and free food, clothing, and medical services. ...

No one knows why we dream. It stands to reason that dreams have some purpose because nearly everyone dreams, and we dream 3 to 6 times every night. People typically have several dreams each night that grow longer as sleep draws to a close. Over...

Farmed animals in the United States have minimal legal protections, and much of the abuse they endure is legal. Unfortunately, the federal Animal Welfare Act—which establishes protections for pets and nonhuman animals used for exhibition (like in zoos) and research—does not apply to farmed...

Racism has been embedded in America’s food and agriculture systems since European colonizers began enslaving Black and Indigenous people for farm and plantation labor. A notable example of how this injustice continued throughout history is the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) denial of...