Sex, Drugs and Self-Control: How the Teen Brain Navigates Risk

Kerri Smith Nature
Teenagers leaps between buildings
In more ways than one, there is a lot going on in a teenager’s head. “In fact, it’s just beautiful,” says B. J. Casey, a neuroscientist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “It’s amazing that it unfolds correctly most of the time.”

Dispatches from Barbed Wire

Abigail Carl-Klassen Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature
The Wall goes on, but as the El Paso poet Abigail Carl-Klassen announces: “We’re still here. In protest. In Pachanga. Fists raised.”

A Pledge to Transform the Resistance, and America

Richard Eskow Our Future
A popular narrative today is that we live in a country which is deeply divided. And the Democratic Party, we are told, is nearly as split as the nation itself. But chatter in the press and social media may overlook some fundamental points of agreement about changes we need to make in our economy. That’s the premise behind a new pledge, the “Agenda for Good Jobs, Sustainable Prosperity, and Economic Justice,” that has been signed by more than 70 prominent progressives.

As Long As Rights Are Trampled, There Will Be Forced Migration

Roy Bourgeois and Margaret Knapke Foreign Policy in Focus
We often debate the pros and cons of welcoming immigrants here. We seldom consider the U.S. impact on the countries they leave. Ultimately, reducing the flow of refugees requires a just foreign policy, one that values people over profits. You can be sure: As long as rights are trampled, voices are silenced, and lives are cut short — there will be forced migration. Even at great risk. Even without parents. Even with a wall.

Why Do White People Like What I Write?

Pankaj Mishra London Review of Books
Writers once busy in prestigious magazines rationalizing war and torture are now confronting the obdurate pathologies of American life that stem from America’s original racial sin. Coates wonders why those once fierce in defending bloody imperial missions now embrace him for describing American power from the rare standpoint of its internal victims. Yet the danger for Coates is not so much seduction by power as a distorted perspective caused by proximity to it.