Ryan Zickgraf is a journalist based in Atlanta.
Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties imagines the decade as dominated by pop culture, not politics. In reality, Gen X was passionately political during the 1990s — and centrists were busy laying the groundwork for the politics of the next century.
Decades after the end of Jim Crow, cities like Mobile, Alabama, are still shot through with racial segregation. That segregation is reflected in the city’s Mardi Gras culture, where some social societies still maintain white-only membership.
All professional sports team owners are evil. But the sight of billionaire LA Rams owner Stan Kroenke hoisting the Super Bowl trophy on Sunday should inspire particular revulsion — he’s one of the most despicable owners on the planet.
Liberals have made a cottage industry out of breathless warnings about impending apocalypse at the hands of the Right. This rhetoric isn’t just overblown — it’s also politically useless.
Housed within McDonald’s Chicago HQ are both white-collar workers upstairs, enjoying a relaxed work environment and decent compensation — and restaurant workers downstairs, making the company’s profits but facing unsafe work environments and low wages.
America is experiencing a massive shortfall in hospital beds, harmful to both COVID and non-COVID patients needing care. But the pandemic didn’t create the hospital bed crisis — it exacerbated an existing one that our government refuses to address.
Has anyone ever seen Jeff Bezos and Superman supervillain Lex Luthor in the same room?
The Matrix Resurrections makes a convincing case that the Matrix franchise is keeping us plugged into the Matrix. Unfortunately, it exhausts the viewer in doing so.
Thanks to her investing prowess, the Speaker of the House’s wealth grew by an estimated $16.7 million in 2020, just as millions of Americans fell into poverty and struggled to make ends meet during the COVID-19 pandemic. Long live the Queen of Stonks!
Millions of players agree that Microsoft’s Forza Horizon 5 is a beautiful, fun, and endlessly seductive video game. It’s also an eerie transitional technology that hints at the dystopian metaverse to come.
OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, which played a key role in creating America’s opioid crisis, has dissolved. But the crisis rages on, lives are still in danger, and the profits are still flowing — now to street dealers who manufacture synthetic drugs.
The Facebook founder intends to usher in a new era of the internet where there’s no distinction between the virtual and the real — and no logging off.
Michael K. Williams wasn’t just one of the most talented actors in America. He was also in the middle of a political awakening, speaking out on a range of issues from police reform to fighting poverty.
Once the proud land of Lincoln, downstate Illinois — devastated by unemployment, deindustrialization, and an infamously corrupt political class — is quickly becoming a failed state.
The Second Gilded Age is starting to look more and more like the first.
Why are powerful leaders all trying to be Oprah Winfrey? From Obama’s Netflix series to Bill Clinton’s podcast, the political elite aren’t content with being merely influential — they want to be influencers. But Pod Can’t Save America, and we shouldn’t come along for the ride.
Cyberpunk once stood out as a vital genre of anti-capitalist fiction. Today, it’s been reduced to a cool retro aesthetic easily appropriated by the world’s second-richest man to market ugly Blade Runner–inspired trucks to nostalgia-drenched Gen Xers.
California’s post-Reagan drift into the welcome arms of the corporate-friendly Democratic Party has meant a politics that looks like an elite lifestyle brand. It’s a state where social liberalism reigns, but so does staggering poverty and inequality. The Democratic Party has failed California and unless things change, it will continue to fail our nation.
Cyberpunk once stood out as a vital genre of anti-capitalist fiction. Today, it’s been reduced to a cool retro aesthetic easily appropriated by the world’s second-richest man to market ugly Blade Runner–inspired trucks to nostalgia-driven Gen Xers.
A ballot measure to tax the rich failed on election night in Illinois. The person behind the “no” campaign: right-wing billionaire Ken Griffin, who funneled $50 million of his own money to kill the referendum.