Here’s some of what we have seen recently that might be of particular interest to our generation. (Apologies for any pay walls.) Send us what you have seen at WritingAboutOurGeneration@gmail.com.‍ ‍

• How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life, Kurt Streeter, New York Times, Nov. 20, 2025

• Turns Out Fighting Fascism Helps You Live Longer, Julia Métraux, Mother Jones, Nov. 26, 2025

• Is Full-Fat Dairy Healthier? Caroline Hopkins Legaspi, New York Times, Nov. 17, 2025

• Superman copy found in mum's attic is most valuable comic ever at $9.12m, Grace Eliza Goodwin, BBC, Nov. 21, 2025

• How Baby Boomers Became the ‘Wealthiest Generation That Ever Lived’, Adam Hardy, Money, Oct. 4, 2024

• Why Greece is now the world’s best place to retire, Maureen O’Hare, CNN, Dec. 1, 2025

• How to Live to 100, According to Dick Van Dyke, Jancee Dunn, New York Times, Nov. 28, 2025

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      The other night we were at a dinner party with our two teenage grandgirls. We were playing Jeopardy with 30 people in five teams. I was on a different team than my husband, Rick.

      When a question came up about a 1950s hair style I buzzed in and yelled out “Ducks Ass.” My husband across the room did not hear me and he buzzed in and yelled out “Duck’s Ass.” It was the wrong answer and both teams lost 800 points.

      My exasperated grandgirl turned to her grandfather and said “Pappy, Doo Doo already said Duck’s Ass,” and then she addressed the entire group, trying to explain or seeking redemption, yelling “but my grandparents are elderly.” . . .

In 2014 I published a history of atheism, Imagine There’s No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World (Palgrave Macmillan). And I remain fascinated with the fact that God has so often been conspicuous in His absence. So I put together a list of some of the most important moments in which He proved a no show and handed them over to GPT 5, which now claims sufficient familiarity with my style to be able to craft an essay in “a wry, amused, idea-forward Stephens tone.” (I like “idea forward.”) Here is the result: idea entirely mine, examples all mine, most of the actually wordings the AI’s, and style intended to be mine—though probably even more “wry” and “amused” than I might have managed.   And now I can spend the rest of the morning reading the news or going for a walk or whatever we humans are supposed to do in this AI-ified world..

      God is wonderfully real in the early pages of Genesis. Not metaphorically real, not “felt in the heart” real—really real. He walks, He talks, He strolls through the garden in the evening breeze like a homeowner checking the irrigation system. [Note: this was the worst of the AI’s wordings.] He behaves more like a Mesopotamian super-being than an ineffable First Cause. . . .

      It’s a big closet, a walk-in, my stuff on the left, my wife’s stuff on the right. The top rail of my stuff is long-sleeved dress shirts, ties, sports jackets and suits. The bottom rail is short-sleeved dress shirts and pants, not including the two pairs of jeans I actually wear, which are in the bedroom hanging from the clothes tree.

      I haven’t worn the dress shirts or the ties or the sports jackets or the suits or the regular pants in  . . . I don’t know how long. These were clothes I had accumulated over the years, clothes I wore when I had a job to go to, clothes I wore when there were occasions to wear such clothes. But I no longer have a job to go to. I also don’t have many reasonably fancy occasions to dress up or at least dress a little better than my now common everyday uniform of t-shirt (short-sleeved in the summer; long-sleeved in the colder weather) and jeans or shorts. . . .

One of the greatest guitarists in the heyday of American soul music and R&B was a white guy who grew up in segregated Memphis, Tennessee.

Steve Cropper, who died this past week at the age of 84, was an essential musician and songwriter behind the emergence of the Stax/Volt record label, which brought Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and many others to the forefront of American pop music. Later in his career, Cropper had his greatest financial success as a guitarist in the Blues Brothers Band, fronted by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd of “Saturday Night Live” fame. . . .

After criticizing media coverage about him aging in office, Trump appeared to be falling asleep during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.

But that’s hardly the most troubling aspect of his aging.

In the last few weeks, Trump’s insults, tantrums, and threats have exploded.

To Nancy Cordes, CBS’s White House correspondent, he said: “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? You’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.”

About New York Times correspondent Katie Rogers: “third rate … ugly, both inside and out.”

To Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”

About Democratic lawmakers who told military members to defy illegal orders: guilty of “sedition … punishable by DEATH.”

This is an excerpt from Robert Reich’s substack. We suggest that you read the whole piece there.

The remarkable guitarist Steve Cropper—who died this week—co-wrote “Dock of the Bay” with Otis Redding, “Midnight Hour” with Wilson Pickett and “Knock On Wood” with Eddie Floyd.

Click here for a recent version of “Knock on Wood” with Steve Cropper on guitar.

      I never knew my paternal grandmother and barely knew, and didn’t much like, my grandfather, but here I was at the house where they lived as young marrieds in Sicily—and my eyes were filled with tears.

      What had begun months before as an almost academic quest on Ancestry.com [see “We Went on a Roots Pilgrimage” for a different perspective on the quest] had turned into an emotional revelation.

      My dad was born in the states, the youngest of six siblings. He was only two when his mother died of tuberculosis, so he had no memories of her. Strangely enough, my aunts and uncle never talked about her either, even though they would have been old enough to remember their mother.

      So, I didn’t grow up hearing stories of my nonna or of the old country. Only my dad’s oldest sibling was born in Sicily, and he was just a baby when they left in 1902. . . .

A short video—a fable, actually—set in the African savannah that argues for a particular understanding of the purpose of media: from the new Taylor Swift album to a novel by Virginia Woolf to the Times crossword puzzle. It employs some still-primitive AI animation.

Click here for video

      “Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does,” wrote George Orwell. It’s from his essay, “The Lion and the Unicorn,” which was a prose-poem in some ways to the quiet virtues of his native England. It so affected me that I actually remember the moment I was reading it. I was a 13 year old on the top deck of a double-decker bus, the windows opaque with condensation, the air thick with cigarette smoke, the skies dark outside, rain falling steadily, making my way home from school.

      Decency. This was Orwell’s deep theme . . .  Orwell saw it primarily in ordinary people, especially the English, and rarer among intellectuals: “It is not easy to crash your way into the literary intelligentsia if you happen to be a decent human being” . . .

This is an excerpt from Andrew Sullivan’s Substack. We urge you to read the whole piece there.

The argument in favor:  People love treating things as conscious. . . . People are already personifying AI! Half of the youth have a GPT-4o boyfriend. . . .

The argument against:   . . . AI companies have an incentive to make AIs that seem conscious and humanlike, insofar as people will feel more comfortable interacting with them. But they have an opposite incentive to make AIs that don’t seem too conscious and humanlike, lest customers start feeling uncomfortable (I just want to generate slop, not navigate an independent being with its own hopes and dreams who might be secretly judging my prompts). . . .

In honor of the holiday, we’re delighted to reprint our favorite Thanksgiving recipe, a classic dish for this perilous, querulous era.

***

Ingredients

35 years of family squabbles, still stewing

1 gallon of raw anger

1/2 gallon of steaming rage

1 pint of unadulterated guilt

2 quarts of mild frustration

6 cups of exasperation

2 pints of low-fat antagonism

3 pounds of constant complaining

4 ounces of raw milk, spilled

2 ounces of crying, over spilled milk

3 tablespoons of minced irritation (or use a dollop of spite).

2 teaspoons of annoyance extract

½ teaspoon of bad timing

¼ teaspoon of touchiness

A sprinkle of irritation

A dash of accusation

A hint of reproach

A splash of annoyance

A pinch of reality

A dusting of growing dissatisfaction …

It turns out there are considerably more than ten annoying things about modern life today. In fact, there are at least these ten more:

10: Weather apps that predict a “a 5-percent chance of precipitation” or say “light rain is expected to start in 43 minutes” as you walk outside into an already howling monsoon.

9: The sticky residue left behind after you try to peel the price tag off anything, leaving you with a half-torn label that will never ever come off no matter how much you rub and scrub.

8: Traffic lights that stay red for so long and then, just at the moment you look away for one second to adjust the radio, the light turns green and the car behind you honks like you’ve committed a felony.

7: Restaurant waiters who suddenly come over to your table to ask how everything is precisely when your mouth is filled with 14 cubic inches of eggplant parmigiana and you can only respond with a thumbs-up while trying not to choke. . . .

      James Marriott has composed a particularly eloquent elegy for reading, now that humanity seems to be turning in another direction: toward screening—toward the smartphone. Marriott’s elegy is also particularly frightening, for he sees “the post-literate world [as] characterized by simplicity, ignorance and stagnation.” This website excerpted a chunk of Marriott’s depressing argument the day before the essay you are now reading is being published.

      And how can any of us whose thoughts have been formed in large part by newspapers, magazines and books—by descriptions and propositions, by sentences—not feel some sadness watching them being made redundant. How can we avoid some disquiet about the ongoing triumph of that flickering, know-it-all, video-jukebox-busybody, smart-alecky phone—to whose siren song even we often enough succumb?  

      . . . But I wanted to hear Marriott out not because he is right but because his argument—which is showing up in many forms lately, forms not often as literate and eloquent—is, I believe, profoundly and importantly and demonstrably wrong. . . .

. . . If the reading revolution represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history.

      The transmission of knowledge—the most ancient function of the university — is breaking down in front of our eyes. Writers like Shakespeare, Milton and Jane Austen whose works have been handed on for centuries can no longer reach the next generation of readers. They are losing the ability to understand them.

      The tradition of learning is like a precious golden thread of knowledge running through human history linking reader to reader through time. It last snapped during the collapse of the Western Roman Empire as the barbarian tides beat against the frontier, cities shrank and libraries burned or decayed.

      That golden thread is breaking for the second time. . . .

This is an excerpt from Cultural Capital, a Substack written by James Marriott. We recommend that you read the entire piece there.

      This pains me to say it, but I believe it’s true: Donald Trump is the most influential president of our lifetime. Maybe the most influential person.

      The influence hasn’t been good, of course; it’s been terrible. But I think there’s no denying that Trump has had more influence on government, on politics, on economics, on racial ideas, on American culture than any of his predecessors over the last 75 years or so. . . .

Without a shred of political or governing experience and a generally dishonorable backstory, he ratified the cliché that anyone can grow up to become president. Even before his first election, he had fundamentally changed how politics is performed, talked about and consumed. He elevated social-media-driven politics and direct-to-voter communication. In Steve Bannon’s words, he knew how to “flood the zone with shit,” obtaining constant media saturation—and it all worked and is mostly still working. . . .

      It doesn’t take organized book burnings to mute free speech in today’s MAGA America. At Indiana University, it took only a disgruntled college student, an influential U.S. senator and a cowardly university administration.

      The story barely caused a ripple in a week that saw the collapse of Democratic courage to stand up for affordable health care, a lurid dump of Jeffrey Epstein emails, the beating of U.S. war drums off Venezuela, ICE’s invasion of another U.S. city (Charlotte, NC) and yet another Trump turnaround on tariffs as his administration scrambles to stabilize his plunging poll numbers in the face of rising prices.

The Indiana University saga, however, deserves a lot more attention, particularly since the impact of the university’s actions could prove chilling not only in Indiana but on campuses across the country. . . .

(This is a conversation between Abbott—who believes, as so many young people do today, that the end is nigh—and Ether—who doesn’t—from Jason Pargin’s novel, I’m Starting To Worry About This Black Box Of Doom, as quoted on Scott Alexander’s blog, Astral Codex Ten.)

      Ether groaned and put her head in her hands. “Okay,” she said, trying again. “How about this: What do you think the world will look like in the future, post-collapse?”

      Abbott thought for a moment as if picturing it. “Uh, terrified people scrounging for food and running from bandits. Rampant disease, infrastructure breakdown. All the stuff from the movies, I guess.”

       “No internet?”

       “I wouldn’t think so.”

       “No electricity? No running water, no sewage? No hospitals?”

       “Probably not.”

       “Got it. So, what I’m about to say isn’t an opinion, it’s not a matter of personal philosophy or politics. It is an objective fact that what you’re describing is how virtually all humans have lived through all of history. Until, that is, about thirty years ago. . . .

      . . . Some older studies—the ones I really liked—suggested that low amounts of alcohol, particularly red wine, might actually reduce certain cardiovascular risks. And so for decades, red wine was often said to be good for you—especially for your heart. Lab findings seemed to indicate that compounds like resveratrol and polyphenols in red wine might protect blood vessels, reduce inflammation or improve cholesterol.

      Not so fast.

      The American Heart Association now suggests those studies were mistaken, and that risks of drinking wine, red or white, even at low levels, may outweigh any possible benefits.

      Taken all together, it means there is no completely safe level of alcohol consumption. And to be honest, I am a little bereft. . . .

What are the seven most transformative ideas humans have had—ever? Here is my list, counting down. What would you add or subtract? Is there a woman who—despite all the difficulty women have had getting heard—should have been included? Are there ideas from Asia that should have made this list?

. . . 3.  Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot: “Liberty, equality, fraternity” 

There was a revolution in each of these three words—not only an assault upon monarchy but the end of inherited orders, ranks, and privileges and a call for us to recognize our own brotherhood.

      “All men are created equal”—despite not being true and, outrageously, leaving out women, sisters—was pretty damn powerful too.

      Yes, we all have different abilities and different resources and different luck. But shouldn’t we all—and, over time, that “all” would finally grow to include different races and different genders and different sexual preferences—be free to pursue happiness and have equal rights. . . .