Republicans who voted for Trump tax cuts now accuse Democrats of slashing taxes for the rich

Congressional Republicans who backed the 2017 Trump tax cuts for the rich are already attacking Democrats over one provision in a bill that, in most respects, will raise taxes on the wealthy.

A group of Democrats from high-tax states, led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Tom Suozzi of New York and backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, pushed to insert a provision in the House version of the Build Back Better package that would roll back a $10,000 cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction — effectively a tax break that overwhelmingly favors the wealthy. But an analysis by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation found this week that the overall package would increase taxes on millionaires by more than 3 percentage points. Furthermore, Senate Democrats are clamoring to “fix” the House-passed bill, which raises the cap to $80,000, to reduce the windfall to the wealthy.

Republicans who supported the Trump tax cuts, which expanded the federal deficit by $2 trillion while showering tax breaks on the top 1% of earners, are already running ads ahead of the 2022 midterms attacking Democrats for cutting taxes on the rich — in a bill that has not even passed the Senate.

Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., the top Republican on the House Budget Committee — who backed the Trump tax cuts — rolled out a new ad this week calling SALT the “Democrats’ way of giving the rich a tax cut.” This blatantly hypocritical attack line has been echoed in other circles of the GOP.

The Republican National Committee, which supported the Trump tax cut, last week blasted out a statement calling out the Democrats for trying to “give tax cuts to the wealthy.” National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott, R-Fla., an ardent supporter of the 2017 tax gift to the wealthy, vowed to make sure that all states know about how much money Democrats “are going to give to rich people.” Republican-aligned groups, including the Heritage Foundation, are also running ads attacking Pelosi for slipping a “big tax break for her wealthy friends” into the bill.

These attacks mark a dizzying turnaround for the party that just four years earlier voted to give the top 1% of earners an average tax cut of $278,000, according to a recent analysis. The 2017 Republican tax law included the SALT cap, which Democrats from high-income, high-tax states argued was a “punitive” measure aimed at hurting blue states. Democrats like Gottheimer and Suozzi pushed to repeal the cap entirely but ultimately agreed on a proposal to raise the cap to $80,000 per year.

But these Republican attacks also underscore the Democrats’ messaging problem ahead of a challenging 2022 midterm campaign. Economists from both sides of the aisle agree that the party’s SALT proposal is a regressive tax cut that would disproportionately benefit the top 5% of earners. The House proposal appears to have little chance of passing the Senate in its current form, where even Democrats from Gottheimer’s home state of New Jersey have lambasted it as a windfall for “millionaires and billionaires.”

“This bill should invest in our families and our future — not provide giveaways for the wealthy few,” Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said earlier this month. “The House’s SALT proposal cuts taxes for millionaires and billionaires on the backs of low-income and middle-income families. We should fix this in the Senate.”

“I think it gives tax breaks to the wrong people: Rich people,” complained Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.

Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has teamed up with Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., whose state would disproportionately benefit from a SALT cap rollback, to reduce the benefits to millionaires.

Menendez said their proposal would “allow the full deductibility to middle-class working families, but it won’t go to those making over a million dollars. And therefore, the issue of millionaires and billionaires getting this tax deduction is not an issue.”

The proposal would eliminate the SALT cap entirely for those earning less than $400,000 to $550,000 per year, which would likely still be a regressive tax cut, but would maintain the $10,000 cap in place for those earning more.

“In terms of SALT, we must protect the middle class from high local and state taxes,” Sanders tweeted last week. “But we cannot provide 39% of the benefits to the top 1% — as is in the House bill. At a time of massive income inequality, we must increase taxes on the 1%, not give them huge tax breaks.”

The Sanders-Menendez plan “costs less than a third as much as repealing the cap fully and is much less regressive,” said Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the progressive-leaning Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy.

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Democrats initially planned to pay for much of the Build Back Better package by rolling back the Trump tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., killed that plan, but the current version still includes a 15% corporate minimum tax on big corporations and a surtax on those earning over $10 million. An analysis by the JCT found that the average tax rate for millionaires under the bill would increase by 4.1 percentage points in 2023 and 3.3 percentage points in 2025. But progressives are warning that the inclusion of the SALT cap rollback favorin g the wealthy could be suicidal for a party facing its most difficult midterm election cycle in a decade.

“I’m not worried about the perception that we’re doing too much for wealthy people. I’m worried that we may do too much for wealthy people. It’s the reality that troubles me,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told Politico last week. “I’m not here to help those at the top.”

Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has expressed concern that Republicans will “pound” the message that Democrats were too soft on millionaires in the coming months.

“You can’t be a political party that talks about demanding the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, and then end up with a bill that gives large tax breaks to millionaires,” Sanders warned last week. “You can’t do that. The hypocrisy is too strong. It’s bad policy, it’s bad politics.”

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Rich countries blamed for new Omicron COVID variant: “It was entirely preventable”

The detection of a new, heavily mutated, and potentially vaccine-resistant coronavirus variant in Botswana and other nations is sending shockwaves worldwide as public health officials rush to understand the strain and its possible impact on the global pandemic response.

For vaccine equity campaigners and epidemiologists, the emergence of another highly contagious coronavirus mutation is far from surprising given the massive inoculation gap between rich and poor countries, which has left billions of people across the globe without access to lifesaving shots—and kept the door open to variants.

Botswana, where the new strain was first identified earlier this month, has fully vaccinated just 20% of its population.

Tim Bierley of the U.K.-based advocacy group Global Justice Now said in a statement that the B.1.1.529 mutation is an “entirely avoidable” consequence of deliberate policy decisions by rich countries, which have hoarded vaccine doses and refused to force pharmaceutical giants to share technology with developing nations.

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“The U.K. has actively prevented low and middle-income countries from having equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines. We have created the conditions for this variant to emerge,” Bierley said, referring to the British government’s opposition to a proposed patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines.

“For more than a year, South Africa, Botswana, and most countries have been calling for world leaders to waive intellectual property on coronavirus vaccines, tests, and treatments so they can produce their own jabs,” Bierley noted. “It’s a vital measure that will be discussed at next week’s World Trade Organization conference. But, so far, the U.K. and E.U. have recklessly blocked it from making progress.”

“There have been countless warnings that super-variants could emerge if we do not remove artificial barriers to global vaccination,” he continued. “If and when this new variant starts to tear through the world, remember that the British government has led opposition to the plan that could have stopped it.”

Srinivas Murthy, an infectious disease expert, echoed that sentiment.

“Allowing new variants to emerge and spread, 13 months into the vaccine era, is a policy choice by the rich world,” he argued.

In marked contrast to their slow-walking of the proposed patent waiver, European countries sprang into action in response to the new variant, moving to impose fresh travel restrictions on visitors from southern Africa as global markets tumbled.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said Friday that the body will “propose, in close coordination with member states, to activate the emergency brake to stop air travel from the southern African region due to the variant of concern B.1.1.529.”

“Rich nations are very quick to ban travel but very slow to share vaccines and know-how,” said Madhu Pai, Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology and Global Health at McGill University.

Dr. Ayoade Alakija, co-chair of the Africa Vaccine Delivery Alliance, tweeted that the renewed push to cut off travel “was our greatest fear, and [we] were almost prophetic in predicting that the world would eventually shut Africa out having denied us access to vaccines.”

Five quick tweets on the new variant B.1.1.529

Caveat first: data here is *very* preliminary, so everything could change. Nonetheless, better safe than sorry.

1) Based on the data we have, this variant is out-competing others *far* faster than Beta and even Delta did 🚩🚩 pic.twitter.com/R2Ac4e4N6s

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) November 25, 2021

At a press conference on Thursday, South African Health Minister Dr. Joe Phaahla said the B.1.1.529 variant—which has thus far been detected in Belgium, Botswana, South Africa, Israel and Hong Kong—may have been behind recent coronavirus outbreaks in the small South African province of Gauteng.

“Rest assured that as people move in the next coming weeks, this [variant] will be all over,” he warned.

Professor Tulio de Oliveira, a renowned bioinformatician, told the media that in the B.1.1.529 variant, “what we see is this very unusual constellation of mutations.”

“This is concerning,” he said, “for predicted immune evasion and transmissibility.”

As Nature reported, “The variant stood out because it contains more than 30 changes to the spike protein—the SARS-CoV-2 protein that recognizes host cells and is the main target of the body’s immune responses.”

“Many of the changes have been found in variants such as Delta and Alpha and are linked to heightened infectivity and the ability to evade infection-blocking antibodies,” the outlet noted.

Former GOP lawmaker lays out plan to boot Lauren Boebert, MTG from Congress

Appearing on CNN to talk about the conduct of Republican lawmakers who have been threatening and disparaging their Democratic colleagues to the point where they have been censured, former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) discussed the work she is doing to oust Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) from Congress.

Speaking with host Jim Acosta, Comstock slammed Boebert for her highly-publicized and vile comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN) where the Colorado Republican compared the Democrat to a terrorist.

“We know since January 6th and even before, there have been more threats to members of Congress than ever,” Comstock told Acosta. “This year is going to be the highest sort of threat level that there’s ever been. When you have this kind of just unconscionable attack — and it’s not just that she needs to apologize to the congresswoman who she attacked, she needs to apologize to the American people. She needs to apologize to the Republican party and a lot of other people. It goes way beyond that.”

Continuing speaking on Boebert, she added, “I’d also like to point out that she has a Republican opponent, Marina Zimmerman, who in response to [Rep] Adam Kinzinger pointed out Lauren Boebert is ‘trash,’ I would agree, and Marina Zimmerman said help me take out the trash and that’s what I think needs to be done here.”

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“Both Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Greene have Republican women who are running against them in the primary,” she explained. “I’m on two PACs that support Republican women who we specifically do not support Marjorie Greene or Lauren Boebert, and you know, even — those are very red districts, you’re going to end up with a Republican. You can have a conservative Republican woman without having a crazy, you know, very unpleasant, you know, nasty, you know, unconscionable congressperson who, by the way, neither of these women are getting anything done in Congress for their constituents. Zippo, nothing.”

“These women aren’t doing anything of help to the country, and they’re divisive, and they are dangerous,” she added.

Watch below:

Adele “30”: The psychology of why sad songs make us feel good

Adele’s new album, “30,” is finally available. Last month, hundreds of millions of us streamed its first single, “Easy On Me.” This song evokes feelings not easily put into words. But we can probably agree it is a sad song.

It isn’t obvious that we should like sad music. Sadness is usually a feeling we try to avoid. An alien might expect us to find such music depressing and dislikable.

Yet, sad music pulls us in and lifts us up. So, why does hearing sad music feel so good?

You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here.

The biology of sad music

Let’s start with biological theories. When we experience real-life loss, or empathize with another’s pain, hormones such as prolactin and oxytocin are released within us. These help us cope with loss and pain. They do so by making us feel calmed, consoled, and supported.

Feeling Adele’s pain, or recalling our own, may cause such chemical changes within us. Clicking on Adele’s song may be like clicking on our own metaphorical morphine drip.

The jury is still out on this theory. One study found no evidence that sad music increases prolactin levels. Yet, other studies have hinted at a role for prolactin and oxytocin in making sad music feel good.

The psychology of sad music

A key reason we enjoy sad songs is because they profoundly “move” us. This experience is sometimes called kama muta, a Sanskrit term meaning “moved by love.” Feeling moved can involve chills, goosebumps, a flood of emotions (including romantic ones), a warmth in our chest, and elation.

But why do we feel moved? The American writer James Baldwin got at this when he reflected: “The things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” Similarly, feeling moved can come from us suddenly feeling closer to other people.

This may explain why the people most likely to feel moved by sad music are those high in empathy. Indeed, when we have listened to “30” we may turn to reaction videos to see how others feel. This lets us share an emotional experience with others. A sense of communal sharing boosts our feeling of being moved and triggers feelings of comfort and belonging.

A related suggestion is that Adele’s sad music can be a friend to us. It can act as a social surrogate. Sad music can be experienced as an imaginary friend who provides support and empathy after loss.

Feeling moved can also result from memories being triggered of important moments of our lives. Adele’s songs are powerfully nostalgic. It may be nostalgia, rather than sadness, that we enjoy.

Indeed, when people listen to sad music, only around 25% say they actually feel sad. The remainder experience other, often related emotions, most commonly nostalgia. This feeling of nostalgia can help increase our sense of social connectedness, mitigate feelings of meaningless, and reduce anxiety.

A completely different type of psychological theory is that Adele’s songs are emotional gyms. They give us a safe, controlled space in which we can explore simulated sadness. They are the emotional equivalent of Neo sparring with Morpheus in the Matrix movie.

Simulated sadness lets us experiment with and learn from this emotion. We can enhance our empathy, learn to better see things from other people’s perspectives, and try out various responses to sadness. This may make us better prepared for when real loss strikes. Such learning experiences may have evolved to be pleasurable to encourage their use.

Making sense of sadness

Alternatively, it could be that Adele’s songs aren’t pleasurable because they are sad or nostalgic. They may be pleasurable simply because they are beautiful. Sadness might just happen to coincide with beauty. Indeed, seeing acts of moral virtue or beauty have been suggested to provoke feelings of elevation and can touch, move and inspire us.

We can also think at the cultural level. Here we can view the pleasure Adele’s songs gives us in terms of the meaning she helps us make. Adele takes hard life experiences and helps makes sense of them.

This is what much tragic art does. It takes the pain and the suffering and the sadness of the world and gives it meaning. As the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once put it, someone who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Ultimately, Adele’s songs will mean something different to each of us. We listen to sad music when we want to reflect, belong, or relax. We listen to experience beauty, receive comfort or reminisce.

But to all of us Adele’s songs say: you are not alone in your pain. They let us feel her pain, share our suffering, and connect with others past and present. And in the sharedness of our humanity is beauty.

Simon McCarthy-Jones, Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology, Trinity College Dublin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

With Russell T. Davies’ return, BBC loses creative control of “Doctor Who”

We’ve yet to witness all of what “Doctor Who” Season 13 has to offer, seeing as the series just premiered on Halloween night. But already, big changes are in the air for the series, with former showrunner Russell T. Davies returning to manage things for Season 14.

The announcement about Davies returning to run “Doctor Who” has been known for a little over a month now. And thanks to a report from The Times, we now know what else his return means for the series. According to their sources, “Davies . . . made his return next year contingent on the transfer of control to Bad Wolf, a production firm based in Wales.”

This means that the BBC, which has been behind the production of the series previously, will now essentially have to hand this control over to Davies’ and his team. And they’ll be missing out on a lot of money for Season 14 and onward because of this; The Times estimates that could be about £40 million in commercial revenue lost per 10 episodes.

A new future for “Doctor Who”?

The Bad Wolf production company was formed in 2015, which means they didn’t get to operate while Davies was the showrunner on “Doctor Who” back in 2005 and onward. But because the founders, Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter, worked as producers for the launch of “Doctor Who” back in 2005, it at least means we’re dealing with a studio that knows the series — and people who know Russell T. Davies.

Unfortunately, since we’re so far out from Season 14, the effects of this handover won’t be seen for quite some time. But seeing as “Doctor Who” is due for an extreme revamp, their confidence to not only bring Davies back but hand over control to Bad Wolf shows that they are serious about having this flagship television series perform better than before.

With Davies coming back, we’re likely to see old fans be more receptive to the series and the ideas that he brings to the table. And as Screen Rant mentions, Davies did attempt to expand the Who universe with the likes of “Torchwood” and “The Sarah Jane Adventures” well before the MCU and DCEU were doing their thing. So in order to grow “Doctor Who,” we might see Davies take this approach again by potentially spearheading some spinoffs or limited series based on some of the characters we’ll see in Season 14.

A horrifying COVID-19 side effect makes food taste and smell like garbage

At this point in the pandemic, it is well-known that loss of taste and smell is a common symptom of COVID-19. But a related, rarer and more frightening side effect occurs for some: when taste and smell is finally regained, their food doesn’t taste like how they remember it. Rather, it tastes like literal garbage.

“Ever since I’ve regained my smelling and taste back, I have smelled this smell and tasted this taste that is disgusting and I cannot figure out what it is,” explained one person in a story shared by the Covid Parosmia Support TikTok account. “I can no longer drink some of my favorite drinks or eat some of my favorite foods.” The recovering COVID-19 sufferer said she had to stop using her favorite body wash because the smell was so bad.

Many other users on TikTok have taken to the platform to share their struggles with the health disorder called parosmia, which is when smells can become distorted. For those who have parosmia, things that once smelled pleasant — like body wash, say — might now smell repulsive.

Typically, parosmia is caused by an upper respiratory tract infection, head injury, sinus problem, exposure to toxins, or due to a neurological condition like Parkinson’s disease. Now, it seems COVID-19 can be added to that list of causes.

“Parosmia can be caused by a number of things such as respiratory infections, seizures, and even brain tumors,” said Richard Orlandi, MD, an ear, nose, and throat physician and professor in the Department of Surgery at University of Utah Health. “We’ve noticed since the pandemic more COVID-recovered patients now report this symptom.”

While the disorder is generally temporary, some — like TikTok user HannahBaked — report that their struggle with parosmia lasts for many months.

“I put on my mask every time I use deodorant or perfume,” HannahBaked said in a video to her followers. “I cannot do most meats.”

She says she has been struggling with parosmia for 10 months.

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Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center, told Salon that it is unclear “how common parosmia is, but anosmia seems to be very common and these may get grouped together.” Anosmia means a complete loss of smell and taste, which is quite common with COVID-19.

According to one systematic review published in June 2020, 41 percent of 8,438 people with COVID-19 reported losing their sense of smell. Few studies have been conducted specifically on parosmia and COVID-19, specifically. However, out of the research conducted on the topic, it does appear to be somewhat common. According to a May 2021 study surveying 268 patients with parosmia over the course of 7 months, 91 percent of the people reported an altered quality of life.

“The daily perception of parosmia was unpleasant for the majority of our patients, and was typically described as sewage, moldy socks, rotten eggs, citrus, and rotten meat” smells being constant, the aforementioned researchers of the May 2021 study wrote. “All patients could identify the triggering stimuli eliciting parosmia.”

Participants reported that the parosmia lasted between 9 days and 6 months; the average duration of parosmia was 3.4 months.

Adalja said the cause of parosmia is likely similar to anosmia.

“It is likely the result of the same process that causes anosmia, which hasn’t been fully elucidated but occurs either through direct viral invasion, immune system inflammation, or some combination of these two elements,” Adalja said. “It can occur during initial infection as well.”

Indeed, the precise way in which COVID-19 causes parosmia remains unknown. As Adalja alluded to, it is possible that the coronavirus damages the receptors and nerves responsible for our sense of smell. The origin could have to do with inflammation, too.

However, like many side effects of COVID-19, more research is needed to find definitive answers.

“Right now, so little is known about the long-term effects of COVID-19,” Orlandi said. “All we really know is that the majority of patients do experience a return of their normal senses of taste and smell, but it’s unclear if and how many patients will get fully back to normal.”

For some, practicing a technique known as “small training” — which involves smelling the same group of scents for 20 seconds at a time — can help one recover from both anosmia and parosmia.

You don’t need an air fryer to make salty, sweet coconut chips

“The question I get asked most is, ‘How do I learn to cook without a recipe?'” Says writer and cookbook author Dawn Perry. “And that’s, just learning to cook. I liken it to getting from A to B on a map. If I’ve never been there before, I need directions. Once I’ve been there a couple of times, then I can throw away the maps and the apps.”

It’s true. The best way to become the kind of person who can put together some easy dishes from whatever is in the kitchen is to first understand how to cook. It’s not about becoming a chef with master level knife skills; it’s just about discovering your own tastes. It takes trying out recipes to learn that a dish is better if you double the garlic or add a squeeze of lemon (true, by the way, 90% of the time.). “But,” as Perry says, “It’s not very nice to push people beyond their comfort level. So I think you’ve got to give them some easily executed steps to build confidence.”

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Perry’s her new book, “Ready, Set, Cook: How To Make Good Food with What’s On Hand (No Fancy Skills, Fancy Equipment, or Fancy Budget Required)” delivers exactly what the title promises. It’s both a cookbook and a guidebook, a step-by-step outline for creating a real world kitchen routine to live with. Build a smart larder, cook a bunch of vegetables ahead of time and pull them out all week, and elevate it all with some homemade spice blends, marinades and crunchy things. Her recipes for comfort classics like pan roasted chicken thighs and pasta with meatballs deliver because they trust you, the home cook, to bring what you have on hand to the party.

I knew Perry was the virtual friend I wanted at my side as soon as I saw her croutons recipe — because if you’ve got croutons, you’re pretty much always halfway to dinner. I was likewise cheered to see her inclusion of a recipe for coconut crisps, the most addictive snack in the world.

I first started making coconut chips several years ago, when I developed an expensive addiction to a brand called Dang! chips. Making my own version in the oven was cheap and easy, and the end result was even better tasting than the original. Since then, I’ve branched out to chipping other foods as well — like apples and tomatoes. You don’t need any special equipment, just a little patience.

But coconut remains my top love. My recipe tweaks Perry’s a little; I omit the paprika and sub maple syrup for sugar. Feel free to improvise your own verison. These take all of two minutes to prepare, and you’ll want to put them on everything. They’re fantastic on yogurt or added to granola; they look very nice on top of a cake. The best way to enjoy them, however, is straight out of your hand whenever a hunger attack occurs. They’re perfect — salty, sweet, toasty and so, so crunchy.

***

Salty and sweet maple coconut chips

Inspired by Dawn Perry’s “Ready, Set, Cook”

Makes 1 cup

Ingredients:

1 cup of unsweetened coconut flakes (sometimes labeled coconut chips)
1/2 teaspoon of flaky salt
1 tablespoon of maple syrup
1 teaspoon of coconut or olive oil

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 300°F.
Line your largest baking sheet with parchment.
In a large bowl, toss coconut, salt, syrup and oil until well coated.
Spread your coconut all over the sheet and bake from 5 – 10 minutes, checking after 5. They should be lightly golden.
Remove from oven and let cool completely before storing, so they don’t steam and get limp.
Store in an airtight container up to three months — they will not last nearly that long.

More easy recipes we love:

Martha Stewart’s chocolate-and-pear pie is a seasonal must-try for brownie lovers

If we’ve learned anything about the cult-favorite cronuts — the love child of a croissant and donut — and brookies — another love child, now between a brownie and cookie — it’s that desserts are so much better when two signature recipes are meshed into one. That means double the sugar and chocolate and more servings of our favorite confectionary ingredients. After all, life is too short to restrict yourself of such indulgences and baked luxuries. So, why enjoy just one dessert when you can savor two at the same time?

To help satisfy our cravings and stir up some much-needed baking inspiration for the holiday season, Martha Stewart recently shared her fool-proof recipe for a decadent chocolate-and-pear pie. Her sweet concoction touts a fudgy brownie filling that’s encased in warm pie dough and topped off with sliced pears and candied ginger. Stewart recommends this brownie-pie hybrid for all the brownie lovers in our lives — seriously, this sophisticated delight is beckoning to earn its rightful spot on the family dinner table.

Start by preheating your oven to 350°F and whisking together butter, egg yolk, sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl. Once the mixture is airy, stir in the flour and knead to make a soft dough for the pie crust. Press the dough into a standard 9-inch pie dish and refrigerate until firm.

For the filling, whisk together more butter, sugar, eggs, egg white, vanilla, salt, cinnamon and cocoa until thick and glossy. Add in the flour, chopped baking chocolate and candied ginger. Then, slice the peeled pears before tossing them with lemon juice to prevent browning. Arrange a few of the slices in a single layer on the bottom of the chilled pie crust.

Pour the brownie batter into the crust and decorate the top with more pear halves before baking. The dessert is ready when it flaunts a wobbly center with well-done edges.

After the pie has cooled, serve it warm and à la mode with a scoop (or two) of vanilla ice cream or a dollop (or two) of fresh whipped cream. For an extra comforting touch, enjoy with a piping shot of espresso or a warm mug of homemade hot cocoa. Full recipe here.

More simple recipes we love:

Our best meal-prep ideas for better weeknight lunches and dinners

I don’t love to admit it, but before I joined the Food52 team, I was not a world-champion meal planner. I spent five years in an office where “lunch hour” meant: “pop out for quick takeaway.” And “weeknight dinner” meant: “the fantasy of an alternate universe where people leave work before 8:30 p.m.”

Accordingly, I struggled to get my act together when I first crossed the threshold of Food52 HQ. But, it turned out, all I had to do was look around. My new colleagues were like the Olympic Varsity All-Star Meal Planning team. (Is it too clear from that description that I’ve never watched sports?) They even wrote a book on it.

My first week on the job, come noon, I’d encounter a sudden onslaught of salads composed so beautifully, I’d wonder if there was a farmers’ market in the building I hadn’t yet noticed. People would wander out of the team kitchen with hunks of perfectly charred meat that looked like Francis Mallmann had spent days roasting and plating them. There were curried chickpea sandwiches. Bowls of pasta. Slices of warm cake.

And the way they talked about weeknight dinners: good god. These people were whipping up two-course meals like nobody’s business. (Sheet-pan chicken thighs! Chili! Once, I even heard someone mention a scallion crostata!)

Equal parts impressed and intimidated, I started to to pay close attention. I realized that their secret was creating a weekly meal plan so that they could have ready to eat meals for lunch and dinner. And by bringing colorful, wholesome, photo studio-ready meals to the office, they were also saving money from buying lunch at the cafeteria or one of the chain quick-service spots on the block. Here are my colleagues’ best tips for quick and easy meal planning, for work-from-home lunches and weeknight dinners alike:

1. Spreads and dips are your best friends

Keeping any number of spreads and dips—homemade over the weekend, or otherwise—is a game-changer when it comes to composing dinner in a flash—or adding a dollop of excitement to a pre-packed lunch.

Recipe: Homemade Hummus Is the Gift That Keeps on Giving

Say you throw together some pesto pasta on a Saturday. Double-down on pesto-batch-size, throw the leftovers in the fridge. And when Monday rolls around, smear it on a plate and top with a 5-minute broiled boneless chicken breast, and a wedge of lemon. Game over. Or dollop it on top of other leftovers, maybe buzz it into a quick salad dressing to make things interesting.

“Since I am an unabashed homemade mayonnaise and aioli lover, I like to make a big-ish batch and keep it in the fridge to use on everything,” says Brinda Ayer, our Director of Content. “To spread on toast, thin out to use as a salad dressing, dip sweet-potato wedges into, eat by the spoonful (yep).”

2. Tonight’s dinner should absolutely be tomorrow’s lunch

If you’re like former Senior Editor Eric Kim, then you don’t underestimate the value of cooking for six to eight on the weekend—in order to eat for one throughout the workweek.

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m a pretty lazy cook if I’m being 1,000% honest,” he tells me. “Even when I’m making a big batch of chicken or beef stroganoff or a simple steak dinner for one, I’ll find any excuse to cut corners so that I’m left with gargantuan amounts of leftovers to repurpose into extra meals later, especially lunch.”

“Oh, but this?” he chuckles. “Yeah . . . this is just Papa John’s from last night. It’s been a long week.”

3. Keep a few lunch essentials at work

Do yourself a favor and keep a few ingredients you’ll want to use over and over at work, like a bottle of olive oil, your vinegar-of-choice, hot sauce, salt, and pepper. Then, you can make like my fellow Recipe Developer and Food Writer Emma Laperruque and very quickly compose beautiful salads on-the-fly, by bringing your leafy greens and any surprise accoutrements day-of. Emma brings in a giant container of chopped veggies on Monday, and uses them in salads all week long.

4. Make the feezer your sous-chef

“My freezer is my best friend,” says former Assistant Editor Katie Macdonald. “I love making big batches of soup or chili on Sunday nights, then freezing leftovers for my future-self. On days I know I’m swamped, I’ll pull my frozen container out in the morning and let it defrost in the fridge all day. It’s the best thing to come home to.”

Katie, can I come over for dinner?

“Also a freezer fan!” says Marketing Manager Luz Ramirez. “I have a vacuum sealer, so I usually double my meals and freeze half—sometimes uncooked, so I have a fresh meal. P.S. Always have frozen cookie dough on hand.”

5. Storage is key

Don’t underestimate the importance of storage vessels.

For pre-prepped lunch and weeknight dinner components, having containers you can see right intothat stack well will facilitate super easy grab-and-run-with-it dinner riffs.

“I don’t follow a meal plan guide, per se, but I am a fan of overcooking on Sundays to have at least a couple of leftover options for our lunchboxes and dinners through Wednesday (that’s the goal, at least),” says former Senior Lifestyle Editor Hana Asbrink. “Things like big-batch Bolognese or other meaty mains, lasagna, pans of roasted veg, lots of hard-boiled eggs; they all get put into storage containers and are doled out over the next few days. Having cute and functional lunch boxes and bentos always seems to motivate me, but perhaps I’m alone in that?”

Grab a “lunchbox” that fits in your typical work-bag (or has its own handle!), and is oriented in the way you eat—which is to say, if you bring lots of little components or snacks, pick one with separate compartments.

6. Embrace the whimsy

Meal planning is great and all—and, with my colleagues’ A++ intel, pretty easy to tackle—but sometimes, the best plan is no plan at all.

“Dinners are sometimes more of a whimsical affair, often inspired by something I pass at the corner market on Columbus Ave., or an unwanted root vegetable or spice left by a coworker,” says Copywriter Maggie Slover. “They function as a sign post for the rest of the meal and give me a chance to be a little more spontaneous and creative without breaking the bank.”

7. Snacks are a key

Meal prepping implies planning breakfast, lunch, and dinner in advance, but Staff Writer Kelly Vaughan also likes to prepare a big batch of snacks. On Sunday night, she slices multiple bell peppers, cucumbers, carrots, and other crisp, crunchy snackable vegetables. “I am much more likely to eat a proper serving of vegetables throughout the day if they’re pre-cut and ready to grab by the handful. It’s an easy answer to when I say to myself ‘I want a snack, but I’m not actually hungry,'” she said. Plus, chopped veggies can double as an accoutrement to a pre-dinner grazing board or get tossed into a salad for lunch or dinner.

8. Shop intentionally

Instead of going to the grocery store and shopping aimlessly, just picking up the same produce, snacks, protein, and dairy products that you always reach for, make a list ahead of time. Sit down and think about your meals for the week, choose a few recipes, and only buy the ingredients you need. While this isn’t exactly meal planning, it will help eliminate food waste because you’re only buying what you plan to cook with immediately. And, come Tuesday or Wednesday night, cooking dinner will be a breeze. You will have already thought about what you’re going to cook and will have everything on hand so you can dive right in.

34 meal prep ideas and recipes

1. Crisp and Tender Roasted Root Vegetables

No matter which root vegetables you have in your kitchen, this foolproof roasting method from our co-founder, Merrill Stubbs, makes sure they come out crisp and tender every time.

2. Tahini Roasted Broccoli

A drizzle of nutty tahini and bright lemon juice takes otherwise average roasted broccoli and transforms it into a can’t-stop-eating-it dish you’ll have to make a concerted effort not to finish off in one go.

3. Roasted Cauliflower with Cumin and Cilantro

This lightly spicy cauliflower dish adds just the right zing to any meal-prepped lunch—we like to pack it with grain bowls, salads, or roasted chicken.

4. Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pears and Pistachios

This five-ingredient side matches up sweet and salty flavors, and soft and crunchy textures for a sheet-pan dish you’ll want to add to your meal prep rotation ASAP.

5. Pomegranate Roasted Carrots

If you don’t have pomegranate molasses already in your kitchen, you can easily sub in balsamic vinegar for these tangy-sticky roasted carrots (though stocking up on a bottle is highly recommended).

6. Lemon-Roasted Potatoes with Kalamatas

Roasted potatoes are an easy meal prep staple, so you’ll probably want plenty of ideas for riffing on them throughout the year. Our contribution: lemony sheet-pan potatoes with smoky spices and tart kalamata olives.

7. 5-Minute Hummus from Zahav Restaurant

Making hummus from scratch can easily turn into an hours-long affair, so you can thank us later for introducing this five-minute version from Chef Michael Solomonov to your meal prep-ertoire.

8. Roasted Red Pepper, and Cauliflower Dip

Equal parts creamy and perky, this roasted red pepper and cauliflower dip (that just so happens to be Whole30-friendly) welcomes all manner of crunchy pairings, from sliced vegetables to crackers.

9. Labneh Bi Toum

This thick, lemony Middle Eastern staple makes a great dip or spread, yes, but it also works nicely under a salad of seasonal vegetables and herbs.

10. Bright Red Beet Hummus

No chickpeas here—cooked beets and walnuts give this hummus its bright-red color and dip-able structure, while tahini, lemon, and cumin bring pops of flavor.

11. Sheet-Pan Chicken and Cauliflower Bake

If you’re not a cauliflower fan, feel free to swap in any sturdy vegetable, like broccoli, carrots, or fennel, for starters.

12. Sheet-Pan Shrimp Scampi For One

A double batch of this sheet-pan shrimp scampi can take you in a few different directions throughout the week, from salads to rice bowls.

13. Roasted Sweet Potato, Chickpea, and Kale Sheet-Pan Salad

If you don’t feel like making a bunch of different recipes to eat throughout the week, make just one: this vegetarian-friendly sheet-pan salad starring big, bold flavors you’ll want to eat over and over again.

14. Sheet-Pan Pork Chops and Vegetables with Parsley Vinaigrette

For meal prep in a hurry, whip up these sheet-pan pork chops with roasty potatoes and carrots—the whole thing’s ready to portion out and pack in just about an hour.

15. Sheet-Pan Chicken with Broccoli, Chickpeas, and Parmesan

This sheet-pan chicken dinner (or next day’s lunch!) gets five stars pretty much across the board for its speed, ease, and smart use of straightforward ingredients.

16. Sheet-Pan Roasted Salmon with Tomatoes and Fennel

Get your dose of Omega-3s with this sheet-pan roasted salmon dressed in a classic combo of garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, capers, dill, and Dijon mustard.

17. Sheet-Pan Za’atar Chicken with Carrot and Avocado Salad

This punchy sheet-pan chicken makes a crowd-friendly dinner one night, and a totally riff-able salad (mix in more greens, extra feta, fresh avocado slices, and the like) the next day.

18. Sheet-Pan Chicken with Potatoes, Olives, and Herbs

You can tell we’re into sheet-pan chicken, huh? This fuss-free recipe is ready an under an hour, and a double batch makes an excellent meal to enjoy throughout the week.

19. Coconut and Red Curry Lentil Stew with Sweet Potatoes

This hearty, cozy stew might actually taste better the next day (and lasts about three days in the fridge), which we think makes it an excellent meal-prep candidate.

20. Turmeric Chickpea Soup with Charred Brussels Sprouts

This creamy turmeric soup can be frozen for up to three months, in case you’re planning way ahead.

21. Instant Pot Polenta

This batch of Instant Pot polenta can go a long way throughout the week—top it with braised or grilled meats, stewy lentils, or roasted veggies.

22. Easy, Creamy Vegan Salad Dressing

If salads are a part of your meal-prep game plan, consider this creamy vegan salad dressing a must.

23. White Bean and Tuna Salad with Hard Boiled Eggs and Dukkah

The limits of this white bean and tuna salad only go so far as your imagination; we’re dreaming of using it for sandwiches, salads, or heck, even on its own.

24. Couscous Salad with Zucchini, Lemon, and Ricotta Salata

One reviewer said it best: “Super easy recipe that tastes great!”

25. Radish and Pecan Grain Salad

This hardy, grain-packed salad (we’re talking farro, wild rice, quinoa, and barley) won’t wilt as it sits in the fridge, waiting for you to take it to work.

26. One-Pot Kale and Quinoa Pilaf

Add a bit of grilled chicken to this one-pot pilaf (which just so happens to be one of our most popular recipes of all time) and you’ve got yourself a very-satisfying lunch.

27. Farro with Roasted Sweet Potato, Kale, and Pomegranate Seeds

If you’re unsure whether this dish belongs in your meal prep rotation, let this community member’s review help you decide: “I’ve had this recipe on my list for a while and finally made it last night. It was delicious!”

28. Tomato Rice (Tamatar Biryani)

Make this aromatic tomato rice during the colder months when you’re bound to be in the mood for something cozy and comforting. Meal prep bonus: it reheats in the microwave well.

29. Slow-Cooker Whole Squash with Spelt and Feta

Take a hands-off approach to meal prep with this slow-cooker squash you can set and forget on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and enjoy throughout the week.

30. Quinoa Salad with Hazelnuts, Apple, and Dried Cranberries

Quino, like most grains, makes a great base for all types of toppings. In this case, barely-cooked onions and celery, toasted hazelnuts, and dried cranberries.

31. Northern Spy’s Kale Salad

Don’t worry about the kale getting sad and droopy as it hangs out in the fridge—one reviewer said they regularly make it on Sunday nights for lunch throughout the week (and it’s always good).

32. Charred Broccoli and Lentil Salad

Make this surprisingly delicious salad once and we bet you’ll keep broccoli, lentils, and tahini stocked in your kitchen on the regular.

33. Chickpea “Tuna” Salad

“If you’re looking for tuna salad, turn back now.”

34. Crunchy Cabbage Salad with Miso-Ginger Dressing

This completely vegan salad is especially nice over brown rice with sliced avocado or—if you eat meat—under just about any grilled protein.

“What happened on Jan. 6, Senator?” Dr. Fauci blasts Ted Cruz for threatening to put him in jail

Dr. Anthony Fauci fired back at Sen. Ted Cruz this weekend after the conservative Texas firebrand suggested he should be prosecuted for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Fauci, who served as the top White House medical adviser under both Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden, made the comments during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.

“I have to laugh at that,” Fauci told host Margaret Brennan when asked about Cruz’ comments. “I should be prosecuted? What happened on Jan. 6, Senator?”

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

“Do you think that this is about making you a scapegoat to deflect from President Trump?” Brennan immediately followed up.

“Of course,” Fauci said. “You’d have to be asleep not to figure that one out.”

“I’m just going to do my job,” he added. “And I’m going to be saving lives and they’re going to be lying.”

Watch below via Twitter:

Lawmakers like Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have called for Dr. Fauci to step down and be prosecuted over the course of COVID-19. Fauci scoffs at such threats, calling it "noise."

"They're really criticizing science because I represent science. That's dangerous." pic.twitter.com/zLzceD2DHe

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) November 28, 2021

From “Jeopardy!” to “Trivial Pursuit,” how LeVar Burton’s latest lesson is one to inspire us all

It’s been a mixed bag, 2021.

What began with a bud of relief that society was trending toward some version of normalcy was squashed under the boot of an attempted insurrection six days into the new year. We enjoyed the fantastic returns of “Succession” and Adele. Joe Rogan become the unofficial health expert of the anti-vaxxer crowd.

Let’s not forget that weeks before the ball dropped in Times Square fans launched a campaign for LeVar Burton to succeed the late Alex Trebek as the host of “Jeopardy!” Momentum snowballed and the enthusiasm surrounding that dream provided yet another mote of optimism.

Nearly a year hence, we know how that turned out – although we could not have predicted that this story’s trip through Disappointment Pass would drive by a number of kooky choices selected by execs at “Jeopardy!”‘s producing studio Sony Pictures Television.

In case you’ve forgotten, before giving Burton a tryout, Sony and former “Jeopardy!” executive producer frat bro Mike Richards picked celebrity quack Dr. Mehmet Oz as a guest host before giving Burton a shot along with Green Bay Packers star Aaron Rodgers, who lied about his vaccination status before contracting COVID. Wisely he sought out treatment advice from, yes, Joe Rogan. Who would have thought a brand associated with general knowledge and facts would be so few degrees removed from both Dr. Oz and Joe Rogan?

Be that as it may, because of the brouhaha surrounding Sony’s bungling the selection of Trebek’s successor – for the time being that duty is being shared by Mayim Bialik, who may also be problematic, and Ken Jennings – many more of us emotionally invested in the syndicated trivia show than we had for much of our lives.

And while that didn’t do great things for the institution’s reputation, it only resulted in good things for Burton.

Having officially entered the month of “best of 2021” lists and contemplative retrospectives covering the year that was, it’s tempting to focus on the definite superlatives or acknowledge important events we’ll be happy to leave in the past.

Burton’s 2021 chapter is a spectacular journey through the peaks and valleys of possibility that was public, and painful at times, but ends in a way that should please anybody contemplating a daring leap.

In the simplest breakdown of events, strangers and friends made a passionate suggestion that he should be given a shot at one of the best and most respected gigs on TV and he responded not with false humility but by saying, “Yes, actually, I’d make a great host, I’ll take that shot.”

That’s not how business is generally done in the entertainment industry or most others. These deals are forged quietly, behind closed doors. Such was the case with the eventual and troubling selection of Richards, who was wrong for the job in every way.

But “Jeopardy!” made a show of auditioning contenders to replace Trebek, even if it ended up being an empty one. Burton was right to declare his desire out loud. In a New York Times profile he admitted that if he didn’t get it he’d be upset, but also philosophically observed, “That which is mine, no one can take away. That which is not meant for me, no amount of wishing or stamping my feet will make it so.”

All of that let the world know that Burton’s heart was in this effort. That set him up for heartbreak when it didn’t go his way. Sony made itself a target of outrage on its own, though, by announcing Richards as the next host. Then The Ringer did what the studio failed to do and dug into Richard’s troubling past, discovering multiple allegations of gender discrimination and a library of podcast episodes that include antisemitic and misogynistic slurs.

Meanwhile, the public discovered Burton’s soothing podcast that uplifts reading and literacy, and Burton himself began courting offers. It’s poetic, truly. A dream launched last year around this time with a fan-fueled quest to host “Jeopardy!” lands with Burton securing a gig to host another show that champions intelligent and breadth of knowledge: the TV resurrection of “Trivial Pursuit,” Hasbro’s popular family game, co-produced by Entertainment One Ltd (eOne) and LeVar Burton Entertainment (LBE).

“Trivial Pursuit” had previous tryouts on TV, with Wink Martindale hosting its first serialized incarnation in 1993 and 1994 for cable’s Family Channel, Freeform’s ancestor, with Christopher Knight stepping into the hosting role for a year in 2008 when Hasbro attempted to syndicate it as “Trivial Pursuit: America Plays.”

Knight is best known for playing Peter Brady, not teaching generations of children how to read or navigating the stars in an iconic science fiction series. No show’s success or failure lies solely in whether the host fits the gig, but it certainly helps. That already places Burton in a position to fulfill his quest to helm a trivia show, and one he can shape to suit him. We can’t know whether that would have happened if he hadn’t loudly, confidently answered his fandom’s call to step into contention for a role Sony wouldn’t have considered him for on its own, and still didn’t after tens of thousands of people signed a petition.

Finding inspirational parables about life and truth in our fictions is easy, be they televised or written on the page. Popular culture invites us to draw inspiration from real people, too, although so often the image we’re presented is manipulated and edited to fit whatever dream a studio or a label is selling.

Burton provided a window into an unvarnished step-to-step tumble through hope and letdown that parked at year’s end on a positive score. In its own way he rode the same fast-moving current as the millions of workers who decided life was too short not to try for something better, even if whatever that was had yet to present itself.

Burton boldly took his shot, for the win. There’s nothing to read into that but inspiration.

More stories like this:

Noam Chomsky discusses the path to a livable future

This month will mark a critical juncture in the struggle to avoid climate catastrophe. At the COP26 global climate summit kicking off next week in Glasgow, Scotland, negotiators will be faced with the urgent need to get the world economy off the business-as-usual track that will take the Earth up to and beyond 3 degrees Celsius of excess heating before this century’s end, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Yet so far, the pledges of rich nations to cut greenhouse-gas emissions have been far too weak to rein in the temperature rise. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s climate plans hang in the balance. If Congress fails to pass the reconciliation bill, the next opportunity for the United States to take effective climate action may not arise until it’s too late.

For the past several decades, Noam Chomsky has been one of the most forceful and persuasive voices confronting injustice, inequity, and the threat posed by human-caused climate chaos to civilization and the Earth. I was eager to know Professor Chomsky’s views on the roots of our current dire predicament and on humanity’s prospects for emerging from this crisis into a livable future. He very graciously agreed to speak with me by way of a video chat. The text here is an abridged version of a conversation we had on October 1, 2021.

Professor Chomsky, now 92, is the author of numerous best-selling political works, translated into scores of languages. His critiques of power and advocacy on behalf of the political agency of the common person have inspired generations of activists and organizers. He has been institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1976. His most recent books are “Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance,” with Marv Waterstone, and “Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet,” with Robert Pollin and C.J. Polychroniou.

***

Stan Cox: Most of the nations that will be meeting in Glasgow for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference on October 31-November 12, 2021, have made emissions-reduction pledges. For the most part, those pledges are wholly inadequate. What principles do you think should guide the effort to prevent climate catastrophe?

Noam Chomsky: The initiators of the Paris Agreement intended to have a binding treaty, not voluntary agreements, but there was an impediment. It’s called the Republican Party. It was clear that the Republican Party would never accept any binding commitments. The Republican organization, which has lost any pretense of being a normal political party, is almost solely dedicated to the welfare of the super-rich and the corporate sector, and cares absolutely nothing about the population or the future of the world. The Republican organization would never have accepted a treaty. In response, the organizers reduced their goal to a voluntary agreement, which has all the difficulties that you mentioned.

We’ve lost six years, four under the Trump administration which was openly dedicated to maximizing the use of fossil fuels and dismantling the regulatory apparatus that, to some extent, had limited their lethal effects. To some extent, these regulations protected sectors of the population from pollution, mostly the poor and people of color. But they’re the ones who, of course, face the main burden of pollution. It’s the poor people of the world who live in what Trump called “shithole countries” that suffer the most; they have contributed the least to the disaster, and they suffer the worst.

It doesn’t have to be this way. As you write in your new book, “The Path to a Liveable Future,” there is indeed a path to a livable future. There are ways to have responsible, sane, and racially just policies. It’s up to all of us to demand them, something young people around the world are already doing.

Other countries have their own things to answer for, but the United States has one of the worst records in the world. The United States blocked the Paris Agreement before Trump eventually got into office. But it was under Trump’s instructions that the United States pulled out of the agreement altogether.

If you look over at the more sane Democrats, who are far from guiltless, there are people called moderates like Senator Joe Manchin (D–WV), the leading recipient of fossil-fuel funding, whose position is that of the fossil-fuel companies, which is, as he put it, no elimination, just innovation. That’s Exxon Mobil’s view, too: “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you,” they say. “We’re a soulful corporation. We’re investing in some futuristic ways to remove from the atmosphere the pollution that we’re pouring into it. Everything’s fine, just trust us.” No elimination, just innovation, which may or may not come and if it does, it will probably be too late and too limited.

Take the IPCC report that just appeared. It was much more dire than previous ones and said we must eliminate fossil fuels step by step, every year, and be free of them completely within a few decades. A few days after the report was released, Joe Biden issued a plea to the OPEC oil cartel to increase production, which would lower gas prices in the United States and improve his position with the population. There was immediate euphoria in the petroleum journals. There’s lots of profit to be made, but at what expense? It was nice to have the human species for a couple of hundred thousand years, but evidently that’s long enough. After all, the average lifespan of a species on Earth is apparently around 100,000 years. So why should we break the record? Why organize for a just future for all when we can trash the planet helping rich corporations get richer?

SC: Ecological catastrophe is closing in on us largely because, as you once put it, “the entire socioeconomic system is based on production for profit and a growth imperative that cannot be sustained.” However, it seems that only state authority can implement the necessary changes in ways that are equitable, fair, and just. Given the emergency we face, do you think that the U.S. government would be able to justify imposing national-resource constraints like rules for resource allocation or fair-shares rationing, policies that would necessarily limit the freedom of local communities and individuals in their material lives?

NC: Well, we have to face some realities. I would like to see a move towards a more free and just society — production for need rather than production for profit, working people able to control their own lives instead of subordinating themselves to masters for almost their entire waking life. The time required for succeeding at such efforts is simply too great for addressing this crisis. That means we need to solve this within the framework of existing institutions, which can be ameliorated.

The economic system of the last 40 years has been particularly destructive. It’s inflicted a major assault on most of the population, resulting in a huge growth in inequality and attacks on democracy and the environment.

A livable future is possible. We don’t have to live in a system in which the tax rules have been changed so that billionaires pay lower rates than working people. We don’t have to live in a form of state capitalism in which the lower 90% of income earners have been robbed of approximately $50 trillion, for the benefit of a fraction of 1%. That’s the estimate of the RAND Corporation, a serious underestimate if we look at other devices that have been used. There are ways of reforming the existing system within basically the same framework of institutions. I think they ought to change, but it would have to be over a longer timescale.

The question is: Can we prevent climate catastrophe within the framework of less savage state capitalist institutions? I think there’s a reason to believe that we can, and there are very careful, detailed proposals as to how to do it, including ones in your new book, as well as the proposals of my friend and co-author, economist Robert Pollin, who’s worked many of these things out in great detail. Jeffrey Sachs, another fine economist, using somewhat different models, has come to pretty much the same conclusions. These are pretty much along lines of proposals of the International Energy Association, by no means a radical organization, one that grew out of the energy corporations. But they all have essentially the same picture.

There’s, in fact, even a congressional resolution by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey which outlines proposals that are pretty close to this. And I think it’s all within the range of feasibility. Their cost estimates of 2% to 3% of GDP, with feasible efforts, would not only address the crisis, but would create a more livable future, one without pollution, without traffic jams, and with more constructive, productive work, better jobs. All of this is possible.

But there are serious barriers — the fossil-fuel industries, the banks, the other major institutions, which are designed to maximize profit and not care about anything else. After all, that was the announced slogan of the neoliberal period — the economic guru Milton Friedman’s pronouncement that corporations have no responsibility to the public or to the workforce, that their total responsibility is to maximize profit for the few.

For public-relations reasons, fossil-fuel corporations like ExxonMobil often portray themselves as soulful and benevolent, working day and night for the benefit of the common good. It’s called greenwashing.

SC: Some of the most widely discussed methods for capturing and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would consume vast quantities of biomass produced on hundreds of millions or billions of acres, thereby threatening ecosystems and food production, largely in low-income, low-emissions nations. A group of ethicists and other scholars recently wrote that a “core principle” of climate justice is that “the urgent, basic needs of poor people and poor countries ought to be secured against the effects of climate change and of measures taken to limit” climate change. That would seem to clearly rule out these “emit carbon now, capture it later” plans, and there are other examples of what we might call “climate-mitigation imperialism.” Do you think that the world may be faced with more and more of this sort of exploitation as temperatures rise? And what do you think about these proposals for bioenergy and carbon capture?

NC: It’s totally immoral, but it’s standard practice. Where does waste go? It doesn’t go in your backyard, it goes to places like Somalia that can’t protect themselves. The European Union, for example, has been dumping its atomic wastes and other pollution off the coast of Somalia, harming the fishing areas and local industries. It’s horrendous.

The latest IPCC report calls for an end to fossil fuels. The hope is that we can avert the worst and reach a sustainable economy within a couple of decades. If we don’t do that, we will reach irreversible tipping points and the people most vulnerable — those least responsible for the crisis — will suffer first and most severely from the consequences. People living in the plains of Bangladesh, for example, where powerful cyclones cause extraordinary damage. People living in India, where the temperature can go over 120 degrees Fahrenheit in summer. Many may witness parts of the world becoming unlivable.

There were recent reports by Israeli geoscientists condemning its government for not taking account of the effect of the policies they are pursuing, including developing new gas fields in the Mediterranean. They developed an analysis that indicated that, within a couple of decades, over the summer, the Mediterranean would be reaching the heat of a Jacuzzi, and the low-lying plains would be inundated. People would still live in Jerusalem and Ramallah, but flooding would impact much of the population. Why not change course to prevent this?

SC: The neoclassical economics underlying these injustices lives on in economic climate models known as “integrated assessment models,” which come down to cost-benefit analyses based on the so-called social cost of carbon. With these projections, are economists seeking to gamble away the right of future generations to a decent life?

NC: We have no right to gamble with the lives of the people in South Asia, in Africa, or people in vulnerable communities in the United States. You want to do analyses like that in your academic seminar? OK, go ahead. But don’t dare translate it into policy. Don’t dare to do that.

There’s a striking difference between physicists and economists. Physicists don’t say, hey, let’s try an experiment that might destroy the world, because it would be interesting to see what would happen. But economists do that. On the basis of neoclassical theories, they instituted a major revolution in world affairs in the early 1980s that took off with Carter, and accelerated with Reagan and Thatcher. Given the power of the United States compared with the rest of the world, the neoliberal assault, a major experiment in economic theory, had a devastating result. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Their motto has been, “Government is the problem.”

That doesn’t mean you eliminate decisions; it just means you transfer them. Decisions still have to be made. If they’re not made by government, which is, in a limited way, under popular influence, they will be made by concentrations of private power, which have no accountability to the public. And following the Friedman instructions, have no responsibility to the society that gave them the gift of incorporation. They have only the imperative of self-enrichment.

Margaret Thatcher then comes along and says there is no such thing as society, just atomized individuals who are somehow managing in the market. Of course, there is a small footnote that she didn’t bother to add: for the rich and powerful, there is plenty of society. Organizations like the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, ALEC, all kinds of others. They get together, they defend themselves, and so on. There is plenty of society for them, just not for the rest of us. Most people have to face the ravages of the market. And, of course, the rich don’t. Corporations count on a powerful state to bail them out every time there’s some trouble. The rich have to have the powerful state — as well as its police powers — to be sure nobody gets in their way.

SC: Where do you see hope?

NC: Young people. In September, there was an international climate strike; hundreds of thousands of young people came out to demand an end to environmental destruction. Greta Thunberg recently stood up at the Davos meeting of the great and powerful and gave them a sober talk on what they’re doing. “How dare you,” she said, “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” You have betrayed us. Those are words that should be seared into everyone’s consciousness, particularly people of my generation who have betrayed them and continue to betray the youth of the world and the countries of the world.

We now have a struggle. It can be won, but the longer it’s delayed, the more difficult it’ll be. If we’d come to terms with this ten years ago, the cost would have been much less. If the U.S. hadn’t been the only country to refuse the Kyoto Protocol, it would have been much easier. Well, the longer we wait, the more we’ll betray our children and our grandchildren. Those are the choices. I don’t have many years; others of you do. The possibility for a just and sustainable future exists, and there’s plenty that we can do to get there before it’s too late.

Would you pay someone to listen to you vent? The rise of “professional listeners”

When Lucy set up her psychiatric stand, charging her friends five cents a session in that famous Peanuts comic strip, was she on to something? Don’t we all have a friend, family member, or even work acquaintance who has called us up or stopped us in the breakroom to rant about something, unchecked? What if, in these moments, we sent these people an invoice? What if we understood listening as not just a skill, but a job we could get paid for — maybe even paid a lot for?

These questions are top of mind to New Yorker Chris Keise. A former Long Island Seahawks football player–turned personal trainer, gym manager, and standup comedian, Keise is eager to talk about storytelling, listening, and the particular kind of loneliness rife in a city where you’re never really alone. His words are dotted with aphorisms, his voice deep and piney like a seasoned voiceover actor. And he has a new side project: Just a couple months ago, Keise started working part-time as a professional listener.

“I wouldn’t accuse myself of being a super-sharp, over-educated person,” he says, “but I will give myself that I’m observant. And I feel like people are not really in touch with one another. Especially with Covid … And perhaps they don’t have anybody to really turn to, to talk about it.”

And so, Keise did what many entrepreneurial-minded people do when they notice an unfilled niche: He posted an ad on Craigslist. He’ll admit, he hasn’t talked to a ton of people; he hasn’t been doing the work that long. But about three times a week, he gets a call.

The first interaction is free and then, clients pay $20 for a thirty-minute conversation in which they can just talk. What’s bothering them? Overwhelming them? Who do they miss and why do they miss them? There are the calls from people who have just moved to the city, the calls from those who are lonely, the call he once got from a young man who wanted to talk about the challenges of being a gay man isolated in the Bronx.

“At the end of the day,” Keise told him, “we all owe it to ourselves, especially in this city, to make ourselves available to the world.” Is he a new kind of Dear Abby, doling out advice, small insights, validations?

If you ask him, part of his ability to listen, professionally, has to do with knowing when to let someone go on, unchecked. “If they need somebody to just talk to and connect,” he says, “then I’ll be that ear. Because I understand, it’s not always possible for some people.”

Though his service is unique, Keise is not the only one providing it. Listening is no longer just a skill, but an industry — one that monetizes the ability to have, sometimes deliberately, one-sided conversations. And as an industry, it has been growing throughout the pandemic.

Sandra Bodin-Lerner, also based in New York City, works as a communication coach while also teaching courses on listening at both Montclair State and Kean University, and simultaneously serving as Vice President of Membership on the board of the International Listening Association. The ILA has been around for forty years and has a paying membership base that extends across three different continents. Approaching listening from a wide variety of interdisciplinary contexts, members include researchers, lawyers, doctors, life coaches.

Bodin-Lerner remembers the sheer influx of clients and members who reached out to her during the pandemic. Suddenly, people were asking: How do we establish connections over Zoom? How do we communicate? How do we get better at listening?

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“We quit jobs because we don’t feel heard,” Bodin-Lerner says, “or we leave marriages and romantic relationships because you don’t feel heard by your partner or understood. People complain about it, but they don’t really do much to get better at it.” The challenge of teaching someone to listen? Showing them, first, just how few of us are good at it to begin with. And for everyone who feels they need to get better at listening, twice as many people feel they need to be heard.

Anthony Nosike in Union, New Jersey, who started work as a professional listener in July, said it wasn’t necessarily about monetizing this ability to make people feel heard. The Union County College student, studying psychology, says he was inspired by a friend who committed suicide in April. He believes it was the isolation of the pandemic that triggered the suicide.

Unlike Keise, Nosike doesn’t charge for his listening sessions, though he admits he’d “like to get paid some day.” His Craiglist ad reads, “Need a friend?” followed by a very short paragraph that includes a lofty promise: “My name is Anthony. I’ll help you feel loved by being a good listener to you.”

But despite such a grandiose assurance, on the phone Nosike is quick to clarify why people call him and why he does this. “People need listeners,” he says. And though most of his clients call him to vent, many want to talk about love, or loneliness — ubiquitous struggles that became unignorable in the social isolation of a pandemic.

“I know what it’s like to be lonely, suicidal, depressed,” he says. But he is amazed by the stories of what people have been able to overcome. And he says that his personal goal, in both his listening and his real life, to ensure that “everybody who crosses my path leaves feeling better.”

This desire to help through listening is echoed by Tiffany Himes, who founded NY Listens, a professional listening service, a year and a half ago. With a background in both journalism and grief counseling, and experience with active listening at a pregnancy resource center where she spoke to women dealing with the shock of unexpected pregnancies, Himes charges $30 for a half-hour call and $50 for a full hour, according to her website.

“I did sell seashells by the seashore with my brother growing up,” she jokes, “but I’m not much of an entrepreneur . . . My grandfather always said everyone has a story. That always stuck with me.”

It was this belief that inspired her to found NY Listens. And though she admits she hasn’t been heavily marketing her company, she says she was influenced by the quiet revelation she had while talking with expectant mothers: People very often end up being their own best teachers.

Himes is not a therapist. She’s careful to make this distinction. She believes professional listening is not a replacement for therapy. At the same time, she says, “I thought a professional listener would really help cut through the fear that people have of the medical field. Of being analyzed, of being diagnosed.”

Keise, who recognizes a similar anxiety towards therapy, floats a different idea: “I didn’t graduate with a psychology degree. But I kind of wonder, do you really need that psychology degree? The truth of the matter is, we live for, more or less, the same things.”

Does this mean that our shared desires are the only supplies we need to effectively listen? Indeed, we live in an age of alternatives. Is professional listening just another one? And where is the demand coming from?

Himes stresses the sheer amount of time it takes to find a professional mental healthcare provider. Or the cost, even after insurance — if you have it — kicks in. Even though some of these healthcare apps and sites provide the professional of all professional listeners — licensed therapists — Himes thinks these services might be more of a turnoff than one might think.

“That can be nice if you feel like you really need a professional and you’re looking for a diagnosis. But in some ways, I think a lot of people aren’t. A lot of people are at a point in their lives where they want change.”

She is a bit giddy to share a recent idea. She has noticed that sometimes, people call because they might just want to share a secret. And in the face of this desire, they face a question: “Who do you call?”

Who do you call? A microcosm for a larger, pandemic-related dread. Who is willing to listen to individual suffering, or even just individual secret-sharing, in a time when suffering is so universal? Who will listen when everyone has something to say?

These aren’t new questions. Just as loneliness or the desire to be heard is not new. But their persisting relevance, and the professional listening services that respond to them, can be seen as a litmus test for the extent to which we are willing to invest, or turn to the web’s wide void for answers. It also represents a certain type of social alienation that may drive some to seek out gig economy resources that could help. Or, that could leave us terribly exposed. How do you protect yourself when you are so desperate to find someone you can trust?

Dr. Sofia Noori, a clinical instructor at the Yale Department of Psychiatry and former chief resident of digital psychiatry, says there is an ethical gray area when wellness services and mental health services are mistaken for each other.

“I tend to think of digital mental health products as either being clinical,” she says, “or something that’s more like wellness . . . something someone voluntarily engages in. And the regulatory landscape around what wellness is is very, very murky.” Dr. Noori has followed, for example, the growing cottage industry that is known as coaching. Essentially, she says, coaches find a way to provide therapeutic services in a “downshifted” way that doesn’t always require licensing or regulation.

Dr. Noori wonders: is professional listening just another extension of coaching? Meaning, a way to provide some type of therapy in an even more “downshifted” manner?

“Some of the coaches can do very, very good work,” she says, “but on the other hand it’s very confusing for patients. The quality is incredibly variable, and there’s a lot of danger in that.” After all, will listeners or coaches recognize if a client needs more help than they can provide? Especially if those listeners are untrained, and especially if there is no regulatory precedent that demands training?

Guided by these lingering questions, Dr. Noori only sees the digitization of mental healthcare resources growing. “This just brings up this bigger problem where mental health services are so highly needed and there’s not enough practitioners. And so people are like, ‘there’s all these opportunities to offer care…'”

The demand for more accessible resources has grown in the face of a pandemic that has left the mental healthcare industry so overburdened. In August 2020, the CDC published a study that surveyed adults across the U.S. and found that 41% reported at least one adverse mental or behavioral health condition.

But, even if access is a completely valid concern, why becomes a question with its own odd echo chamber. Why pay a stranger, and why pay a stranger whose qualifications may be totally unverifiable?

For Claire G. (who prefers to not share her surname, and whose clients know her only as Claire, The Professional Listener) it comes down to loneliness. Based just outside of York, England, she works frequently with young professionals, and charges $70 for twenty-five minute calls, $125 for fifty minutes.

“I think loneliness as a topic is one that’s not discussed very widely amongst younger and middle-aged age groups,” she says. “You may, physically, be surrounded by people all day long, but actually you’re feeling lonely and isolated within yourself.” According to Claire, this version of loneliness is not only less visible, but less understood. It’s the type of loneliness best addressed by someone who knows how to listen without necessarily overburdening you with a response.

Claire also believes the industry will keep growing, people will keep calling, even after the pandemic winds down. After all, what will happen when society begins to return to “normal,” and many people still don’t feel better? The sensation that we are being left behind is another lonely one. And there is a layer of protection in being able to disclose this sensation to a stranger. “I think that’s why people sometimes seek out professional listening,” Claire says. “As a way to talk with someone openly, and having someone with whom to connect.”

Sandra Bodin-Lerner recalls sitting in a listening classes at Kean University watching this need play out. All semester long, students had been making disclosures as a way of practicing empathetic listening with each other. In a series of slow disclosures that took place over many weeks, one particular young student described the downfall of her relationship with her mother.

Suddenly, the student arrived to class having experienced a breakthrough.

“She goes, ‘for the first time in two years, I felt heard by my mom,'” Bodin-Lerner remembers. “And she said, ‘well, my mom said that for the first time in two years, she felt heard by me.'” What’s more: Could she bring her mom to a class? More students jumped in. Could they bring their roommates? Boyfriends?

“When do college students ever invite their parents to school?” Bodin-Lerner asks, her voice still tinged with wonder. The desire to share what they had been learning led to a fifty-person turnout at their class’ friends and family day.

“They need this,” Bodin-Lerner remembers thinking. Doesn’t everyone?

The absolute best way to cook potatoes, according to so many tests

In Absolute Best Tests, our writer Ella Quittner destroys the sanctity of her home kitchen in the name of the truth. She’s boiled dozens of eggs, seared more porterhouse steaks than she cares to recall, and tasted enough types of bacon to concern a cardiologist. Today, she tackles potatoes.

* * *

I don’t mean to alarm you, but Gen Z has discovered potatoes.

Several hundred years after Spanish conquistadors brought the tubers back across the Atlantic from South America, our youthful brethren have bravely carried the very same taters from the pages of fusty French cookbooks to the digital paper of record: TikTok.

I am talking, of course, about “15-Hour Potatoes.” A 15-Hour Potato may be better known by its French moniker, the pavé. It is a dish of shingled, slow-cooked potatoes pressed into a terrine, then sliced and fried. It requires patience, two loaf pans, quite a few heavy cans, and goddamn, is it delicious.

Unfortunately for my landlord, it was just one of 12 methods I tested for my latest round of Absolute Best Tests. I baked and I fried. I boiled and I prodded. I nibbled, I salted, and I pavéd and pavéd, till I fell asleep at the dining room table. Behold:

Controls

For the most accurate comparison across methods, and also because I ran out of pepper, I stripped all seasonings away from the methods, except for salt (I used Diamond Crystal kosher salt), butter, olive oil, and in a few cases, key staple ingredients (e.g., the cheese and dairy in the gratin).

Methods and Findings

I will preface this section with the disclaimer that there is no such thing as a completely bad potato. There are, however, lackluster potatoes, and there are potatoes so crisp-gone-melty they could launch ships, etc., etc. Accordingly, I have ranked the preparations I tested in ascending order, from “Most Forgettable” to “Potatoes I’d Like to Marry”:

12. Air-Fried

From Delish.

1 pound new potatoes, halved
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt

Heat an air fryer to 400°F.
In a large bowl, toss the potatoes and oil with a generous sprinkle of salt.
Place the potatoes in the air-fryer basket and cook for 10 minutes. Shake the basket and stir the potatoes. Keep cooking until the potatoes are golden and tender, 8 to 10 minutes more.

These potatoes got much crispier than I expected, though the texture of their insides was not my favorite of the bunch. It was reminiscent of the stovetop seared batch, though a hair tougher, because the air-fried potatoes never got steamed. In a pinch, I would use this method again, if I had limited stovetop and oven space and I simply needed some crispy Ps STAT.

11. Baked

From Food Network and Serious Eats.

1 large russet potato
Canola oil to coat
Kosher salt

Heat the oven to 350°F.
Scrub the potato thoroughly with cold water, then dry. Using a fork, poke a bunch of deep holes all over the potato. Coat lightly with oil and rub with salt, then place directly on a rack in the middle of the oven. (You can place a baking sheet on the lower rack to catch any dripping oil.)
Bake for about 1 hour, until the skin feels crisp but puckers when poked with a fork, betraying its soft flesh beneath. Slice open, fluff with a fork, and add any toppings you please.

A baked potato is what it is. And what it is is the perfect vehicle for creamy, acidic, and texturally contrasting toppings. It’s also the perfect vehicle for pretending your fork is a miniature snowplow and the potatoey innards are a troublesome highway. Would I make a baked potato again? Of course. Can I pinpoint a scenario in which it would be better than any of these other potato preparations? Just the snowplow thing.

10. Hasselback

From Food52.

6 to 8 baby Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed
1/2 cup (4 ounces/1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
Kosher salt

Heat the oven to 425ºF.
Slice one thin layer off each potato, along the length — this will serve as a base. Place a potato flat side down and cut slices about ⅛ inch apart, making sure not to cut all the way through. (Tip: You can place a chopstick on either side of the potato so that you hit the chopstick before slicing all the way through.) Carefully fan out the sliced pieces without breaking them apart. Repeat with each potato.
Using a pastry brush, brush the bottom and sides of a cast-iron skillet and each potato with the melted butter. Brush the potatoes generously, making sure to get in between the slices. Reserve one-third of the melted butter for basting. Nestle the potatoes into the skillet. Sprinkle with salt.
Bake for 1 hour — basting the potatoes every 15 minutes with the remaining butter — or until tender on the inside and crisp on the outside.

Hasselback potatoes are a fun party trick and little more, unless you plan to stuff them with herbs and cheese, in which case why not just gratin? And if you don’t plan to stuff, may I IMPLORE YOU to boil and roast?

9. Pan-Roasted

From Food52.

1 pound small waxy potatoes (such as Yukon Gold)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt (the coarser the better)

Halve the potatoes and place them cut side down. Halve each half again but keep these halves together.
Choose a cast-iron skillet large enough to fit the potatoes in a single layer. Add enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan, about 1/8 inch deep. Heat the oil over medium until it begins to shimmer. Evenly sprinkle a generous layer of salt into the oil. Place the potato halves onto the salt (keeping the quarters together so they look like just one half). Fry at medium heat, without peeking, until you are sure that the potatoes must be burning (they’re not!), 10 to 12 minutes.
When the potatoes are nicely browned, turn the heat as low as possible and cover the pan. Cook for about 20 minutes (the splattering noises are OK). The potatoes are done when a sharp knife slips into a potato easily. Serve hot. Kept covered with the heat off, they will keep for 30 minutes or more.

Look, we’re all thinking it: Pan-roasted potatoes are underwhelming. It’s true that the method — which calls for just one skillet and one stage of cooking — is lower key. But at what cost? The potatoes weren’t quite as tender as most of the other specimens, and while they were deeply browned on some façades, other sides were pale and puckered. Also, steaming the potatoes after the initial browning meant that despite appearing to wear tiny jackets of crunch, the little potato pieces actually turned out quite soft.

That said, a self-described “big breakfast person” did walk through the room and pop several of these into his mouth, declaring them “absolutely perfect,” so I would keep this method in my back pocket for mornings when I need something quick and simple to accompany eggs. But I would add an additional crisping phase after the steam.

8. Butter-Braised

From Food52.

1 1/2 pounds fingerling potatoes, scrubbed
1/2 cup (4 ounces/1 stick) unsalted butter, halved lengthwise, at room temperature
1 teaspoon kosher salt

Cut the potatoes into approximately 1-inch pieces. The pieces should all be about the same size, so that they cook at the same rate.
Heat a 12-inch sauté pan (not nonstick) over medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, add the butter. It’s going to steam, smoke, and start to brown. Immediately add the potatoes, even if the butter isn’t fully melted. Arrange them in a single layer and season with the salt. Let them cook without stirring for 4 minutes. Stir, then rearrange in a single layer, cooked side facing up. Stir after 2 to 3 minutes, then stir again after another 2 to 3 minutes. Test one of the largest pieces. If needed, stir and cook a bit longer. Remove the pan from the heat and give everything a good stir.
Using a slotted spoon or spider, transfer the potatoes to a serving dish. Garnish as desired and serve immediately.

I suspect a butter-braised shoe would be fantastic, so yes, butter-braised potatoes were really excellent. I was surprised they cooked all the way through in the short time they were searing, making them one of the more efficient methods on the list. They were beautifully caramelized on several sides, though the moisture of the butter bath did sap some of their crunch. They tasted as if purée de pommes de terre were a solid. They’d be wonderfully over the top with a bit of crunch added, like bread crumbs or bacon.

(Photo by Rocky Luten)

7. Gratinéed

From Food52.

5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 garlic clove
1 pinch kosher salt
6 large waxy potatoes (about 2 1/2 pounds), such as red bliss, peeled and thinly sliced
2 cups half-and-half
1 cup grated Gruyère

Heat the oven to 400°F. Rub the inside of an 8×8-inch baking dish with 1 tablespoon of the butter.
Smash the garlic with the side of a knife and sprinkle generously with salt. Chop and scrape the garlic into a mushy paste.
Roughly chop the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter, then add to a pot with the garlic paste, potatoes, and half-and-half. Season with salt. While stirring with a spoon, bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil for 8 to 10 minutes, until the potatoes are a little tender and the liquid has thickened. Taste and adjust the seasoning as you like.
Transfer the mixture to the prepared dish and smooth the top. (At this point you can cover and refrigerate the dish for up to 12 hours, until you’re ready to bake.) Cover the gratin with Gruyère and bake until deeply golden brown, 20 to 30 minutes (longer if chilled overnight). Let the gratin cool a little before serving.

Yes, potatoes boiled in salty cream and butter then baked with cheese are really fucking good. NEXT QUESTION, YOUR HONOR?

6. Boiled

From Food52.

2 pounds baby Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed, larger ones halved
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt

Place potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with 2 inches of cold water. Generously salt the water. Place the pan over high heat, bring to a boil, and cook at an active simmer until they’re fork-tender. Drain. Shock in an ice bath if you want a potato salad that will maintain its shape (if a few squished potatoes are OK with you, this step isn’t necessary).
Toss the warm potatoes with olive oil and salt. Garnish as you like and serve.

I will go on record saying boiled potatoes are underrated. This would be a hot take if it weren’t so boring. Boiled potatoes do have a lot to offer, though — their starch has been drawn out, but not yet transformed into a crispy shell, or mashed into a velvety glue, so you can use it to absorb lots of flavor, like olive oil, lemon juice, and fresh herbs. They are also criminally easy, delightfully savory, and beg to be popped into your mouth one by one like grapes.

5. Mashed

From Food52.

4 large russet potatoes (about 2 pounds total), peeled and quartered
Kosher salt
3/4 cup whole milk, half-and-half, or heavy cream
6 tablespoons unsalted butter

Place the potatoes in a 3- to 4-quart sauce pan and cover with cold water. Partially cover the pot and bring the water to a boil. Uncover, add 1 teaspoon of salt, and reduce the heat so that the water boils gently. Cook until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork, 10 to 12 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, heat the milk to just below a simmer. In a separate pan, melt the butter.
Drain the potatoes and return them to the warm pan over low heat for 1 minute to evaporate any excess water. Use a food mill or hand masher to mash the potatoes. Stir the butter into the potatoes. Add the milk, a little at a time, until the potatoes are as soft and moist as you like. Salt to taste. Serve immediately, or keep warm in the top of a double boiler for up to 1 hour, or cover and rewarm in a microwave.

You know them, you love them, you stare straight at them when your anti-vaxxer uncle’s asking why you’re still single. Mashed potatoes, the only universally cool thing about Thanksgiving, are always decent, even when they’re only OK. Nora Ephron once wrote, “Nothing like mashed potatoes when you’re feeling blue. Nothing like getting into bed with a bowl of hot mashed potatoes already loaded with butter, and methodically adding a thin cold slice of butter to every forkful.” Agree! Though she went on to say that they’re just as much work as crisp potatoes, which is where we diverge. I think mashed potatoes are virtually effortless relative to crispy boys, if you know to 1) salt your water, 2) skip the food processor, and 3) mash in ample butter, salt, and cream. Bonus points for frizzled leeks.

(Photo by Rocky Luten)

4. Smashed and Pan-Fried

From Food52.

1 pound fingerling (preferably) or baby white potatoes
Kosher salt
Extra-virgin olive oil

Place the potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with 2 inches of cold water. Generously salt the water. Place the pan over high heat, bring to a boil, and cook at an active simmer until the potatoes are tender. Drain and let cool to room temperature.
Peel the potatoes (or don’t, if you find it too tedious). Using a meat pounder or the bottom of a small sauté pan, flatten the potatoes one at a time, until ¼ inch thick.
Heat a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat. Coat the base of the pan with a thick layer of oil. Using a spatula to transfer them, add a single layer of squashed potatoes. Adjust the heat between medium and medium-low so the potatoes brown slowly. Let them sizzle away until brown, 5 to 8 minutes, then flip and brown the other side.
When the potatoes are browned, transfer to the serving platter and season with salt. Repeat with the remaining potatoes.

This method is a great shortcut for crispiness when you don’t have time (or the sheet pan-age) to boil and THEN oven roast, with similar results. Flattening each boiled potato for an increased surface area means more crisp and less creamy interior, in the time it takes to brown each side in a roaring hot skillet. Sign me up, baby!!!! (But to be clear, don’t sign me up if I have time to do the boil and roast method instead, which I liked better.)

3. Boiled and French Fried

From Food52.

1 pound (roughly 3 medium) russet potatoes
1 tablespoon white vinegar
Kosher salt
Vegetable oil

Slice the potatoes into ⅓-inch-thick strips.
Place the potatoes and vinegar in a saucepan. Add 1 quart of water and 1 tablespoon of kosher salt. Bring to a boil over high heat. Boil for 6 to 8 minutes, until the potatoes are fully tender but not falling apart. Drain and spread on a towel-lined sheet pan. Pat dry.
Add about 4 inches of oil to a heavy saucepan or Dutch oven. Heat over medium-high until it registers 300°F on an instant-read thermometer.
In batches to avoid overcrowding, add the potato strips and cook, flipping every minute or so, for about 5 minutes, until pale and floppy. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on the lined sheet pan. Let cool to room temp, about 30 minutes.
Adjust the heat to get the oil up to 400°F. Add the potatoes and fry again until golden, about 5 more minutes. Drain on the lined sheet pan and sprinkle with salt.

This boil and fry method was the winner from my recent investigation into the best way to make French fries, and I still stand by it to produce salty, crunchy, pleasantly tart FFs. It’s definitely one of the most labor-intensive ways to prepare potatoes, but you know what they say: A mayo-based sauce a day keeps Ella’s depression at bay.

2. Pavé, aka Stacked and Fried

Adapted from Food52.

3 pounds russet potatoes, peeled
1 cup whole milk
Kosher salt
Melted unsalted butter
Canola oil

Heat oven to 350°F. Thinly slice the potatoes on a mandolin. Toss the potatoes in the milk with a big pinch of salt.
Line a loaf pan with parchment and butter it. Leave a bit of parchment overhang on each of the four sides for easier removal. Add a layer of potatoes, brush some butter on top, and repeat until the tin is full. Fold the parchment over the potatoes and then cover in tin foil.
Bake the potatoes for 60 to 75 minutes, until knife-tender.
Take a loaf tin of the same size and set it on top of the covered pavé. Add some books, canned goods, or anything heavy to the top. Transfer to the fridge and let the terrine cool under this pressure for at least 6 hours or up to 24 hours.
When the pavé has cooled, remove it from the mold and slice into rectangles about 2 inches wide. In a frying pan, heat some canola oil and fry the slices of pavé until deep golden brown and crispy on every side.

The girl you want to hate but can’t ’cause she’s sooooooooo crispy and creamy and tastes like a hash brown mated with a crinkle cut fry. A huge amount of work, but well worth it in the right conditions. Alright TikTok, you win — this time.

1. Oven-Roasted

From Food52.

1 pound red potatoes
Extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt

Bring a pot of water to a boil. While that’s working, peel the potatoes or don’t. Chop them into chunks — not small cubes, bigger are better.
Generously salt the boiling water and boil the potatoes until a fork inserted meets just a little resistance.
Drain the potatoes, transfer to a rimmed sheet pan, and let them cool while you get the oven really hot (say, 400°F or 425°F).
Drench the cooled potatoes in oil — enough to coat, plus some excess pooling on the sheet pan. Season with a lot of salt. Toss everything together. Spread out the potatoes so they’re in an even layer, cut side facing down.
Roast until they’re really browned and really crispy, stirring with a spatula halfway through. These are best hot, but you can serve them warm, too.

Holy hell, these potatoes are outrageous!!! They have approximately 5 billion legs up on your standard roasted Ps because the little potato chunks get boiled in super salty water before they’re oiled up and tossed into a hot oven like a hog in heat (that’s definitely not a thing I’m just so FIRED UP from these POTATOES). This boiling step both flavors the potatoes and draws out a thick layer of chalky starch that hardens into a suit of shattery armor for each tiny tater. Even with just salt and olive oil as seasoning, they tasted like the best version of fast food hash browns. They called for ketchup like my lungs call for air, like a cat mews for milk, like my Absolute Best Tests narration calls for human company and/or psychiatric intervention.

* * *

The absolute best ways to cook potatoes

The average potato is 80% water, 20% solids, and 100% good company. If you don’t believe me, cook one!

Best all-around potatoes: Boil and roast
Butteriest, creamiest caramelized potatoes: Butter-braise
Crispy bits on the lam: Boil and squash and stovetop sear
Ultimate happiness and psychic fulfillment: French fry
A sauce-catching side: Mashed
A Gruyère vehicle: Gratin
Showing off: Pavé

Proud Boys terrorize Small Business Saturday shoppers on Long Island

About 20 members of the far-right Proud Boys militia group marched Saturday on Long Island — flashing white power signs, entering stores and shouting slogans.

The march took place in the Village of Rockville Centre, on the South Shore in Nassau County.

“Members of the group marched down Sunrise Highway, waving American flags and ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags and playing music from the back of a pickup truck,” Newsday reports. “Some store owners appeared surprised and alarmed by the demonstration, while diners expressed concerns about the group coming to the community.”

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Judy Griffin, a Democrat who represents Long Island in the New York State Assembly, said the Proud Boys did not have permits for the march and didn’t give the village notice about it, adding that the event seemed intended to disrupt Small Business Saturday.

“They’re a divisive group of hate and violence,” Griffin said. “They don’t have any place here. I’m all for freedom of speech, but this group doesn’t have a very good track record and seem to come to communities to incite problems and polarize.”

Democratic state Sen. Todd Kaminsky posted video from the march on Twitter, writing: “The Neo-fascist Proud Boys marched through Rockville Centre today, close to my office. I think the latest elections emboldened them-I don’t remember this happening before. I will not be silent. Their hatred has no place here-this is not the Nassau I know. Who else will speak up?”

Rockville Centre Mayor Francis X. Murray, a Republican, told Newsday he didn’t know who the Proud Boys were, and declined to comment on the march.

Watch below:

The Neo-fascist Proud Boys marched through Rockville Centre today, close to my office. I think the latest elections emboldened them-I don’t remember this happening before. I will not be silent. Their hatred has no place here-this is not the Nassau I know. Who else will speak up? pic.twitter.com/KNXVsQhvfR

— Todd Kaminsky (@toddkaminsky) November 27, 2021

MTG urges followers to sue doctors, hospitals over refusal to issue Ivermectin prescriptions

For months, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has fought public health efforts to vaccinate Americans amid rising caseloads and fears of a new spike in COVID-19 cases this winter — instead doubling down on unproven treatments being hawked by fringe medical groups.

In a series of tweets Saturday, she urged her followers to file lawsuits against any doctors that refuse to prescribe the anti-parasite drug Ivermectin, and prepare wrongful death suits in case a family member passes away after being denied the deworming drug, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advises against using for COVID-19.

For justification, she cited a low COVID-19 related death rate in Africa — where the drug has been used widely to fight intestinal parasites that are rare in more developed countries. Studies into the phenomenon have cited other factors for the discrepancy (namely, the fact that African countries have much larger numbers of young people, proportional to the region’s overall population).

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“Africans have safely taken Ivermectin for decades and many clinical trials have proven Ivermectin to be a very effective safe & cheap treatment against #Covid,” Greene wrote, adding, “Any doctor refusing to prescribe Ivermectin for Covid is participating in politics that is killing people.”

She also used the opportunity to blast vaccine mandates and the efficacy of mask wearing in crowded public spaces, which research has repeatedly shown to be an effective way to limit the spread of COVID-19.

“With Africa’s amazingly low death rate from Covid, combined with the lowest vaccine rate in the world & very little masking, the ‘civilized’ leaders of the world should immediately stop their tyrannical forced shutdowns, vaccine mandates, & absurd masking policies. If you had a loved one die from Covid, and they were not allowed to take Ivermectin or monoclonal antibodies, you might have a wrongful death suit in your hands.”

“With all that is know about #Covid and all the covid studies and the known miracle of low deaths in Africa with very little vaccinations, it’s no wonder the Tyrants announce a new #covidvariant from Africa and apply travel restrictions. They control you with irrational fear.”

Greene’s newfound strategy of pushing lawsuits against hospitals and doctors has deeper roots, however. It’s a tactic embraced by fringe medical groups like America’s Frontline Doctors, which has embraced a number of COVID-19-related conspiracy theories and is helmed by Dr. Stella Immanuel, a Texas doctor who is perhaps best known for suggesting that certain ailments may be caused by sperm from sexual visitations from demons and/or alien DNA.

As Salon’s Jon Skolnik reported back in October, people convinced by these groups — which have financial incentives to push Ivermectin on desperate and often unvaccinated patients — have then turned to lawyers-turned-conservative operatives like Ralph Lorigo, a once-obscure lawyer and conservative party chairman in West Seneca, New York.

In an interview, Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, called the tactics “the 21st century, digital version of snake-oil salesmen.”

“And in the case of Ivermectin, it’s extremely dangerous,” he added.

2. Obesity is the highest risk factor for hospitalization & deaths from #COVID19. For many reasons, good & bad, obesity is not at all high in Africa like it is in America.

Being outdoors a lot also gives Africans higher healthy levels of Vit D & Zinc.https://t.co/Phc32H5pUZ

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) November 27, 2021

4. Ivermectin, the ‘Wonder drug’ from Japan, has a long safe history of saving lives especially among the poor all over the world.

Any doctor refusing to prescribe Ivermectin for Covid is participating in politics that is killing people.https://t.co/SAHYnaiNN0

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) November 27, 2021

6. If you had a loved one die from Covid, and they were not allowed to take Ivermectin or monoclonal antibodies, you might have a wrongful death suit in your hands.

Treatment & healthy living is the way out of this nightmare, NOT vaccine mandates, masks, & shutdowns.

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) November 27, 2021

“The Offer”: A homeless Vietnam vet gets an unexpected second chance

“OK, I’m in Sacramento. Homeless. There’s a Stand Down.”

The military term means to give soldiers a break from battle. In 1988, Vietnam war veterans in Swords to Plowshares adopted the phrase Stand Down for a now nationwide project to help homeless or troubled soldiers. A homeless Viet vet himself, Del knew all about the project.

“I’m pulling into the Stand Down, driving my shopping cart. Stand Down at the Boy Scout camp, on the bank of the Sacramento River. It’s a crazy place, too, because of rattlesnakes. I’m walking in, wearing an old nasty pissy Army jacket. These guys are putting up the temporary lights they do at carnivals and stuff. A pickup truck parked there says International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. As I pass it by, I’m looking at these electrical workers of the union I used to be in. I make a comment to one of the guys. I’m drunk. I says,” Del now shouts, “‘Oh yeah! I used to be in that union.’ The guy says, ‘Well, what are you doing now?’

“‘What am I doing now?’ Fuck that. Can’t you see what I’m doing now?’ I took that as him already putting me down. It was confrontation.”

Instead, the man asked Del his name, pulled out a business card and handed it to him. “Said, ‘Here. Come see me Monday morning. You know where the union hall is.'”

“I said, ‘No, I don’t know where no damn union hall is.’ He said, ‘Well, find out and come see me Monday morning.'”

Rather than respond or even read the card, Del turned his attention to more immediate matters. “My mind was on trying to get in line to get a meal and get me a bed. Because this was a three-day event. The next day, I’m hanging around. Some workers were still putting up the lights and the generators because we needed heat and everything. The union does this as a volunteer for the Stand Downs every year. I said, ‘Hey! Remember when I came through there yesterday and this guy gave me a card?’

“They say, ‘Yeah.’

“I said, ‘Who is that guy I was talking to?’ I hadn’t even read the card. He says, ‘That’s Chuck Cake. He’s president of the Union.'” (Actually, Cake was business manager of IBEW Sacramento Local 340, the No. 2 person in charge.)

The sentiment of the other men to Del was, absolutely, go see Cake.

By Monday morning, when Stand Down at the Boy Scout camp ended, Del felt mixed emotions. He had learned Sacramento’s IBEW union hall was some 10 miles away. “He told me to be there at seven o’clock in the morning. The Sacramento buses don’t start till eight, for some stupid reason. I parked my shopping cart, started walking. The only way to get there at that time. I’m still dressed in the same pissy clothes I hadn’t changed in weeks. I looked like the worst bum on the street. But I’m going out there to prove that this guy was bullshitting me like everyone else in life. Just to prove to myself there ain’t good people in the world. Why am I in the situation I am if there are good people in the world? I needed to prove this to myself, another shit-talking official with a suit on. I’ve already made up my mind. Nobody going to tell me, ‘Man, why don’t you straighten up?’ Here’s this guy playing this game. I needed to have that in my ammunition when someone would say, Why don’t you clean up? I won’t clean up because somebody just going to bullshit me around.”

“I’m walking. You cross Highway 5 and you’re round the hill. It’s way out in the country. Then you got all of the Union Hall and it’s a sit-alone gigantic building on several acres.” The then new building was shared by IBEW and the Pipefitters Union. Del was exhausted, but his quest was not over.

“There’s a parking lot on the IBEW side with about a hundred slots and a hundred of them are filled. All brand new F-150, F-350 pickup trucks. With the ladder racks. All these are union guys out here to try to get a job because they only give out a certain amount of jobs every day.” The lengths varied, Del knew. “They try to offer you short jobs, like a day job or two-day job. You’ll take that and you go to the back of the book. You may lose a nine-month job or two-year job. Depending on how your finances are, if you’re broke, you’ll take that short job. But if you had enough sense to save up from working 80 hours a week last year, all that overtime, you need to save that money up so you can come back to be selective about the jobs you take.”

“But all these guys want to go to work today. This ain’t no social club.”

Somewhere along Del’s long trek to the union hall, his mindset changed from defiance to hope. At the sight of the competition, though, hope slammed him in the face.

“I’m saying, ‘This guy actually had the gall to have me come out here, and all these people with these brand new pickup trucks, dressed for work.’ I’ve got tennis shoes on. All of them good, sharp, and had a good night’s sleep, smell good, got cologne on. Here I am smelling like piss. Coming across the hill. I got as bent as I can get. I walked an hour and a half, two hours. Straight, at a hard pace.

“And I says, ‘I fell for this shit. I can’t believe, as sharp as I am, I fell for this bullshit. This guy was posturing and fucking with the people at the VA. ‘Oh yeah, come see me!’ I said, ‘I can’t believe I fell for this, man! I’m sharper than this! I knew better.’ Because IBEW is a very racist racist union. They just started cleaning up now. I got into the union through a government discrimination lawsuit. The federal government sued IBEW, so I was one of the people they were forced to pick to train. One of the few African Americans nationwide. Because there were zero blacks in the IBEW.”

Del later said he became a union electrician in 1963, after the Department of Labor filed the lawsuit against IBEW’s precursor, the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

Knowing the union’s history, as well as that Sacramento “had some racist parts of it,” Del was convinced the business card man was conning him.

“I’m terribly embarrassed because I look like a bum. A real bum. With a scraggly beard, all that. At that time I had hair and it was all kinky. So I’m going to walk down here, embarrassed as I am. People’ll probably offer me a quarter and tell me to get out. Because I look like a homeless … not looked homeless, I was a homeless man,” he now laughed, and said he had a few more minutes to talk before his weekly meeting with San Francisco’s Mayor, Ed Lee, and various department heads about solving the city’s homeless dilemma.

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The interior of the union hall, Del recalled, was enormous, with huge windows, a seating area and glassed-in counters where hiring was done. “Everyone’s sitting over here looking all bright and bushy-tailed and I slink in. At this point, I don’t know why I’m doing this. Just so I could tell people how full of shit IBEW is. I needed to do this. I go to the window. The guys at the window, they’re real hard-nosed guys. Because they deal with a whole bunch of people that want to go to work and they deal with them every day. And they’re gods, they’re prima donnas. They can talk to you however they want. You better kiss their ass because they could easily find a reason not to see you. They’re like DMV workers. Where else would you go get a license? They know that. I already know that. So I go up, ready to be beat down because of who I look like and everything. I know ain’t nobody going to know about anything. I said, ‘Is Chuck Cake here?'”

Del yelled in imitation, “‘No, he ain’t here!'”

“I said, ‘Oh. Well, you expect him?'”

Another yell. “‘He’s in New York. Be back next month.'”

“I said, Son of a bitch. Now I know it. Now it’s confirmed. He got my ass. Son of a bitch. Man, how stupid I was to come all the way out here. I knew he was bullshitting me. He knew Friday he wasn’t going to be here. You don’t just go to New York. I’ve got all this stuff on my mind. And the guy says, `Who are you, anyway?’

“I says, ‘My name is Del Seymour.’

“‘Oh, Del! Man, don’t let anyone see you, but go outside in the parking lot, come out in the back door.’ I says, ‘Oh-kayyy.'” Del drew out the word in the telling. “I leave the union hall and kind of slink around to the back door and come in. He says something like, ‘I was hoping you would show up.’

“I said, ‘And?’

“He says, ‘You need to go to work? You got to be there in an hour.’

“‘Work!’

“‘Yeah. Didn’t Chuck tell you?’

“I says, ‘No. He told me to be here.’

“He says, ‘Well, yeah. He’s got you a year-long job.’

“‘What?!’ I’m looking at these hundreds of people out here waiting to get what I got. Any one of them. He said, ‘Go get your truck and pull around the back.'”

“I said, ‘Truck!'” Del started laughing so hard recalling the moment, he pounded one foot on the floor. Bang! Bang! “‘Truck!'”

“The guy said, ‘You don’t have no truck?’

“I said, ‘No.’

“He says, ‘Son of a bitch! I’m going to have to drive you all the way to Folsom.'” The job included remodeling Folsom High School. “He says, ‘Just go get your tools and meet me outside.'”

“‘Tools!'” Del laughed again.

“The guy said, ‘Oh no. Don’t tell me you don’t have no tools.'”

“I said, ‘No, man.’

“And he says, ‘Man man. This is crazy.’ He goes in the other room and comes out with like a $500 tool belt, with all the tools in it. He said, ‘These are my tools. The first paycheck you get, you bring me my tools back.’ He said, ‘Let me go get my truck.’

“He took me out to Folsom High School and took me to the foreman, said, ‘This is Del Seymour. He’s one of Chuck’s guys. Put him to work.’ And he says, ‘He lives in Sacramento somewhere. One of you guys take him every night and bring him back every morning. Get someone that lives around where he lives so he’ll have a way to get back and forth.’ And he said, ‘Del, I want my tools back. You understand? Don’t play with me.'” He added, in two weeks Del had to pay his dues.

Del was sure the man earlier telephoned the foreman, who in turn informed the other people on the crew that Del was “one of the guys that Chuck rescued from the Stand Down, to give him a pass and help him out.”

According to Chuck Cake decades later, IBEW took part in Sacramento’s Stand Downs in 1992, 1993 and 1994. “I felt an immense sorrow for these people,” he recalled in a telephone call. “They were homeless, had rotten teeth, and they needed so much help.”

As Del was promised, at the end of his first day’s work, a crew member drove him back to Sacramento. “I was staying on the streets. So I went back to my box.”

In the morning, Del commuted from his box to work. Within the week, he was no longer homeless. “Union gives us the right to pull money from our employer within two or three days. So I got an advance and I got me a room. And I eventually got an apartment, with my girl.” Her name was Sheila, he said, same as his later major love, Sheila, in San Francisco. “I remember that apartment, right down there by Sutter’s Fort.”

“That was it. I worked at Folsom High School for a year. Then I worked at Safeway. We did all the Safeway resets for a year.” Again, a government directive was involved. “The federal government came out, says two wheelchairs have to pass in the aisle in any supermarket. So we had to do massive resets of supermarkets all over. Which may sound like nothing, but wires run every one of those counters. You got to move the counter over and then you got to remove the wire, cut into the concrete to replace the wire. Or the refrigeration lines. It’s massive jobs. Multimillion dollar jobs in every store. We did the ‘gay Safeway’ on Church and Market [in the Castro District of San Francisco]. We did all the ones in Sacramento.”

After finishing those jobs, what then?

Del was no longer in his exuberant storytelling mode. He spoke quietly. “I went back in addiction.”

“Colin in Black & White” writer on Kaepernick’s parents & awakening: “They didn’t see him as Black”

Back in 2016, the superstar NFL quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, Colin Kaepernick, had become so fed up with racism, police violence against Black and Brown people, and the many injustices woven into the fabric of America, that he decided to begin his own silent protests, by taking a knee during the singing of the National Anthem.

Since then, Kaepernick, 34, has been allegedly blackballed from the NFL, with every team refusing to sign him, even though he is arguably better than half of the quarterbacks in the league. He filed a lawsuit against the NFL for discrimination and won an undisclosed amount of money and then smoothly transitioned toward his second act as an activist. He started Kaepernick Publishing company, donated to grassroots organizations all over the world and launched the Know Your Rights Camp so that young people from improvised areas can get the resources they need to learn about the many types of racial injustices in America, challenge the system and become the next generation of leaders.

Taking a knee during the anthem has bought Colin Kaepernick more hate than any of us could have probably imagined – from him being a constant target for conservative media to President Donald Trump calling him and other NFL anthem protestors who followed his lead a “sons of a bitch” just because they wanted to use their platform as a vehicle for raising awareness. Michael Starrbury, who was a writer on Netflix’s Emmy-nominated series “When they See Us,” had the difficult job of not only researching the impact of Kaepernick’s protest, but tying his decision to do so with some of the most traumatic incidents from Kaep’s childhood in the new Netflix series “Colin In Black and White.”

“Colin in Black and White,” co-created by Ava DuVernay and Colin Kaepernick, documents the coming-of-age story of the world renowned athlete turn activist. The six-part series does a deep dive into the struggles Kaepernick faced while growing up Black with white adoptive parents. The series tackles the racism young Black athletes are subject to on and off the field and how a young Colin figured it out how to survive, while helping others survive as well.

On a recent episode of “Salon Talks,” Starrbury and I discussed Colin’s journey in detail, the power of diversity, what it really means, and why television is better because of the creative mix of unique Black stories. You can watch my “Salon Talks” with Michael Starrbury here or read a Q&A of our conversation below to hear more bringing Kaepernick’s experiences to life onscreen.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

I would love if you started out by taking our viewers and readers into the world of young Colin Kaepernick.

Colin was born in Milwaukee, adopted as a baby by Teresa and Rick Kaepernick. Eventually they moved from Wisconsin to Turlock, California, where he grew up surrounded by mostly white folks and it kind of formed who he was. He was starting to have his awakening to his culture as a teenager and that’s kind of what the show explores.

So how did the whole project come about?

Ava and Colin had met somewhere swanky, as those types tend to do. Colin wanted to do a show. He mentioned it to Ava. Eventually they connected and Ava said, “Yeah, let’s go.” And for whatever reason, Ava thought of me to write it. I was down. A couple years later, here we are.

One of the things that I wasn’t really expecting when watching the show was how, I’m saying this in the most gentle way possible, but how tone-deaf his parents came off in the show in the beginning. And I was wondering if you could speak to that reality from a writer’s standpoint and the different devices you used to try to put us in that world to allow us to feel how he felt when his parents couldn’t really connect with a lot of the things he was going through as a young Black man.

Yeah, I think his parents came from a place where he did not come from. I mean, culturally, he was finding himself. The idea wasn’t to make his parents any other thing than naive. Hopefully the idea comes across that they did love him, but they were lacking in certain things that Colin probably needed in his life at that time. As hard as they tried, they couldn’t connect with him on a cultural level.

You listen to Colin talk about himself growing up, his relationship with his parents, and you try to make that as cinematic as possible. You try to find the spirit of that and give that to the actors so they can portray it. I think what everyone’s reacting to is the way that the parents in the show played him. And I think that’s a good thing because it tells me that we did hit our mark with his parents feeling or being naive, but still believing that they were doing what was best for him. Because it was never out of, “Let’s hurt this Black kid.”

Right.

It was more of, “We just think this is the way it should be.” They didn’t see him as Black. They thought he had the same kind of life and privileges as the white kids there. And that’s just not how it worked for him.

I feel like a whole lot of people who decide to adopt kids from different cultures are going to be able to see a film like this and think about how hyper aware you have to be. If you are a Black kid moving into a white household, you can’t just mix in a white community or a white space. You’re always going to stick out like a sore thumb.

Right, you don’t just mix in like you’re saying. And even as a kid, you have to recognize this. Your privilege may not be theirs. I mean, they probably have a little more privilege than you even recognize until you get into these situations with these little microaggressions and sometimes just straight-up overt racism. Yeah, I agree with you 100%.

Watching Colin deliver these history lessons directly into the screen made me think about audience. Who was the audience you guys had in mind in the writers’ room when you were constructing these episodes?

Selfishly, I thought about people like me who might know Colin from football, might know him a little bit on the surface from the protest, but didn’t really know where any of that stuff comes from. It’s never about changing anybody’s mind. He’s a very polarizing person. Just scrolling through Twitter today, I’m seeing haters who haven’t seen the show have something to say about him. You’re not going to reach those people. I wasn’t worried about that.

The idea is let’s understand this brother a little bit more and whatever opinion we have now about him can be more informed. It was really just about me finding my groove and then hopefully everybody else could find what they found in the show too. Thematically, you might get something different from it than even I got, and I think that’s okay.

When you said I would take something different than you would take from it, I think it was eye opening for me because I’m from Baltimore City and it’s a 65% Black city that’s extremely segregated, so we don’t have interactions with white people at all coming up unless they’re a housing police officer or maybe a teacher or a social worker or something like that. I never even thought about the reality of being the only Black person because I’m so used it being from where everybody’s Black. The diversity inside of our race and our experience exists, however.

Yeah, and even taking that and flipping it and putting it in his parents’ perspective, they don’t know anything about Blackness, Black culture. And then they take this kid, and even if their intentions were pure, putting him in this world or inviting him into this world that doesn’t really accept him like that, that’s going to be a different kind of culture shock for both of them. For Colin to realize this thing that he’s comfortable in isn’t really meant for him and wasn’t built for him.

Absolutely. I think about the project you worked on, “When They See Us,” a lot. I think that was such an important series. I thought it was brilliant. And I thought it was extremely impactful, especially in defining the horrors that exist in the criminal justice system. And even though that was a time piece, these things are still happening to this day. And I wanted to ask you, what do you think “Colin in Black and White” is going to add to the conversation, as far as culture and society?

For anybody that has any empathy or sympathy, they’re going to look at it and take a step back at when they are looking at the Black kid who’s amongst his white friends in a hotel. Maybe they won’t be so quick to judge that kid and think he’s up to no good. I think what it’s going to do is going to force people to look at some of their stereotypes and how comfortable they are. They’re going to have to think about their privilege. They’re going to have to think about the sacrifices young people of color make, young Black men make, in order to navigate through even just adolescence, man.

It wasn’t really about giving ammo. It wasn’t like, “Here’s some ammunition for these arguments.” It was about here’s some information, this thing that happened to Colin, that’s really universal. Everybody’s going to find something in it. I do hope that people can at the very least understand that the white privilege thing is a real thing, that there’s a real underlying racism that’s built into this system. And whether those people want to stop it or fight against it, that wasn’t what I was trying to do, but I don’t want them to be able to deny it, because it’s there.

And once they know, it’s on them to as far as what they do with it.

That is absolutely correct. You have the information, it’s up to you now to do what you’re going to do with it.

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I struggle with the idea of thinking that they’ll do something with it, at times because America is so competitive. We’re so competitive. And white privilege, it gives you a great advantage. You’re not passing go and collecting $200, you’re passing go and collecting $5,000. I’m passing go and I’m getting hit over the head with a payday loan, so. I think about that side of it too. Everybody’s in this race to be successful, at the top, at this place and that place. And if I know that my privilege is going to take me from here to there, why would I forfeit that?

Yeah, that is the challenge, right? You winning the race, again, it’s a lack of empathy and sympathy though. It’s a lack of understanding how you got in first place in the first place. I agree with you, it does take people with empathy and sympathy and scruples and integrity to say, “Let’s truly even the playing field.” But at the same time, that’s why there’s more Twitter-hashtag social activists than there are feet on the ground activists. It’s easy to just be like, #GeorgeFloyd. It’s harder to be like, “I’m not doing this until we end police brutality.” And that’s what set Colin apart.

Yeah, you don’t even, you don’t have to get on the ground to be a hero, you just need wifi. We saw so many people pouring to the streets after the death of George Floyd. We saw everything from sneaker companies coming out with special edition I love Black people, colorways and silhouettes. And we saw networks pouring a whole lot of money into projects around dealing with systemic racism or stories about Black people that aren’t being told. And I want to know, look, reflecting on this moment, right? We had over a year to process this stuff. From your perspective, do you feel like we’re starting to see the kind of change that we deserve?

No matter who dies or who gets killed or who decides what the flavor of the month is, we’re capitalists. A lot of the people who are making these decisions don’t think Black money has the same value as white people money for whatever reason. It’s up to us to kind of keep the pressure on to make sure that the change is going to happen. Meaning, it almost goes back to what you were saying about why would you give up your spot, basically?

Well, if they feel like if they give us too much, we might take all. It’s just too much. Do I feel like it’s an even playing field right now? Absolutely not. There’s some industries that are doing it better than others. A place like Netflix is trying, I can tell you that. I mean, I see that. So it’s hard for me to say, but I’m not ready to call us New Africa yet.

Right, right. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a response to what happened with everyone being in the streets and protesting. I wonder about the lasting effects and what is that going to mean. And I do think shows like this series are going to have a lasting effect on a whole lot of people who see it and get a chance to understand where some of the anger and frustration comes from. However, I don’t think we’ll be able to reach a certain segment of people in general, and we have to be able to live and survive with that. When you talk about those haters, it’s almost like there’s no way to approach them in a civil way because they’re looking for conflict. They’re looking for violence. They’re looking to save their country that they’re losing — a country that I probably own more of than them. Do you ever think about how to reach those people?

I don’t try to change. I’ll leave that to the politicians. The ones who are just like, “Hey, we got to reach out to everybody and show sympathy towards them.” Now, that doesn’t mean I go out of my way to antagonize them. But I mean, I understand that a lot of those people, even, and I think we touched on it on the show, you can change laws but you can’t change hearts. So some of those hearts are just hardened and they believe what they believe, and those are not the people I’m going after.

Some people they are who they are, but there’s some people who genuinely don’t know. There was a couple people talking to me last night after the premiere who learned something, a couple of white people, and even simple stuff like, “I didn’t know it hurt when you got your hair braided,” like even simple stuff like that starts a conversation. It’s like, okay, you paid attention enough to care about that. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about why that means so much that he was able to do that with his hair. So, there are people who genuinely are curious and want to understand our experiences, so those are the people I’m more interested in reaching out to and talking to and having conversations with.

Absolutely. The intellectual curious people who really, really, really want to learn. Another thing in the show was the racism that exists in sports. Did you feel like we’re going to reach a moment where people will start to understand that, and what that means? It’s been an industry fueled by Black power, Black bodies, and Black skills for so long. It’s terrible.

No, it’s the same thing. A lot of people just see Black athletes as gladiators, just go out there and perform, and make me happy emotionally or whatever kind of vicarious-ness they get out of that. It’s interesting, like talking about the haters. Once in a while, I’ll just click on their profile and then you’ll see all kinds of pictures of this Black athlete, this Black athlete that they like, and it’s just like I don’t think they’re grasping even what’s happening here. Maybe they are, but it’s crazy to me that there’s so many sports athletes that maybe they don’t even recognize that they hate Black people.

But think about “Do the Right Thing” and that scene where he was calling Dino out on Magic Johnson, Mike Tyson, Prince. They’re different. They’re not like the rest of y’all.

That scene, yeah.

So, it’s kind of like the same thing. Colin Kaepernick has been so impactful outside of the NFL and then you guys are taking it to the next level with this show, and the mission is so strong and so many people are being inspired and learning. With all that being said, and the ability to be a part of that, and to do that, do you think he should still be in the NFL?

Me personally, no, but if Colin wants to play football he should have the opportunity to play football. They took that from him, so I never doubted his ability. It’s pretty clear why he’s not in the league. If anybody’s who’s honest with themselves will say they know why he’s not in the league, and it’s not because he can’t throw or can’t run anymore. That’s not it. So, if he wants that I think he should be allowed that opportunity. As a friend of Colin’s I would wish he would not pursue that. I don’t see anything good coming from it unless his happiness, or his passion for it, will rise above all the negativity. I don’t think that’s a space for him.

I feel you on that, especially when I look at the Know Your Rights campaign and all of the young people that he’s had a chance to personally interact with. Protect that brother at all costs. What’s next for you?

Hopefully, something new with Netflix that we’ll be able to talk about real soon. It’s a good partnership with them. And who knows? Maybe me and Ava will come up with something together again. We seem to make magic together.

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Key Jan. 6 organizer to comply with Capitol riot subpoena: “I don’t want to go to jail”

Jan. 6 organizer Ali Alexander, who calls himself the “founder” of former president Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement, announced Saturday that he will comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.

“You may have missed the news that I’ve been subpoenaed by the Democrats’ partisan Jan. 6 committee,” Alexander said in a video posted to the right-wing social-media platform Telegram. “This is a midterm issue that they want to run on, and what they want to do is paint me as the Black face for a white supremacy movement that doesn’t actually exist.”

Speaking in front of a poster of singer Johnny Cash flashing the middle finger, Alexander added that he respects his “fellow patriots” who are defying the committee, but called it “an expensive right” — claiming that it would cost between $250,000 and $500,000 to fight the subpoena.

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“I frankly don’t have that money to spend on legal bills, so for this unselect committee, I will actually be privately deposed in December,” Alexander said. “I’ve asked to make it public testimony. They won’t cooperate with that request.”

“The only reason I’m going is that I don’t want to go to jail,” he added. “So under the threat of imprisonment and spending tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers, I will be privately deposed before this committee in December, and I will make public whatever I can.”

In a post accompanying the video, Alexander wrote that he plans to submit to the committee “photographic and video evidence of agitators sabotaging his January 6th peaceful protests.”

Referring to himself in the third person, Alexander wrote: “He will also present evidence to the Committee that President Trump was betrayed by someone in his inner circle. Someone made the decision to take instructions for patriots out of the Ellipse Rally. Ali says he’s not backing down and the Democrat Committee has already threatened to imprison him.”

Watch below via YouTube:

Experiment with wheat-free flours in cooking and baking

A trip down the grocery store aisle today is dizzying with alternative flours popping up left and right. As allergies to wheat become more prevalent, many people find themselves looking for healthy wheat-flour alternatives. It can be daunting to pick which flour makes the most sense when it comes to baking and cooking.

We have a variety of options that will meet just about any need depending on personal preference, dietary restrictions and general demand for nutritious flours.

Although I haven’t experimented with every variety, I’m fairly well-versed and biased towards a handful of flours. A little imagination, knowledge of ratios and confidence are what’s needed to brave the new mélange of options. Here’s a rundown of my all-time favorite flours, how they’re made and my favorite dishes that use them.

Pro tip: Storing flour and nuts in a freezer extends the shelf life way beyond the dusty cupboard.

Chickpea Flour

Relatively new to American households, chickpea flour (also called garbanzo bean flour or besan in Indian kitchens) is arguably one of my favorite ingredients. Growing up in an Indian household, my mom bought chickpea flour in bulk — I’m talking 25-pound bags — and stored it in a bottomless plastic bucket. It’s one of the most versatile flours, and my mom uses it in so many dishes like curries, bread and even desserts. Her signature dish is kadhi, a traditional Gujurati dish she makes two or three times a week that starts with a base of chickpea flour mixed with yogurt and water. It’s a great source of protein, an abundant dose of fiber and as an added bonus, it’s gluten-free.

Unlike many gluten-free flours, chickpea flour has endless binding power. A little water and oil with salt turn this pale yellow flour into a dense paste that’s capable of binding to anything. A little secret: Many Indian tandoori chicken recipes call for a small amount of chickpea flour paste to help keep the spices coated to the skin.

Rice Flour

Rice flour is pretty bland on its own but a really versatile option when it comes to making Asian dishes. The most common use for rice flour is to make a slurry to thicken sauces by stirring a little into a liquid. Similar to cornstarch, you can use white rice flour, brown rice flour or sweet glutinous rice flour, which, despite its name, is gluten-free. Brown and white rice flours are interchangeable in recipes but add different flavors. Use about 2 tablespoons per cup of liquid that needs to be thickened.

While I don’t fry much, there are a couple of recipes that I make in which rice flour plays an invaluable role. As a chef, rice flour is one of my secret ingredients to make anything fried light and airy in texture. In Asia, it’s used in everything from Japanese tempura vegetables to the ever-popular Korean fried chicken, giving fried foods their characteristic pillowy crunch. A key ingredient in the famous Thai dish chicken larb, a chopped meat salad with various Thai seasonings, is rice flour, which is toasted and mixed with the meat to help bind the sauce.

Almond Flour

All nut flours are made from grinding what’s leftover from nuts after the oil is removed, while nut meals are made from grinding the whole nut. I’ve found in recipes that most nut flours are interchangeable. After living in Italy, I became obsessed with an almond orange cake that you could find at any reputable coffee shop. A pretty straightforward recipe to execute — a combination of eggs, sugar, oranges, vanilla extract and almond flour — it is a deliciously bold and immensely moist cake. The nut flour and sugar make this less than ideal for a light dessert, but given that it doesn’t have all-purpose flour or any oil, it’s healthier than a traditional cake. This recipe gets bonus points because I once made it directly on the stovetop and finished in the oven!

All nut flours add a great, rich flavor to baked goods. Nut flour can be higher in calories but is considered a healthy fat with more protein than regular and alternative flours, which can keep you feeling satisfied. I like using a mix of nut flour and buckwheat as a breading option for chicken cutlets. It’s very easy to make nut flour at home using a high-speed blender.

Buckwheat Flour

Don’t let the name fool you, buckwheat flour doesn’t contain wheat, it’s made from a seed. This is my go-to for pancakes, muffins or savory crêpes. Buckwheat flour is packed with fiber and protein and has an assertive flavor and nutty aftertaste. At first glance, the flour is darker in color than other flours, but it has a wonderfully distinctive, lightly floral flavor and is used in both sweet and savory dishes. For anyone with a gluten intolerance or aiming to cut back on regular flour, buckwheat flour can be used on its own in recipes or combined with other types of gluten free-flour like brown rice or even all-purpose flour. If you’re feeling adventurous, try your hand at making soba noodles, blinis or these piece-of-cake pancakes at home with buckwheat flour.

***

Recipe: Buckwheat Flour Flapjacks

Ingredients

1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose or spelt flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup almond milk
Berries and syrup, optional but necessary

Directions

Mix the dry ingredients.
Mix the wet ingredients separately.
Mix the dry and wet ingredients together and let sit for 10 minutes. Ladle pancakes 1/2 cup at a time onto a non-stick pan.

Etching the pain of COVID into the flesh of survivors

It was Saturday morning at Southbay Tattoo and Body Piercing in Carson, California, and owner Efrain Espinoza Diaz Jr. was prepping for his first tattoo of the day — a memorial portrait of a man that his widow wanted on her forearm.

Diaz, known as “Rock,” has been a tattoo artist for 26 years but still gets a little nervous when doing memorial tattoos, and this one was particularly sensitive. Diaz was inking a portrait of Philip Martin Martinez, a fellow tattoo artist and friend who was 45 when he died of covid-19 in August.

“I need to concentrate,” said Diaz, 52. “It’s a picture of my friend, my mentor.”

Martinez, known to his friends and clients as “Sparky,” was a tattoo artist of some renown in nearby Wilmington, in Los Angeles’ South Bay region. A tattoo had brought Sparky and Anita together; Sparky gave Anita her first tattoo — a portrait of her father — in 2012, and the experience sparked a romance. Over the years of their relationship, he had covered her body with intertwining roses and a portrait of her mother.

Now his widow, she was getting the same photograph that was etched on Sparky’s tomb inked into her arm. And this would be her first tattoo that Sparky had not applied.

“It feels a little odd, but Rock has been really good to us,” Anita Martinez said. Rock and Sparky “grew up together.” They met in the 1990s, at a time when there were no Mexican-American-owned tattoo shops in their neighborhood but Sparky was gaining a reputation. “It was artists like Phil that would inspire a lot of us to take that step into the professional tattoo industry,” Rock said.

After Sparky got sick, Anita wasn’t allowed in her husband’s hospital room, an isolating experience shared by hundreds of thousands of Americans who lost a loved one to covid. They let her in only at the very end.

“I got cheated out of being with him in his last moments,” said Martinez, 43. “When I got there, I felt he was already gone. We never got to say goodbye. We never got to hug.”

“I don’t even know if I’m ever going to heal,” she said, as Diaz began sketching the outlines of the portrait below her elbow, “but at least I’ll get to see him every day.”

According to a 2015 Harris Poll, almost 30% of Americans have at least one tattoo, a 10% increase from 2011. At least 80% of tattoos are for commemoration, said Deborah Davidson, a professor of sociology at York University in Toronto who has been researching memorial tattoos since 2009.

“Memorial tattoos help us speak our grief, bandage our wounds and open dialogue about death,” she said. “They help us integrate loss into our lives to help us heal.”

Covid, sadly, has provided many opportunities for such memorials.

Juan Rodriguez, a tattoo artist who goes by “Monch,” has been seeing twice as many clients as before the pandemic and is booked months in advance at his parlor in Pacoima, an L.A. neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. Memorial tattoos, which can include names, portraits and special artwork, are common in his line of work, but there’s been an increase in requests due to the pandemic. “One client called me on the way to his brother’s funeral,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez thinks memorial tattoos help people process traumatic experiences. As he moves his needle over the arms, legs and backs of his clients, and they share stories of their loved ones, he feels he is part artist, part therapist.

Healthy grievers do not resolve grief by detaching from the deceased but by creating a new relationship with them, said Jennifer R. Levin, a therapist in Pasadena, California, who specializes in traumatic grief. “Tattoos can be a way of sustaining that relationship,” she said.

It’s common for her patients in the 20-to-50 age range to get memorial tattoos, she said. “It’s a powerful way of acknowledging life, death and legacy.”

Sazalea Martinez, a kinesiology student at Antelope Valley College in Palmdale, California, came to Rodriguez in September to memorialize her grandparents. Her grandfather died of covid in February, her grandmother in April. She chose to have Rodriguez tattoo an image of azaleas with “I love you” written in her grandmother’s handwriting.

The azaleas, which are part of her name, represent her grandfather, she said. Sazalea decided not to get a portrait of her grandmother because the latter didn’t approve of tattoos. “The ‘I love you’ is something simple and it’s comforting to me,” she said. “It’s going to let me heal and I know she would have understood that.”

Sazalea teared up as the needle moved across her forearm, tracing her grandmother’s handwriting. “It’s still super fresh,” she said. “They basically raised me. They impacted who I am as a person, so to have them with me will be comforting.”

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Beyond brown shame: Refreshing “India Sweets and Spices” moves past struggles of hyphenated identity

Early on in “India Sweets and Spices,” Alia (Sophia Ali) spots a handsome young man from across the way in the local Indian store. Immediately, they lock eyes, and romantic music swells, as her hair blows back elegantly by a mysterious indoor breeze. It’s a dramatic cliché familiar to fans of Bollywood, whose over-the-top romantic arcs typically start with a scene like this. Alia, it seems, is living in a Bollywood daydream of her own, though crucially she actually lives in the posh New Jersey suburb where she was born and raised.

That type of scene, so steeped in love for mass Indian culture, would never have made it into a Hollywood film 20 years ago. Geeta Malik’s “India Sweets and Spices,” however, is full of these little nods to India. In the film, Alia and her mother Sheila (Manisha Koirala) realize they’re more alike than different after Alia uncovers her mom’s secret college days as a feminist organizer. The film interrogates ingrained class prejudice, gender expectations and intergenerational dynamics.

It’s a departure from the coming-of-age films of the early aughts that centered on modern-day South Asian assimilation into western communities. In 2006’s “The Namesake,” based on the Jhumpa Lahiri novel of the same name, Kal Penn‘s Gogol is stuck between two worlds: the Indian one that he’s desperately trying to denounce by changing his name and dating white girls in order to fit in, and the American one that also doesn’t feel correct either. Gogol is battling a case of the hyphenated identity in which neither half feels enough to make him whole, and the only thing that wakes him up to his parents’ sacrifices and his cultural pride is his father’s death.

Parminder K. Nagra in “Bend It Like Beckham” (Getty Images/Sundance/WireImage)

Meanwhile, Gurinder Chadha’s 2002 comedy “Bend It Like Beckham” also attempts to find an identity balance for its main character. Jesminder “Jess” (Parminder Nagra) is a rebellious female soccer player — a sharp contrast to her mother’s expectations of what a good little Indian girl should be. If her mother had her way, Jess would sit at home learning to cook the perfect roti while patiently waiting to be married off to a suitable man. Jess’s sister’s wedding provides the backdrop for the film, showing Jess what life would be like if her mother’s vision came true. But Jess can’t wait to change out of her feminine Indian garb and back into her jersey and cleats, and to her family, a girl playing any sport is improper. As Jess continues to rise in her team’s ranks, her family’s scrutiny makes her question whether following her passion is worth challenging her family’s long held beliefs about what women should or shouldn’t do.

Even 2001’s cult classic “American Desi” speaks to the feelings of assimilation and stripping your culture in order to fit in. Krishnagopal (Deep Katdare) renounces his Indian heritage for much of his upbringing, even shortening his name to “Kris.” His worst nightmare comes true when he arrives at college to three South Asian suitemates who are unapologetic in embracing their brownness. They cook Indian food, join the Indian club on campus, and regularly watch Bollywood films in their dorm, much to Kris’ chagrin. But after Kris develops a crush on an Indian girl, he finds himself turning to these new, reluctant friendships, and ultimately realizes that his heritage is something to love instead of something to run away from.

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For a long time, these films spoke directly to what the diasporic experience was: Am I American enough? Indian enough? Where do I fit in? Do I have to give up who I am to appease my family’s expectations? As a ’90s kid myself, born and raised in the Midwest to Indian immigrant parents, I have struggled with these questions, sometimes feeling like the chasm between my Indian self and my American self was too big to cross and bring together. My childhood was the era where kids would be bullied for bringing their “smelly” rice and dal for lunch or be called names on the playground that insulted our heritage. Why would I lean into my brownness if such hatred was waiting for me on the other side?

Fortunately, times have changed even though bullying and identity issues haven’t gone away completely. But now, our media is finally investing in and producing varied stories that showcase the prism of Indian-American experience. I’ll always be thankful for having the likes of “Bend It Like Beckham” and “The Namesake” while I was dealing with my own identity-based questions as an adolescent, but it’s nice to see the stories about our community evolve along with us and highlight different aspects of our experiences.

Compared to the previous era of Indian-American films, the crux of “India Sweets and Spices” is not about Alia’s confusion about who she is or what her relationship to being Indian is. In fact, Alia feels very at home in her Indianness, donning elegant mirror-work lehengas for family parties, picking up Parle-G biscuits from the Indian store, and hanging out with family friends that are as close to real family as it gets for most immigrants. Alia slips into heightened Indian accents when joking with friends and seeks out Indian dating prospects in both Varun (Rish Shah) and Rahul (Ved Sapru), clearly affectionate for her culture.

In “Spin,” teenager Rhea (Avantika) discovers a passion for creating DJ mixes (Disney/John Medland)

The film follows and builds on the foundation of “Spin,” a recent Disney Channel Original Movie that also allows its main character Rhea to fully embody her Indian identity: conflict comes from Rhea’s internal struggle about whether she wants to pursue DJing rather than how connected she feels to Indian culture. Instead, Indianness is a fabric of her life. Rhea works at her family’s Indian restaurant where her grandma does an elaborate Bollywood-style dance every night, Rhea mixes popular Bollywood music for the dinner rush, and her big DJ debut is constructed with her mother’s traditional Indian tunes. At school, she even suggests a fundraiser event inspired by the Hindu holiday Holi.

None of it is embarrassing, and Rhea’s culture is even lauded by her school crush Max who deems the whole spectacle “legit awesome.” “Spin” is aimed at a younger generation, but along with “India Sweets and Spices,” the approach of these narratives is a stark contrast to the Indian identity-based films I grew up on. There’s no “brown shame” at the center of these films, and there’s no exoticization of our culture either.

Instead, “India Sweets and Spices” gives us a different aspect of the diaspora experience by trying to understand Sheila’s generation and the things they gave up in order to give their children the life they have. For Sheila, the sacrifices were extreme: her identity as a feminist in India caused her to be persecuted and then exiled, and she lost the agency (and the will) to make decisions for herself after she is forced into an arranged marriage. My parents made similar decisions, even if they weren’t as soul-shredding as Sheila’s; they gave up their native country and moved thousands of miles away seeking better jobs and a better life. I, like Alia, didn’t realize the full extent of their sacrifices until I became an adult myself.

Malik tells Alia and Sheila’s story warmly and fully injects the film with recognizable yet nuanced aspects of South Asian immigrant culture, warts and all. There is noticeable exploration of class and status through the aunties in Alia’s elite community gossiping about and acting superior to Varun’s family who own the local store that everyone frequents. Though they’re from a perfectly stable and normal middle-class background, the Duttas don’t fit into the lavish Ruby Hill community filled with high-status individuals in mansions. This is a common, though usually unspoken, aspect of our culture: we can be judgmental of and condescending to those not working as doctors, lawyers or engineers.

Rish Shah and Sophia Ali in “India Sweets and Spices” (Eliza Morse/Bleecker Street

Even worse, Varun attends community college, automatically placing him on a lower plane than Alia in the community’s eyes. Education is of utmost importance, and just getting a degree isn’t seen as enough; the name of the school does too. Aunties in “India Sweets and Spices” are shameless in their judgments, making snide comments to Varun and his mother’s face at dinner parties and even in the store that they own. In an excellent clapback against their collective gossip, Alia drops truth bombs about each of these meddling aunties’ own children: one got caught in a threeway in the school gym, one cried in class after failing a Physics final, and another is a (lovable) pothead. Gossip rules the community, and fans of Hasan Minhaj will pick up on the Hindi line that he made famous in his comedy special “Homecoming King” coming to life in this film: “Log kya kahenge? What will people think?”

Through Sheila’s story, the film also delves into antiquated Indian values about female agency and a woman’s place in society, and even seeks to understand how those outdated opinions can find themselves stuck in time and perpetuated in modern-day migrant communities. Sheila often finds herself at odds with Alia, likely because she sees part of herself in her and is worried to see that story play out again. It colors their relationship and shows that Sheila had given up on what she once stood for; for so long after she was unceremoniously married off, Sheila saw the feminist fight as pointless and wanted to shield her daughter from the consequences of rocking the boat.

But at its heart, the story is about how we relate to each other and seek a deeper understanding of where we came from. Late in the film after it’s revealed that Sheila used to be just as headstrong as she raised Alia to be, it’s as though Alia can suddenly see her mother in 3D. Suddenly, she clearly sees all of the hardships and turmoil that have made her who she is today, and with that comes a deeper respect for her roots. Traditional elder Indian generations are stoic and secretive, choosing not to divulge the details of the past for a better future. Malik’s film shows us that it’s usually worth the nudge.

Both “India Sweets and Spices” and “Spin” are contemporary examples of how Hollywood is evolving and the stories we’re allowed to tell are changing. The diaspora films of yesteryear are, and always will be, important to the South Asian film canon. But I no longer complain to my friends about how to bridge the gap between my Indian heritage and my American upbringing, and I think there has been enough conversation in the past 20 years to make those hyphenated identities feel much more at home in the fabric of this country. It’s a sign of our culture growing up (and Hollywood finally getting with the picture) that we’re seeing immigrant stories expand in different directions.

We aren’t just immigrant doctors, lawyers or engineers anymore. We are DJs who also happen to be great coders. We are social justice warriors who don’t mind ruffling a few feathers by shaving our heads and speaking our truths at family parties. We are mothers and daughters who fight and make up and then fight again. We are freelance journalists and aspiring screenwriters with big ideas and big ambitions who are trying to figure it out one day at a time. We are more than just people grappling with cultural assimilation, and it’s undeniable how great our stories can be if we’re allowed to tell them.

“India Sweets and Spices” is in select theaters. Watch a trailer for it below, via YouTube.

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When a president taught in a segregated school — and it changed history

Last month I found myself in a friend's kitchen, perched on a wooden stool while pointing a cracked iPhone screen at my laptop's voice recorder. I was interviewing a pair of climate activists in their 20s, who were hunger striking to protest ongoing political inaction in the face of climate change. A series of unexpected technical glitches forced me to improvise the interview set-up — and then one of the protesters said something that nearly made me drop my phone in astonishment.

"I think the last couple of days of hunger striking make me think about what a different president would have done, right?" Kidus Girma told Salon. "I'm thinking of LBJ and the Great Society and the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

Girma went on to mention Franklin D. Roosevelt, but it was the reference to Lyndon B. Johnson that startled me. By the end of his presidency, Johnson was almost universally reviled by the liberal baby boomers who had grown up during his administration. Blamed for escalating the Vietnam War to a disastrous scale and then cracking down on antiwar protests, Johnson faced such forceful opposition from young people that he dropped out of the 1968 presidential campaign after the New Hampshire primary, faced with the prospect of losing his own party's nomination.

Because boomers later inherited the earth — or at least defined the narrative of the 1960s — the collective hostility toward LBJ has lingered. He has been largely overshadowed in the public's consciousness by the president before him, John F. Kennedy, who dismissed Johnson as a nonentity. In the ensuing decades, many Americans tended to see Kennedy as a symbol of youth, charisma and eloquence, while Johnson represented a brutal and cynical style of politics.

That appears to be changing. LBJ has been name-dropped constantly in recent years. Girma was the third young activist in recent months to describe Johnson to me in terms one might use for a presidential beau idéal, something no self-respecting '60s radical would have done when he was in office. It is jarring to hear that very argument from the same types of activists who would have hounded him out of power during the 1968 election.

It is not, however, unexplainable. Given LBJ's policy stances — which were ahead not only of his time, but our own — this youthful admiration makes a great deal of sense. It also helps that LBJ was famous for what friends and foes alike dubbed the "Johnson treatment," which involved using his intimidating physical presence, eerie knack for knowing an opponent's darkest secrets and mastery of parliamentary procedure to strong-arm anyone who stood in his way. These two qualities made him not only an accomplished president, but a fascinatingly nuanced personality. His seeming contradictions — and with them the essence of his contemporary appeal — may be partially explained by a brief episode from LBJ's early life: His one-year stint as a teacher in a segregated public school.

The year was 1928. The Jazz Age was still roaring, but the Great Depression was right around the corner. Then again, in places like the Texas town of Cotulla — a rural community about 90 miles southwest of San Antonio, where the 20-year-old Lyndon Johnson had been assigned to teach math and history to 5th, 6th and 7th graders — life was always the Great Depression. This was especially so for the 29 students trusted to Johnson's care, all of whom were of Mexican descent and many of whom had migrant parents. Their lives, anyone could plainly see, was deeply marred by poverty and discrimination.

Powerful people in Texas simply didn't care about educating "Mexicans"; as Robert Caro writes in the first volume of his Johnson biography, "the five other teachers were Cotulla housewives, and they treated the job with the contempt they felt it deserved, putting in the minimum time necessary, arriving just as classes started and leaving as soon as they ended."

At first the young Johnson wasn't much different. He had taken the job to help pay for his studies at Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now Texas State University), and his racial attitudes weren't much different from those of other white Texans (nor would he ever entirely rid himself of a noxious racist streak). Nothing in the ambitious young man's character suggested he would treat this teaching gig as anything special. Johnson was rapidly promoted to school principal, but that was almost certainly the result of sexism; he was the only male teacher at the school.

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Instead Johnson poured himself into the job, something his students quickly noticed. As principal, he ordered every teacher to supervise the students during recess, convinced the school board to spend money on sports equipment, and then began to schedule games against other schools. He was hard on underperforming students, even using corporal punishment on the boys —which was neither illegal nor unusual — but many of his students understood that came from a place of high expectations. As he learned that some of them were struggling in school because they were forced to work as day laborers, he became ever more determined to help them surmount those obstacles.

"He put us to work," one student, Manuel Sanchez, later told Caro. "But he was the kind of teacher you wanted to work for. You felt an obligation to him and to yourself to do your work." Johnson himself put in long hours on his own time, staying after class with students who had fallen behind or teaching English to the school janitor. Johnson spoke no Spanish and had little interest in Mexican culture — which was pretty much the norm for white people in Texas back then — and clearly believed it was important to "Americanize" his young charges in order to give them their best shot at life. That looks a lot different from the 21st century than it did at the time. As another former student, Juanita Ortiz, told Caro, "I remember his telling us seventh graders that anybody could be anything he wanted to be if he worked hard at it. As young as he was, he was trying to teach us all he knew. He really cared."

Johnson left the C.A. Welhausen Elementary School in 1929 and was never employed there again, but his brief teaching career probably changed him more than his students. He frequently talked about his year at the Cotulla school, whether in conversation with liberal activists, when lobbying intransigent legislators to support his civil rights bills or in private conversations with friends and family. LBJ had a Machiavellian nature, so he probably saw this as a way to convince listeners of his good intentions. That doesn't mean the feelings he expressed were insincere.

Perhaps the most telling occasion occurred in 1965. A year earlier, LBJ had won the most one-sided popular landslide in the history of presidential elections, crushing Republican Barry Goldwater with a never-surpassed 61.1 percent of the popular vote. He had also caused a permanent political realignment while passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex or religion. The landmark bill began to drive conservatives, especially white Southerners, out of the Democratic Party. Instead of scaling back his ambitions, LBJ saw that the 1964 legislation had not gone far enough. The next step was to ban racial discrimination in voting, which came with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In a special address to Congress explaining his rationale, Johnson called on the story of his teaching career in Cotulla.

My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican- American school. Few of them could speak English, and I couldn't speak Spanish.

My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast and hungry. And they knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them, but they knew it was so because I saw it in their eyes.

I often walked home late in the afternoon, after the classes were finished, wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that it might help them against the hardships that lay ahead.

And somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.

I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students, and to help people like them all over this country.

But now I do have that chance. And I'll let you in on a secret: I mean to use it.

Later that year, when returning to his alma mater to sign the Higher Education Act of 1965, Johnson brought up Cotulla again:

I shall never forget the faces of the boys and the girls in that little Welhausen Mexican School, and I remember even yet the pain of realizing and knowing then that college was closed to practically every one of those children because they were too poor.

And I think it was then that I made up my mind that this nation could never rest while the door to knowledge remained closed to any American.

It's unlikely that many young people in the 2020s know the story of LBJ's teaching career at Cotulla, but I suspect this is the animating spirit of what so many find appealing about him. As Caro would write in later volumes, Johnson's career was driven by two great desires — a craving for power, and an impulse to help those who were suffering. When the imperatives clashed, Johnson always chose power, and acted no better than any other shrewd but amoral politician. When those two strains of his character aligned, however, he accomplished truly amazing things.

This saga is made more fascinating, not less, by the fact that Johnson was by all accounts an unpleasant human being. Journalist Bill Moyers, who served as LBJ's press secretary for two years, admired the man's politics but has described him as temperamental, mean-spirited and demanding. For every tale of LBJ's kindness toward ordinary citizens, there are others about people who worked for him and insisted he was the worst kind of boss — abusive, unrealistic, quick to blame others but never willing to accept responsibility for his own mistakes.

Johnson might not have been able to have a political career in this century. He was notorious for being sexually inappropriate with women, and even his vulgar humor when in male company would raise eyebrows today. As Caro writes, LBJ shamelessly cheated on his wife and publicly scolded her for being less attractive, he claimed, than other women. He delighted in acts of cruelty to those who were powerless to tell him off, and enjoyed exerting a sort of royal privilege over aides and advisers, famously compelling them to talk to him while he was sitting on the toilet.

No doubt more important than any of that, boomer liberals weren't wrong in blaming Johnson for the imperialist debacle in Vietnam. Thanks to secret recordings of his presidential conversations, we now get a sense of a man who was unable to shake the conventional wisdom that if he "lost" in Vietnam, he would be emasculated — the worst kind of political defeat. Arguably Johnson destroyed his presidency, and did incalculable damage to both America and the world, out of fear that he'd be humiliated by the Viet Cong.

Yet despite these ample shortcomings, LBJ looms large because when it comes to domestic policy, he was far ahead of any subsequent Democratic president. Indeed, he was pretty close to positions we would call "progressive" today. That goes beyond his landmark civil rights bills to community-based antipoverty programs, investment in high-unemployment areas and free or heavily subsidized education and job training. He pushed through the bills that created Medicare and Medicaid, and on environmental issues was the first president to move beyond an ethic of "conservation" toward regulations designed to protect air and water quality along with endangered species, as well as control industrial pollution.

Johnson's list of progressive accomplishments is so extensive there's no point trying to catalog them all: education, funding of the arts, senior services, women's rights, immigration reform, consumer protection, transportation infrastructure, farm aid, subsidized housing and much more. He repeatedly succeeded in enacting major legislation, in stark contrast with later Democratic presidents (including the one now in office). Despite his personality flaws — or maybe to an extent because of them — he knew how to productively channel his strengths and energies in humane directions.

At a time when Democrats appear more invested in bipartisan comity and "going high" than causing the change their base voters want, LBJ's "take no prisoners" attitude seems like a much-needed tonic. If contemporary liberals and progressives decide to learn from Johnson's distinctive blend of idealism and pragmatism, they'll have to begin with the brief period when he was a teacher — a chapter in his life that brought out the best in him.

Religious Trauma Syndrome: How organized religion can lead to mental health problems

At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia. When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister. “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said. “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers.

But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn’t just the bulimia. I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn’t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God. It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through the mechanisms offered by biblical Christianity was not a function of my own spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.

Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. She is also the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. This combination has given her work an unusual focus. For the past twenty years she has counseled men and women in recovery from various forms of fundamentalist religion including the Assemblies of God denomination in which she was raised. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion, written during her years of private practice in psychology. Over the years, Winell has provided assistance to clients whose religious experiences were even more damaging than mine. Some of them are people whose psychological symptoms weren’t just exacerbated by their religion, but actually caused by it.

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Two years ago, Winell made waves by formally labeling what she calls “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) and beginning to write and speak on the subject for professional audiences. When the British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published a series of articles on the topic, members of a Christian counseling association protested what they called excessive attention to a “relatively niche topic.” One commenter said, “A religion, faith or book cannot be abuse but the people interpreting can make anything abusive.”

Is toxic religion simply misinterpretation? What is religious trauma? Why does Winell believe religious trauma merits its own diagnostic label? I asked her.

Let’s start this interview with the basics. What exactly is religious trauma syndrome?

Winell: Religious trauma syndrome (RTS) is a set of symptoms and characteristics that tend to go together and which are related to harmful experiences with religion. They are the result of two things: immersion in a controlling religion and the secondary impact of leaving a religious group. The RTS label provides a name and description that affected people often recognize immediately. Many other people are surprised by the idea of RTS, because in our culture it is generally assumed that religion is benign or good for you. Just like telling kids about Santa Claus and letting them work out their beliefs later, people see no harm in teaching religion to children.

But in reality, religious teachings and practices sometimes cause serious mental health damage. The public is somewhat familiar with sexual and physical abuse in a religious context. As Journalist Janet Heimlich has documented in, Breaking Their Will, Bible-based religious groups that emphasize patriarchal authority in family structure and use harsh parenting methods can be destructive.

But the problem isn’t just physical and sexual abuse. Emotional and mental treatment in authoritarian religious groups also can be damaging because of 1) toxic teachings like eternal damnation or original sin 2) religious practices or mindset, such as punishment, black and white thinking, or sexual guilt, and 3) neglect that prevents a person from having the information or opportunities to develop normally.

Can you give me an example of RTS from your consulting practice?

Winell: I can give you many. One of the symptom clusters is around fear and anxiety. People indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity as small children sometimes have memories of being terrified by images of hell and apocalypse before their brains could begin to make sense of such ideas. Some survivors, who I prefer to call “reclaimers,” have flashbacks, panic attacks, or nightmares in adulthood even when they intellectually no longer believe the theology. One client of mine, who during the day functioned well as a professional, struggled with intense fear many nights. She said,

I was afraid I was going to hell. I was afraid I was doing something really wrong. I was completely out of control. I sometimes would wake up in the night and start screaming, thrashing my arms, trying to rid myself of what I was feeling. I’d walk around the house trying to think and calm myself down, in the middle of the night, trying to do some self-talk, but I felt like it was just something that – the fear and anxiety was taking over my life.

Or consider this comment, which refers to a film used by Evangelicals to warn about the horrors of the “end times” for nonbelievers.

I was taken to see the film “A Thief In The Night”. WOW. I am in shock to learn that many other people suffered the same traumas I lived with because of this film. A few days or weeks after the film viewing, I came into the house and mom wasn’t there. I stood there screaming in terror. When I stopped screaming, I began making my plan: Who my Christian neighbors were, who’s house to break into to get money and food. I was 12 yrs old and was preparing for Armageddon alone.

In addition to anxiety, RTS can include depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning. In fundamentalist Christianity, the individual is considered depraved and in need of salvation. A core message is “You are bad and wrong and deserve to die.” (The wages of sin is death.) This gets taught to millions of children through organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship, and there is a group organized to oppose their incursion into public schools. I’ve had clients who remember being distraught when given a vivid bloody image of Jesus paying the ultimate price for their sins. Decades later they sit telling me that they can’t manage to find any self-worth.

After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.
I’ve spent literally years injuring myself, cutting and burning my arms, taking overdoses and starving myself, to punish myself so that God doesn’t have to punish me. It’s taken me years to feel deserving of anything good.

Born-again Christianity and devout Catholicism tell people they are weak and dependent, calling on phrases like “lean not unto your own understanding” or “trust and obey.” People who internalize these messages can suffer from learned helplessness. I’ll give you an example from a client who had little decision-making ability after living his entire life devoted to following the “will of God.” The words here don’t convey the depth of his despair.

I have an awful time making decisions in general. Like I can’t, you know, wake up in the morning, “What am I going to do today? Like I don’t even know where to start. You know all the things I thought I might be doing are gone and I’m not sure I should even try to have a career; essentially I babysit my four-year-old all day.

Authoritarian religious groups are subcultures where conformity is required in order to belong. Thus if you dare to leave the religion, you risk losing your entire support system as well.

I lost all my friends. I lost my close ties to family. Now I’m losing my country. I’ve lost so much because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad to my very core. . . I have tried hard to make new friends, but I have failed miserably. . . I am very lonely.

Leaving a religion, after total immersion, can cause a complete upheaval of a person’s construction of reality, including the self, other people, life, and the future. People unfamiliar with this situation, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create.

My form of religion was very strongly entrenched and anchored deeply in my heart. It is hard to describe how fully my religion informed, infused, and influenced my entire worldview. My first steps out of fundamentalism were profoundly frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide. Now I’m way past that but I still haven’t quite found “my place in the universe.

Even for a person who was not so entrenched, leaving one’s religion can be a stressful and significant transition.

Many people seem to walk away from their religion easily, without really looking back. What is different about the clientele you work with?

Winell: Religious groups that are highly controlling, teach fear about the world, and keep members sheltered and ill-equipped to function in society are harder to leave easily. The difficulty seems to be greater if the person was born and raised in the religion rather than joining as an adult convert. This is because they have no frame of reference – no other “self” or way of “being in the world.” A common personality type is a person who is deeply emotional and thoughtful and who tends to throw themselves wholeheartedly into their endeavors. “True believers” who then lose their faith feel more anger and depression and grief than those who simply went to church on Sunday.

Aren’t these just people who would be depressed, anxious, or obsessive anyways?

Winell: Not at all. If my observation is correct, these are people who are intense and involved and caring. They hang on to the religion longer than those who simply “walk away” because they try to make it work even when they have doubts. Sometime this is out of fear, but often it is out of devotion. These are people for whom ethics, integrity and compassion matter a great deal. I find that when they get better and rebuild their lives, they are wonderfully creative and energetic about new things.

In your mind, how is RTS different from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Winell: RTS is a specific set of symptoms and characteristics that are connected with harmful religious experience, not just any trauma. This is crucial to understanding the condition and any kind of self-help or treatment. (More details about this can be found on my Journey Free website and discussed in my talk at the Texas Freethought Convention.)

Another difference is the social context, which is extremely different from other traumas or forms of abuse. When someone is recovering from domestic abuse, for example, other people understand and support the need to leave and recover. They don’t question it as a matter of interpretation, and they don’t send the person back for more. But this is exactly what happens to many former believers who seek counseling. If a provider doesn’t understand the source of the symptoms, he or she may send a client for pastoral counseling, or to AA, or even to another church. One reclaimer expressed her frustration this way:

Include physically-abusive parents who quote “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as literally as you can imagine and you have one fucked-up soul: an unloved, rejected, traumatized toddler in the body of an adult. I’m simply a broken spirit in an empty shell. But wait…That’s not enough!? There’s also the expectation by everyone in society that we victims should celebrate this with our perpetrators every Christmas and Easter!!

Just like disorders such as autism or bulimia, giving RTS a real name has important advantages. People who are suffering find that having a label for their experience helps them feel less alone and guilty. Some have written to me to express their relief:

There’s actually a name for it! I was brainwashed from birth and wasted 25 years of my life serving Him! I’ve since been out of my religion for several years now, but i cannot shake the haunting fear of hell and feel absolutely doomed. I’m now socially inept, unemployable, and the only way i can have sex is to pay for it.

Labeling RTS encourages professionals to study it more carefully, develop treatments, and offer training. Hopefully, we can even work on prevention.

What do you see as the difference between religion that causes trauma and religion that doesn’t?

Winell: Religion causes trauma when it is highly controlling and prevents people from thinking for themselves and trusting their own feelings. Groups that demand obedience and conformity produce fear, not love and growth. With constant judgment of self and others, people become alienated from themselves, each other, and the world. Religion in its worst forms causes separation.

Conversely, groups that connect people and promote self-knowledge and personal growth can be said to be healthy. The book, Healthy Religion, describes these traits. Such groups put high value on respecting differences, and members feel empowered as individuals. They provide social support, a place for events and rites of passage, exchange of ideas, inspiration, opportunities for service, and connection to social causes. They encourage spiritual practices that promote health like meditation or principles for living like the golden rule. More and more, nontheists are asking how they can create similar spiritual communities without the supernaturalism. An atheist congregation in London launched this year and has received over 200 inquiries from people wanting to replicate their model.

Some people say that terms like “recovery from religion” and “religious trauma syndrome” are just atheist attempts to pathologize religious belief.

Winell: Mental health professionals have enough to do without going out looking for new pathology. I never set out looking for a “niche topic,” and certainly not religious trauma syndrome. I originally wrote a paper for a conference of the American Psychological Association and thought that would be the end of it. Since then, I have tried to move on to other things several times, but this work has simply grown.

In my opinion, we are simply, as a culture, becoming aware of religious trauma. More and more people are leaving religion, as seen by polls showing that the “religiously unaffiliated” have increased in the last five years from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. It’s no wonder the internet is exploding with websites for former believers from all religions, providing forums for people to support each other. The huge population of people “leaving the fold” includes a subset at risk for RTS, and more people are talking about it and seeking help. For example, there are thousands of former Mormons, and I was asked to speak about RTS at an Exmormon Foundation conference. I facilitate an international support group online called Release and Reclaim which has monthly conference calls. An organization called Recovery from Religion, helps people start self-help meet-up groups

Saying that someone is trying to pathologize authoritarian religion is like saying someone pathologized eating disorders by naming them. Before that, they were healthy? No, before that we weren’t noticing. People were suffering, thought they were alone, and blamed themselves. Professionals had no awareness or training. This is the situation of RTS today. Authoritarian religion is already pathological, and leaving a high-control group can be traumatic. People are already suffering. They need to be recognized and helped.

—- Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area and the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion. More information about Marlene Winell and resources for getting help with RTS may be found at Journey Free. Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Her articles can be found at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.