James Chappel is an associate professor of history at Duke University and a senior fellow at the Duke Aging Center. He is the author of Catholic Modern, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and The New Republic.
Whats the big idea?
Aging in America is becoming one of our countrys most important policy arenas. With more old citizens than young ones, the relevance of elder members in society has never been greater. Despite great progress in the quality of old age over the past century, there is much need for growth in terms of practical policy and cultural perceptions.
Below, Chappel shares five key insights from his new book, Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age. Listen to the audio versionread by Chappel himselfin the Next Big Idea App.
1. Population aging is one of the biggest historical transformations of our time.
We think about population aging as an issue for medicine and finance, but we dont usually think about it historically. From the broadest perspective, population aging is one of the biggest changes that has happened to American society in the past century. Many people think of politics, iPhones, or AI when considering dramatic societal change, but those things matter less than major demographic changes. Human life is not what it was a century agoits twice as long!and that deserves much more attention.
2. Weve only been seriously contemplating population aging for a century.
Most of the major things we deal with as a society (education, politics, health, war, gender) are topics we have publicly debated for centuries. We have reflected long and hard on many subjects, but no one really paid attention to population aging until about the 1930s.
Even people thinking very hard about social reform and progress, like Karl Marx, werent thinking about aging at all. So, aging is an issue that has a pretty short history. What to do with old age and how to pay for old age are areas of reflection with a lot of space open for creativity. Its an exciting, vibrant, fresh avenue for collective contemplation.
3. There have been many different approaches to aging.
We often think of aging as something nonideological. Education is ideological, and the military is ideological, so we have robust public debate about the meaning of these things. But old age is kind of like, well, you get Social Security and Medicare, and we dont want to think about it too much beyond that. Old age is in a moment of ideological stasis. But for most of the past century, theres been much debate about what it means to age well: socially, politically, and justly.
There has been socialist aging, conservative aging, green or eco-conscious aging, etc. One tradition I look at is critical race theory. From that perspective, the history of aging looks quite different. There actually was a robust tradition of Black thought about aging. A lot of inspiring Black leaders said, essentially, that racism and prejudice follow Americans through the whole course of life. Older Black Americans have all kinds of negative outcomes, and Black activists suggested specific reforms to bring the insights of the Civil Rights Movement into old age politics and policy.
We need to reinvigorate and repoliticize old age. We should remember how political and divisive it was (and therefore, how exciting it was) to debate old age just a few decades ago.
4. 20th-century solutions to old age are very good.
Historians are often quite down on American history. They tend to focus on the persistence of inequality, violence, or disenfranchisement. But when it comes to old age, the situation is much better than it was a century ago.
A century ago, older people often lived in squalor, in one-room shacks with dirt floors. There were only a few elders because public health was so bad. Now, older people are quite economically privileged, and they have access to the best poverty reduction program in the country, which is social security. Theyre the only age bracket with something like socialized medicine through Medicare. Theres a lot to be grateful for as aging Americans, but theres also a lot left to be done.
There are failures in old-age policy, especially for people over 80, the old old. Issues of frailty, nursing home care, and things like that. Many American middle-aged couples, especially women, are financially or emotionally devastated by caring for older relatives. This is a result of a policy decision that could have been approached differently. There were approaches on the table that would have lessened the burden on unpaid caretakers, and it is not too late.
When we think historically about old age, its important that we tell an optimistic story. Im excited to get old. There will be way more social programs for me when Im 65 than I have available to me now. But theres also room for growth, especially in dealing with policy for the old old. Nursing homes and extended care will be the most important policy arenas in the near future.
5. Getting old is an adventure.
Old age in America can be very good. It can be very fun. You have access to so much when it comes to opportunities for leisure and health. But what I mean by the adventure of old age is a bit different.
As Americans, we tend to believe that we make our biggest contributions as citizens when were young, that politics is a young persons game: green energy, Black Lives Matter, and other movements are for younger people, and old people can step back. I think that is absolutely not true. That is a completely outdated way to think about American politics. I think the age of youth has eclipsed.
There are more older people in America than younger ones. The decisions we make about how to age and think about old age policy will matter now more than ever. Being provocative, I might even say that decisions about aging are going to matter more than decisions about youth because I think the age of the youth is over. Theres been a major demographic transition in this country and many others. As we age, we should not think of ourselves as becoming less relevant. We should think of ourselves as becoming more relevant.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
A popular true crime YouTube channel has been pulling in millions of views with videos about gruesome murders. As it turns out, None of them are real.
One of those videos, titled “Husband’s Secret Gay Love Affair with Step Son Ends in Grisly Murder, claimed to detail a gruesome crime in Littleton, Colorado. After it amassed nearly two million views, viewers reached out to local reporter Elizabeth Hernandez. But there was no record of the crimebecause it never happened. The murder was entirely fabricated by a YouTube channel called True Crime Case Files that used ChatGPT and AI-generated imagery.
According to 404 Medias Henry Larson, over 150 similar videos had been uploaded to the channel in the past year, each racking up tens of thousands of views. Other videos carried titles like Wife Secret Affair with Neighbors Teenage Daughter Ends in Grisly Murder and Coach Gives Cheerleader HIV after Secret Affair, Leading to Pregnancy. Hernandez contacted the police about the fake crime videos and the channel was deactivated earlier this year.
Paul (a pseudonym created by 404 Media to protect his identity) told Larson that he created the fake true crime news to make viewers question why they were so interested in such salacious acts. While his methods are dubious at best, the question itself stands. More than half of all Americans say they consume some form of true crime, with Crime Junkie and Dateline NBC (the original inspiration behind Pauls videos) both among Apples 10 most popular podcasts of 2024.
Im trying to overdose the viewer on luridness, to try to confront them with the fact that they seem to be so invested in the luridness of it all, Paul told Larson, defending his AI-generated work. Peoples secret lives, their secret affairs that are really taboo.
The videos were popular and lucrative enough that Paul was able to work on them full time. Before his account was made unavailable, he would create up to two videos a week, each taking around 2.5 hours to finish. A YouTube spokesperson told 404 Media, We terminated the channel in question for multiple violations of our Community Guidelines, including our policies covering child safety that prohibit the sexualization of minors.
However, Paul still defends his videos. True crime [] at the end of the day, it’s a form of entertainment. Viewers are watching this not to be informed about things that will affect them personally, he told Larson. They’re really just there to be entertained and to have a thrilling mystery with some lurid elements.
Workplaces have started offering more customized benefits over the past decade, even including niche offerings that help employees navigate major life changes like divorce. As demand has increased for fertility coverage and mental health support, for example, many employers have actually doubled down on these benefits in recent years, despite economic headwinds.
This week, the virtual healthcare provider Maven Clinic released a report that indicates the trend is continuingeven as the cost of family-building support and reproductive care has risen across the board. Of the nearly 3,800 employees surveyed, a third of those pursuing fertility treatments said they had gone into debt to do so, and more than two-thirds of respondents said they had switched or considered switching jobs to land better fertility benefits. Among people who were pregnant or planning to expand their families, nearly half were concerned about how the political climate and new administration might impact their reproductive health.
At the same time, however, providing these benefits is becoming prohibitively expensive: In 2024, insurance premiums for employer-sponsored family healthcare coverage jumped 7% and crossed $25,000. In Maven’s survey, which also polled nearly 1,600 HR leaders, 70% said that fertility-related expenses had increased, and those affected almost universally expressed concerns over the rising cost.
Still, at the moment, employers are continuing to invest in fertility benefits. Nearly half of HR leaders said they are planning to expand fertility coverage following the election, while 69% plan on further investing in family health benefits in the coming years, with many opting to add benefits like preconception care.
A significant portion of employers (65%) are also expanding reproductive health offerings for men, including fertility support and more equitable parental leave policies. It’s likely a welcome investment, judging by Maven’s findings: The vast majority of men surveyed said their reproductive health needs were not being served, or that they weren’t sure where to seek out additional support in that arena.
It seems many employers regard family-building and fertility benefits as a crucial part of attracting and retaining the best talent; according to Maven’s survey, 84% of companies that provide strong support to parents said almost all of their employees returned to work after taking parental leave. In a moment when corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are under attack, some employers might also see the value in continuing to shore up benefits that help build a more diverse and inclusive workforce.
The fight over businesses’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs is heading to the courtroom. This week, a lawsuit was filed against coffee giant Starbucks over DEI practices, which the suit claims, break the law.That lawsuit, filed by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, says the chain is allowing race discrimination. “Starbucks ties compensation to racial and sex-based quotas, discriminates on the basis of race and sex in training and advancement opportunities, and discriminates on the basis of race and sex with respect to its board membership,” the suit reads. “All of this is unlawful.”
The lawsuit comes amid a major federal crackdown on DEI policies that has erupted since Trump’s inauguration. On January 21, the president signed an executive order called Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, which instructed all federal agencies to take all appropriate action with respect to the operations of their agencies to advance in the private sector the policy of individual initiative, excellence, and hard work.
The action called for the termination of DEI programs, policies, and funding. After the order, it was reported that federal buildings were raided and swept of any DEI materials. Federal employees were also barred from using their pronouns in the email signatures. Pronouns and any other information not permitted in the policy must be removed from CDC/ATSDR employee signatures by 5 p.m. ET on Friday, Jason Bonander, the CDCs chief information officer reportedly wrote. Staff are being asked to alter signature blocks . . . to follow the revised policy.
Much like Trump’s response to the recent plane crash over the Potomac River that killed 67 people, in which he blamed, without evidence, DEI hiring, the suit alleges that DEI policies at Starbucks created problems at the chain. Not only did it allege that Starbucks bases hiring on race, it said employees made “more mistakes” on the job. Missouris consumers are required to pay higher prices and wait longer for goods and services that could be provided for less, had Starbucks employed the most qualified workers, regardless of their race, gender or national origin, the lawsuit said.
Starbucks is, of course, pushing back on the claims in the suit. The chain told CBS News, “We disagree with the attorney general, and these allegations are inaccurate. We are deeply committed to creating opportunity for every single one of our partners (employees). Our programs and benefits are open to everyone and lawful.”
Other companies, such as Target, McDonald’s, Ford, Amazon, Meta, and Walmart, were quick to get on board, post-election, with Trump’s push to eliminate their DEI policies. Although last month, nearly three dozen Walmart investors sent a strongly worded letter to Walmart CEO Doug MacMillon, questioning its DEI-initiatives rollback.
Starbucks seems to be holding firm. As stated on its website, “We are expanding workforce diversity to bring new perspectives and experiences that improve our business and workplace. To do this, we reach a broader pool of candidates and talent by prioritizing inclusivity in our recruitment practices, in partner engagement, and by continuing to foster inclusive leadership. We work hard to ensure our hiring practices are competitive, fair and inclusive and that we hire the best person every time.”
Likewise, Costco recently doubled down on its diversity practices, when at an annual meeting, the companys board of directors unanimously voted down a shareholder proposal, which asserted that diversity initiatives are discriminatory. JPMorgan also isn’t caving to the new administration’s pressure. In a visit to Columbus, Ohio, this week, CEO Jamie Dimon expressed his view on how massively important the company’s DEI initiatives remain. “We bank cities, schools, states, hospitals. We reach out to veterans. We fought for [the] disabled,” Dimon said. “We have programs for a million different things.”
As former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Jen Pahlka helped to create the U.S. Digital Service (USDS). Today, the USDS houses Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), hell-bent on quick, disruptive change. Pahlka shares why the motivation behind Musks disruption of the status quo isnt necessarily wrong, arguing that we must clear the sludge out of government processes to finally create the conditions for substantive change.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
When we last spoke, it was in the early days of the pandemic to talk about a new nonprofit that paired volunteer tech pros with struggling government agencies. It was called U.S. Digital Response, modeled in part on the U.S. Digital Service, which you helped set up inside the White House. Now, the U.S. Digital Service has been renamed the U.S. DOGE Service, housing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. When and how did you first learn that USDS was going to change into something else?
I found out the way everyone else did, which was the night of inauguration, right? Those EOs started hitting, and the fact that it had actually been renamed the U.S. DOGE Service. It shouldn’t have been a shock.
Do you take it personally? I mean, it was a lot of work that you put into creating the U.S. Digital Service.
I mean, you can’t take anything personally. I mean, it’s something of an honor that someone with a lot of power sees a thing that you had a hand in building and says, This is the thing that I’m going to use for my agenda. I think that they were very smart about it: There is great tech talent in the U.S. Digital Servicenow the U.S. DOGE Service. It has the hiring authorities that they needed. They could bring Elon and his special government employees and he didn’t have to divest from all his investments.
But it hasn’t been necessarily a pleasant experience for folks in USDS, who on the one hand have really been waiting for somebody to give them more oomph and speed up the transformation that they’ve been trying to make for a long time. These new folks come in and they’ve had very brief conversations with the team and then sort of let them go back to their work so far. We’ll see how it goes. And it just means that the USDS is just associated with things like stopping payments to USAID, which is really not at all what USDS is about.
When we first talked about USDS, as I recall, there were a lot of rules about what the administration could and couldn’t do. And you took a lot of care in trying to navigate that. In hindsight, were folks too beholden to those rules? Like that they were rules and not laws? I mean, the Trump administration certainly acts as if it’s unencumbered.
They sure do. USDS has been able to do some great stuff. You know, they were part of the Direct File launch last year, which was hugely successful. They did online passport renewals recently. I think that whatever you’re doing, whether it’s setting up something like USDS or trying to get Direct File working for low-income Americans, there are a lot of rules.
The right way to do it is to come in with a very bold, ambitious, curious agenda and say like, but this is the right thing to do for the American public, right? And these rules seem to be stopping us. Let’s ask, “Is this really a law? Is it a policy? Is it a regulation? Is it a memo?” And figure out how you might change it legally, so that you can serve the public better. And that’s hard. It’s really hard because people will just say it’s illegal. And you have to distinguish, is it something that . . . so this manager over here could change just because it’s just a memo that his predecessor wrote and it can be rewritten? Or do we have to do notice-and-comment rulemaking and actually go through the regulatory process and change it? Or do we have to go back to Congress, right? And that’s the work. That’s the work that needs to happen. And it needed to be happening at a far faster pace than it had. People will say, well, now it’s happening at a faster pace. Yes, if you don’t count the fact that sometimes they’re just ignoring the law entirely, right?
You recently wrote an opinion column for The New York Times about how you align with some of the motivations that Musk and Trump express for more efficient government. You talked about, I’m quoting here, “the layers of process and procedure that encrust so much of government operations.” It’s strong words.
Yes, I think what I said about motivations was that their motivations seem to be very different from mine. . . . Stopping payments that Congress authorized or firing as much of the workforce as you can indiscriminately seems to be driven by maybe a different motivation. What I think we have in common is the tactics of bringing in talent, having a little less patience with the status quo. I think we should have had less patience with the status quo for the past, say, 20 years. And maybe we would have been able to avoid this irresponsible kind of transformation that seems to be going on right now.
In the article, you called your goal “de-proceduralization.” That’s a long word. Can you explain what you mean by that?
To define de-proceduralization a little bit . . . I mean, during the pandemic, you know, last time I saw you, we had this crisis in unemployment insurance. All of the state’s labor commissioners got called up in front of their legislatures and yelled at for the backlogs that they’d accumulated. One of them was very smart: Rob Asaro-Angelo. He’s the commissioner of labor for the state of New Jersey. When he gets called up, he brings boxes and boxes of paper and puts them on the table as he’s being yelled at. And they are labeled 7,119 pages of active regulations that govern UI in the state of New Jersey. And he just keeps pointing at the pages and saying, you want a system that can operate at very low levels during times of high employment, and then scale apparently now to 10, even in some cases 15 times the number of claims on a dime. . . . You have to have a simpler system for it to be able to scale.
And who created all of those regulations that have made this system so fragile, so complex, and so non-scalable and non-resilient? Well, the state legislature, the federal department of labor, courts. . . . The labor commissioner himself can’t do anything about that. But it does make it very hard to keep trust and faith with the American public when you can’t deliver because you̵re drowning in regulations which then drive great volumes of procedure and process that mean you can’t act quickly and you can’t act in a way that people expect.
We have a world that is moving really fast and it seems like government just doesn’t have the capacity to move at that pace. And I guess what you’re saying is it’s not that the people within government don’t have that capacity necessarily. It’s that there’s so many rules and so many hoops to jump through that you just can’t move at that speed.
Right. And I think one of the things that Elon seems to be recognizing in real time is that the people that he said such horrible things about before he got into government are the people who most want those regulations changed. So many public servants just want to do their jobs, they just want to serve the public, and they know that they’re really constrained by these huge volumes of procedure, regulation, policy, and law.
The 2025 tax season is in full swing, and the number one question most people have on their minds after filing their return is, Wheres my tax refund? Thankfully, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) offers a quick and easy online tool to help you check the status of your tax refund. Heres what you need to know about the tool as well as how long it may take to receive your refund.
Check your tax refund status with the IRSs Where’s My Refund? tool
If youre anxious about where your refund is, theres good news: you can check its status in just a few seconds using the Where’s My Refund? tool from the IRS.
Checking your refund status is pretty easy. Heres how:
Go to the IRSs Where’s My Refund? tool at www.irs.gov/wheres-my-refund.
Click the Check your refund button.
On the refund status page, enter your Social Security Number.
Next, select the tax year you are inquiring about.
Now, select your filing status for the tax year you selected in the step above.
Finally, enter the exact whole dollar amount of the refund you are expecting.
Click the Submit button.
The IRS says the tool will show you one of three results:
Return Received means the agency has received your tax return and it is still processing it.
Refund Approved means your refund has been approved. You will also see a date that the IRS expects to issue it by.
Refund Sent means the IRS has already issued your refund.
How long until I get my IRS tax refund?
After receiving word that the IRS has issued your tax refund, the next question most people want answered is, When will I receive my tax refund?
According to tax firm Jackson Hewitts Chief Tax Information Officer, Mark Steber, that depends on the method by which your refund is being delivered.
If your refund is being delivered by direct deposit to your bank account, you should receive it in your account between 2 to 5 business days after the treasury issues the payment.
If your refund is being delivered by paper check, it should be delivered to the address on the check within about 5 to 7 business days.
But as Jackson Hewitts Steber points out, the IRS cannot legally send the payments for some refunds out yet. Thats because of a 2015 law known as the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act. The law stipulates that if the taxpayer who files the return claims the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) or Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), the IRS must hold the refund until after February 14. The delay is designed to help the IRS detect and prevent tax return fraud.
So, even if you filed your return on the first day of this tax season, if you have claimed either one of those credits, your refund will not have been sent yet. For these people, the IRS says its Where’s My Refund? tool should show an updated status by February 22.
The agency further explains that it expects most EITC/ACTC related refunds to be available in taxpayer bank accounts or on debit cards by March 3 if they chose direct deposit and there are no other issues with their tax return.
Literate in tone, far-reaching in scope, and witty to its bones, The New Yorker brought a newand much-neededsophistication to American journalism when it launched 100 years ago this month.
As I researched the history of U.S. journalism for my book Covering America, I became fascinated by the magazines origin story and the story of its founder, Harold Ross.
In a business full of characters, Ross fit right in. He never graduated from high school. With a gap-toothed smile and bristle-brush hair, he was frequently divorced and plagued by ulcers.
Ross devoted his adult life to one cause: The New Yorker magazine.
For the literati, by the literati
Born in 1892 in Aspen, Colorado, Ross worked out west as a reporter while still a teenager. When the U.S. entered World War I, Ross enlisted. He was sent to southern France, where he quickly deserted from his Army regiment and made his way to Paris, carrying his portable Corona typewriter. He joined up with the brand-new newspaper for soldiers, Stars and Stripes, which was so desperate for anybody with training that Ross was taken on with no questions asked, even though the paper was an official Army operation.
In Paris, Ross met a number of writers, including Jane Grant, who had been the first woman to work as a news reporter at The New York Times. She eventually became the first of Rosss three wives.
Harold Ross and Jane Grant in 1926. [Photo: University of Oregon Libraries]
After the armistice, Ross headed to New York City and never really left. There, he started meeting other writers, and he soon joined a clique of critics, dramatists, and wits who gathered at the Round Table in the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street in Manhattan.
Over long and liquid lunches, Ross rubbed shoulders and wisecracked with some of the brightest lights in New Yorks literary chandelier. The Round Table also spawned a floating poker game that involved Ross and his eventual financial backer, Raoul Fleischmann, of the famous yeast-making family.
In the mid-1920s, Ross decided to launch a weekly metropolitan magazine. He could see that the magazine business was booming, but he had no intention of copying anything that already existed. He wanted to publish a magazine that spoke directly to him and his friendsyoung city dwellers whod spent time in Europe and were bored by the platitudes and predictable features found in most American periodicals.
First, though, Ross had to come up with a business plan.
The kind of smart-set readers Ross wanted were also desirable to Manhattans high-end retailers, so they got on board and expressed interest in buying ads. On that basis, Rosss poker partner Fleischmann was willing to stake him $25,000 to startroughly $450,000 in todays dollars.
Ross goes all in
In the fall of 1924, using an office owned by Fleischmanns family at 25 West 45th St., Ross got to work on the prospectus for his magazine:
The New Yorker will be a reflection in word and picture of metropolitan life. It will be human. Its general tenor will be one of gaiety, wit, and satire, but it will be more than a jester. It will not be what is commonly called radical or highbrow. It will be what is commonly called sophisticated, in that it will assume a reasonable degree of enlightenment on the part of its readers. It will hate bunk.
The magazine, he famously added, is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque.
In other words, The New Yorker was not going to respond to the news cycle, and it was not going to pander to middle America.
Rosss only criterion would be whether a story was interestingwith Ross the arbiter of what counted as interesting. He was putting all his chips on the long-shot idea that there were enough people who shared his interestsor could discover that they didto support a glossy, cheeky, witty weekly.
Ross almost failed. The cover of the first issue of The New Yorker, dated Feb. 21, 1925, carried no portraits of potentates or tycoons, no headlines, no come-ons.
Instead, it featured a watercolor by Rosss artist friend Rea Irvin of a dandified figure staring intently through a monocle atof all things!a butterfly. That image, nicknamed Eustace Tilly, became the magazines unofficial emblem.
#OTD in 1925Eustace Tilley on the very first issueCover of The New Yorker, February 21, 1925Rea Irvin#TheNewYorkerCover #ReaIrvin #EustaceTilley pic.twitter.com/SaeEZvBILO— Ron Lacy (@LRonLacy) February 21, 2024
A magazine finds its footing
Inside that first edition, a reader would find a buffet of jokes and short poems. There was a profile, reviews of plays and books, lots of gossip, and a few ads.
It was not terribly impressive, feeling quite patched together, and at first the magazine struggled. When The New Yorker was just a few months old, Ross almost even lost it entirely one night in a drunken poker game at the home of Pulitzer Prize winner and Round Table regular Herbert Bayard Swope. Ross didnt make it home until noon the next day and, when he woke, his wife found IOUs in his pockets amounting to nearly $30,000.
Fleischmann, who had been at the card game but left at a decent hour, was furious. Somehow, Ross persuaded Fleischmann to pay off some of his debt and let Ross work off the rest. Just in time, The New Yorker began gaining readers, and more advertisers soon followed. Ross eventually settled up with his financial angel.
A big part of the magazines success was Rosss genius for spotting talent and encouraging them to develop their own voices. One of the founding editors key early finds was Katharine S. Angell, who became the magazines first fiction editor and a reliable reservoir of good sense. In 1926, Ross brought James Thurber and E.B. White aboard, and they performed a variety of chores: writing casuals, which were short satirical essays, cartooning, creating captions for others drawings, reporting Talk of the Town pieces, and offering commentary.
Portrait of E.B. White at work for The New Yorker Magazine circa 1955. [Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images]
As The New Yorker found its footing, the writers and editors began perfecting some of its trademark features: the deep profile, ideally written about someone who was not strictly in the news but who deserved to be better known; long, deeply reported, nonfiction narratives; short stories and poetry; and, of course, the single-panel cartoons and the humor sketches.
Intensely curious and obsessively correct in matters grammatical, Ross would go to any length to ensure accuracy. Writers got their drafts back from Ross covered in penciled queries demanding dates, sources, and endless fact-checking. One trademark Ross query was Who he?
During the 1930s, while the country was suffering through a relentless economic depression, The New Yorker was sometimes faulted for blithely ignoring the seriousness of the nations problems. In the pages of The New Yorker, life was almost always amusing, attractive, and fun.
The New Yorker really came into its own, both financially and editorially, during World War II. It finally found its voice, one that was curious, international, searching and, ultimately, quite serious.
Ross also discovered still more writers, such as A.J. Liebling, Mollie Panter-Downes, and John Hersey, who was raided from Henry Luces Time magazine. Together, they produced some of the best writing of the war, most notably Herseys landmark reporting on the use of the first atomic bomb in warfare.
A crown jewel of journalism
Over the past century, The New Yorker had a profound impact on American journalism.
For one thing, Ross created conditions for distinctive voices to be heard. For another, The New Yorker provided encouragement and an outlet for nonacademic authority to flourish; it was a place where all those serious amateurs could write about the Dead Sea Scrolls or geology or medicine or nuclear war with no credentials other than their own ability to observe closely, think clearly and put together a good sentence.
Finally, Ross must be credited with expanding the scope of journalism far beyond standard categories of crime and courts, politics, and sports. In the pages of The New Yorker, readers almost never found the same content that theyd come across in other newspapers and magazines.
Instead, readers of The New Yorker might find just about anything else.
Christopher B. Daly is a professor emeritus of journalism at Boston University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Bowling Green, Kentucky, is known for being the city from which Corvettes roll off the production lines, and for Fruit of the Loom underwear, which is headquartered there.
But the city of 76,000 could soon be known for something else: its AI-powered mass civic engagement project that is using public surveys to chart the future of the city.
In the next 25 years, the county within which Bowling Green sits is set to double in size, thanks largely to the growth of nearby Nashville. Figuring out what to do about that vexes the public officials in Bowling Green and the greater Warren County. The What Could BG Be? project is an open consultation open to all residents in the area to share their hopes, dreams, and fears for the future of the area.
The tech-driven consultation opens today, and runs through March 17. The insights provided by citizens will be gathered by Google’s Jigsaw team, alongside Polis, a statistical analysis company, and synthesized to try and come up with concrete conclusions the local council can pursue for the future.
Bowling Green is going through this incredible transformation, Jigsaw CEO Yasmin Green tells Fast Company. Theyre doubling in size over the next 20 years. It sounds fantastic on the surface, but theres a mixed bag of emotions about whether thats going to be good or not.
The data will be parsed by Jigsaws Sensemaking tools, which utilize large language models to make sense of large-scale online conversations. In an attempt to foster transparency through the whole process, all the comments, and any votes made by the public on potential options that stem from them, will be available on a website devoted to the project. The website also provides a public square for the general populace to chip in with any comments. The publishing of the comments is very important so that people can check it, says Green. A summary by definition is a lossy act.
That transparency is particularly important because of the intricacies of Bowling Green, a purple city with a Republican mayor and a diverse population. City planners and public figures say there are more things that unite city folk than divide thembut it can sometimes be difficult to discern those areas of uncommon agreement in this age of partisanship.
Bowling Green is kind of a microcosm of what happens around the world, says Green. You feel so much change. Theres technological disruption, immigration, the changing nature of jobs, and the economy. They are going through this change.
The ultimate goal is to try and help encourage participation with civic engagement processesand to glean any ideas that could help the local community head into the future in a stronger position to address the challenges of rapid population growth and changing economic and social circumstances.
I think if we can get a proof point in Bowling Green, that could be inspiring for a lot of other places to pick up, says Green.
U.S. retail sales dropped sharply last month, in part because cold weather kept more Americans indoors, denting sales at car dealers and most other stores.
Retail sales fell 0.9% in January from the previous month, the Commerce Department said, after two months of healthy gains. It was a much bigger drop than economists expected and the biggest decline in a year.
The average temperature in January was the lowest since 1988, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics, and was particularly disruptive in the more temperate South. Devastating fires in Los Angeles may have also impacted spending.
The data does not show that Americans rushed to buy goods in January to get ahead of President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs, as some analysts had expected. However, sales were revised higher for December. Many consumers may have just cut back in January after splurging during the holiday season.
The tail-off in sales may provide some measure of reassurance for the Federal Reserve, after a very hot read on inflation for January, that the economy may not be overheating.
And he decline in retail sales indicates that the economy, while still expanding, will grow more slowly in the first three months of this year. It grew at a 2.3% annual rate in last year’s final quarter.
Sales plummeted 2.8% last month at auto dealers and slumped at furniture stores, home and garden centers. Even in the usually strong online retail sector saw a 1.9% decline. Sales rose at general merchandise stores, a category that includes big retailers like Walmart and Target, and at restaurants and bars.
In addition to cold weather, the sales decline could in part point to fading consumer confidence as was reflected in a pair of recent surveys by the Conference Board and University of Michigan. Still, hiring and wage growth have been steady, suggesting the economy is still expanding. Last week the government reported that the unemployment rate fell for the second straight month to a low 4%.
Inflation did tick higher last month despite the Federal Reserve’s efforts to cool prices through higher interest rates. The cost of groceries jumped in January from the previous month, pushed higher by soaring egg prices. Rising costs at the grocery store is exacting a toll on Americans.
At the same time Trump is also stepping up tariff threats, which could lead to higher prices. Trump said Thursday he would soon impose reciprocal tariffs on countries that levy large duties on U.S. goods exports. Trump has already added 10% import taxes on goods from China, and has said he will place 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports.
David French, executive vice president of the National Retail Federation, warned the import taxes could raise prices for consumers.
While we support the presidents efforts to reduce trade barriers and imbalances, this scale of undertaking is massive and will be extremely disruptive to our supply chains,” French said Thursday. It will likely result in higher prices for hardworking American families and will erode household spending power.
Retail executives say that its hard to plan given the fluidity of the tariff policies under the Trump administration.
Kim Tobman, CEO of Bouqs, a floral retailer based in Marina del Ray, California, said most of her vases come from China, and that the 10% increase wasnt as bad as she expected. She doesnt expect to raise prices, but she is considering Vietnam, Indonesia and other areas to source vases.
We feel at this moment we can absorb it, Tobman said.
She experienced the turbulence that comes with Trumps shifting tariff plans last month during his showdown with Colombia, a massive exporter of flowers, after that nation initially refused to accept flights of deported migrants.
Trump swiftly announced a series of retaliatory measures, including a 25% tariff on Colombia exports to the U.S., with a threat it could escalate. Colombia is the largest flower exporter to the U.S and represents a big chunk of sourcing for Bouqs floral arrangement, Tobman said. The Colombian government eventually agreed to Trumps demands, and the tariffs never materialized.
By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and ANNE D’INNOCENZIO AP Business Writers
The Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General on Friday said it was launching an audit of the security controls for the federal government’s payment system, after Democratic senators raised red flags about the access provided to Trump aide Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team.
The audit will also review the past two years of the system’s transactions as it relates to Musk’s assertion of alleged fraudulent payments, according to a letter from Loren J. Sciurba, Treasurys deputy inspector general, that was obtained by The Associated Press.
The audit marks part of the broader effort led by Democratic lawmakers and federal employee unions to provide transparency and accountability about DOGE’s activities under President Donald Trump’s Republican administration. The Musk team has pushed for access to the government’s computer systems and sought to remove tens of thousands of federal workers.
We expect to begin our fieldwork immediately, Sciburba wrote. Given the breadth of this effort, the audit will likely not be completed until August; however, we recognize the danger that improper access or inadequate controls can pose to the integrity of sensitive payment systems. As such, if critical issues come to light before that time, we will issue interim updates and reports.
Tech billionaire Musk, who continues to control Tesla, X and SpaceX among other companies, claims to be finding waste, fraud and abuse while providing savings to taxpayers, many of his claims so far unsubstantiated. But there is a risk that his team’s aggressive efforts could lead to the failure of government computer systems and enable Musk and his partners to profit off private information maintained by the government.
Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon led the push for the inspector general office’s inquiry.
On Wednesday, Warren, Wyden and Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noting the inconsistencies in the accounts provided by his department about DOGE.
Your lack of candor about these events is deeply troubling given the threats to the economy and the public from DOGEs meddling, and you need to provide a clear, complete, and public accounting of who accessed the systems, what they were doing, and why they were doing it, the Democratic lawmakers wrote in their letter.
The Treasury Department provided conflicting information about DOGE’s access to the payment system. Initially, it claimed the access was read only, only to then acknowledge that a DOGE team member briefly had the ability to edit code, and then to say in an employee sworn statement that the ability to edit was granted by accident.
The 25-year-old employee granted the access, Marko Elez, resigned this month after racist posts were discovered on one of his social media accounts, only for Musk to call for his rehiring with the backing of Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Advocacy groups and labor unions have filed lawsuits over DOGEs potential unauthorized access to sensitive Treasury payment systems, and five former treasury secretaries have sounded the alarm on the risks associated with Musks DOGE accessing sensitive Treasury Department payment systems and potentially stopping congressionally authorized payments.
Earlier this week, the Treasury declined to brief a pair of the highest-ranking lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee, including Wyden, on the ongoing controversy related to DOGE’s use of Treasury payment systems, citing ongoing litigation.
By FATIMA HUSSEIN and JOSH BOAK Associated Press
