PicoBlog

Any time I hear someone talk about “natural farming”, my ears perk up and my suspicions tend to grow, and for good reason. “Natural farming” often falls into naturalist fallacies and a refusal to engage with replicable science but instead relies on ‘logical solutions’ that are poorly framed and often without any basis in basic science. Needless to say, when I first heard of Korean Natural Farming, I was suspicious and critical.

There are many ways to get at saying something in a cartoon. One is to do a political cartoon, or a drawing that gets directly at the issue. Another is to go at it obliquely, which is what I have done over the years for The New Yorker. These are cartoons that speak to the issue, whatever the issue is, but do so in a way that isn’t direct, makes you pause and maybe think for a minute.

I started offering premium content to reward the generosity of those folks who were donating money — unprompted & unasked! — to support this new Thoughtful Money venture. I didn’t want to just take their money for free. So I started re-publishing my “Adam’s Notes” for them. These are my detailed Cliffs Notes summaries of the key takeaways from the interviews I conduct each week. Essentially, I take notes so that they don’t have to.

I’m a journalist and author. You may know me from my years writing and editing at The Week, but now I’m the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today and a fellow at Defense Priorities. While freelance, I was writing regularly at Reason and The Daily Beast, and I’ve been widely published at outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, NBC, and Politico. My first book was A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (FaithWords, 2018).

BORDER/LINES is a weekly newsletter where experienced immigration beat reporters Gaby Del Valle and Felipe De La Hoz focus on injecting context into the week’s most contentious and confusing immigration policy news. Every Friday morning, we deliver an email with a full breakdown of the most significant story of the week, top-to-bottom, including historical context, legal precedent, analysis, informed predictions, and key takeaways. We’ll also dig into stories important new stories that flew under the radar, and take a look at what to expect for the week ahead.

Welcome to Buona Domenica, a weekly newsletter of Italian recipes and inspiration, delivered to your inbox every Sunday. I’m Domenica Marchetti, author of eight beautiful books on Italian home cooking, including Williams-Sonoma Everyday Italian; Preserving Italy: Canning, Curing, Infusing, and Bottling Italian Flavors and Traditions; and the bestselling book The Glorious Pasta of Italy. I teach cooking classes online and IRL, and I occasionally host tours and workshops in Italy. My articles and recipes on Italian food have been widely published, but this newsletter gives me an opportunity to connect directly with you and others who love Italian food and life as much as I do.

During my many years in public life, I always said that the rarest characteristic of leaders—and the one I admired most—is clarity. Human affairs are encrusted with fog, and nowhere is it thicker than around Israel. To see Israel as it really is—and its relations with America and the world—one must cut through many layers of that fog. Seeing the real Israel requires clarity. Welcome to Clarity, my Substack on Israel, America, and the world.

Are you over hot takes? Y’all, I am over them So. Over. Them. Hot takes are quick, messy, and partial. They only give us the fastest views of an event, a moment, or a person. They don’t give us depth, nuance, or complexity. Hot takes are everywhere, and really they shouldn’t be. So, I am aiming for something different: the cold take, a thoughtful, complicated, and distanced view. I want takes that are ice cold, lovely, and true.

This is my blog, for media criticism and diary entries and sometimes fiction. I write about the way that art affects my life. I grew up in Illinois and also on the computer. Now I live in New York City. Everything I write is free, but it means a lot if you choose to put this in your email inbox. I write in a few different genres here. To make the blog easier to navigate, I’ve categorized my writing on the Table of Contents page.