~vox | Bookmarks (534)

Shortly after departing the Gates Foundation in June, Melinda French Gates surprised 12 people with a $20 million grant each. Most of them were doing work focused on helping women and girls’ mental and physical health globally — a cause she has backed for years. But one grant went to Richard Reeves, president of the American […]

If you want to help human beings alive right now, there are few better places to give than global health. Diseases that have been largely eradicated in the US still claim hundreds of thousands of lives abroad. In 2018, the most recent year for which there’s data, seven Americans died of malaria; all acquired it […]

Giving Tuesday — the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving and the internationally recognized day to contribute to charity — is upon us. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has always been the kickoff event of the holiday shopping season and one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Marketing experts recognized how popular it was […]

If you care about animals and want to reduce their suffering, but aren’t sure exactly how, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE) is an organization that might be able to help. The California-based nonprofit puts out an annual guide for recommended animal charities, and it just released its list for this year. (Disclosure: ACE has helped fund […]

If you’re reading this, chances are you care a lot about fighting climate change, and that’s great. The climate emergency threatens all of humanity. And although the world has started to make some progress on it, our global response is still extremely lacking. The trouble is, it can be genuinely hard to figure out how […]

President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden on Sunday, just weeks before he leaves the White House and despite previously promising not to do so.  Biden said in a statement announcing the pardon that his son had been “selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted” and that his political opponents had undertaken an “effort to break Hunter,” […]

A year after graduating from college, Chi was adrift.  She’d gone from a life of structure to one without guardrails and her mental health was declining. As a result, she distanced herself from friends and family. She left her job as a peer facilitator at a support group for people with depression and bipolar disorder […]

What ails the Democratic Party? Since Kamala Harris’s defeat, several Democrats and center-left commentators have pointed the finger at one culprit: “the groups.” Specifically, they claim, progressive interest and activist groups have both moved too far left and grown far too influential in the Democratic coalition, pushing the party to adopt stances out of step […]

President-elect Donald Trump has long sought to end deportation protections for immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program that has significantly expanded under the Biden administration to cover over 860,000 people. He has shown no sign of relenting in a second term — and may try to either revoke those protections or let them […]

VALLE DEL CAUCA, Colombia — The chambers look a bit like walk-in refrigerators. Housed inside a research building in southwestern Colombia, they are essentially big metal boxes with large, latched doors. Inside them are concrete floors, plexiglass windows, and air conditioners mounted on the wall.  These chambers serve a noble and highly scientific purpose: measuring […]

Presidents have a lot of Constitutional powers: the power to wage war; the power to veto laws; the power to pardon criminals; the power to appoint Supreme Court members and other judges. But President-elect Donald Trump and his inner circle are hoping to add a new power to the repertoire, one which would constitute one […]

December 3 is Giving Tuesday, the day for donations and a national conversation about how to give back and do good. Especially in a turbulent year when many of us want to give back, but also want to be cautious with our budgets, here’s one important question: If you want to donate to charity, should […]

We’re ending 2024 with more questions than answers. There are the timely ones: Can men and women really be friends when the gender divide has become so stark and contentious? And does the term “Latino” make sense in politics anymore? There are some more existential ones, too, like who has the right to die? Can […]

On April 11, 2022, just weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the writer and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza was arrested outside his home in Moscow. He was charged with “spreading deliberately false information,” Kremlin-speak for criticizing the war in Ukraine. A year later, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison before later being transferred […]

Everyone wants to hold space for “Defying Gravity,” the powerhouse anthem from Wicked, the Broadway musical-turned-movie blockbuster. But behind the in-your-face themes of female rivalry and friendship, unrequited love, and the unfortunate circumstance of being green, there’s a deeper undercurrent: the alienation that comes when you stand behind what you believe in. The story — […]

In 2022, surgeons transplanted the first genetically engineered pig heart into a human. Fifty-seven-year-old  David Bennett, a patient with heart failure, survived almost two months with a pig heart beating in his chest, one of five people who have received pig organs as a part of an experimental procedure called xenotransplantation — the transplanting of […]

There’s a code of conduct for the multiplex experience, deliberately broadcast right before a movie: When the lights start to dim, we turn off our phones and end any side discussions. However, if dispatches of Wicked screenings around the country are any indication, this code isn’t being followed.  In the few days since the highly […]

With the holiday season upon us, it’s important to grapple with the loneliness many Americans face every day. It’s often more intensely felt in the times when you are expected to be surrounded by the warm embrace of family and friends. And, increasingly, that warm embrace isn’t happening. Americans spend more time at home — […]

Thanks to a new Netflix docuseries from true crime mainstay Joe Berlinger, audiences across the nation are asking a question true crime fans never really let go of. The new series, Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey, doesn’t actually spend all that many of its three hour-long episodes speculating about its title question. Instead, it […]

President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team have yet to sign the customary documents allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to conduct background checks on his nominees for important government posts, and it’s unclear whether those nominees will receive FBI background checks at all.  The background checks flag any serious concerns about the nominees — […]

Wicked, the highly anticipated adaptation of the popular Broadway musical, is just about everywhere. The first half of the saga, released on November 22, made $114 million in its opening weekend domestically, and it has already generated some early Oscars buzz. Wicked: Part Two is set to premiere in November 2025.  Directed by Jon M. […]

Wicked, the movie musical based on the beloved Broadway show of the same name, is one of the biggest hits of the year, opening at No. 1 in North America over the weekend and already generating some early Oscars buzz. Audiences came in prepared to love Wicked’s famous power ballads and girl power core, but […]

Kerry Rego, 47, always had a rocky relationship with her dad. His past history of drinking and passive-aggressive behavior eventually led to a seven-month period of estrangement. But they began reconciling after her dad started going to Alcoholics Anonymous, which prompted him to reach out. He told her that he missed her and he hoped […]

On Thursday, tens of millions of Americans will partake in a national ritual many of us say we don’t especially enjoy or find meaning in. We will collectively eat more than 40 million turkeys — factory farmed and heavily engineered animals that bear scant resemblance to the wild birds that have been apocryphally written into […]