SPLICE TODAY: Trading the Iron Curtain for the Iron Law

New article on Splice Today: How the Iron Law of Bureaucracy led us to the latest standoff between West and what remains of East. 

SPLICE TODAY: Forget Everything You Know About Schooling

My latest for Splice Today involves my epiphany about formal schooling after hearing so many professional educators fret about how much their students are forgetting during the break between when schools stopped classroom instruction because of the COVID-19 pandemic and when schools might reopen in the fall: Formal schooling is largely a waste of time and resources.

SPLICE TODAY: Doomsday Was Yesterday

My latest for Splice Today is a look back at the 1979 Bible prophecy documentary The Late Great Planet Earth, based on Hal Lindsey's unlikely bestseller and hosted by a slumming Orson Welles. Nearly 40 years on, Lindsey's brand of Bible exegesis motivates the evangelical wing of the Republican Party, but his prophecies are all busts.

SPLICE TODAY: Characters vs. Trademarks

Entertainment companies want to reach out to an increasingly diverse and historically underserved audience. But in the age of remakes, sequels, and tentpoles, that rarely results in new characters. Instead it manifests in the laziest and most unsatisfying way possible: diversifying existing trademarks. My latest at Splice Today.