For my first piece in Deseret News, I'm analyzing a line of argument in Dobbs, claiming that that the question of when life begins is beyond what government can answer. But this question isn't uniquely the domain of religion—everyone needs to be able to furnish and defend an answer. Where a loose consensus prevails, it… Read More
Category: Articles
Encanto and the Benedict Option
Encanto doesn't have a conventional Disney villain, because the musical is about learning to live in safety, putting aside the bad habits that come from fear and scarcity. I covered the musical for First Things, with a particular emphasis on the parallel dangers for Christians. The village is not so different from a Benedict Option… Read More
Sacrifice Is Not a Therapy
As the Omicron wave crested in January, many institutions tried to do more and seemed to assume that the more intrusive or inconvenient a restriction, the more powerful it was. I talk about why this is the wrong way to think about medicine at The New Atlantis. They assume that our safety is proportional to… Read More
Covid, Vulnerability, and a Miasma Mindset
The New Atlantis convened a slate of writers for a symposium on lessons to learn from covid. My contribution to the "Beyond the State of Exception" symposium is "Bad Air," a mediation on aerosols, ventilation, and vulnerability. We’re used to starting with a premise of safety and sterility. The goal of our policy and our… Read More
The Green Knight and the Elderly Gunman
First Things asked contributors for the best film they saw in 2021, and my husband and I both picked films by David Lowery. My choice was The Green Knight, and (once I had dibsed it) Alexi chose The Old Man and the Gun. Here's an excerpt from my reflection: To call it an adaptation of… Read More
Lyme and Literacy in Suffering
I got to read and review Ross Douthat's memoir of Lyme disease, The Deep Places for National Review. The book is thought-provoking and unsettling. It is as much about how to endure suffering as how to address medical mysteries. In some ways, Douthat’s striving for a cure is a transposition of the same meritocratic story… Read More
Black Widow, Gymnasts, and How We Use Girls
I saw Black Widow just before the beginning of the Tokyo Olympics, and, as I wrote at The Bulwark, the juxtaposition was an uncomfortable one. The story of the girls reshaped and thrown away by the Red Room trainers isn’t so different from the story of USA Gymnastics over the last decade. With the Summer… Read More
Penance and Public Shaming
I was glad to get the chance to make my Bulwark debut with an essay on a question I've been wrestling with for some time: "What do we do with people who have committed a wrong that they themselves cannot put right?" Cycles of public shaming ebb and flow through our public discourse. Some implicate… Read More
Let the Body Testify
In the "Creatures" issue of Plough, I wrote a feature article on how women translate their pain and their experiences to make them legible to a world shaped by male norms. I was honored that this piece was recognized with a 2021 Eliot Award by Mere Orthodoxy, as well as being an Editors' Favorite and… Read More
Government Should Fail More
At The Week, I have a reflection on watching SpaceX crash rockets with my daughter and the price we pay for expecting perfection in public policy. Musk's riches allow him to comfortably risk his money. But these more adventurous investments should be made by the government, too. I want to see more failures of government… Read More