Field Reports

On August 22, 2025, Iryna Zarutska boarded a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was 23 years old, a Ukrainian refugee who had fled the Russian invasion and the wreckage of her hometown. Friends, family, and neighbors described her as disciplined and ambitious, someone who aspired to become a veterinary assistant and was studying […]

I. Introduction: The Lie Agreed Upon In a modest fruit shop in Communist Czechoslovakia, a grocer hangs a sign in his window: Workers of the world, unite!. He doesn’t believe it. He hangs it because it’s expected—because to do otherwise would invite attention, scrutiny, risk. The sign is not a profession of belief. It is

A recent spate of news articles about content creators gone rogue has me echoing Marvin Gay and the 4 Non Blondes’ question: What’s going on?  In December 2024 Charles Smith,  a 27 year-old TikToker known as Wolfie Kahletti videoed himself spraying Hot Shot Ultra Bed Bug & Flea Killer on vegetables, fruit, and rotisserie chickens

In the blood-soaked drama of U.S. foreign policy, the first act rarely changes: defy our corporations, and the visitors arrive with smiles, signatures, and silencers. After World War II, American foreign policy turned its gaze southward. Europe had been divided, Asia was burning, and Latin America—poor, restless, and resource-rich—offered a new arena for the old

In 1895, Gustave Le Bon—a French polymath, amateur psychologist, and professional pessimist—published The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. He wasn’t the first to notice that people behave differently in groups. But he was among the first to map the transformation: how individuals, once absorbed into a collective, become reactive and compliant, surrendering reason