Ideas - The Boston Globe

IDEAS | MARY ZIEGLER

Why are antiabortion activists going after sex education?

The abortion wars are bringing the fight for fetal personhood to a classroom near you.

IDEAS | MICHELINE MAYNARD

Washington is holding up a future of inexpensive EVs

Both Biden and Trump have stood in the way of cheap electric vehicles from China. Who’s that really benefiting?

IDEAS | AARON REGUNBERG AND DAVID ARKUSH

It’s time to charge oil companies with homicide

It’s no legal leap: Cases have been won against defendants who have engaged in far less culpable conduct.

A Trump supporter sported a "Make America Great Again" cap outside the US Capitol on the eve of Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration.

IDEAS | DAVID SCHARFENBERG

Nevertheless, Trumpism persisted

Donald Trump isn't an aberration in American politics. He's part of a long if unheralded tradition of illiberalism.

A Trump rally in Greensboro, N.C., on March 2.

IDEAS | BRIAN BERGSTEIN

Why people see truth in Trump’s lies

Rhetoric scholar Robin Reames explores how people develop views that the opposing political tribe finds abhorrent.

The Mattapan Trolley crosses Capen Street. If not for the trolley’s brief foray through a corner of Milton, the town would not have to contend with the state’s new zoning requirements for housing in communities served by the MBTA.

IDEAS | CARINE HAJJAR

Milton isn’t a ‘rapid transit community,’ no matter how many times the state says it is

The requirement that Milton zone for thousands of new housing units is based on a false premise.

may i have a word?

May I have a word: And they called it macaronic
Anguish language by any other name is just — nonsense. Or is it?

May I have a word: A cascade of good fortune

May I have a word: Drivers on the merge

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Blueprints for a new downtown Boston

It's time to reimagine the identity of the city's core — and we've got ideas.

IDEAS | DAVID SCHARFENBERG

How Uphams Corner got wealthier without getting whiter

The scrappy Dorchester neighborhood has fulfilled the community activist’s dream: development without displacement.

Where did all the workers go?

For two years, employers have been desperate for workers — and there’s no indication the labor shortage will soon change. What are we losing — and possibly gaining — as a result?

IDEAS | MEREDITHE MCNAMARA

A huge misconception about medical care for trans kids

IDEAS | ARJUN SHARMA

Toward better health care for the homeless

IDEAS | IEVA JUSIONYTE

A scholar of gun policy says his field has gotten it wrong

democracy under siege

A Trump supporter sported a "Make America Great Again" cap outside the US Capitol on the eve of Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration.

IDEAS | DAVID SCHARFENBERG

Nevertheless, Trumpism persisted

IDEAS | CHRISTINE MEHTA

Dictators ignore borders in their pursuit of critics

IDEAS | ASYA PARTAN

Navalny and the dissemination of hope

A Trump rally in Greensboro, N.C., on March 2.

IDEAS | BRIAN BERGSTEIN

Why people see truth in Trump’s lies

IDEAS | CARINE HAJJAR

Trump’s biggest applause lines

IDEAS | OMER AZIZ

Where is Biden’s foreign policy taking us?

civil rights

IDEAS | MARY ZIEGLER

Why are antiabortion activists going after sex education?

IDEAS | CHIKA O. OKAFOR

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself

IDEAS | MARY ZIEGLER

Another brick in the wall blocking abortion access

Rest time at the Lakeview nursery school for children of working mothers in Buffalo, N.Y.,1943.

IDEAS | LISA SELIN DAVIS

Subsidizing families is one thing the two parties can agree on

IDEAS | COLEMAN HUGHES

Color blindness remains the best form of antiracism

IDEAS | Reiko Hillyer

Healey’s plan for clemency is courageous, but it once would have been unremarkable

climate crisis

The BYD Seal U electric car at the Geneva International Motor Show in Switzerland last month.

IDEAS | MICHELINE MAYNARD

Washington is holding up a future of inexpensive EVs

IDEAS | AARON REGUNBERG AND DAVID ARKUSH

It’s time to charge oil companies with homicide

IDEAS | BENJAMIN RACHLIN

Can one official move the needle on our state’s carbon emissions?

education

Recently retired professor Harvey Mansfield in his Cambridge home. He taught at Harvard from 1962 until last year. "We need a return to debate," he says. "Harvard doesn’t debate. It emotes.”

IDEAS | CAREY GOLDBERG

Will Harvard ever get another professor like Harvey Mansfield?

IDEAS | STEPHEN LANE

Checking in with the COVID class of 2024

IDEAS | ROB HENDERSON

The SAT is a pathway to more college diversity, not less

The Mattapan Trolley crosses Capen Street. If not for the trolley’s brief foray through a corner of Milton, the town would not have to contend with the state’s new zoning requirements for housing in communities served by the MBTA.

IDEAS | CARINE HAJJAR

Milton isn’t a ‘rapid transit community,’ no matter how many times the state says it is

IDEAS | Taylor C. Noakes

A once-futuristic vision for urban housing whose time still may come

IDEAS | THE EDITORS

Help us reimagine downtown Boston

On Monday in Paris, the message "My Body My Choice" in both French and English was projected onto the Eiffel Tower after the French parliament voted to anchor the right to abortion in the country's constitution.

IDEAS | ROBERT ZARETSKY

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The French were watching.

IDEAS | Matjaž Krivic

In ancient rocks, a message that resonates still

IDEAS | OMER AZIZ

A memoir of enslavement reveals the meaning of freedom

IDEAS | MILES HOWARD

Making too little to get affordable housing — and other problems with trying to stay in Boston

IDEAS | CLAIRE DUNNING

The unintended consequences of Boston’s nonprofit-led urban development

IDEAS | STARRE JULIA VARTAN

Consider the small landlord

technology

A robot called Archax, which for now has to be controlled by a human pilot, is being offered by a Japanese company for use by hobbyists and in construction and disaster recovery.

IDEAS | EVAN SELINGER

What it will take for robots to start doing our chores

IDEAS | AUDREY JIAJIA LI

China’s first viral true crime story may also be its last

IDEAS | EVAN SELINGER

We can get more imaginative about what we imagine

The eight-celled embryo that did not implant in the author's uterus.

IDEAS | LISA ALLEN

It was the perfect embryo, full of possibility

IDEAS | GRETCHEN CLARK

Wild horses dragged me away

IDEAS | GARRET KEIZER

Divided over Israel, united by denial

more special projects

IDEAS | JOAN VENNOCHI

How the MBTA went off the rails

Nearly everything about Boston has changed in the past few decades, yet the T has the same big problem — a failure to prioritize the rider experience above all.

IDEAS | DAVID SCHARFENBERG

Boston was once a wildly ambitious city. It’s time to go big again.

The pandemic is still shattering expectations of what workdays look like. In this special issue of Ideas, we explore which of these changes will stick — and how they’ll affect the quality of our lives.

Editing the Constitution

The pandemic is still shattering expectations of what workdays look like. In this special issue of Ideas, we explore which of these changes will stick — and how they’ll affect the quality of our lives.

The Future of Work

The pandemic is still shattering expectations of what workdays look like. In this special issue of Ideas, we explore which of these changes will stick — and how they’ll affect the quality of our lives.

The Future of Food

What we eat, where it comes from, and how we get it are being reimagined like never before.

Massachusetts Works

We turn the typical model of journalism on its head — instead of focusing on what’s broken, we’re taking a look at what Massachusetts gets right.