All posts tagged: trouble

Getting into Trouble | Václav Havel

Getting into Trouble | Václav Havel

In January 1977 the writer, dissident, and future president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, was arrested by the Communist regime for his part in organizing the groundbreaking Czechoslovak human rights initiative, Charter 77. After his release four months later, he wrote a detailed account of his time in detention and then hid it so well that he forgot where it was. In 2014, three years after his death, it was found among the papers of his close friend Zdeněk Urbánek. Paul Wilson’s translation of the report, the first in English, will be published this fall as Lost and Found: Hidden Notes on My First Incarceration. The text below is drawn from that account. —The Editors If the Czechoslovak secret police truly understood the events they so carefully monitor, they would have realized long before Charter 77 appeared that something like it was in the works, and they might have avoided the shock that the launch of the Charter gave them. For Charter 77 didn’t just drop out of a clear blue sky. Its appearance …

Gaming is in serious trouble. GTA VI may be the nail in the coffin

Gaming is in serious trouble. GTA VI may be the nail in the coffin

My first encounter with a “Grand Theft Auto” game was way back in 1999 with “GTA 2” at, of all places, my pastor’s house. The church patriarch would often host the youth group at his home, which meant taking turns on the first-gen PlayStation, but we were cackling a little too loudly as we carjacked vehicles and used them to run over cops. The adults, hearing our incessant laughter, came into the room, instantly became horrified and confiscated the game. To this day, I have no idea how the pastor’s son obtained a copy of this crime spree simulator, but I still find it hilarious. I would never have imagined, nearly three decades later, that the Grand Theft Auto series would become the cultural juggernaut it is today. While “Grand Theft Auto V,” released in 2013, cost a record-breaking $265 million to make, its upcoming sequel “Grand Theft Auto VI” is sure to exceed any video game budget in history. It has cost an estimated $1 to $2 billion to develop so far, though verified …

The Trouble With Therapy Today

The Trouble With Therapy Today

This is the first post in a series. In recent years, there have been a number of books published that are highly critical of how psychotherapy is being practiced today, and, in some cases, directly blame our current cultural stresses on such therapy itself. For instance, consider the recently released Therapy Nation: How America Got Hooked on Therapy and Why It’s Left Us More Anxious and Divided by therapist Jonathan Alpert (2026, Hanover Square Press), in which he generally argues that “too much therapy, or the wrong kind, can have painful effects on individuals, families, communities and our nation.” Alpert views Americans today as being “overtherapized” and accuses so-called “therapy culture” of contributing to the “anxieties dividing America today.” Fascinatingly, he personally adheres to and sings the praises of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), despite the fact that CBT has for decades been and continues to be the predominant therapeutic approach in this country, refusing to recognize that this is a significant part of the problem with what he calls “bad” therapy today. Another scathing critique …

The Social Sciences Are in Trouble

The Social Sciences Are in Trouble

In the summer of 1945, four days after Japan’s official surrender and a few weeks into the Atomic Age, President Harry Truman began floating the idea of an agency guided by “the free intelligence of the scientist” that would fund investigations into how the world works. As of 2024, the agency that Truman had envisioned, the National Science Foundation, supplied about one in every 10 federal research dollars going to U.S. universities. Its Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences division funds roughly 63 percent of academic research in the psychological and social sciences, according to the NSF. The Trump administration now seems determined to shrink the NSF—and to quash its ability to fund social sciences. The Trump administration has proposed cutting the agency’s budget in half and eliminating the SBE division altogether in the next fiscal year. Congress would need to approve those changes, and it may not: Last year, when President Trump also requested drastic cuts to the NSF, Congress rejected them and warned the White House against cutting federal research dollars for any one …

The Trouble with Review Bombing

The Trouble with Review Bombing

Every cultural moment reveals the fault lines. In our era, those fault lines increasingly appear in the strange ritual known as review bombing: the coordinated effort to swamp films, television shows, books, or games with negative ratings—not because they are poorly made, but because they touch a cultural nerve. Two recent examples illustrate the phenomenon: Starfleet Academy and Shrinking. Both are thoughtful, well-crafted shows. Both explore themes of accountability, grief, and forgiveness. And both have attracted a wave of online hostility from viewers who have labeled them “woke,” a term that has evolved from a call for cultural awareness. This is not simply criticism. It is a small but revealing episode in a much larger culture war. The Moral Spine of Star Trek Star Trek has always been a moral laboratory. From the original series onward, it asked viewers to imagine a future in which humanity had learned—sometimes painfully—to become a little wiser. The central arc in Starfleet Academy continues that tradition. A starship captain, Captain-Chancellor Nahla Ake, played by a delightful Holly Hunter, makes …

Having trouble falling – and staying – asleep? These techniques may help

Having trouble falling – and staying – asleep? These techniques may help

If you’re having trouble falling asleep – or staying asleep – you’re certainly not alone. Some 60 percent of U.S. adults are struggling to get enough shut-eye, according to the National Sleep Foundation’s 2025 Sleep in America Poll. Nearly four in 10 Americans struggle to fall asleep at least three nights a week and nearly half wake up in the middle of the night, the survey of more than 1,300 people found. And, about 50 to 70 million Americans have sleep or wakefulness disorders, according to the American Brain Foundation. Getting enough sleep, the federally-recommended seven hours a night, is crucial to our health and well-being, ensuring that we are sick less often, stay at a healthy weight, have improved attention and memory and have a reduced risk of chronic conditions like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Still, it can be tricky if you’ve been looking at your phone, had caffeine or worked out right before bed. But experts approve several strategies they say can help the sleep-challenged. However, it really all comes …

Mother Trouble | Vivian Gornick

Mother Trouble | Vivian Gornick

In those days, women were only allowed the option of cloying virtue—or its affectation…. I watched [my mother] unleash all of herself—her genius, her eccentricity, her radical kindness, her militant courage, her ruthlessness, her generosity, her cruelty, her bullying, her head for business, and her wild, unpredictable temper—with complete abandon…. Once I learned to protect myself (somewhat) from its soul-crushing meanness, I even grew fascinated by her wrath against motherhood itself. Sometimes the barefaced nakedness of it made me laugh…. She was my shelter and my storm. And there you have Arundhati Roy’s new memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, all of it. Well, almost all of it—or maybe just some of it. It’s the kind of book that actually makes a reader think about how a book gets made, especially when all the necessary parts are there but somehow do not seem to get properly knit together. Arundhati Roy was born in 1961 in the northeast Indian state of Meghalaya, then part of Assam, to a Christian mother and a Hindu father. Her mother …

The Trouble With Innocuous Westminster Gossip

The Trouble With Innocuous Westminster Gossip

(Collage by Antonello Sticca. Image credit: Rainer Mirau / Adobe Stock) 9 min read2 hr A recent wave of alerts, convictions and the furore over the dropping of an alleged Chinese espionage case all serve as a reminder that Parliament is and has always been a prime target for spies. Gordon Corera explains how times have changed There was a time when recruiting an agent inside Parliament involved old-fashioned methods – maybe a chance encounter at a think tank event, followed by a slow cultivation over drinks or a long lunch. In the Cold War, Eastern Bloc spies worked the cocktail party circuit, hunting those with weaknesses. Debt was one toehold, with envelopes of cash passed to MPs, particularly by the effective Czechoslovak spy service. Sex was another avenue. In the 1960s, Anthony Courtney, a Conservative MP and fierce critic of the KGB, was honey-trapped during a visit to Moscow. When he refused to resign, dossiers featuring pictures of him in a compromising situation were sent to his constituency association, his chief whip, …