All posts tagged: week’s episode

How to Have a Healthy Argument

How to Have a Healthy Argument

Published by skeptic

I’ve heard of three Thanksgiving plans that got canceled because of disagreements over the Israel-Gaza War. In one case, over the past few weeks, a guy watched as his brother’s wife posted pictures of cease-fire rallies on Facebook. Finally he texted her: “So you love Hamas now?” She was horrified. After doing Thanksgiving together for two decades, they will not be continuing the tradition this year. I could give you more examples of unproductive fights that ended plans, friendships, relationships, but we’ve all been there. In this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, we focus less on the substance of any of those disagreements. Instead, we talk about how to disagree, on things big (a war) or small (how to load the dishwasher). Our guest is Amanda Ripley, the author of High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, and her suggestions work equally well in the personal or political arena. We also talk with Utah Governor Spencer Cox about his Disagree Better initiative. In 2020 Cox ran an unusual political ad in …

The Man Working to Keep the Water On in Gaza

The Man Working to Keep the Water On in Gaza

Published by skeptic

Numbers are one way to make the destruction of war legible: number of hostages, number of children killed, number of buildings destroyed, number of aid trucks that made it across the Egyptian border. For Marwan Bardawil, who lives in Gaza, the unit of peril he tracks is cubic meters per hour. Bardawil is a water engineer with the Palestinian Water Authority overseeing Gaza. And these days he is measuring, in cubic meters per hour, the quantity of water flowing through the pipes that, in prewar time, carried 10 percent of Gazans’ drinking water—pipes that are controlled by Israel. Right now, with other water sources dwindling, those pipes are Gaza’s lifeline. “The people are really in need of each drop of water,” he told me. For the past week, I’ve been checking in with Bardawil every day as he struggles to find clean sources of water. (You can hear our phone conversations on this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic). In the best of times, Bardawil’s job is difficult. Gaza sits between a desert and the Mediterranean …

‘And Just Like That’ Is … Better Now?

‘And Just Like That’ Is … Better Now?

Published by skeptic

This article contains spoilers through Season 2 Episode 10 of And Just Like That. And Just Like That, like no other show in our admittedly depleted television universe right now, is simultaneously a riot, a rout, and an utterly chaotic melange of small-scale storytelling and high—but-literally-am-I-high—fashion. Every episode contains at least three scenes to which there is nothing to say but “What?!?” Five weeks ago, The New Yorker ran a humor piece that imagined ludicrously banal storylines the show could tackle next; since then, two have basically happened. Last week, Miranda and Charlotte went to Chipotle, where they were confused by the fast-casual chain’s ordering system. Carrie might have a cat now? Che, a comedian who used to have a hit podcast and a sizable-enough following to get them a sitcom pilot and a Cameo presence, is doing overtime at a vet’s office again, because apparently the only two financial brackets in this world are Hudson Yards–rich and shift work. Money is important to TV shows, I think, because striving is the engine for really …