I admit that I got a few strange glances when I told people I had a big trip to Baltimore. It is, admittedly, an odd place for vacation. While it’s situated on the Northeast Regional, and is nearly as populous as both DC and Boston, Baltimore rarely ranks on the list of top places to live or destinations to visit. At best, it’s forgotten. At worse, it’s held up as a prime example of poor municipal governance and urban decay.

The principal reason for this is crime. For decades, Baltimore has ranked among the more dangerous cities. While it experienced the same rise that typified other cities in the 80s and early 90s, it did not benefit from the same reduction after. Its unfortunate uniqueness in this regard spawned its greatest cultural export, The Wire. In the years that followed, while big cities witnessed all-time low homicide rates in the mid 2010s, Baltimore hovered narrowly above its rate in the early 90s.

Then came the death of Freddie Gray in the custody of several police officers. In the aftermath, mass protests broke out, leading to dozens of injured police officers, arrests, and the announcement of a curfew. The officers were indicted, then the DA was unable to convict them, and any fragile trust that had existed between law enforcement and Baltimore communities was shattered. In 2019, there were 348 homicides in Baltimore, which nearly matched the record 353 set in 1993, when over 100,000 more people lived in the city.

As an infrequent visitor to the city, I didn’t have a great sense that Baltimore was a substantially less safe place than New York, but looking back, there were signs. We visited my grandparents a few times a year in Pikesville, a suburb, and when we went to the city, we stayed relatively contained to the traditionally touristy areas like the Inner Harbor and Fells Point. For a family that enjoys a trip off the beaten path on a city vacation, this might have told me something.

And then, there was the Senior class trip. Every year, the seniors would take our trip to Baltimore near the end of the year; the year before me, their bus was held for a few hours as it was part of an active crime scene since that had been a stabbing just in front. Some of this is part and parcel for big cities, but it’s undeniable that it was more likely to happen in Baltimore than it was in almost any other big city.

But in the last five years, Baltimore has been the site of an unprecedented reversal of fortunes. In 2025, there were 133 homicides, marking a 60% drop from 2020 alone. This year, the city is on pace for roughly 100, which would be one of its lowest rates in history. It remains a travesty—both in absolute terms and in comparison to other cities—but in a relatively short time, there has been rapid progress.

The causes of this precipitous decline are multiple. Most important is the most mundane: homicide rates have collapsed across the whole country. We often try to point to specific policies to explain jumps or drops, but largely, the story is a national one: a large jump after Covid, followed by significant declines in the following years.

But policies at the local level can also play a role. In 2023, homicide rates rose in DC; a sharp divergence from the collapse that most other cities witnessed. The strongest explanation for this was DC’s unique jurisdictional system, wherein both the federal and municipal government have power over a portion of the judicial system. The US Attorney General in DC, unaccountable to city voters, was shielded from public opinion as he continued a policy that dropped DC’s prosecution rate to its nadir, well below peer cities.

In Baltimore, authorities used the tools at their disposal to turbocharge the homicide decline more than the national average. The Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS) involves law enforcement, community organizations, and city officials and focuses on a tenet of public safety: there are only a small number of people who are at risk of committing most violence. In DC, for example, a criminal justice organization found that 500 people were considered high risk, an identifier that applies to 70% of the district’s gun violence. Instead of simply locking these high-risk people up, Baltimore’s program proactively attempts to divert them from committing violence. It offers both a warning—that they have been identified and will be duly punished if they are a perpetrator—and offers resources like housing and jobs to steer them elsewhere.

It’s usually difficult to determine the impact a specific policy on something as multifaceted as crime. But under Mayor Brandon Scott, the GVRS was first piloted in a single police district. There, the city created a veritable RCT, comparing the drop in crime there to the rest of the city. It found that shootings fell by 30% compared to the control, and while there are obvious confounding factors, it’s strong evidence in favor of the strategy. At the same time, other strategies like Safe Streets, a violence interruption program, have shown some efficacy of its own in reducing homicides and shootings.

Crucially, Baltimore has made progress on the other side of the public safety coin. Ten years ago, the DOJ found that the Baltimore Police Department had routinely violated the rights of the city’s residents. This was hardly a surprising finding in the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death, but it further illustrated the chasm between law enforcement and community. In a city with as much violence as Baltimore, that chasm only feeds more violence. Yet, in the years that have followed, there has been progress. Since that time, Baltimore has been under a consent decree, with quarterly hearings to assess its progress to boot. At the latest hearing, the judge who presides over the decree and once lambasted the police department’s practices described it as “efficient and high-functioning.” While there remain areas for sincere improvement, sections of the consent decree have been steadily removed as BPD fulfills the requirements, and it’s compliant or on track on 83% of its goals.

But crime and police malfeasance alone cannot be blamed for the city’s challenges. Over the past few decades, Baltimore experienced an economic contraction as manufacturing declined and its population fled the city. Now, there are promising signs of a turnaround. Baltimore’s median income has steadily increased, rising 17% from 2022 to 2024 alone. Crucially, this doesn’t appear to be due to a composition effect; the population of Baltimore increased in 2024 for the first time in years. GDP has also exploded in recent years, while the poverty rate reached a 21st century low in 2024. Johns Hopkins, the city’s sterling university and world-class institution for science and medicine accounts for $19 billion in economic impact on the city. Opioid deaths have declined by 46% since 2020. Although this is in line with nationwide statistics, it is particularly important in the city with the highest number of drug overdose deaths in the country.

At the same time, Baltimore is revitalizing its city fabric. Blight is a common problem in post-industrial cities, and Baltimore has thousands of empty lots and vacant homes. They’re doing a fair job on the first half of that problem: removing vacant buildings. Since the Mayor took office, the number of vacant buildings have fallen from 16,000 to fewer than 12,000. It has done this through a systematic approach to reducing vacancies—targeting whole street blocks rather than single lots—and the city has devoted considerable resources towards it. It also built twice as many homes as the city target, and the median house price has increased by less than income.

In 2024, a cargo ship struck Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, bringing it down in seconds and causing the death of six people. Amidst the horror and tumult came the longer-term issue of economic stagnation. Baltimore’s economic engine, its port, which routinely moved over 700,000 tons of containers a month, plummeted to fewer than 2,000 in April. By November, however, it had returned to its former strength. This is part of a larger story of the rapidity of Baltimore’s response to this crisis. Only 77 days after the removal process began, it was complete—beating the highest hopes of its own leaders. And the Key Bridge is now in the midst of being rebuilt, with one part of its process that normally takes 7 years completed in only 14 months.

This doesn’t all translate into a flourishing city yet. There were a fair few vacant lots heaped with debris, a small homeless encampment was parked in the alley half a block from our hotel, and the walk back from Camden Yards at night became desolate pretty quickly. Despite that, Baltimore was a worthwhile, excellent trip. The outstanding crab cakes, excellent ice cream, and beautiful historic streets and homes never went away. Back to back Hawaiian shirt nights at the Orioles game was pretty awesome too. And Baltimore has begun to figure out the other important components of a robust comeback: safe streets, a burgeoning economy, urban revitalization, a growing population. After decades of stutter steps, often in the wrong direction, the Charm City is on its way back.

In 2026, the sticker price of one year’s worth of Keytruda is $210,000. Even for Americans inured to the high price of healthcare, this is a jaw-dropping amount. While all Americans have benefitted from Keytruda and other immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), those who lack health insurance have seen fewer gains.

So far, this story sounds eerily familiar: transformative medical advancements that are inconsistently applied, leaving the full scale of benefits unrealized. I’ve already written about other instances of this; we’ve made brilliant strides on tackling malaria, sickle cell anemia, and AIDS, but some of the newest and most promising innovations have yet to scale because of high prices.

Politicians have—at least rhetorically—demonstrated they understand there’s a problem. The Biden administration capped insulin copays at $35 a month for Medicare users, and forged deals with insurance companies to lower the costs of ten drugs. Trump has made his own claims to lower drug costs, but his signature legislation kicked millions of Americans off their health insurance plans, so he gets no marks here. But despite overtures real and feigned, the problem of lower drug costs appears somewhat intractable—just like most other affordability issues.

Keytruda is a different story. In 2028, key patents that Merck holds in Keytruda will expire. This opens up opportunities for other drug manufacturers to create generic versions of Keytruda. For Merck, this is a large problem; Keytruda accounts for nearly half of its revenue. But for ordinary consumers, this is an extraordinary boon. Increased competition in the drug market at the end of drug exclusivity routinely leads to falling prices. Take Humira, a biologic drug like Keytruda, the price of which dropped around 30% soon after the end of patent expiration as generic drugs flooded the market. The higher revenue the drug—and Keytruda is the best selling drug in the world—the more competitors enter the market, and the more prices fall.

Happily, Keytruda is not a unicorn. A cascade of generic drugs will soon come to market as some massive drugs, like Eliquis, Gardasil, and Trulicity lose patent protections. A few years after, GLP-1s like Ozempic and Mounjaro will meet the same fate. This patent cliff is unprecedented in size. Between 2025 and 2033, $400 billion in revenue will lose patent rights. The last sustained patent cliff around 2011 was barely more than half that. Some of the drugs with patents soon to expire are small molecule instead of biologic, and these types usually see price falls closer to 80-90%.

The mechanism behind this approaching cliff is something of a devil’s bargain: when a new drug is created, the holder of the patent typically has exclusivity for about 20 years. In that time, pharmaceutical companies earn insane profits, before steep drops once they reach the cliff. In order to combat losses in revenue, they are forced to innovate once more, creating better drugs in turn. In Merck’s case, that has meant buying other pharma companies, like Verona Pharma for $10 billion. In fact, biotech mergers and acquisitions are on the rise as companies look to counter the effects of the patent cliff.

There’s a serious dilemma that the patent system introduces. On the one hand, it serves as an incentivizer for innovation. Research and development is an expensive enterprise, and requires significant projected outlays in order to math out. Once, Europe was the unquestioned innovation leader in biotech, creating more than half of all new drugs. But as they installed cost controls, both the volume and the speed of drug development declined, and the US took up the mantle as the world leader. The result hasn’t just been profits for a few companies, but comparatively fewer drug shortages and access issues compared to those experienced in Europe.

On the other hand, any system where a company has 20 years to sell life-saving drugs at unfathomable prices needs significant retooling. If we ignore cost controls as an unsustainable, if attractive option, there remain other solutions.

A popular idea is the patent buyout, where the government would essentially pay a company for its patent at market value and then release it into the public domain. This serves as a carrot, rather than the stick of forcibly lowering drug costs, and continues to incentivize new drug creation while also allowing the government to end patent exclusivity and bring it to market early. The propagator of this idea cites the Daguerrotype as an example; in the 19th century the French government bought the patent for this precursor to the camera, and then gifted it to the French public.

Another idea to improve the patent process is a Harberger Tax, which is a type of self-assessed tax. On the face of it, if someone has the ability to assess the value of their own property, it’s likely that they’ll undersell it to pay less in taxes! But a Harberger Tax includes a second provision: said property can be bought at that assessed value. Apply this to patent law, and companies either assess their patents cheaply, increasing the risk of them being purchased, or pay higher taxes—which can then be used to fund other patent purchases. Georgists have also suggested reducing the length of a patent from 20-years to five, with a yearly auction to determine who has rights for that year.

These all sound like compelling ideas, and perhaps implementation of them would meaningfully lower the healthcare costs that plague millions of Americans. In the interim, we might take some comfort in the knowledge that the greatest patent cliff in history is here and a number of crucial, life-saving drugs are about to become much, much cheaper. It might seem like a small victory, but it is a very big deal for each and every person who uses these drugs.

The country’s history is bountiful and astounding: the ancestors of modern Hungary were a unique mix of steppe nomads named Magyars and their conquered subjects in the Carpathian Basin of Eastern Europe. It was the lesser considered half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and its Golden Team in the 1950s was one of the greatest and most influential national teams in the history of soccer. The most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature is a Hungarian named Laszlo Krasznahorkai, and as all the Krasznahork-heads know, that was well-deserved.

But for the past decade and a half, the central story in Hungary has been darker: authoritarianism, right-wing populism, Russian propagandism. Viktor Orbán was not always an isolationist autocrat. A staunch anti-communist, he oversaw Hungary’s entrance into NATO in the late 1990s, before losing re-election in 2002. A different Orbán returned to power in 2010, and quickly eroded rights in Hungary. He passed a new Constitution in 2011, giving himself unprecedented control over the media and elections. He portrayed himself as a defender of Western civilization, heavily restricting immigration, and banned adoption for same-sex couples.

On a more personal note, Orbán has long been defined by his relationship with a single man: George Soros. Once, Soros awarded him a research fellowship, but he would grow to be Orbán’s biggest foe and bogeyman. Years before U.S. Republicans were using Soros as a slur, Orbán made the Hungarian billionaire and philanthropist Public Enemy #1. He depicted Soros, who made his billions in finance and most famously “Broke the Bank of England” as a globalist nightmare, come to destroy traditional Hungarian values. Several years ago, Hungary used taxpayer dollars to put up hundreds of thousands of antisemitic signs alleging that Soros was pushing for the great replacement of Hungarians with immigrants.

My mom, a human rights lawyer par excellence, worked for Soros’ Open Society Foundations for several years. I remember her frequent visits to Hungary, and the steadily more pessimistic reports as Orbán clamped down on its operations. He also targeted Central European University, founded by Soros after the fall of Communism, with the end result being its relocation from Budapest to Austria. Orbán was relentless in pursuing his enemies, to his nation’s detriment.

Yet, for all the vileness and danger that Orbán has posed domestically, he has been more impactful on the European stage. Orbán appeared completely content as a Russian vassal, the kink in the European chain, the “mouse” to Russia’s lion. Under the rules of the EU, many decisions require unanimity. Orbán has exploited this time and time again, repeatedly blocking aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. When Sweden and Finland respectively sought to join NATO, Hungary delayed each for months, seeking to extract maximal concessions at a time when both had serious security concerns. In each case, Orbán appeared to be seeking vengeance against the EU for freezing funds to Hungary for its democratic backsliding.

Yesterday’s election was framed against this backdrop, but Orbán was also facing the concerns that just about every world leader faces: high costs. Satisfaction over the availability of affordable housing collapsed as Hungary’s real housing prices top the list among OECD countries.

Yet, it would be dishonest to claim that this was just like any other country’s election. Political and governmental issues ranked highest in polling, a rare outcome in Europe. Voters don’t trust election results, do not believe there is media freedom in Hungary, and see the government as corrupt. None of this was a recipe for an Orbán victory.

Nor was Orbán’s opponent a good foil among this conservative electorate. Péter Magyar was himself a former member of Fidesz, the conservative party that Orbán leads. Most of his political life was spent in the shadow of his ex-wife, Judit Varga, who served as Minister of Justice under Orbán. However, in 2024, Orbán pardoned a man who covered up sexual abuse at a children’s home, and Magyar left the party. Within a few months, he had formed his own party—Tisza—and it earned 30% of the vote in the EU Parliament elections.

Tisza is ideologically conservative as well, and Magyar maintains some of Orbán’s positions, including being staunchly anti-immigrant. At the same time, he is clearly interested in shoring up closer ties with the EU, separating from Russia, and refusing to engage in the authoritarianism and corruption that have been hallmarks of Orbán’s tenure. Orbán could not credibly paint Magyar as a closet leftist or ideologically out of step, because the daylight between them is about adhering to democracy and the law.

What followed yesterday was a shellacking. In the highest turnout election since the fall of communism, Tisza secured 138 of the 193 available Parliamentary seats, giving them a supermajority.

The impacts of this result are extraordinary, and fall into three main buckets.

1. Domestic. A supermajority will allow Magyar to unwind many of the laws that Orbán has used to stifle dissent and cement power. Restrictions on the media, vendettas against specific enemies should become out of fashion in this new Hungary. Cooperation with Europe may also lead to frozen funds being released to Hungary, a boon to the national economy.

2. Europe. Magyar has already announced that Hungary will not block the EU aid to Ukraine that Orbán held up. As mentioned above, Hungary has routinely served as the sole opposition to efforts to bring about a tighter knit European Union. Magyar would also like to bring Hungary into the eurozone, further transitioning Hungary’s alignment from Russia towards the rest of Europe. Leaders across Europe echoed this note of optimism, with Polish PM Donald Tusk saying to Magyar: “I am happier than you, you know,” and Ursula Von Der Leyen declaring that “Europe is Hungarian today.” If you ignore the echoes of Cuomo and Infantino in her speech, you can understand the relief in Europe. Its most prominent rogue actor, endowed with outsized power, is now toppled.

3. The model. Both supporters and detractors of Hungary have pointed to it as a model for the end result of right-wing populism. Orbán has spoken at CPAC, was described by Steve Bannon as “Trump before Trump,” and JD Vance just visited to rally for Orbán, to no avail. There are structural reasons why implementing authoritarianism is easier in an ex-Communist, highly homogenous, conservative country, but the Trump administration seems interested in following the playbook: weakening key institutions, attempting to curtail voting rights, and alliance capture of the most prominent news stations. This defeat suggests that even when this strategy is successful, a permanent majority is hardly secure. The sprint to secure power and hold it will often be counterbalanced by such overwhelming opposition that even election riggers cannot dispute the results. And it is also a warning to the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, the man most likely to try to step into Orbán’s shoes on the European stage. The Slovak elections are only a year away, and he may rethink whether it’s wise to tread the same path.

Much to my regret, Péter Magyar is not going to lib out. This is like Mitt Romney beating Trump in the presidential election; it’s not an absolute victory. And even if Magyar works whole-heartedly to dismantle Orbán’s encroachments on the rule of law, that will take time and political capital. But this is the latest in a string of reasons to be hopeful about Europe.

I’ve already written about Poland’s return from the brink, and the economic resurgence of Southern Europe. At a time when the United States seems to be engaged in self-sabotage, Europe has a chance to be a beacon once more. Decades of poor policy choices and slow growth need not snowball into the implosion of Europe. Hungary has long been a rot at its core, an obstacle in the path of a better Europe, but now it may join the swelling coalition of the willing as Europe draws closer together and strengthens its position. And after a long time in the darkness, the sun is peeking out over the River Danube once more.

After the 2008 financial crisis, the world shuddered. Millions lost their jobs, wealth was wiped out, and in some ways we still have not fully recovered; in the US, homebuilding starts remain below what they were before the Recession and labor force participation has never recovered. For all the concern about Gen Z, there’s a lot of data to suggest that the millennial cohort—which entered adulthood during the recession—is lagging behind its fellow generations. Across the Atlantic, the ramifications were even greater, exemplified by the poster-child for financial hardship: Greece.

In the decade after the crisis, Greece’s economy contracted by 25%. It received three bailouts from the Eurozone, the largest bailout in history, had to enact a series of highly unpopular austerity measures, and in 2015 it became the first European country to default on a loan. At one point, it was a serious possibility that Greece would have to stop using the euro. The scope of Greece’s problems were so great that it entered the politics of other countries; Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union was punished at the ballot box just days after her support of the first Greek bailout.

The final bailout ended in 2018, and in the past several years, Greece’s recovery has been rather extraordinary. The unemployment rate is back at pre-crisis lows, its debt to GDP ratio is actually trending downwards, and the bond spread (indicating the level of additional risk one takes on) is at its lowest since 2007. In 2025, more Greeks moved back to Greece than left it, a massive reversal from the preceding near decade and a half of brain drain.

The glimmers of promise in a once mired economy are not only a Greek story. Greece may have plumbed the greatest depths, but its rise is emblematic of a tilting of the scales within Europe. I’ve already written about Poland, but it is to the rest of southern Europe that I turn to today.

Collectively, the four most southwestern countries of Europe contain some of the richest history in the world. Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain have housed the two most influential cultures in western civilization and Spain and Portugal dominated the seas and seeded culture that has lasted a half millennium. All can lay claim to some of the most breathtaking beauty, extraordinary cuisine, and kindest people anywhere in the world. But in many cases, their reputation is that their best days are behind them.

Beginning in the 1990s, far before the financial crisis, the economic difficulties of these four countries were well-understood. Portugal had the worst recession in Europe in the early 2000s, Spain had a persistently high inflation rate, and Italy had middling growth and high debt ratios. Collectively, the four countries earned the derogatory nickname PIGS for their malaise.

For a long time, this was an apt, if unkind depiction of their finances. I’ve already covered Greece’s ailings, but Portugal was forced to request an IMF bailout after its own deficits spiraled and it was unable to pay off its debt. Spain received its own bailout a year later, after unemployment climbed above 25% and the government was forced to nationalize its largest mortgage lender. In Italy, GDP in 2019 remained below where it was in 2007. Occasionally, a fifth nation is considered part of PIGS as well (in this case termed PIIGS); Ireland suffered its own economic catastrophe during this period, resulting in its own bailout.

But fifteen years is a long time, and the fortunes of southern Europe have changed. Since Covid, Spain’s economy has been the fastest growing in Europe, while Greece, Portugal, and Ireland have also outpaced peers. Bond spreads between PIGS and Germany—Europe’s strongest economy—have narrowed substantially, and even Italy—the PIGS’ economic laggard—is keeping up with the growth of France and Germany.

There isn’t a single reason why southern Europe is booming. Some of it is simple math: they’ve started from a lower base, meaning equivalent raw growth yields a larger percent increase compared to their historically successful northern neighbors. Europe’s commitment to pulling their economies out of the muck also played a large role; in 2012, President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi promised that he would do “whatever it takes” to protect the euro and intervene in struggling economies. These governments also worked hard to produce budget surpluses and bring down debt ratios over time.

These countries have also been beneficiaries of the post-Covid tourism boom and are less over-leveraged in areas like manufacturing, meaning rising prices on everyday essentials have been less deleterious to their key industries. There’s been a downside: as these countries have become more popular without a commensurate increase in homebuilding, costs have risen. In Barcelona, the center of anti-tourist ire in Europe, only 1,195 homes were permitted in 2025. New York City, which has its lowest rental vacancy rate in decades and is mired in its own housing crisis, permitted 3-4 times as many homes, adjusted by population. There are similar issues in other popular cities like Lisbon, Athens, and Rome.

Despite these affordability concerns, there’s been an evident reversal of the normal state of affairs in Europe. The countries once maligned for needing bailouts are now underpinning the growth of the continent. At the same time, they are hardly immune to the latest spectre haunting Europe: right-wing populism.

In Spain, the leader of the center-right People’s Party—currently polling in first place—has refused to create a cordon sanitaire against the far-right Vox, although it is not polling at much higher than their insurgent 2019 campaign results. Portugal’s Chega party may have been thoroughly beaten in the 2026 Presidential election, but it is still the opposition party. And in Italy, which experienced the least robust resurgence, the existing far-right government is doing important things like banning surrogacy and trying and failing to capture the judiciary.

At the very least, however, it does appear that they are ever so slightly more resistant. Ireland’s Sinn Fein have their own foibles1, but Irish politics are dominated by the left-wing populists as well as the two centrist parties: Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Greece has been steered ably by the center-right Kyriakos Mitsotakis and appears poised to continue to do so.

Today, I suspect the new economic reality has not set in for most. Greece, Spain, Portugal are still associated with financial imprudence and instability. That’s not because people refuse to accept the truth—many of us are trying to be Bayesian—but because economic success stories earn a fraction of the billing as those filled with doom and gloom.

Think about which of the two statements you hear more in the news:

1. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck

2. The median American has $8,000 in savings

It’s the first one. Theoretically,2 both of these statements are true, but it’s only the first that ever gains traction, because precarity is a more interesting story than stability. That’s why the common sentiment surrounding Greece and the other PIGS remains focused on the past, not the present.

But now you know. Southern Europe is surging. Mare Nostrum aeterna.

From the first ziggurat in Uruk to the present day, the city has served as an engine of opportunity, shared knowledge, and culture. The ancient Sumerian cities were the birthplace of writing and advancements in manufacturing, math, and irrigation, Babylon home to the near-mythical Hanging Gardens, and the Phoenician network of city-states served as the link between the ancient world.

I need not expound on the importance of all that we have gained from Athens, or Rome, or Constantinople, or Baghdad, or Alexandria, to say nothing of countless others. But cities have always been exceptional because they serve as a focal point, a nerve center where ideas and sheer numbers can lead to truly extraordinary creations. It’s also a question of simple arithmetic: it is easier to fund infrastructure improvements when you have a larger tax base.

Yet, for nearly all of our history, cities have been laid out inefficiently. The benefits of density have been nearly undercut by the problems of fitting people into confined spaces—think the tenements of New York or the ancient insulae apartments in the Subura of Rome. Density has often been an uncomfortable affair; people have been forced to live in excessively small apartments, leading to disease, pollution, and general discomfort. In 97 Orchard, one of the two buildings that now make up the New York Tenement Museum, the Levine family once housed ten people in their 325 square foot home.

One of the principal problems here was that in order to densify a city, you have to do one of three things: increase the number of people in the same space, build out, or build up. You can only fit so many people in a place before it becomes inhumane, you can only build so wide until you reach another building, and you can only build so high until it becomes infeasible for a person to actually walk up. Or so we thought.

Among the greatest marvels of our time is a contraption that many of us use every single day. The first record of elevator use was by the Greek genius Archimedes, who used a rope and pulley system to lift objects. The Colosseum used prototypal elevators to transport animals, while Louis XV had a flying chair to move his mistresses about Versailles. In the 19th century, our mastery over steam power led to the first modern elevators, but these were relatively dangerous; whenever the chain or rope broke, people were at severe risk of dying.

This all changed because of a man called Otis. Elisha Otis was a mechanic, manufacturer, and inventor. In 1852, in Yonkers, New York, he developed the first safety elevator. Otis created a device that would automatically prevent the elevator from careening to the ground on such an occasion, dramatically changing the calculus around elevators. Suddenly, these were not a dangerous novelty, but had real potential as a means of transportation. Two years later, Otis successfully demonstrated his invention in New York, and in 1857, the first safety elevator for passenger use was installed.

As important as this was, it was hardly an immediate success. This elevator was removed after three years, in part because of its glacial pace of 40 feet a minute. Otis had made elevators safe, but it would take advances in propulsion technology to make them functional. In the next decade, steam was phased out in favor of hydraulics, and then eventually electric motors by the end of the 19th century. The first office building to use elevators did so in 1870. Other advances aided in the slow but steady adoption of elevators, including ones that allowed doors to open and close automatically and safely.

In the final quarter of the century, New York’s skyline began to change, with 250 buildings reaching at least 200 feet high, driven by this marvel of elevation. The age of the skyscraper had begun. Yet, this hardly had an impact on the majority of the New York population. Tenements continued to flourish into the turn of the century, spurring the Tenement House Act of 1901. But, why, if we had the ability to build higher, had we chosen instead to continue to allow huge swathes to live in squalor?

Fundamentally, there were two main issues. The first were the limits of “ordinary construction” which comprised most buildings in New York. This required a high ratio of thickness to width and height, driving up costs and decreasing the actual interior of a structure. At the same time, just as the construction of taller residential buildings began in earnest, a reaction arose. Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: wealthy citizens mobilized against tall buildings, citing encroachments on their sunlight and quality of life concerns. Although the populace viewed tenements as a major issue, that didn’t mean they wanted to bear the perceived consequences of taller buildings.

The result was catastrophic: a blanket height restriction passed in New York in 1885 that prevented housing from being built higher than six stories. Suddenly, with a rapidly rising population and an inability to build tall buildings, we had wiped out the advantages elevators provided. What was left for new immigrants was the tenement. This impact was compounded by the consolidation of New York in 1898 (an otherwise very good thing) which meant the new boroughs were subject to the same laws, and then further by New York’s early installment of Euclidean zoning in 1916.

But while cities decided to neuter the benefits of elevators, elevators have continued to improve by leaps and bounds. In the 20th century, we saw the introduction of multiple elevators in a single shaft, full automation, and more recently, a growing push for greater sustainability. The creation of Machine room-less elevators has saved valuable building space, reduced energy use by 70-80%, and removed the need for hydraulic oil use. And in 2017 the first net-zero elevator was created. Destination dispatch is also growing in popularity; this is when you select your destination outside of the elevator, and then are grouped with other people going to the same place.

At the same time, technical advances have been paired with policy ones. The most important is the improvement in accessibility legislation, primarily through the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). With nearly 20% of American households including someone with an accessibility need of some kind, this legislation has had enormous ramifications for how we build, and the existence of the elevator has been a crucial component.

Very few people would consider the elevator a particularly interesting structure. But it serves a revolutionary purpose: allowing us to maximize space in ways our ancestors never thought possible. As people flock to cities in search of the connectivity and opportunity they provide, they also come up against that ever-present issue: high costs. This simple capability, to build higher, gives us a chance to actually lower the cost burden of housing. And while we still have that thorny problem of politics to solve, we can rejoice in the knowledge that we can conquer the skies.

My great-grandfather’s home nation has a storied history; after unifying in the 10th century, it combined with Lithuania in the 14th century to create one of the largest realms in Europe. During that time period, Poland claimed luminaries like Nicolaus Copernicus among its citizens, but perhaps its most impressive contributions were political. A kind of early democracy was present in Poland, as each noble was granted equal status to one’s fellows, and all served as electors of the king. At the end of the 18th century, Poland also codified the second modern constitution in the world, following the United States.

But by the time Dave departed, Poland had been languishing for centuries. Poland’s Golden Age came to an end in the 17th century, as the nation’s unfortunate geography finally caught up to it. Pinioned between Prussia and Russia, with increasingly adventurous Scandinavian nations residing to the north, Poland was unable to keep hold of its land or its autonomy. Three partitions of the country unfolded, with the final partition in 1795 between Russia, Prussia, and Austria ending the independent Polish state and placing its citizens at the mercy of foreign rulers. Few benefited from such an arrangement.

The large Polish Jewish population, for example, was condemned to the Pale of Settlement, an area controlled by Russia that stretched through much of modern Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, and eastern Poland. To exist outside of these borders was criminal, and conditions inside the Pale were porous. It is no surprise that so much of my family left the region during the existence of the Pale.

After WWI, Poland regained its independence, but the old adage traditionally applied to Russia stuck with them: “and then it got worse.” A brief period of democracy was followed by dictatorship—and soon after, the Nazis and Soviets invaded Poland. Six million Poles were murdered—up to 17% of the population. The greatest casualties were around 3 million Polish Jews, constituting 90% of that group.

At the war’s end, Poland was reeled into the Eastern Bloc and suffered the standard indemnities of other Soviet vassals: surveillance, economic stagnation and decline, and executions. Only upon the fall of the Berlin Wall was hope restored to the beleaguered nation, and while many predictions of democratic triumph appear laughable today, Poland began to progress by leaps and bounds.

An economic miracle commenced, one that persists to this day and outshines much of the rest of the world. Real GDP doubled over the past two decades, and from 1990 to 2020, Poland grew faster than any country other than China. It is now, in GDP per capita (PPP), approaching Japan. Before the pandemic, it had the second-longest period—twenty-eight years—without a recession. This growth has not been concentrated among the wealthy. Poland holds one of the lowest Gini coefficients in the EU, as well as the second lowest rate of people at risk of poverty. Between 2019 and 2024, its rate declined by 50%.

But Poland is more than a 30-year story of massive quality-of-life increases and purchasing power. For in 2015, warning signs began to flash. While the economy continued to hum along, the fledgling democratic institutions and bonds with Europe began to unravel. That year, the right-wing Law and Justice Party assumed power, serving as one of the harbingers of the potency of right-wing populism. Only months after the European Migration Crisis started, and a year before Brexit or Trump, Law and Justice ousted the centrist incumbents on a platform of stricter migration controls and euroskepticism.

Anne Applebaum, columnist for the Atlantic and wife of Radosław Sikorski, a Polish cabinet minister—both before Law and Justice and now again—chronicled the consequences in her 2020 book Twilight of Democracy. Efforts were undertaken to censor independent journalists and politicize the judicial system, resulting in attacks on judges that voiced dissent. In 2020, the puppet Constitutional Court further restricted Poland’s already draconian abortion laws, preventing abortion even in cases of nonviable pregnancy.

For eight years, Poland was mentioned despairingly, billed as the potential next Hungary. Twenty years of growth and democracy were to be rewarded only by retreats to a darker past. The cycle of Poland, brief periods of hope that turned into nightmare, was beginning again. But this time, Poland resisted. In 2023, Law and Justice were ousted by a centrist coalition, led by the greatest current world leader serving a second nonconsecutive term whose name is Donald T.

In the two years since, Tusk’s government has sought to rectify much that was broken. It has pursued investigations into key Law and Justice figures accused of corruption, including one Zbigniew Ziobro, an ex-minister now seeking asylum in Hungary as he faces charges of leading a criminal organization. It has also sought to reestablish the independence of the judiciary by ending sanctions against judges. Closer ties to Europe have also guaranteed access to funds that were restricted during Law and Justice’s tussles with the EU.

Russia’s imperialism has also required Poland to step up its military capacity and defend continental interests. No stranger to the evergreen specter of Russian territorial ambitions, even under Law and Justice Poland was one of the most strident supporters of Ukraine. Military expenditures as a percentage of GDP are nearly 5%, rising from only a little above 2% before the war. But Law and Justice demonstrated how trustworthy it is when it announced in September 2023 that it would stop aid to Ukraine. Under Tusk, Poland has renewed its commitment to Ukraine that reflects both Polish national security concerns and a commitment to the rule of law and against imperialism.

All is not perfect in Poland. Two years have not been enough to reverse all the fractures that Law and Justice created in eight. And last year, Law and Justice retained the Presidency, allowing them the power to veto laws put forth by Tusk’s government. That president, Karol Nawrocki, is now the most popular figure in Poland, and he has embarked on an effort to push Poland in a right-wing direction and stymie efforts to rebuild the rule of law. An election looms in November 2027, with polling suggesting the combined right-wing parties have enough vote share to emerge victorious. Yet, they are already faltering and collapsing into infighting. Tusk’s party has recently reassumed the lead over Law and Justice, and we are still 21 months away from the election.

Pick almost any country, and you will find that the median person is enjoying a far higher standard of living than they did thirty years ago. That’s true in Poland, but it’s also true that people’s lives are better than they were two years ago. And Poland is hardly the only place where this is the case. Other countries like Romania and Slovenia are on the rise, as are former economic laggards like Spain and Greece. In Guyana, fortunes have exploded after the discovery of oil, Vietnam has grown rapidly, and my correspondent on the ground informs me of improvements in Rwanda.

But Poland is not just an example of success, it is an exemplar. After its democracy teetered on the brink, it came back. We are all too familiar with the fragility of democracy, but Poland is proof of its resilience. A cautionary tale that is also a symbol of hope—despite the fact that it takes longer to rebuild than to break. A reason to believe that even if we go back, we can once again move forward.

In the new year, it seems apropos to reflect on what I’ve written about previously, and explore whether there has been further progress, or setbacks on those topics. I’m not going to revisit every single piece, as there’s been little change in some cases.1

Parking Mandates: May 27, 2024

Over the past 20 months, the elimination of parking mandates, which drive up the cost of housing and incentivize car dependency, has continued. New York passed City of Yes, which eliminated parking mandates in some parts of the city and reduced them in others. The original ambitious—and thoroughly correct—attempt to ban mandates citywide failed, with some outer borough councilmembers securing carve-outs that led to minimal changes in their areas, but it was still a net victory.

Other cities took greater steps recently, with full citywide elimination of parking mandates in Denver, Baltimore, and Sacramento. Seven of the biggest thirty-five cities have now fully banned parking minimums, and three of those happened in the last two years.

On the state level, Illinois prevented parking mandates near transit, joining states like California, and Oregon. Washington also improved its own laws; where previously, it had eliminated requirements in areas that covered about 20% of Washington residents, legislation passed in May 2025 covers municipalities that make up 83% of the state’s population. As a result, all homes under 1,200 square feet are automatically exempt from parking mandates—which constitutes the majority of apartments—and first-in-the-nation reductions in requirements for commercial spaces and childcare facilities were instituted.

Even in some of the most car-dependent cities in the country, it’s clear the tide is shifting. LA is considering reducing parking requirements, while Dallas did so in June. With high housing costs one of the driving issues in American life today, momentum is on the side of parking reformers.

Malaria: June 4, 2024

On the surface, not much has changed in the past 19 months. In 2024, 610,000 people died of malaria, little change from the year before. We are still far off track of the goals we had set at the turn of the century, with a precipitous drop in malaria deaths until 2015 leveling out over the past decade. Some positive signs that I identified have not improved since. For example, fewer insecticide treatment nets were distributed in 2024 than previous years, leading to a small decline across groups in usage of this key treatment.

Yet, glimmers of hope linger under the surface. 14 million deaths have now been averted, an upward trend from 19 months ago, when the estimates were closer to 11.7 million. In 2000, malaria was endemic in 108 countries, in 2023, it was endemic in 82 countries. Two more countries—Suriname and Bhutan—dropped off the list in 2024. 20 formerly endemic countries have now been certified malaria-free; as recently as a couple years ago, there were only 12.

Seasonal malaria chemoprevention (SMC) has continued to trend upwards, with 54 million children under 5 receiving these monthly antimalarial treatments (up from 49 million two years ago). Perennial malaria chemoprevention (PMC) is a newer strategy that I actually did not explore in the previous article. Only instituted a few years ago, ten countries have now implemented or plan to implement it, with nearly a million children receiving each of the three targeted doses.

Where there is real promise is on the vaccine front. In 2024, Gavi managed to roll out nearly 10 million doses to 17 countries, protecting 5 million children. Further rollouts have occurred in 2025 in many African nations.

The elephant in the room (you may notice a pattern throughout this piece) is the Trump presidency. The WHO’s Malaria Report lags a year behind, so it does not include any policy impacts from this administration, which included cutting massive amounts of malaria funding. Given that the US contributed 36% of global malaria funding in 2024, this is bound to have a catastrophic impact on elimination efforts unless other nations pick up the slack.

Next year’s report will shed light on how resilient the global effort to fight malaria can be without US commitment. Whether medical advancement and further vaccine rollouts are enough to bear the load remains to be seen.

Renewable Energy: June 11, 2024

In 2025, renewables became the largest source of electricity generation for the first time, surpassing coal. Over the next five years, Bloomberg projects further increases in renewable energy installations. EV sales increased 25% worldwide from the year prior, and gas car sales in 2024 were below 60 million after peaking at over 80 million several years ago. All of their market share has been lost to hybrids and EVs. In 2025, Science named the growth of renewable energy its Breakthrough of the Year.

These numbers are all worldwide, because the picture in the United States is less rosy. The present administration’s extreme hostility toward all things renewable2 has collapsed renewable energy growth projections over the next few years. They have scuttled tax credits for renewables and paused offshore wind leases in the name of national security. But their power is not absolute.

Yesterday, a judge ruled that an offshore wind project in New York could move forward, against the administration’s objections. In 2025, 92% of new energy installations in the US were renewable or battery storage. And strangely, after decades of bipartisan and global opposition to nuclear power, Trump is aligned with Democrats like Kathy Hochul on expanding nuclear energy.

The new administration has sought to disrupt renewables at every turn, and while they continue to grow, it is the pace of that growth that matters. Every year we only scale up by 5% instead of 10% is a missed opportunity and a debt that will eventually have to be paid. But it is still a 5% increase. Still a sign that all the powers that be cannot stop the inevitability of a greener world.

Sickle cell CRISPR: June 18, 2024

Up until this point, the two sickle cell treatments approved in the US—Lyfgenia and Casgevy—have been slow to get off the ground. But the engine behind Casgevy, the gene editor CRISPR, continues to advance. Recall that Casgevy is the first CRISPR treatment approved in the US. In this case, CRISPR is meant to be used in repetition, editing the genetic mutations responsible for sickle cell disease.

But in 2025, something new happened. Scientists in Philadelphia created a special gene editing therapy for a single patient: KJ Muldoon. The promise of such treatment is evident: eventually, CRISPR may be able to be deployed on an individual level to treat a person’s specific condition, rather than trying to fit them into one of the generic therapies.

Non-Alcoholic Beer: July 3, 2024

Gallup found that the percent of American adulst who are drinkers is at a 90-year low, while separately liquor stocks have lost $830 million in the last four years. The alcoholic recession is well and truly here. This is a good thing: alcohol is poison, and we’ve finally dispensed with the fiction that red wine is good for you. Non-alcoholic beer outsold ale in 2025, illustrating that a decline in drinking isn’t only associated with fewer social interactions, but is also driven by consumers choosing non-alcoholic beer over an alcoholic option.

Non-Competes: July 30, 2024

Overall, movement on non-competes has trended in the wrong direction. A couple of months ago, the FTC refused to defend its non-compete clause, making it void. Non-competes have traditionally stifled wages and reduced competition, which makes this a disappointing, if not terribly unexpected move from the administration.

On the state level, there have been some attempts in the last year to regulate non-competes. In states with as varied politics as Oregon, North Carolina, Colorado, and Texas, restrictions on the use of non-competes in healthcare have proliferated. In fact, of the eleven pieces of state legislation passed in 2025, nine of them restricted non-competes further, while only two states expanded non-competes.3

River cleanup: August 13, 2024

The act of cleaning up rivers is not a quick or easy process, but in the year and a half since I wrote this article, there is one beacon of optimism. Before and even during the Olympics, the Seine cleanup was controversial; heavy rain caused postponements of certain events, and a few athletes became sick, although there was nothing to confirm it was caused by the Seine.

This summer, however, the Seine was opened for swimming for good. Over 100,000 people frolicked in the waters for free, and no one seems to have become sick! The next time I go to Paris in the summer, I’ll be sure to take a dip.

Dog life expectancy: September 5, 2024

You may not imagine that much has changed on dog life expectancy of late, but there has been one update of note. Previously, I wrote about Loyal, a company that produced three different drugs aimed at expanding life expectancy. In early 2025, the FDA approved the Reasonable Expectation of Effectiveness section for the second of these drugs—LOY-002. This makes it more likely that Loyal’s target for 2026 FDA approval will occur, meaning the first medicine aimed at increasing dog longevity may be available this year.

Crime reduction: October 19, 2024

After a rise in homicides during the pandemic, violent crime rates began to come down—with significant declines in 2023 and 2024. That trend has continued over the past year. In New York, there were 305 murders in 2025, lower than the 319 in 2019. LA recorded its fewest homicides since 1966 and its lowest homicide rate since 1959. Chicago’s homicides fell 29% in 2025.

This is also true for cities that did not see declines after the pandemic. DC was a notable exception, with homicides actually rising in 2023 to a 20-year high. But from 2023 to 2025, homicides fell from 274 to 127, an astounding drop. This put it at the fewest homicides in the district since 2017.

Jeff Asher, founder of the Real Time Crime Index, illustrated that this was not just a big-city or a homicide reduction. Across the country, crime fell from 2024 to 2025. According to his estimates, 12,000 fewer people were murdered in 2024 and 2025 compared to 2020 and 2021. Violent crime is still far too high in the United States, but that’s extraordinary progress.

Congestion Pricing: January 18, 2025

Just over a year ago, New York became the first place in the country to implement congestion pricing. A plethora of research and early data suggested that it would reduce congestion, bring money to the MTA, aid businesses in the area, and would not fall disproportionately on the poorest New Yorkers. I, and every other proponent, also suspected that once it was in effect, it would become a much more popular policy than at the time of implementation. And in every single way, congestion pricing has fulfilled its promise and more.

Pollution has declined 22%, traffic has dropped, more trucks are not driving through the Bronx, MTA revenue is beating expectations, and business revenue is up. As predicted, opposition has subsided once the policy was actually enacted and New Yorkers were able to see the positive ramifications.

As congestion pricing heads into its second year in New York, there are really only two questions to ask: can we make it more than $9, and can we do this elsewhere? The DC government scuttled the public release of a 2020 study on congestion pricing and west coast cities were exploring the possibility before New York’s implementation. In the most walkable cities in the US—San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, DC, Philly, etc.—leaders now have good data as to why congestion pricing may work in their cities too.

AIDS: January 22, 2025

It was a grave oversight on my part to fail to mention PEPFAR, which has saved 26 million lives and prevented millions from being born with HIV. Among the countless ills of the Trump administration’s first year, its attacks on the US’ successful HIV/AIDS programs was one of the most unforgivable. The dissolution of USAID caused chaos and was catastrophic, even if Trump eventually decided to keep PEPFAR under the State Department. Cuts to funding have already caused some research to be postponed, and those who rely on medicine and resources are struggling to survive.

Yet, the administration has not managed to destroy all progress. As I wrote about last year, Lenacapavir marks the next step forward in HIV prevention. Instead of the daily PrEP pill, it’s a twice a year shot that’s nearly 100% at protecting people from HIV. And in 2025, WHO recommended its use for prevention, while the FDA approved it for use in the United States.

While the hunt for an HIV vaccine continues, the reduction of barriers to Lenacapavir is an extraordinary development in an otherwise bad year for the effort to end HIV/AIDS.

Cellphone Bans: May 10, 2025

From 2023 to May 2025, 20 schools implemented cell phone bans in classrooms. Since then, numerous other states have taken decisive action, with twenty-three states implementing some kind of restriction in 2025 alone. And already in 2026, New Jersey has banned cellphones and Michigan is taking steps to do the same.

It’s too early to assess the impact in most places, but a study of a Florida school district where phones are banned “bell to bell” found modest increases in test scores after. There’s also anecdotal evidence of more social interaction in schools, as students are forced to talk to each other instead of play on their phones during lunch.

Golden Age of Baseball: July 12, 2025

I feel pretty good about how this subjective argument has stood the test of eight months. I identified Ohtani as one of the key reasons that baseball is in its golden age, and three months later, he had maybe the greatest game ever. In NLCS Game 4, Ohtani hit 3 home runs and pitched 6 innings of 10 strikeout, shutout baseball.

This year’s World Series ended up being one of the best ever. Stretching seven games, into the 11th inning in Game 7—a toe tap away from a Blue Jays victory—MLB.com rated it the 5th best 7-game World Series ever. It was also the most watched game in 34 years, illustrating that while baseball has lost the popularity of its heyday, it may very well be back.

Lab Grown Diamonds: August 13, 2025

After a brief uptick earlier in 2025, the cost of natural diamonds has now dropped again, while lab-grown prices slowly trickled downwards. Of more note is the impact that the diamond industry’s decline has had on its biggest producer, Botswana. This country, one of the richest and most stable in Africa, shrunk 1% this year, a continuation of last year’s 3% contraction. In response, Botswana is considering a golden passport scheme similar to that of Malta and Trump’s Golden Visa program.

All told, this exercise shows a mixed bag. Crucial medical advancements continue to iterate and improve rapidly, but the US’ callous withdrawal of resources will cost lives in the meantime. Localities are adopting their peers’ successful policies on issues as varied as housing, transit, student performance, and crime in an encouraging sign. And renewable energy adoption, perhaps the most important global story, continues.

I did not start this expecting to see uniform improvement in order to confirm a theory of constant, inevitable progress. As history has taught us, progress is often delayed by malice, greed, or stupidity, with severe ramifications. It’s critical to track our advancements, both so we do not rest on our laurels and to try to intervene when progress is interrupted.

Between the creation of every great innovation and its real-world impacts, there have always been occasions where progress stalled. Even so, with a fraction of our knowledge—and all of the same baser elements of human nature—we uncovered phenomenal discoveries and turned them into results. On some of these issues where we have moved backward, it is worth remembering past victories so that today’s challenges do not seem impossible to solve.

Yet, at the turn of the 20th century, blight arrived. Brought over from Asia, a fungus began to nestle into the bark of these grand trees and starve them. Discovered in 1904 at the Bronx Zoo, by the 1930s, 99% of all American Chestnuts were functionally dead. The shrubs remained, as the fungus could not burrow into the soil to kill the tree’s roots. What resulted was a cycle of new sprouts, culled once they reached the surface and encountered the blight. A slow, painful death.

For the last century, that’s been the story of the American Chestnut. While the United States has actually added more trees than lost in the past 100 years, there are very few American Chestnuts still standing.

But, against all odds, and truly, I do mean all odds, there is hope for the return of the American Chestnut. The first major breakthrough was in the 1960s, when a botanist named Robert Dunstan crossbred a still living American Chestnut with a Chinese one, which is immune to the blight. Since then, advancements have increased the composition of American trees in these hybrids; today, the most successful contain only 12% Chinese Chestnut DNA. The American Chestnut Foundation is the primary proponent of this crossbreeding, using Recurrent Genomic Selection to model and then select only the most resistant trees and their most resistant offspring. This builds on similar techniques that exploded milk yields in the 20th century.

In 1997, researchers managed to plant tissue cultures of the American Chestnut in the wild, and four years later, an attempt to improve blight resistance was achieved. This involved using a gene from wheat known as oxalate oxidase, or OXO. This was a crucial development, as it opened up the possibility of using transgenics in trees. A transgenic tree is one that incorporates foreign DNA into it; in 2006, the first Transgenic American Chestnut, which added the OXO gene to a standard sapling, was planted.

The speed and scale of research has accelerated since, with new advancements in blight detection, early flowering, and blight resistance, but there have been sizable setbacks as well. The players: the American Chestnut Foundation, and SUNY’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, or ESF. The subject: the Darling tree, the name given to the transgenic American Chestnut. After a series of trials, where researchers at the ESF inserted the OXO gene at different places on the chestnut’s genome, they suspected that Darling 58 was a blight-resistant, 100% American chestnut. The ACF jumped on board, providing significant funding to continue the research.

Then things went haywire. Darling 58 was actually Darling 54, meaning researchers had been studying the wrong tree, and the promising results needed to be reexamined. In particular, the accidental insertion of the gene in the wrong area resulted in gene deletion, which could have deleterious effects. At the same time, the ACF witnessed blight symptoms in some Darling 58/54 trees and in December 2023, it announced it was cutting ties with ESF and the Darling project.

Some might take this as evidence that the dream of a transgenic return of the American Chestnut was dead. But I think that would be a mistake. First, the Darling 54 trees at ESF have not seen the same issues as those seen by the ACF, which the ACF itself “cannot explain.” More recent ESF research on the correct strain has shown promise as well. But more importantly, ESF is developing a better tree, known as DarWin. DarWin’s blight resistance is only activated when its bark is wounded. This might solve a potential key issue with D54: because blight resistance was automatically on, the tree may have lacked the energy to grow.

Currently, the USDA is considering whether to deregulate D54—allowing it to be propagated anywhere—and in a positive sign has concluded that it poses no pest risk to plants. Such government approval could not only fast-track approval of better trees like DarWin, but increase research capacity to study further transgenics—ensuring DarWin is soon supplanted by even better iterations. And the private sector is becoming involved as well; American Castanea, a company led by a former Gates Foundation employee, has gained seed money and has a plan to speed up the planting of these trees.

As I’ve written before, the rapidity of gene editing advancements is exhilarating. A year later, the landscape has already shifted beneath our feet, as KJ Muldoon became the first human to receive a personalized CRISPR therapy for his exceedingly rare disease. American Chestnuts may not be top of the list of use cases, but specialized attention to genetic engineering may yield impressive results faster than we think.

If you live in New York, take a day and head to Greenwood Cemetery. Explore the graves of luminaries like Henry Ward Beecher, DeWitt Clinton, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. And walk the Chestnut Path, where you might catch a glimpse of a chestnut sapling, newly planted as part of the 1,000 Chestnut Challenge. Look upon it, and know that for the first time in 100 years, there is a chance that a seed from that tree’s own seed will stand as high as the chestnuts of old.

Everyone knows about long waiting lists for kidney transplants, but I think few understand the true scope of the problem. In the United States, 37 million people have kidney disease and worldwide, chronic kidney disease is the 9th leading cause of death. Nearly 1 million Americans have kidney failure, which is deadly except for two possibilities: dialysis or transplant, and 55,000 people die a year in the US from kidney failure.

Dialysis is a miracle, performing the necessary filtration of waste and toxins from your bloodstream that doesn’t occur during kidney failure. Since Willem Kolff’s invention of the dialysis machine in 1943, millions have seen their lives saved or extended by dialysis. It is also, for most Americans, covered by Medicare.

But dialysis is not the optimal outcome. Those on dialysis also experience high unemployment, quality of life issues, and lower survival rates than those with transplants. It is also extraordinarily expensive, totaling 1% of all federal budget spending. Our goal should be to make dialysis obsolete.

Of the 90,000 people currently awaiting a kidney transplant, only 25,000 will receive a transplant this year. In 2025, twice as many people have joined the waitlist as have received a transplant. Only 7,000 living donations of kidneys happened last year, which is a problem since living donor organs have much higher rates of functionality than their deceased counterparts. In general, it takes three to five years to receive a kidney, unless you can find a family match or do a kidney swap.

As it stands today, the primary way to improve kidney donation is to get living people to donate their kidneys. That’s the purpose of the aforementioned End Kidney Deaths Act, which would provide $10,000 in tax credits per year for five years to anyone who donates a kidney. Such a credit would tackle the costs that often disincentivize people from donating, which one study estimated total nearly $38,000.

Incentive systems work in similar contexts, like blood plasma. Paying for plasma has rocketed up plasma collection in countries across the world. We’re not suffering from a lack of altruism, but for many, altruism is not enough to risk real health issues or financial loss.

Incentives for kidneys aren’t some far flung idea. From the Netherlands to California, jurisdictions offer paid family leave for donors, and many countries provide reimbursement for travel and medical expenses. Surprisingly, the one country with an actual compensation program is Iran, and although I consider its open kidney market politically infeasible, it has resulted in the shortest kidney waitlist in the world.

For the moment, at least, the End Kidney Deaths Act appears at a standstill, but there is good news in the broader push to incentivize kidney donation in the US. A few weeks ago, New York became the first state to provide reimbursements for donor expenses. It’s estimated that such a program will save 100 lives a year, which might sound small in comparison to the legions who die each year waiting for a kidney, but it’s an important first step, and one that will hopefully lead other jurisdictions to follow.

The primary argument against such a system seems to revolve around exploitation. In this story, financial compensation would encourage predominantly lower-income people to donate their kidneys. This, too, matches plasma, as centers are disproportionately located in places with high poverty rates. But as even the Jacobin notes, the problem isn’t the existence of blood plasma centers themselves, but of insufficient and uncoordinated compensation. Legislation that guarantees $10,000 a year would serve as a legal contract guaranteeing equal compensation to all donors, resolving these issues.

Overall, Americans are split on compensating donors, but a sizable chunk would shift from opposition to support if it increased the supply of organs. NY’s program, and others that might follow, would be a powerful demonstration to those who have questions about the trade-offs but are persuadable of the efficacy of compensation.

Policy isn’t the only lever to improve donation rates; medical advancement will play a critical role as well. People—myself included—have other hold-ups, including fears about medical risks in transplant or later-in-life kidney failure that would make one wish they hadn’t donated their other kidney. As I’ve written this, I’ve become a little less concerned. Studies have shown that kidney donors have very low rates of kidney failure, although it appears that it’s ever so slightly higher than a comparable healthy non-donor population.

Kidney donation has also become significantly safer over the last few decades. Rates of death among kidney donors have dropped from 2.9 per 10,000 from 2003 to 2012 (already a very low number) to 0.9 per 10,000 from 2013 to 2022. In other words, one kidney donor dies every two years. Continued strides should ease these medical concerns that might not be mitigated by financial compensation.

Another medical advancement has the capacity to increase the supply of organs as well. In January 2022, scientists at University of Maryland successfully performed the first transplant of a pig heart into a living human. Two years later, the first pig kidney transplant occurred. The idea of pig organs inside a person may seem strange, but they’re more similar than one might think. There’s also a history of using pigs in human treatment; heart valves can be porcine, for example.

Although xenotransplantation (the name for animal to human transplant) has been theorized for a century and researched since the 1960s, it remains in its infancy, with all the difficulties that come with it. Pig hearts carry risks in humans, both as transmitters of porcine viruses and because they often induce antibody responses that can endanger patients. Alpha-gal, for example, is a molecule that exists in pigs, but not humans; when it comes into contact with humans, it can cause rejection of the transplant. Though that particular problem was solved in 1997, further differences persist, including proteinuria and immune responses against what they perceive to be foreign cells. Researchers also aren’t completely sure of all the reasons why pig organs are rejected.

But we have more tools to iterate on these problems. Most importantly, the invention of CRISPR gives scientists more flexibility and capability to edit genes. As well, immunosuppressants can play a role in limiting unwanted immune responses. In only a few years, xenotransplantation has made tremendous strides. The first patients mentioned above died after two months; a year later, Towana Looney’s pig kidney functioned for over four months. Two patients who received kidneys a few months after Looney have now survived for over six months with pig kidneys, including Tim Andrews, whose kidney lasted for 271 days. And most recently, the first successful pig lung transplant was facilitated in China, suggesting potential for other organs to follow the heart and kidneys.

Earlier today, two new studies came out that should give us even further reason for optimism. These studies put forth new evidence for the main factors that cause organ rejection. Conducted on a deceased man named Maurice Miller, the tests allowed doctors to create a map of his immune response and gain a more granular understanding of it. Among the discoveries were:

1. Kidneys work better when the pig’s thymus is also transplanted. The thymus functions as a kind of middleman between the human’s immune system and the pig cells, teaching the former not to attack the latter as foreign.

2. T cells are more crucial than was previously theorized. After T cells emerged on the kidney’s surface, an anti-T cell immunosuppressant destroyed the T cells and restored the kidney to full function. Certain antibodies also reacted, and were successfully treated by drugs.

It also raised questions about how much gene editing is sufficient. In these tests, only a single gene edit—to remove alpha-gal—was used. In other cases, more than 10 different edits are often utilized to limit rejection. In principle, the more edits the better, but there are trade-offs; you can breed pigs without alpha-gal, but you have to clone pigs with more edits, a costlier process.

Xenotransplantation is hardly solved, but its rapid improvement is promising. And there is real support behind finding solutions to its enduring challenges. In February of this year, the FDA greenlit the first xenotransplantation clinical trial, allowing researchers the opportunity to conduct tests with more resources and participants. One of those two trials began last week. Clinical trials will allow a scaling up of transplants that improves our collective understanding of xenotransplantation.

Momentum is building to end the kidney shortage, and it should give us all hope. So if you can, support the End Kidney Deaths Act, encourage other states to follow New York’s lead, and remember to thank2 all the courageous, selfless people who have donated kidneys to a loved one or anonymously. They are, in the purest sense of the word, heroes.

As someone with a lot of strong opinions, I appreciate this urge. But of late I’ve been thinking about the value of being wrong, of the importance of both sharing one’s opinions and demonstrating curiosity—even while recognizing certain undeniable truths. In pursuit of this, I’ve sought to come up with a small set of principles for myself, some of which may apply to others as well:

1. Wrongness is a state to be avoided:

   This feels like a pretty obvious thing to state, but obvious truths should still be stated! If the sum total of this essay is “it’s okay to be wrong,” that’s incomplete. We’re always going to be wrong about some things, but we should do our level best to not be. Don’t sink back into a justification for being wrong, recognize that it’s an evergreen enemy to be battled with. A Sisyphean task that still requires you to push the boulder up the hill, not sit down at the bottom.

2. Stupid views are still stupid:

   Accepting the likelihood of being wrong doesn’t mean living in constant self-doubt. It just means that it’s often worthwhile to hear a dissenting opinion, even if it just strengthens your pre-existing convictions. Not every view is equally valid, but it is valuable to understand them. The ones you’re more unsure about are the ones that are worth spending the most time interrogating.

3. Kindness matters:

   I’ll admit that I think people overstate the decline of civility in political discourse. Virtually every time period has included its share of incivility, virulent rabble rousers, flagrant racism, and generally not so nice people engaging in bitter disagreement. But it is true that polarization has increased in recent years, that social media incentivizes and amplifies bad behavior, and that cruelty often sells.

   This isn’t a prescription for how politicians should play politics, but for how ordinary people engage with each other: online, with their families, with their friends. And I think getting heated and lapsing into moral grandstanding is unproductive and something I should aim for less. At best, when you’re right you gain an air of superiority, at worst you force them to dig their heels in; if you’re wrong, you lose the opportunity to learn.

4. Ad hominems really are bad:

   Relating to point 2, I get why if someone has a stupid idea about one thing, it’s highly tempting to believe they’re wrong about everything. And that’s not always a bad bet. Some people seem to miss consistently. And while that may be a good enough reason not to listen to them, that doesn’t necessarily mean that every one of their views is guaranteed to be wrong by association. If a person who thinks climate change isn’t real also believes that we should ban horse carriages in Central Park, we shouldn’t draw conclusions about the merits of the second based solely on the first.

5. Qualifying your arguments is good:

   This is the meat of today’s article. You shouldn’t be equally sure about every position you hold, and I think it’s worth being more open about that. I have a tendency to dig my heels in on everything—no matter how firmly I believe in it—but I should be more willing to say “I think it’s this, but I’m not totally sure.” Whether we’re engaging in an argument, or sharing a fact, it’s worth qualifying how confident we are in it, and revisiting the conversation as needed to introduce new information even if that weakens our argument.1

Related to that last point, I’ve decided to practice what I preach, sharing ten of my opinions on a gradient of 1/10 confidence in them. 5/10 doesn’t mean I’m 50% on whether it’s correct, this is just a rank-order of my feelings about certain topics. So, here goes.

10/10: We live in the best time in human history: The entire premise of the Substack. Naturally, there are some areas in which one could argue we have declined, but on net, if you were to line every human to ever live up in a line in terms of fortune, even today’s poorest would be likely ahead of anyone else in existence a century ago.

9/10: A true New Yorker is one who chooses to be here, not only one who was born here: People really hate transplants. Whether it’s major political figures or just ordinary people, people of all stripes and party affiliations seem to view those who were born and raised in a place as better than those who moved. It’s not universal, but there is real, visible belief that you’re only a real New Yorker if you were born here.2

This is mad. For one thing, a number of people who tee off against transplants would rightly find it unacceptable if an immigrant were told they were not a “real American.” As well, the entire debate over who is a real New Yorker obscures the fact that New York is a city of immigrants.

The first non-indigenous people who made a home in New Amsterdam were not born there, but surely they were true New Netherlands Dutch who represented the best of this comparably tolerant, multiethnic culture. Anthony van Sallee, the Spanish settler whose nickname was Anthony the Turk; Asser Levy, the first Jewish homeowner in North America, these people were part of the fabric of the Island at the Center of the World. They were not less New Netherlands Dutch than Sarah Rapelye, who was the first European actually born in North America.

I understand why some default to framing that pits natives against transplants or decries issues of displacement. But a person is not defined by where they’re born but where they choose to claim home, and if I can’t get the right-wing nativists to see that, it should be easy for the rest to grasp that concept.

8/10: Building more housing, of any type, slows rent increases:

I don’t think my readers need the whole spiel again, but here are the facts:

a) Many cities in the US are exorbitantly expensive

b) Many of those cities have acute housing shortages, as evidenced by their low vacancy rates

c) Increasing the supply of housing, even if it’s market-rate housing (commonly termed luxury housing) has been proven to slow rent growth. In Austin, which builds more housing than any other metro area in the country, rents actually declined as supply outpaced demand.

While many continue to see new housing and high rents and attribute one to the other, I do think elite consensus is changing. Building new homes was a plank of the Harris campaign, Obama has apparently become something of a YIMBY evangelist, California has sustained legislation to make it easier to build homes, and Zohran admitted to changing his mind on the role of market-rate construction as part of the solution.

7/10: Flaking is very bad: Flaking is on the rise these days. More and more often, people cancel plans last minute or say they’ll attend an event and never show up. A recent survey found that half of UK adults have flaked on plans; this number rises to 2/3 with people under 35. Technology has made it easier to cancel plans and the reasons for cancelling have broadened to include “I don’t feel like it.”

I’m a serious culprit of this, RSVPing to Partiful’s and not showing up, double scheduling, or canceling last minute. Most recently, I canceled a plan to run the next day with a friend, before changing my mind and going on it. Because the truth is that flaking isn’t acceptable. I was being selfish, and a bad friend. Other people might have shifted plans or been looking forward to spending time with you, and if you flake, it may feel costless to you but it’s not.

At a time when people are concerned about weaker ties that bind us together and social isolation, it should be obvious that flaking is further rending us apart. The reasons for canceling should be serious: illness, unexpected emergencies, a surprise work task. Being too tired or having a bad day doesn’t cut it.

6/10: Prohibition worked, sorta: Find yourself in a conversation about the legality of just about anything fraught: drugs, abortion, guns, sugar, and inevitably someone will say something about how banning things doesn’t work, “just look at Prohibition.” It’s the quintessential example of how government regulation both failed in its stated goal to reduce consumption and had a lot of unintended consequences. The latter is a fair point, but the former is just not accurate.

Strictly on an alcohol consumption basis, Prohibition worked immensely well. The years right after Prohibition saw plummeting alcohol consumption rates, as well as liver cirrhosis deaths. We don’t know for sure, but the preponderance of evidence suggests that decreased consumption would have also reduced domestic violence rates.

I’m not making an argument for a return to Prohibition on alcohol. It’s clear that giving people phones will sort that one out on its own. But I do think it’s important that people understand what Prohibition actually did and did not do, lest they assume that legalization of whatever will have no impact on consumption. The available evidence we have from Prohibition (which is 100 years old, hence the 6/10 confidence rating) suggests this is incorrect.

5/10: French pension reform is good. Two years after France raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, causing massive protests, the new old PM won a no-confidence vote after supporting a suspension of that pension reform. I get that raising the retirement age is unpopular, particularly on the left—this has been a longtime policy goal of Republicans in the US—and I’m not an expert of the French pension system, but from where I’m standing, this feels like a pretty necessary policy.

France has a massive budget problem; its debt to GDP ratio is greater than all but two EU countries: Greece and Italy, both of which have had serious economic problems in recent years.3 France’s retirement age is one of the lowest in Europe, and French retirees enjoy more retirement years than any other OECD country. Since 1981, when France’s retirement age was 60 years old, French life expectancy has increased nine years.

All of this adds up to a population that is happily living longer, and getting a lot more pension benefits because of it. That’s not inherently bad, but when you’re in a fiscal crisis it’s also not unreasonable to think that the retirement age needs to change, lest spending on some other priority (like children) be cut.

4/10: Nabokov is the greatest author I’ve read. It’s hard to say who my favorite author is. But what I feel pretty good about is who the greatest author I’ve read is, the person with the greatest mastery of language, the most ability to evoke extraordinary emotion and consideration.

I’ve read three books by Nabokov, and I’d characterize two of them as truly extraordinary, while I think Pnin is real masterwork of humor. I don’t think there’s much I can add on Lolita, other than the fact that is the most disturbing book I’ve ever read, but Pale Fire is unbelievable. It’s work of complete and total genius, a brilliant molding of prose and poetry that is a must-read for anyone. And this in his third language.

I’ll leave everyone with this, Nabokov’s witty opinions of other famous authors. I suspect I should take his advice and read Joyce:

• Ulysses. A divine work of art. Greatest masterpiece of 20th century prose. Towers above the rest of Joyce’s writing. Noble originality, unique lucidity of thought and style. Molly’s monologue is the weakest chapter in the book. Love it for its lucidity and precision.

3/10: Aitana Bonmati is the GOAT woman’s soccer player. Spain may not have won the Euros this summer, but every time you watch them, they’re clearly a cut above the rest. The beating heart of this team, and the best player in the world, is Aitana Bonmati, who has now won the Ballon D’Or three years in a row. It seems strange to anoint a 27 year old the greatest player ever, but I think she is anyway.

The traditional debate likely boils down to two players: Marta and Mia Hamm. And while I can’t say I watched Mia Hamm, I get why they stand at the top. Marta makes magic—and is the deserving six time player of the year, while Hamm is likely the most influential player ever, as well as one of its most gifted. But in the past five years—let alone fifteen or twenty-five—the women’s game has grown by leaps and bounds.

It’s not exactly like Mia Hamm was playing against milkwomen, but she only played club soccer for two years because there was no professional women’s club soccer in the US otherwise. In 2022, Bay FC became the most expensive franchise fee in the NWSL at $53 million; in 2024 Angel City was bought for $250 million. The Women’s Super League in England became professional in 2017 and now Arsenal Women sold out the 60,000 seat Emirates Stadium during a match. Investment in technology, in medicine, in facilities, it’s all absolutely exploded in the last several years, and that’s going to mean that the median player is going to rapidly improve.

In short, Aitana Bonmati looks the best player on every pitch at a time when the average player on that pitch is leagues better than they were ten years ago. We can only imagine how good the best player in ten years will be.

2/10: Ethiopian food is better in DC than New York:

DC doesn’t do much better than New York, but after spending four years eating some of the best meals of my life at Chercher, I felt pretty comfortable that it cleared on Ethiopian cuisine. After all, DC has the largest population of Ethiopians in the United States, and that’s naturally going to mean your food is pretty good.

I still think that, but recently I visited Awash in Brooklyn, and it was really, really excellent. Maybe not quite as good as Chercher, but my two friends who lived in DC with me also agreed that it was unbelievably good. So, my confidence is a little shaken. I’ve yet to have Ethiopian food in New York as good as that in DC, but it may be that even on this measure, DC is outclassed. Fortunately, there’s only one way to test if I’m wrong here: eat a lot more Ethiopian food.

1/10: The Amyloid Mafia is right. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease. It robs people of agency, of memory, of knowledge, and as many people as it affects now, it’s likely to impact multitudes more in the coming years as a result of an aging population. To be honest, the first piece I ever wanted to write for this Substack was about Alzheimer’s, about the progress we’ve made on developing drugs like lecanemab or blood tests to help diagnose Alzheimer’s. But while these are promising, and hopefully herald future innovations that will make a serious difference in catching, preventing, and treating Alzheimer’s, we’re not there yet.

Part of the issue is that we’re not sure what exactly causes Alzheimers. Social factors play a role, but theories also abound about the role played by two separate proteins that are found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s: amyloid and tau. For a very long time, the predominant explanation has been the amyloid hypothesis. This suggests that amyloid doesn’t just appear in people with Alzheimer’s, it is in fact the first step in a process that causes tau tangles, and then the disease itself. Most research has been funneled into this, but in recent years, the amyloid hypothesis has come under severe strain.

This gathered steam in 2022, when it was discovered that an influential paper published in 2006 that supported the amyloid hypothesis included doctored images. In 2024, the paper was retracted, becoming the second most cited paper ever to be retracted. In the minds of amyloid skeptics, this was the nail in the coffin, evidence that the amyloid hypothesis was not only flawed, but required lies to prop up.

I feel confident that doctored images are bad. I don’t think that breaks apart the entire theory of amyloid, which seems to have a lot of strong data about it. There’s a reason I’m at 1/10 confidence here; even Alzheimer’s experts don’t know, and I’m closer to a newborn in my understanding of Alzheimer’s than I am to those scientists. But if I had to pick, based on what I’ve read and my rudimentary understanding, I subscribe to the Amyloid hypothesis. I proudly accept the title of a member of the Amyloid mafia, however.

You might wonder what the purpose of this article was. I’m not 100% sure there was one. Perhaps it was just engagement bait to get people to argue with my takes or share their own lists. But I think it’s more than that; if you want to engage with the world and talk with people, you’re bound to say something stupid, be wrong about something, or just disagree. Rather than digging in or feeling embarrassed, there’s value in embracing disagreement, trying to persuade someone of your own view, and being open to the possibility of changing your own mind. Not to be a spineless creature who parrots the views of whomever they spoke to last, but because more perspectives might teach you something new. And I, at least, still have a lot to learn.

Of all things that have changed over the centuries, color isn’t a natural one to consider. After all, history and myth are filled with vibrant colors: Joseph’s coat of many colors, the golden fleece, and red of Rome. But our relationship and access to color has evolved and improved, from the clothing we wear to the hues we see, allowing us ever-growing awareness of the vibrance of the world.

Humanity has always been drawn to the application of color. For tens of thousands of years, people have created cave paintings using a mix of animal and plant sources and earth pigments like ochre and umber. These pigments were quite popular given their staying power, and prehistoric people spent valuable time and resources to attain and utilize the longest-lasting colors possible in their art.

Over time, humanity’s mastery of color increased, with Ancient Egypt at the epicenter of this advancement. We had millennia of experience working with earth colors to create pigments like black, red, and yellow, but blues and greens were out of reach. This changed when Egyptians began to mine the mineral lapis lazuli around six thousand years ago. In Egypt, blue was a divine color, connected to the sky and the Nile, and demand for this new pigment rose to catastrophic proportions as Egyptians sought to decorate tombs of pharaohs and honor the gods.

In search of more blue, Egyptians created the first synthetic pigment, aptly named Egyptian Blue. The Egyptians developed a chemical process to synthesize it, mixing ingredients like sand, natron, and copper shavings, heating them in a furnace and then grinding the result into pigment. This innovation allowed the color to proliferate throughout the Mediterranean.

The Chinese and Maya civilizations also developed their own recipes to create blue, with the Chinese using toxic elements like mercury and lead. The price of progress, in this case, was often poisoning. But while blue remained a highly prized color, its diffusion across cultures heightened access to it, allowing more people to wear the novel color.

If the development of blue was an extraordinary achievement, its close cousin purple surpassed it. Explore the histories of the ancient world, and one civilization will pop up again and again: the Phoenicians. This seafaring people dotted a collection of city-states across the Levant, most famously Sidon, Byblos, Tyre, and eventually the great city of Carthage, archnemesis of Rome.

The Phoenicians were involved everywhere, shipping cedar to Egypt a thousand years before they exchanged goods with the nascent Minoan civilization, another thousand years before their interactions with Greece and then later, Rome. And among the crucial roles they played as the Mediterranean’s merchants, in the city of Tyre, the most valuable color of antiquity was born.

Tyrian purple was not created by heating in a furnace, as done for Egyptian blue. Rather, it came from mucous secretions of the Murex sea snail, which produced three colors that ranged from bluish purple to red. Much of the process was lost to time, but the labor required was astonishing: 12,000 sea snails produced a single gram of dye. The result was a dye of such value that only royalty usually wore it. In Emperor Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices in 301 CE, unprocessed purple dye was worth three times the price of gold.

The color itself also became prized as a symbol. Roman senators wore purple stripes on their togas, while the Emperor alone was permitted full purple robes. Byzantine Emperors adorned their palaces with the color, and children of the Basileus born during his reign were considered “Porphyrogénnētos”, “born in the purple.”

Even as our array of colors exploded—mostly available only to the noble class—it was not until the 17th century that our understanding of color improved alongside it. For 2,000 years, Aristotle’s theory—that all colors were a mixture of black and white—prevailed. Then, Isaac Newton used a prism to find that light was composed of the seven colors of the rainbow—everyone’s favorite ROYGBIV. These discoveries expanded our knowledge not only of color, but also had practical applications in a range of fields, from chemistry to physics to optics.

Since that time, we have been able to study and diagnose color blindness, industrialize color printing, understand whether a planet is moving towards or away from us, and produce further dyes that have democratized color in fashion. We have also forged ahead in two key respects: bringing back colors once lost, and creating new ones.

Egyptian Blue and Tyrian Purple both vanished, their recipes lost to history. Or so we thought. In recent years, scientists have found ways to recreate these two colors, and have proposed interesting new uses for them. Egyptian Blue contains a mineral called cuprorivaite, which luminesces with infrared light. Theoretically, this might allow it to identify fingerprints or serve as an unforgeable ink. Tyrian Purple, on the other hand, holds a molecule that has demonstrated efficacy as a semiconductor, one of the most vital materials on Earth.

Scientists have also managed to create new colors. There’s an arms race to develop the blackest black, from vantablack to an even darker color developed by MIT scientists. This year, five scientists appear to have discovered a new blue-green color, Olo, by activating only one type of the cone cells in our eyes, as opposed to the usual two required at that side of the spectrum. Other than being cool, the process might have real applications for people with red-green color blindness.

Today, more than any other time in history, we have the ability to see a full spectrum of colors and adopt them as our own. Innovation need not come only in material form, in the number of lives saved or people lifted out of poverty, but also in our capacity to tell stories, create great works, and spark imagination. Over humanity’s existence, we have charted a path toward the mastery of color, an indelible advancement that has made us all better off, even if we never noticed it.

Until the Industrial Revolution, peasants made up between 70 and 90% of all people alive. Most owned small holdings, and spent their lives in substantial toil, with men forced to farm their own land and contribute unpaid labor for their lord. Trendy claims that peasants worked less than modern workers have been debunked; the main advocate of the view that peasants only worked 150 days a year now thinks the real number was twice that.

Unsurprisingly, women’s labor demands were even worse. Two women in a family of six would have to spend 46 hours per week on textile production just to hit subsistence level clothing demands; to do just a little better would require 93 hours. That’s in addition to numerous other tasks, including nursing (which took up an average of 40% of a woman’s life from fifteen to forty), cleaning, cooking, household budgeting, and more.

Work-life balance wasn’t much better after the Industrial Revolution. Two separate estimates taken in the 1880s and 1890s found that manufacturing workers were working around 60 hours a week, an improvement from roughly 70 in the 1830’s. The workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory—famous for the fire that killed 146 people, including girls as young as 14—racked up about 80 hours a week at the beginning of the Twentieth century. The Eight-Hour-Day movement persisted for over a century in the US before the Fair Labor Standards Act standardized the forty hour week, plus overtime pay for surplus hours in many industries.

While the average hours worked have not declined substantially since then, technological improvements have likewise expanded available free time for people. Over the course of a few decades, the availability of technologies like refrigerators, freezers, stoves, and washing machines reduced the amount of household work required. No longer did all of Monday need to be spent on laundry.

The last few decades have continued to yield progress, with one study finding an additional four to eight hours per week of leisure from 1965 to 2003. Today, according to the latest American Time Use Survey, Americans have over five hours per day of leisure. There are reasons to believe that further technological progress will raise this number; for example, the average American spends 40 minutes per day on food prep and cleanup, but induction ranges—faster and more energy efficient than other cooktops—are gaining in popularity.

Obviously, this leisure time is not equally distributed. The single parent who works two jobs, the waiter locked out of housing close to his work, the surgeon, all have less time to relax. Gender also plays a significant role here, as women have less leisure time than men in every developed country. Even in marriages where men and women earn similar salaries, men have more leisure time as a result of a higher domestic burden for women.

But while there’s sufficient progress yet to be made, it’s clear that civilization has found a way to expand time, if not master it. I could leave it there, a story of success, of the truism of John Adams’ quote:

I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”

Yet, it’s worth devoting a moment to why, exactly, it doesn’t feel as if we have four to five hours of leisure time every day. Most people feel as if they don’t have enough time in the day, sparking movements for more free time, including four day work weeks. My theory is pretty simple: people spend their free time alone on meaningless activities and then are frustrated that they let their leisure time slip away. It’s a position borne from personal experience; I spend less time on my phone than most, but it still eats away at time that I could be spending on other things. With the average person spending over 2 hours a day each on social media and watching TV, that’s a lot of downtime going to waste.

To be clear, this isn’t an argument about productivity; it’s one about purpose.1 As social media has become more algorithmic and videos have eaten up a larger share of the market, the requirements for engagement on the internet have fallen. Intentionality is no longer necessary; I don’t have to seek out the news, it will just pop up naturally in my feed; I don’t have to search for Arsenal highlights, they’ll just appear on my Instagram. Social media has become less about connection and research accumulation and more about the mindless scroll. Leisure, the one domain where a person should have control, is increasingly about being dictated to.

At the same time, people derive more joy from spending time together. As people spend more of their time alone, leisure feels less leisurely, and the perceived time crunch is heightened.

The last few paragraphs may seem dismal, but they’re not dire. Our historically high leisure time is a result of hard-won victories on labor rights, technological advances, and progress on gender equality. Society can always improve, and we should push tirelessly for the next innovations and legislation that frees up more of our time for what we want. But to truly make the most of our hard-earned leisure time requires some personal responsibility. Touch grass, hang with friends, read a book, attend a lecture, go for a run, try painting, learn a language, or write a polemic. You have the time for it.

In 2010, the first bit of construction was complete. Today, the waterfront between Piers 1 and 6 is one of the jewels of Brooklyn, filled with plentiful green space, soccer, basketball, and pickleball courts, ample space for running, biking, and fishing, and a number of new developments. In a city of riverways and estuaries, access to water is an enormous boon, and Brooklyn Bridge Park provides a blueprint for giving that access back to residents.

But if you journey just a little bit outside the park, walking south from Atlantic Avenue on Columbia, you travel back in time. Western access to the water is blocked off, 122 acres of industrial decay, large trucks, and vacant lots. I’ve run along this path for fifteen years, and the waste has always irked me.

Me in the belly of the beast.

The city of New York agreed. In 2024, the city took control of the site from the Port Authority, and the Economic Development Corporation proposed a plan that would yield the following:

• Upgraded port to replace the existing derelict one

• 6,000 housing units

• Green space

• Expanded greenway path from BBP to Red Hook

• Coastal resiliency

• Reduced traffic

This promises to be transformative. The area abutting the Brooklyn Marine Terminal is some of the most expensive real estate in the city. In a city of housing shortages, Cobble Hill, Columbia Waterfront, and Carroll Gardens stand out as particularly acute; a combination of high demand for leafy streets, good schools, and excellent Italian food and relative low-density supply. Adding 6,000 new units will ease the existing demand pressure on neighboring areas, slowing rent growth on older units and allowing more people to live in these amazing parts of the city.

At the same time, green space is at a premium in New York, and the chance for more pockets in replacement of warehouses and concrete is a boon. So too are the coastal resiliency measures, particularly necessary close to Red Hook, given its low-lying nature and history of flooding. This will combine well with the Red Hook Coastal Resiliency Project that broke ground last week.

The modernization of the port is the cherry on top, although it is quite frankly the centerpiece of the proposal. Right now, the area accounts for about 2% of goods that enter and exit the port. There are six cranes; one is functional. A modernized port would thus improve shipping capacity by 50%. It is part of a Blue Highways initiative that will seek move more goods by water than land, reducing traffic and pollution.

Predictably, the process to approve the Brooklyn Marine Terminal has not been easy. As fast-paced as New Yorkers move, the city is not immune from the glacial processes that inhibit change across America. The first phase of the Second Avenue subway was completed 97 years after first being proposed, congestion pricing was first contemplated in 1952, and NYC’s infamous ULURP process takes at least seven months just to rezone a particular plot of land.

In order for the Brooklyn Marine Terminal to move forward, it had to go before a 28 person “Task Force”. Five times, a vote on the project was postponed, driven by evergreen concerns from naysayers. I couldn’t quite make a full BINGO board, but I was pretty close.

Without spending too much time denigrating the strange arguments of opponents, I’ll just point out a few things.

1. New housing will not raise rents

2. New neighbors are good. It is particularly hypocritical to live in a place that anchors itself around its “neighborliness” and then be mad that more people are living there

3. There was ample public engagement and community input. Over the course of 10 months, there were 163 engagement meetings, including info sessions, site tours, community meetings, and focus groups. Those who complain about community input usually don’t actually mean they haven’t had the chance to give input on a project, they are simply upset their input has not overridden everything else

Despite the weakness of these arguments, for a time it appeared the project was in stasis. Then, last week, two key members of the Task Force—Borough President Antonio Reynoso and City Councilmember Shahana Hanif—signed on, clearing the way for a vote on Monday, at which the Task Force voted in favor. There’s a long, long ways to go, but this was a crucial first step that bypassed a typical hurdle at the local level, where agents are most likely to resign themselves to listening to the loudest, most negatory voices. In time, this project will create a more vibrant neighborhood, serving as one piece of the puzzle to addressing some of the city’s largest issues.

The Brooklyn Marine Terminal is a microcosm of a wider scale effort to address housing issues and reconnect us to greenways. Earlier this year, NYC released its Greater Greenways Plan, its first in over thirty years, which envisions a more connected, expansive system. From the Harlem River Greenway to continued pedestrianization of Broadway, the vision of a better city is coming into focus.

Next, let’s tear down the BQE.

For the last 2500 years, diamonds have been an object of value, originating in India, before eventually spreading across the world. The modern beginning of these precious stones begins in South Africa, however, when a series of discoveries in the 1860s kicked off a fully-fledged diamond rush. Among the thousands of men who journeyed to the Big Hole at Kimberley, on the Northern Cape, was Cecil Rhodes.

Rhodes, like most of the lucky few who were successful in the diamond rush, was ruthless and well-resourced. After beginning as a lessor of highly sought after water pumping equipment at the site, he used his substantial profits to buy up claims at Kimberley. Over the next two decades, he received outside funding and consolidated the worldwide diamond market into a century-long monopoly under the banner of his company: De Beers.

Between 1888 and the 1980s, it controlled greater than 80% of the world’s diamonds, and it used every bit of its influence to create a cartel that artificially reduced supply. At the same time, it successfully increased demand, launching the famous “Diamonds are Forever” ad campaign, tying diamonds to marriage and exploded its profits. Over the next fifty years, diamonds went from a rarity in the marriage space to a necessity, and De Beers was able to hike its prices exorbitantly on the back of its monopoly. Don’t just take my word for it; Milton Friedman himself described the diamond monopoly as one of only two that had existed over a long time without government assistance.

Predictably, the rising popularity of diamonds required more mining, subjecting workers to dangerous working conditions, diseases, death, and is tied to child labor, human trafficking, human rights violations, torture, and environmental catastrophe. It is also built upon an exploitative system in which the lowest workers earn a pittance, but have no other options for employment. In Sierra Leone, for example, one can make as little as 15 cents a day. I’m currently reading The Jungle, and even in 1905, the 12 year old Stanislovas made more than that.

All this brings me to the lab grown diamond. Scientists created the first lab grown diamonds in 1954, but it took another 17 years for the first “gem-quality” diamonds to be made, and further iterating to perfect the product. In 2018, the FTC ruled that they were akin to diamonds. Consumers, who increasingly focused on ethics and sustainability in their purchases, were searching for an alternative to the much maligned natural diamond. Ironically, De Beers played its own role in this market shift, pushing lab grown diamonds in an effort to create a two-tiered system that highlighted the superiority of the natural product. This backfired, and while analyses of the diamond market are variable, all agree that lab grown diamonds have rapidly increased their share of the diamond market in the last five to seven years.

It’s not difficult to see why. Lab grown diamonds equal natural ones in quality, while also costing a fraction of the price. As lab grown manufacturing has scaled, consumers have also reaped the rewards; in five years, the cost of lab grown diamonds has plummeted, from ~$30,000 to ~$5,000 for a similar quality diamond. In contrast, as previously mentioned, natural diamonds are a product of artificial scarcity.

In addition, lab grown diamonds emit a fraction of the emissions as natural ones, with some estimates suggesting that natural diamonds result in 6,000 times as much mineral waste as lab grown. Lab grown diamonds also don’t come with the risk of disaster, lung disease, or death that is common in the mining community, satisfying at least some of the ethical concerns that natural diamonds fall short on.

These advantages have devastated the natural diamond market. De Beers’ market share had already crept down from the near monopoly in its heyday, but it has experienced grave losses in the last couple of years as demand has shifted. The same is true for Alrosa, the big Russian diamond producer. Rarely do disruptions to a market happen with such velocity as the diamond one, but the lab grown boom is an exception.

The decline of the natural diamond market is cause for celebration. As H.R. Haggard writes in the 1896 classic book King Solomon’s Mines:

“Truly wealth, which men spend all their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.”

Men spend their lives in the mines, risking their lives and long-term health for a pittance, because it is their only option. There are many outstanding questions: will lab grown diamonds lose steam; will natural diamond prices fall; will the pendulum shift, as consumers find lab grown diamonds too cheap to be a symbol of matrimony?

The future is uncertain, but this change is surely exciting. At the very least, it offers choice for newlyweds to be; at best, it threatens an industry that must make massive changes to exist in a world we hold to a higher standard. And it adds a little more mystery to the whole enterprise; the next time you see a ring on a newly engaged person’s finger, try to tell whether it’s natural or lab-grown. I bet you can’t.

Firstly, a sport should not be measured merely by the number of people who follow it, just as we do not rank the best seasons of television by their Nielsen Rating. I liked M*A*S*H*, but I don’t think anyone would claim the finale was the greatest episode of all time1, nor that NCIS deserved its spot as the most watched show in season 2015-2016. I adore NCIS, but Season 13 was past its prime. Baseball might have fallen from its heights in the American consciousness, but that does not mean that decline was earned. The popular will is not always the correct one.

Much of baseball’s heyday coincides with its darkest chapter. Although these two are not related, I think it’s a useful indicator of the uselessness of popularity as a determinant of quality. From baseball’s creation until 1947, absent a brief period in 1884—when Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Weldy became the first Black players in the major leagues—professional baseball was segregated.

Babe Ruth never had to hit against Satchel Paige, Walter Johnson never pitched to Oscar Charleston, and we never got to see Joe DiMaggio and Josh Gibson on the same field. That’s not to minimize the careers of Ruth, Johnson, DiMaggio, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Rogers Hornsby, or any of the superstars of early baseball. But if we couldn’t see the best play each other, even setting aside the moral arguments against this period, there’s no way we can call it the best era of baseball.

Since 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, there have been other great eras of baseball. The 50’s and 60’s saw some of baseball’s greatest stars, while the 70’s were filled with great teams like the Big Red Machine and the Oakland Athletics. Afterward came the Steroid Era, a complicated web of superstardom and tragedy that allowed us to see the very pinnacle of baseball achievement, and experience the sorrow of its hollow shell. But I think that today is the best that baseball has ever had to offer, for three distinct reasons.

The first of these is the analytics revolution. Baseball has always been the most analytical of big American sports; it’s what drew me as a 6-year old to keeping score, and it launched my lifelong interest in strategic data analysis. For as long as baseball has been around—people have sought to measure baseball players’ abilities. Over one hundred years ago, men like Henry Chadwick and F.C. Lane were not only creating statistics, but opining on whether they were effective tools of evaluation. In 1980, a man named Bill James gave this longstanding practice a name: Sabermetrics, and defined it as the “search for objective knowledge about baseball.”

Over time, these methods have become more sophisticated, and with it, they have changed how baseball operates. Teams, scouts, players, and fans all have far more tools at their disposal to make better decisions, create better teams in the aggregate, improve play, and for fans most importantly, argue about who is better. No longer do we have to rely on antiquated stats like batting average and ERA, but we can better isolate the individual ability of each player by controlling for fielding quality, whether runners are already on base, the speed of hit balls, and adjusting by weather, era, and location. Players can use this data to make subtle adjustments to their approaches, to prepare for their opponents, and with it comes better baseball.

Rule changes in recent years have also made the game more exciting and interesting to watch. The most controversial of these adjustments was the adoption of the Designated Hitter (DH) by the National League in 2022. For those who aren’t baseball fans, an important lesson I probably should have mentioned earlier: baseball is really weird. It, like most other sports, has multiple conferences (think the Eastern and Western Conferences in Basketball or the AFC and NFC in football). Unlike these other sports, these, while existing under the same umbrella, have unique histories and therefore have had different rules in the past. In this case, pitchers did not bat in the American League, but instead their placement in the batting order was taken by a person who only hit the ball (but did not field). In the National League, pitchers were required to hit.

The arguments against the Designated Hitter were twofold: tradition and also, it’s funny to see pitchers hit. Pitchers spend all their lives learning to throw the ball at ungodly speeds with inhuman accuracy; they are unsurprisingly very bad at hitting. The career batting average for the position is .174 (a bit better than 1 hit every six tries). In 2025, the worst hitter in baseball has an average of .175, and that’s substantially worse than the second worse hitter. I’ll be the first to admit that watching pitchers hit the ball could be fun on occasion (particularly because the Cubs had Carlos Zambrano, one of the best hitting pitchers in history), but it overall both lowered the level of play and likely contributed to a non-zero number of injuries.

Another, more obvious change occurred before the 2023 season, when the MLB decided to use a pitch clock. Baseball is a naturally slow game, which makes it fun when you’re at the ballpark going for the 9-9-9 challenge and less fun when you want to watch baseball and also do other things in a given day. But in recent decades, its become even longer. There are multiple culprits: more commercials, more pitching changes caused by the analytics revolution, but the biggest reason was simple.

Between each pitch, pitchers just took a lot longer. One analysis found that the time between pitches (when a pitcher was facing the same batter) rose by nearly twice as much from 1984 to 2014, from 32 minutes to almost 58 minutes. Think about that. Almost a whole hour of every game between the time the catcher caught the ball in his glove and the time the pitcher threw the next pitch to the same batter. It’s no surprise that people think baseball is boring.

So baseball, after way too long, figured out it had to do something. It instituted a pitch clock, which trims the time between pitches to fifteen seconds. This drastically cuts down on the mindnumbing affair of pitchers scuffing the dirt and making frowny faces, and ensures that games are quicker. The change was marked; baseball games became 30 minutes shorter the year the pitch clock was instituted.

The last reason that baseball has hit its peak is a person. There are a lot of great, even generational players in baseball right now. The Yankees’ Aaron Judge doesn’t have the longevity, but there’s an outside shot he’s the greatest right-handed hitter ever (left-handed hitters include Ruth, Williams, Bonds, Gehrig, Cobb, and Musial). Consider the statistic WRC+, which stands for Weighted Runs Created Plus and is meant to measure hitting when adjusted across years and ballpark (every MLB ballpark has different dimensions, remember baseball is weird!). Including this year so far, Judge has 3 of the top 25 seasons all-time. That’s 4th most after Ruth (7), Williams (6), Bonds (5).

There are other superstars, including Mike Trout—who pre-injury struggles was on pace for one of the greatest careers ever—Clayton Kershaw, one of the best pitchers of all-time, and a number of young superstars like Bobby Witt Jr., $765 million man Juan Soto, Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal, and of course, Pete Crow-Armstrong.

But none of these players come close to the superstardom that is Shohei Ohtani. When people make comparisons to Ohtani, they only talk about one person: Babe Ruth, the embodiment of baseball. As I mentioned earlier, pitchers suck at hitting, and unsurprisingly, batters suck at pitching. Shohei Ohtani does both, not just well, but extraordinarily well. Last season, Ohtani became the first player in history to hit fifty home runs and steal fifty bases in the same season. He’s not only a top 2/3 hitter in baseball today—with the 20th highest WRC+ all-time—but he’s also one of the best pitchers in the league. Even Babe Ruth stopped pitching once he became a full-time hitter, but Ohtani manages to do both.

There’s something particularly special in sports about watching new heights reached. Each time Mondo Duplantis raises the world record by a centimeter, each Messi slalom through five defenders, LeBron stepback three, or Simone Biles floor routine, we are witnessing the pinnacle of human achievement, and that in turn makes the sport all the better. Today, we are watching the most talented baseball player in history. He may not have twenty years of counting stats behind him, but Ohtani is doing what 150 years of baseball would have said was impossible. For all the legends that shroud this sport, we are witnessing something that no one has seen before.

Baseball has captured our imaginations for a century and a half, but so much of it a backwards looking nostalgia, a longing for better days. Good news, we are living those better days of baseball. A baseball that is more exciting, talented, and perfect than any that have come before. When Simon and Garfunkel ask: “where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio,” I can answer: the greats walk among us now, they’re right here.2

2

The poems used to be better, I’ll admit that much

There are thousands of bivalves, but the most common culinary items are oysters, mussels, clams, and scallops. These mollusks are extremely tasty, but just as importantly, they satisfy all the criteria that encompass people’s concerns about eating too much meat. They also pack a protein punch, making them the perfect food for a world in which protein demand is on the rise.

Personally, I’m most concerned about meat’s climate impact, particularly red meat. Among all foods, beef is at the top of the list when it comes to emissions, both with and without methane. One study found that cutting global beef consumption by one-fifth would halve the world’s deforestation. Another model found that a global 75% reduction of red meat consumption for other meat would reduce emissions by over 3 billion tons, compared to the current 13.7 billion tons emitted from food production.

That’s already a substantial reduction, and given that it’s how I operate, I think it would be a huge step forward if everyone were to adopt this. However, if one is willing to tinker more on the margins, there are far greater potential rewards. Of course, a fully vegan diet is most environmentally friendly, reducing over twice as many tons of carbon emissions as the 75% red meat reduction, but for many of us, abandoning animal protein would lead to a substantially lower quality of life. As much as I like tofu and beans, I’m not prepared to embrace plant-based burgers; I am no purist, I love a non-alcholic beer, but they just taste bad!

This is where bivalves come in. The climate benefits of oysters are the most well-known; the Billion Oyster Project has received substantial attention for its efforts to restore oyster reefs in New York. Functionally, oysters and other bivalves act as a kind of dredge; when they eat, they enhance water quality in the vicinity. In addition, the process of building their shells involves removing carbon from the water, which leads to carbon sequestration. Bivalves can also be used as warning systems because of their status as filter feeders. In Poland, for example, freshwater mussels are installed in 50 water filtration facilities to monitor potential pollution in water. If they sense contamination, their reactions feed into a computer system which shuts down the water before it can reach 10 million people. It may sounds lik science fiction, but it’s real.

Unlike other animals, they also don’t require carbon intensive processes to farm, meaning they emit low levels of carbon. Some posit that bivalves act as carbon negatives, which would put them below plants in terms of their carbon footprint.

When it comes to animal welfare, the case for eating more bivalves grows even stronger. Substituting red meat for chicken and fish is cut and dry from a climate perspective, but as a good friend pointed out to me, it’s arguably worsening animal welfare. Crudely, eating an equivalent amount of beef or chicken leads to far more chickens dying than cows. Factory farming of chickens is also awful; chickens spend their entire lives in pain, struggling to walk, hungry, and experiencing behavioral deprivation. I’m not terribly piqued by animal welfare—I’m not about to quit my job to focus on shrimp welfare—but if animal welfare is an issue for you and you plan is to substitute red meat for other meat, you do need to grapple with this.

For bivalves, there’s no dilemma, no choice required between animal welfare and fighting climate change. Bivalves lack many of the key traits of sentience, including a central nervous system— and are sessile, that is, unable to move by themselves. There’s a reason that Bivalvegans, vegans who eat bivalves, exist, and many of their opponents criticize them on purely definitional grounds, citing veganism as an opposition to all animal products, rather than moral ones. In general, bivalves operate like plants—they can react to stimuli, but don’t feel or experience it. Eating an oyster is, morally, akin to eating a piece of arugula.

When it comes to health, the case for eating more bivalves is cut and dry. They’re low-fat, low-calorie, high protein foods with significant amounts of zinc and vitamin B12. In fact, one study found them to be the second most nutrient rich food of any animal protein, after pelagic fish like herrings and sardines. They’re also low in mercury, so you won’t get mercury poisoning even if you eat as many oysters as RFK did tuna.

It’s rare for an animal to check so many boxes: sustainable, healthy, yummy, and stupid, but that’s the miracle of bivalves. As many people seek to alter their eating habits, to consume more thoughtfully, they need not settle for pale imitations or find themselves poised between two opposite choices. For me, I’ll continue to replace red meat with chicken and fish (aside from the occasional burger at a restaurant), but when appropriate I’ll opt for hotate or a half dozen oysters. Briny, with lemon and sauce, please.

It is therefore not only newsworthy but extremely exciting when government responds rapidly to address new crises. As cellphone use has become ubiquitous and social media omnipresent, a bipartisan consensus has emerged against the increasingly online nature of our worlds. Crucially, government has not only raised concerns, but responded.

Few movements have ever been so swiftly successful as classroom phone restrictions. Florida became the first state to pass one in only 2023, and two years later, New York became the 20th, with Governor Hochul signing a “bell to bell” phone ban on May 9. These states do not all have the exact same rules, with some being more restrictive than others, but it’s clear that states have demonstrated remarkable responsiveness in tackling a serious concern.

There aren’t a lot of great studies out there, but one found that the average American spends five hours and sixteen minutes on their phone every day. Gen Z, the youngest group surveyed, spends over six hours per day on their phone. The numbers get even more alarming when you look just at social media use. Gallup, a highly reputable pollster, found that teenagers are spending 4.8 hours a day on social media alone.1

Social media use, and phone use at large, are not inherently bad. These spaces can be repositories for extraordinary learning and connection; personally, I can now read up to the minute news, learn Portuguese from a tutor based on Brasil, and inhabit communities filled with like-minded people on topics like literature, urbanism, and DND (coming off like a real nerd here).

But most of the time, social media comes laden with downsides. It not only allows any idiot to broadcast their feelings to the world, but it can lead to mental health problems, bullying, and shorter attention spans. It’s also a time suck; social media can be used well, but more often than that it’s pulling you away from better things.

Children are disproportionately likely to be affected by this. Not only do they use social media more often, but their brains are still developing, leaving them more at risk. Unfortunately, right now teenagers spend one fourth of the school day on their phones. That means for a substantial period each day, when they should have been learning, they were texting or on Instagram or doing something else that is wholly not conducive to the purpose of school.

This is bad for everyone. It’s bad for students, who were already seeing reduced scores on key measures of performance before phone use became widespread. It’s bad for teachers, which is why the largest union in the country, the National Education Association (NEA), has published articles in favor of phone bans. 90% of NEA members want to ban cell phone use during class time, and 83% support full-day bans. These are extraordinary numbers, suggesting the critical nature of this issue. It’s also bad for administrators, who have had to deal with rising numbers of discipline incidents, some of which are attributable to cellphones. In North Adams, Massachusetts, a cellphone ban led to a 75% decrease in referrals due to disciplinary infractions.

Traditionally, phone bans have either been enforced by individual teachers or on the district level. Requiring teachers to be the arbitrators of phone use is a notoriously bad idea; it only adds difficulty to a profession that is already underpaid and overworked. School district bans can be effective, but patchwork systems are not only going to lead to slower responses and inconsistency across geographies, but the addition of local politics allow for more opportunities to roll back these policies. In recent years, especially as “parents rights” advocates have tried to take over school boards, it’s become more evident why consistent, state policies are the best to ensure children are getting good education.

The arguments against these policies are also quite weak, in my opinion. The most commonly cited is the concern that children will be unable to communicate with their parents in case of an emergency, in particular, a school shooting. I sincerely empathize with these concerns; the fact that this is a concern in the United States is an abhorrent reflection of our lax gun policies. But I don’t think the argument stands up to scrutiny.

Most importantly, there is no evidence that students having phones makes them safer in a mass shooting situation, and in fact they can cause additional dangers. Nor do phone bans necessitate making it impossible to access phones in case of a crisis. If necessary, schools can readily find a solution that does not involve allowing students to hold on to their phones; locking them in a pouch at the front of the classroom has become a common method of phone restriction. This would allow people to quickly hand out phones in the extraordinarily unlikely event of a school shooting.

I don’t want to lay the blame for all problems, both in society and schools, to phone use. I’ve listened to those arguments from people like Jean Twenge, and I’ve found them wanting, attempts to build a unified theory around mental health crises that can’t be explained by one factor. And as I mentioned before, reading and math scores have trended downwards in the US since before phones became a widespread problem in schools. Nor can we blame phones for Covid, neither the actual pandemic itself, nor for its consequences on children’s learning outcomes, both those we couldn’t have avoided, and those we maybe could have.

However, it doesn’t take an anti-social media crusader to recognize that students using their phones in schools is both happening and dangerous. It is surprising that states have been willing to bear the costs. Parents are an extremely powerful interest group, and while education policy should be primarily focused on students and teachers, too often has it catered to the wants and needs of parents first and foremost.

These recent changes are illustrative of an emerging cultural and political force that finds the ubiquity of phones a grave threat. I sympathize with many, though not all, of their concerns, and think that targeted efforts, particularly in schools, are a worthy cause. But the success of this movement also shows that, contrary to criticism, government is not broken. When it needs to, it has the power and capacity to respond quickly to challenges and make positive change.

In Canada, the election results have seemed a foregone conclusion for the last two years. The Liberal Party has been in charge since 2014, and like other incumbent parties, the groundswell of antiestablishment longings for change were poised to weaken them severely during the next election. Justin Trudeau was ailing, his approval collapsing as voters rebelled against rising cost of living and immigration levels. Eventually, his position became untenable and he resigned in January 2025.

His opponent, Pierre Poilievre, is an obvious analogue to Trump. After becoming a household name when he voiced support for the Canadian trucker protests in 2022, he rode this attention to the leadership of the Conservative Party. He has dedicated much of his time as leader to grievance politics and catchy slogans, focusing on promises to “axe the tax,” from Canada’s carbon tax to the “inflation” tax.1 Poilievre’s bombastic style and far-right positioning did not seem to harm him for a long time, as the Conservative Party (blue in most countries outside the US) built up an overwhelming lead over the Liberals in the two years before the election.

And then, the US weighed in. In December 2024, Trump referenced his hopes of annexing Canada for the first time, calling Trudeau the Governor of the “Great State of Canada.” This started a pattern of Trump making more and more blatant references to the US annexation of Canada. When he assumed office, he started to put these words into actions and imposed steep tariffs on Canada. At this point it’s hard to recollect how many times he has placed tariffs on that country, given the chaotic nature of the tariffs rollout, but unsurprisingly the good people of Canada did not take too kindly to the prospect of a loss of their sovereignty.

The Liberals took advantage, painting themselves as a party that would fight Trump’s tariffs and his attacks on their nation, while the Conservative Party failed to put “Canada First”—as their slogan dictates. Poilievre was easily compared to Trump as a fellow right-wing populist, and he was mealy-mouthed in his defense of Canada’s sovereign rights. By the beginning of March, the Conservatives lead had halved from 24 points to 12.

Enter Mark Carney. The consummate technocrat, Carney’s bio doesn’t strike one as making him the right man for the moment. A central banker in two different countries, Carney was not seen as the top choice when he entered the Liberal race to replace Trudeau—trailing longtime next in the line Chrystia Freeland—but as the race got underway he quickly obtained momentum and cruised to a smashing victory. For the next two months, Carney continued to harness the independent spirit of Canadians, forcefully rejecting Trump’s overwhelmingly unpopular attempts to make Canada the fifty-first state. The more Trump spoke, the more this election went from a change election to a battle between two frames: national sovereignty versus change. And in a Pollara survey, voters viewed Carney’s ability to deliver “stability” as far greater than Poilievre’s ability to deliver “change”.

On March 19, the Liberal Party took the lead in polling over the Conservatives, a stunning reversal after years of flagging behind. While this was overwhemingly due to Trump, it’s important to give Carney a little credit as well. Carney himself was viewed more favorably than Poilievre, earning ratings of 46% favorable, 34% unfavorable in comparison to Poilievre’s 41% fav/44% unfav. And Carney held an advantage on most personal traits over Poilievre, a marked difference from when Trudeau was in office. In 2024, Abacus found that Poilievre led on “Putting up a shelf” by 21 points and “putting out a kitchen counter fire” by 19. The only trait that Trudeau had outperformed Carney on was “Hosting the best party.” Make of that what you will.

In the end, the Liberals triumphed, winning 168 seats, just shy of the 172 required to form a majority but enough to form a government. They also came out looking quite strong in comparison to every other party in Canada. Not only did the Conservatives choke what seemed a surefire victory, but third party vote share plummeted below fifteen percent, with Bloc Quebecois, the New Democratic Party, and the Green Party tumbling. Poilievre lost his own seat, as did New Dems leader Jagmeet Singh, one of the two Greens leaders, and Maxime Bernier of the far-right People’s Party. In short, the Liberal Party went from on its last legs to the only winner of the night. And in the aftermath, the Conservative Party demonstrated it failed to learn its lesson, as an Albertan MP resigned to allow Poilievre to take his seat and remain the leader of the party.

Less than a week later, Australia held its own federal elections. Although these elections were not fought on the exact same ground, they did share several commonalities. Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party were running for re-election to a second term after their defeat of the Liberals (bad guys in Australia) in 2022. Although it had only been three years of Labor government, they too were suffering from the incumbency curse as Australians rebelled against the high cost of living. Albanese’s net approval had dropped steadily, from +30 in 2022 to under water near the end of 2023.

Unlike in Canada, this did not suggest a complete wipeout for Labor. Until the end of 2024, in fact, Labor and the Liberals were neck and neck, but by February the Liberals had surged ahead to a consistent, if slight, lead.

But then came the tariffs, and the impact of foreign policy and Australia’s relationship to the US rose in salience. Australian voters responded swiftly to Trump’s attacks on his allies; in 2024, 56% of Australians trusted the US to act responsibly in the world, in 2025 that fell to 36%. And as foreign policy became more of an issue, Albanese’s lead over Liberal Party leader Dutton became more of an advantage.

Dutton also actively sought to emulate Trump, even as he pretended not to, advocating for DOGE style cuts to the public sector, embracing horrific immigration policies, and cozying up to the right-wing One Nation Party. It cost him severely. The Australian election results surpassed Canada’s in shock and awe, as Labor walloped the Liberals, expanding their seats from 2022 and earning a sizable majority. Dutton, like Poilievre, lost his seat—becoming the first opposition leader to do so in history.

Put another way, in the days before the election, the Guardian published a list of seats to watch. They noted five seats in the state of Victoria that Liberals were hoping to take from Labor, and said that Labor was “resigned to losing a few Victorian seats.” It is set to lose none. In fact, Labor has already flipped thirteen seats in this election with some seats left to call; Liberals have flipped zero. It all amounts to a smashing success for Labor and the center-left.

In England, the incumbent Labour Party has faced its own severe challenges. Ten months after sweeping into power with historic majorities, Prime minister Keir Starmer is deeply unpopular, although less so than Rachel Reeves, his Chancellor of the Exchequer. Voters have quickly moved against Labour’s inability to rectify the ills of fourteen years of Tory leadership, and cuts to winter fuel payments for the elderly, continued concerns over immigration—particularly small boat arrivals—and slow growth have poisoned the well for Labour.

Unlike in Canada and Australia, the elections that took place in England were not federal, but local elections. They consisted of roughly sixteen hundred council seats (think US county commissioner elections), six mayoral races, and a single by-election in the seat of Runcorn and Helsby. These elections were expected to go poorly for both Conservatives and Labour, while Reform, Nigel Farage’s third incarnation of the exact same party: euroskeptic, anti-immigrant, populist, and racist, was set to be the big winner.

Unfortunately, the predictions came true. The most concerning and attention grabbing result came in the by-election, a seat that most analysts expected to be narrowly fought. In the end, Reform won by 6 votes over Labour, flipping a seat that the latter had won by nearly 15,000 votes just a year ago.

These results are dispiriting, but this is not the first time that Nigel Farage led far-right parties have done very well in non-general elections in the UK. In both 2014 and 2019, UKIP and then Brexit (again, functionally all the same party) won the European Parliament elections in the United Kingdom. On both occasions, his parties failed to implement many of the policies they sought (Brexit was agreed to well in advance of the 2014 elections). Once again, Farage will be forced to change his operation from “a party of protest” to one that can deliver solutions. He’s failed to do that on two previous occasions, and while his rise for a third time is extremely worrying, it is far from certain that he will be able to build on these victories.

Over the past decade, far-right populism has appeared ascendant, sweeping across the western world and leading to rising anti-immigrant sentiment, isolationism, and distrust. Trump’s election seemed not so much the culmination of the wave as an inflection point, a sign that even those who lost power could once again assume it as voters sought answers to cost of living concerns and their feelings of instability and insecurity. He’s chosen the path that we all feared and expected, wreaking havoc, tearing up the constitution, trampling over rights, and failing to address any material concerns he claimed he would.

But in so doing, at least in these early days, a few of the countries that have flirted with their own versions of Trumpism have rejected them for leaders and parties that support real solutions to make tangible impacts on people’s lives. In the United States, we must wait until 18 months to deliver a real electoral rebuke to the chaos and mayhem that Trump has instigated, but it is heartening to know that in both general elections in the Anglosphere this week, the voters chose solutionism and optimism over racism and populism.

1

Laura Kelly did it better.

Washington: Augustus

Sometimes, the correct answer is not a particularly satisfying one. Augustus was a flawed but ultimately brilliant man who was thrust into an extremely dangerous position as a teenager and emerged over a decade later as the first Emperor. By the age Washington was playing a pivotal (and foolish) role in starting the French and Indian War, Augustus was master of the western world. Whereas Washington was a military man with a legendarily bad temper, Augustus was a consummate politician with a reputation for battle cowardice and a rare patience to see his plans come to fruition.

As a person with views less charitable to Washington than most, I’m tempted to compare him to a less exemplary Emperor. But, despite their differences, Augustus is the only real comparison for Washington. Both of these men were “fathers of the country” who set the precedent that every leader thereafter would follow.

Adams: Tiberius

I promise that each president and emperor will not just follow a chronological pattern. But I think there are a lot of similarities between the stubborn but brilliantly legalistic Adams and the dour but brilliantly military Tiberius. Neither were the closest choice of their predecessors—several members of Augustus’ Julian family had to die before power was transferred to his step-son, a Claudian—but it’s hard to argue that either of them were not qualified for the job when they assumed the role.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to ignore that each were ardent advocates of censorship and harsh punishment, with Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts restricting immigration and free speech, while Tiberius allowed treason trials to run amok. As usual, the Roman Emperors outpaced their American counterparts in cruelty—Adams did not allow his lieutenant to send numerous Americans to their deaths. Adams was an above-average president—and was one of only two presidents before Lincoln clear the bar-on-the-floor of not owning slaves—and I think unless you believe the most egregious of slanders against Tiberius and his activities on Capri, he was an above-average Emperor (high bar, I know!)

Jefferson: Julian

Jefferson is a president who lives on the extremes: a committed abolitionist who owned slaves and sexually assaulted the fourteen year old Sally Hemings for years, a Francophile and practitioner of the Enlightenment who was the staunchest defender of the Jeffersonian Democracy of the petite bourgeoise. Perhaps the smartest Founding Father, he was also horribly, horribly wrong on so much of what was important.

After the Julio-Claudians, the Five Good Emperors, and Constantine, it’s possible that Julian is the best known of all Roman emperors, owing to Gore Vidal. The last pagan Emperor, Julian was a true renaissance man and gifted philosopher who also embarked on a ludicrous attack on the Sasanian Empire that resulted in his death and unsuccessfully attempted to return Rome to its pre-Christian roots. Two intelligent men whose moral failings prevented them from being so much more.

Madison: Marcus Aurelius

This is probably an unfair comparison to Marcus Aurelius. Madison’s record in the War of 1812 (he let the White House get burned down!) pales in comparison to his success in the Marcomannic Wars. On the flip side, Marcus Aurelius’ successor was Commodus, precipitating the end of the Pax Romana and the eventual Crisis of the Third Century. I think what best unites these two leaders is that their greatest contributions come from their writings: Madison as Father of the Constitution and co-author of the Federalist Papers, and Marcus Aurelius as author of Meditations. His influence on Stoicism has been critical, even as it has experienced a resurgence among right-wingers who misinterpret the philosophy in recent years.

Monroe: Antoninus Pius

James Monroe was the last person to run unopposed for the office, serving ably as president during stable times. We know little about Antoninus Pius, who ruled Rome for 20 years during its height in the middle of the 2nd Century, but no news is generally good news. Pius was given perhaps the best hand of any Emperor, but he seems to have kept the good times going, evidence of at least reasonable capacity. Neither of these respective leaders is the very best of the best, but both did the job without fanfare and presided over periods of comparable stability.

Quincy Adams: Pertinax

John Quincy Adams was a better man than most to hold the presidency, and he entered office with an ambitious agenda to improve the nation’s infrastructure. He had eminent qualifications as a former diplomat and Secretary of State, and but was a poor politician, unprepared for the hell-raising tactics and partisan strife that would characterize this era.

Like him, Pertinax came into office with big plans to reform and improve government. After the assassination of Commodus, Pertinax attempted to do something heretofore unthinkable, restricting the power of the Praetorian Guard, which had held a Sword of Damocles over the head of the Emperor since the time of Augustus. A laudable goal, one that would have provided greater stability to the empire. He was naturally killed because of it, a fate that Adams avoided during his own downfall.

In fact, Adams had a kind of renaissance once he entered Congress, becoming one of the most ardent anti-slavery advocates in the Chamber and employed increasingly creative and hilarious tactics in his opposition to the gag rule that prevented discussion on slavery. At the end of the day, while Adams and Pertinax both failed in their goals as leaders, Adams managed to succeed in his later quest to remove the gag rule while in Congress.

Jackson: Caracalla

Andrew Jackson was the most violent president we’ve suffered, causing the Trail of Tears and leading to one of the most precipitous falls in esteem among historians in recent history. As recently as 2015 he ranked 9th in a survey, and now he sits in the 20s. He was also personally violent—he once leapt upon an attempted assassin and would have beaten him to death with his cane if not for the intercession of one Daniel Boone. As another reminder of the different mores of Roman society, Caracalla was also personally violent, his most heinous act was murdering his twin brother and co-emperor Geta in front of their mother.

Jackson and Caracalla share another ideology—populism—that cemented their legacies. In King Andrew’s case, he created one of the two modern political parties (although his greatest fans now belong to the other, unsurprisingly) and he established a long precedent of larking as the advocate of the common man while pushing for policies that would endanger his livelihood. Caracalla’s populism was also tyrannical, but his famous edict granting citizenship to all people under the Roman Empire was a positive, if much maligned and cynical gesture.

Van Buren: Constantius III

The Little Magician was an ace politician, expertly serving as Andrew Jackson’s right-hand man and eventually vice president. The Dutchman was instrumental to the creation of the Democratic Party—perhaps as much as Jackson himself—but in his efforts to elevate Jackson he inevitably ruined himself. By the time he became president, eight years of Jackson’s populism had taken their toll on the nation’s finances, and within two months the the Panic of 1837 turned the Little Magician into Martin Van Ruin.

Constantius III served as magister militum for ten years in the early 5th century CE, operating as the top general of the Emperor Honorius (we’ll get to him). As a commander, he was extraordinarily capable, accumulating greater and greater power until he became emperor upon Honorius’ death. Yet, his time as the actual head honcho was to be brief, as Constantius died only seven months into his reign.

Henry Harrison: Jovian

William Henry Harrison often gets the short end of the stick. He was a rather fascinating character, the hero of Tippecanoe (hence the catchy slogan Tippecanoe and Tyler too), the oldest president elected until Reagan, and the first beneficiary of a new kind of campaign politics that emphasized sanitizing a candidate’s image.

Alas, I’m not nearly charitable enough to compare Harrison to anyone because of these things. Harrison’s enduring legacy is the brevity of his term—31 days—before his death. Enter Jovian. Jovian’s cause of death is either the first or second most ridiculous deaths among Roman Emperors, as he died of exposure to the fumes from the new paint on his walls. The other most absurd death was Valentinian I’s, who died of anger, yelling so much he suffered a stroke.

Tyler: Maximinius Thrax

Sometimes, presidents distinguish themselves only after they leave office. Both John Quincy Adas and Martin Van Buren became staunch anti-slavery advocates, with Van Buren leading the Free Soil Party at one point. William Howard Taft’s impact as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court outshone that of his presidency, and Jimmy Carter was famously an extraordinary humanitarian. But, occasionally the opposite happens, and a president’s later years are more infamous than his time in the office. As President, John Tyler was forgettable, nicknamed “His Accidency” as he entered office unexpectedly after William Henry Harrison’s quick death. But at the outset of the Civil War two decades later, John Tyler became a traitor, siding with the Confederacy.

It’s quite difficult to compare this to Ancient Rome, where just about every other Roman Emperor was a traitor, ascending to the throne by warring with a predecessor. But the man who holds the indignity most is Maximinus Thrax, who admittedly has a very cool name and was maybe 7 feet tall. Thrax became the first emperor of the Crisis of the Third Century, as well as the first of the barracks emperors, furthering the instability that would engulf the empire in the years to come.

Polk: Probus

James K. Polk is commonly considered one of the most successful US presidents. This does not mean greatest, to be sure, but Polk achieved in a single term nearly all his ambitions, including adding substantial amounts of territory to the US and lowering tariffs. It was this breadth of accomplishment in a relatively short period of time that leads me to compare him to Probus, who served as emperor for only six years, but continued the restoration of the empire started by his predecessors, including the defeats of both barbarians and potential usurpers.

Of course, Polk’s legacy—like most of the presidents of the antebellum period—was stained by his inability to end slavery, and in this way it’s hard to compare him to Probus, or any Roman Emperor.

Taylor: Macrinus

Zachary Taylor served as president for sixteen months, which makes him a longer serving leader than Macrinus, who died after fourteen. But there are other similarities between the two: both attempted to keep their flailing body politics stable, both failed, and both were replaced by less capable successors.

Fillmore: Otho

Millard Fillmore would be a completely forgettable president if not for his work passing one of the most heinous laws in US history, the Fugitive Slave Act. It was an attempt to achieve compromise at a time of irreconcilable differences, not to mention its moral turpitude.

Otho played his own brief part in history, aligning himself with the aged emperor Galba after Nero’s death before betraying and assassinating him, becoming the second of the four emperors in 69 CE. A very different kind of bad leader, but one defined forever by a single act, and otherwise best relegated to the dustbin of history.

Pierce: Valentinian III

The trend of an absolute trainwreck of presidents continues. Franklin Pierce’s Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed for Bleeding Kansas, in which political killings took place in the Kansas Territory. Pierce, terribly, chose to repeatedly help pro-slavery groups in the territory, and he goes down as one of the worst presidents in history.

There’s no real analogue to Pierce, who also had one of the most tragic lives of any president and was a depressed alcoholic. But, Valentinian III might be the closest parallel. Valentinian III ruled for thirty years over a steadily collapsing empire, most notably giving Attila the Hun substantial power in order to avoid an invasion. Unsurprisingly, attempting to pacify this legendary conqueror went quite poorly, and Attila sacked Italy under Valentinian’s rule. Valentian’s other notable contribution was the murder of the best Roman general of the time, Flavius Aetius, who earned the familiar sobriquet “Last of the Romans,” although that continued to be bestowed on people up until the 20th century. Perhaps not in temperament, but in self-destructive policy and acquiescence to forces that could not be tamed, Pierce and Valentinian III are close comps.

Buchanan: Honorius

Adrian Goldsworthy described Elagabalus as the “probably least capable emperor Rome has ever had”, which is a fitting comparison to one of America’s worst presidents, but Elagabalus was only 14 when he began his reign (and 18 when it ended), so it’s a little unfair to compare him to Johnson. Buchanan was not as actively malicious as Andrew Johnson or Donald Trump, but he also did basically nothing to try and prevent the Civil War.

In that, Buchanan most resembles Honorius, who apocryphally, when told that Rome had been sacked for the first time in 800 years, believed that his advisors were discussing his pet chicken named Rome, and not the city. Just a completely useless leader in every way.

Lincoln: Aurelian

Forgive me if I put on my patriotism hat for a moment, I know right now it’s impossible to feel proud of the United States. But Abraham Lincoln is almost certainly one of the greatest leaders to ever exist. A country lawyer who rose to the highest office in the land at America’s most perilous time, Lincoln not only preserved the Union but ended the scourge of slavery, deservingly placing himself as the greatest president in our history. He was also an extraordinary man, one of wry humor and deep thoughtfulness who struggled both with the loss of a son and depression. He was also an imperfect one and was hardly a staunch abolitionist like John Brown or William Lloyd Garrison. Yet, had had he not been assassinated, three more years of Abraham Lincoln instead of Andrew Johnson in the White House might have led to a profoundly better United States, rather than the tragedy of the sitting president seeking to undermine his predecessors’ work.

It is difficult to compare Lincoln to any Roman Emperor, but the man who most closely matches him is Aurelian. Like Lincoln, he reforged a nation split asunder, but tragically died too soon to see all his plans come to fruition. Aurelian served for only five short years as emperor, a period multitudes shorter than the other greatest Roman emperors, but during that time he began to knit the Empire back together amidst the Crisis of the Third Century. Under his reign, the Empire—then split into three parts—became one again, earning him perhaps the coolest epithet in history: Restitutor Orbis—Restorer of the World.

Johnson: Petronius Maximus

It’s striking how our greatest president could be sandwiched between perhaps our two worst. While Buchanan was essentially useless as president, Johnson actively worked to undermine the necessary project of Reconstruction after the Civil War. It goes too far to lay all of the unachieved promise of Reconstruction at Johnson’s feet, but it is obvious that the president’s active opposition to it harmed the cause and set back Civil Rights decades.

I have already spoken of Valentian III and his role in the death of Aetius, but it was Petronius Maximus who played the mastermind in ending his life. Petronius Maximus was blinded by power and sought to eliminate rivals and undertook to weaken the empire as long as it meant his own gain.

Grant: Gallienus

For decades, Grant has been the most prominent presidential example of that old lie: history is written by the victors. Vilified by the Lost Cause ideology that would have the greatest of Union Generals viewed as a corrupt drunken sot, Grant’s true quality as a president and a man was obfuscated for too long. Yet it was Grant who, after Andrew Johnson’s administration, sought to put Reconstruction first, crush the Klan, and guarantee rights to Black Americans in the south. Grant was simultaneously dogged by corruption within his administration and personal financial troubles, but it seems clear that the former were a function not of deliberate wickedness but of a willingness to trust and a financial naivete.

Grant’s counterpart is Gallienus, who was probably the first good emperor during the Crisis of the Third Century and the one who presided over the very worst of the conflict. Gallienus served as Roman emperor for fifteen years during that period (in another year there were six emperors in a single year during the Crisis) bringing a kind of stability of leadership even as the Empire divided itself into three. Fundamentally, Gallienus and Grant were both victims of a time in history where the tide was too strong for them to fight against, but they fought for important reforms and reexaminations have found them both to be better leaders than they were originally depicted.

Hayes: Anthemius

Most people remember Rutherford Hayes for how he entered office: the Compromise of 1877 which traded the end of Reconstruction for Hayes’ triumph of Tilden in the contested 1876 presidential election. Hayes himself was an ardent Reconstructionist, but this deal—and the general fading of the public appetite for further civil rights policies—would ensure that he was constrained by political realities and unable to protect the rights of Black people, particularly in the south.

Like Hayes, when Procopius Anthemius became emperor it was clear that he had minimal power. For decades, the magister militum Ricimer had controlled Rome, orchestrating the deaths of emperors who strayed too far from his influence, like Majorian. Anthemius sought to extricate himself from Ricimer’s control, and in heart was the last good Roman emperor, but constrained as he was this attempt only lead to failure and death.

Garfield: Majorian

James Garfield is presidential history’s greatest what-if. A committed advocate against the spoils system, Garfield was also a staunch advocate for civil rights at a time when the Republican Party had turned its back on the Black community. He was also exceedingly clever, having created his own proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. Tragically, Garfield’s presidency was cut short far too early, as the mad Charles Guiteau, who believed Garfield owed him a job for his work on the campaign, shot him four months into his term. Garfield’s legacy lived on with the Pendleton Act, which established civil service reform, but one can’t help but wonder what heights he might have reached if he had been granted more time as president.

I recently read something along the lines of: “Roman history is just a series of great emperors arriving at the perfect time, and then an even greater one arriving when next needed.” In some ways, this is an apt description, although there were years in which those great emperors took their sweet time coming. But after Caesar’s death came Augustus, after the Year of the Four Emperors Vespasian settled the Empire, Nerva (and by extension Trajan) filled the gap after Domitian—heralding the Pax Romana. Even during the Crisis, Rome would have fallen altogether if not for Aurelian and then Diocletian, and then eventually Constantine arrived on the scene. This is all to say that Rome got very, very lucky for a very long time.

In the latter half of the fifth century, Rome was teetering, barely functioning after decades of invasions, and it nearly got lucky one last time. Majorian ruled for four years, adding territory back to the empire that was now barely more than just Italy, and fighting corruption at home. Yet, although some said that Majorian, “surpassed in every virtue all who have ever been emperors of the Romans” the emperor was murdered in 461, and Empire only lasted fifteen more years before Romulus Augustulus was deposed. Majorian and Garfield lived at different times in their respective nations’ history, but both demonstrated a capacity in a short period of time that would have served their people well had they lived.

Arthur: Claudius

“No man ever entered the [BLANK] so profoundly and widely distrusted as [BLANK], and no one ever retired ... more generally respected.” Without context, it’s pretty difficult to tell whether this quote is about Chester Arthur or Claudius. Chester Alan Arthur was not ever meant to be president. He was tool of Roscoe Conkling’s Stalwart faction, the pro-patronage group that battled with the Half-Breeds for supremacy in the Republican Party. Arthur became Collector of Customs of at the Port of New York due to his loyalty, and in one of history’s chance twists of fate, Arthur was renominated against the best wishes of President Hayes, who preferred another man for the position, a man named Theodore Roosevelt Sr. His eldest son will be discussed presently.

Arthur emerged as a compromise candidate for the Vice Presidency, as Garfield was disliked by the Stalwarts, and after Garfield’s death, Arthur defied expectation and actually became a pretty good president. The Pendleton Act of 1883 opened the door for civil service reform. Arthur was also opposed to the Chinese Exclusion Act, vetoing it one time, although he did end up signing the second version into law while stressing his personal objections to it.

For his part, Claudius was a most unexpected choice for emperor. Denounced as a “monster” in his youth, he eventually carved out a niche for himself as a student of Etruscan history, only to find himself named Emperor by the Praetorian Guard upon the death of his mad nephew Caligula. And shockingly, Claudius turned out to be a pretty guard emperor. He brought that backwater island to the north Brittania into the empire and restored stability after the spendthriftness of Caligula. A pair of odd ducklings these two were, but they each exceeded all expectations of them.

Cleveland: Julius Nepos

Technically, Julius Nepos did not lose and then regain the office, as Grover Cleveland did. However, Nepos was removed from power but continued to claim it anyway, leading to at least some considering him the last Roman emperor, not Romulus Augustulus.

Harrison: Phillip the Arab

In the Gilded Age, power flowed not so much from the halls of the White House as the offices on the Hill and more notoriously, the banks and railroads and ships and steel mills and coal mines of the robber barons. A president was not impotent, but their ability to shape the world compared to a president today was much diminished. It’s no surprise that the presidencies bookended by Hayes and McKinley are some of the least recognizable in history.

Benjamin Harrison was a middling president who is more remembered for he could not accomplish than what he could. The Sherman Antitrust Act was a real win to his name, but his attempts to achieve civil service reform and further civil rights legislation were failures, and of course his response to the Wounded Knee Massacre was terrible. Nevertheless, Harrison was a president who we can plainly say had less agency than many of his counterparts, and compared to some of those from his time period, he looks pretty good.

Philip the Arab’s five years as emperor near the beginning of the Crisis of the Third Century were relatively stable, but he was fundamentally a weak emperor at a time when emperors were a dime a dozen. For that brief moment during his reign, Phillip impressively managed to bring the empire together and even celebrated the millenium anniversary of Rome’s founding to much fanfare. Unfortunately, as was so common during this era, Philip’s downfall was swift and he was deposed and killed, with the Crisis continuing unabated after his death.

McKinley: Didius Julianus

While McKinley is best known currently for his support for tariffs (and thus is seen as a role model for Trump), his place in history is really as a transitional figure. It was McKinley who served as the bridge between the relatively weak presidencies of the Gilded Age to the increasing presidential power that has existed ever since, it is McKinley who presided as president during the turn of the 20th century, and it was McKinley who foreshadowed the influence of money in political campaigns, as his campaign manager was businessman Mark Hanna.

Nestled between the Nerva-Antonine Dynasty and the Severan Dynasty, Didius would also be a transitional figure, serving for only three months. However, it’s hard to argue that like McKinley, Julianus’ impact exceeded his short tenure. Julianus bought the throne, paying off the Praetorian Guard in an auction that would foreshadow even greater power being placed in the hands of the Praetorians. And his devaluation of the currency would have a snowball effect that would lead to a weak economy and high inflation. Sounds kind of like the impact a tariff might have.

Roosevelt: Trajan

Teddy Roosevelt was an extraordinary man, maybe the president who was good at more things than any other. He was the author of dozens of books, including one on naval strategy in the Wars of 1812 that influenced the operations of the US Navy, written when he was 23. At 22 he joined the New York State Assembly, making his mark quickly as the bane of corporate interests and patronage, and by 24 he was minority leader. He was a naturalist, a hunter and rancher of renown in the Dakota Territory, and eventually a war hero. He placed third in the greatest mayoral election in American history, battled gridlock and corruption in the civil service and Police Department, and became such a thorn in the side of New York machine interests as Governor that they made him Vice President, ignoring the prescient words of Mark Hanna: “there’s only one life, between that madman and the presidency.”

Roosevelt has a complicated legacy, like every president, as his expansionist tendencies and love for Americanism contrast with his intense capacity and his urgent desire to reform a broken system. Nonetheless, this polymath remains one of America’s presidents, a trust-busting, hard-charging man who looked to uproot the status quo system that empowered machines and the wealthy. We could do worse than a New Square Deal.

Felicior Augusto, Melior Traiano. May he be more fortunate than Augustus, and better than Trajan. The Optimus Princeps was literally the best of the best, the only Roman Emperor who can compare with Augustus. I considered comparing Trajan to FDR for this reason, but ultimately settled on Teddy. The two are united both in their expansionism and in their capability as administrators. Both left behind lasting physical legacies, Trajan with his column and his bridge—which would be longest arch bridge for over a millenia—and Teddy with his creation of the National Parks system.

Taft: Lucius Verus

Taft’s presidency will always be overshadowed by his predecessor, who not only supported him for the office but then tried to beat him when he saw Taft as caving to the conservative wing of the Republican Party. He will be overshadowed by his successor, who was both a force in establishing modern liberalism and a virulent racist. His presidency is even overshadowed by own his own period as Chief Justice. But Taft seems to have quietly gotten the job done, doing an honest job at advancing some of Roosevelt’s principles—including antitrust enforcement—while being rather unimaginative and lacking the brilliance of his presidential forebear.

It is telling that the period of the Five Good Emperors is called that, when there were six emperors during the period. Lucius Verus might have had less auctoritas than his co-emperor Marcus Aurelius, but the east under his authority didn’t suffer for his leadership. At the end of the day, Taft and Verus were profoundly different men, as Lucius Verus was prone to flights of debauchery compared to Taft’s stolidness, but both men—through their own efforts or others—managed to keep their nations moving, and eventually be forgotten.

Wilson: Valentinian I

Woodrow Wilson’s star has faded in recent years as the extent of his racism, even relative to the time period, has received greater attention. And it’s quite obvious that both at Princeton and in the nation’s highest office, Wilson not only refused to advance the rights of Black people but actively sought to restrict them. Whereas Wilson was once heralded as a godfather of liberalism for his expansion of government and the institution of the income tax, the eight-hour-work day, as well as his support for liberal internationalism, he is no longer numbered among the liberal presidents to be emulated.

Valentinian I had his virtues, vanquishing several tribes who sought to enter Roman territory as well as attempting to improve the welfare of the citizenry through the creation of schools and appointment of physicians across the city. These were balanced out by his distasteful personality and a capacity for extreme cruelty, which included feeding those who displeased him to his bears.

Harding: Nero

Both Harding and Nero were pretty bottom of the barrel presidents, but that alone does not make this comparison work. I actually think what unites them is that for a long time, they were considered the very worst of the worst, but it appears that’s not quite the case. The Teapot Dome Scandal of Harding’s time was surpassed by Watergate and then a host of other scandals, and even compared to other previous scandals it hardly stands out to me, especially since Harding was unaware of it.

For Nero’s part, the one story that everybody knows about him is false. Nero did not fiddle while Rome burned. In fact, Nero wasn’t even in Rome when it burned! He was evidently a bad emperor, a spendthrift who also murdered his mother, which is really quite bad! There’s no doubt that these two men were very, very bad leaders, but neither are the first I’d think of when asked who was the worst to lead Rome and the US.

Coolidge: Elagabalus

There’s a pocket of diehard Calvin Coolidge fans on the internet, which is well and truly perplexing. Laconic to the extreme, Silent Cal was the definition of a “small c” conservative, and did very, very little as president. His few accomplishments were important, namely granting more rights to Native Americans, but it’s hard not to see Calvin Coolidge as a president who missed the harbingers of recession on the horizon and just tried to keep the good times going. Not for nothing did Dorothy Parker ask: “how could they tell?” when she heard of Coolidge’s death.

In so many, this comparison makes no sense. In fact, I admit it’s an extraordinary reach. Coolidge was taciturn and quiet, Elagabalus was loud and extravagant. Coolidge and his wife had a happy marriage, while Elagabalus died at 18 with four wives and numerous lovers. But when it came to governance, neither of them seemed remotely interested in doing the job. Coolidge’s very principles were to just do nothing because the federal government was vestigial, while Elagabalus spent his time creating a religious cult.

Hoover: Gordian I

By all accounts, Herbert Hoover was a good man. There is a reason he was called the Great Humanitarian for his work on international relief during WWI and in its aftermath. He was also plainly a dismal president who could not react to the impending Depression. He doesn’t bear the brunt of the blame as the wheels were already in motion when he assumed office, but he also seemed unable to change course to prepare for the approaching calamity.

Gordian I was the first of six emperors who “ruled” in 238 CE, and was apparently of a friendly disposition. He also was a complete flop as an emperor, lasting for only 22 days before dying.

FDR: Constantine

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a behemoth, the most consequential president since Lincoln, a leader whose triumphs and accomplishments reverberate even today. For four terms, FDR lorded over the roost, and in the process fundamentally redefined the American presidency. His domestic policy successes are numerous, from pulling the US out of the Great Depression to the social programs of the New Deal, and his foreign policy record speaks for itself as he steered the US through the Second World War. Of course, his record is hardly spotless: the internment of Japanese Americans is a horrific stain upon his presidency.

Ancient Rome traditionally numbers three founders: Romulus (753 BCE), Marcus Furius Camillus (after the Samnite Wars), Gaius Marius (in the first century BCE). Logically, if this way of thinking had extended, Augustus would be the Fourth Founder, and Constantine would be the Fifth. Today, Constantine is best remembered for his role elevating Christianity to the official religion of Rome and for the founding of Constantinople, but Constantine also fundamentally restructured the Empire after the Tetrarchy collapsed, and his leadership allowed it to endure far beyond its expiration date. Above all else, Constantine was transformational, a leader who heralded a new Rome, just as Roosevelt’s tenure heralded a new America.

Truman: Hadrian

On the surface, Harry S. Truman and Hadrian could not be more different. Truman was a plain-spoken man who never completed college, while Hadrian was known as the Greekling, excessively interested in Ancient Greek culture. Truman ascended to the vice presidency only because of concerns about FDR’s health and a wariness that Henry Wallace might become president, while Hadrian was Trajan’s only living relative, and thus the obvious choice to succeed him.

But I think there is something deeper that connects these two men. Truman was the consummate underdog, the closest to an ordinary person we’ve had in the White House in a long, long time. Hadrian was not an underdog, but he was profoundly different than previous emperors because of his idolization of Greece. In each case, these men followed the second greatest leader their nation had ever experienced, and in each case they lived up to the task. Even as they took their respective nations in a different direction, Hadrian by turning away from the expansionism of his predecessor while Truman sought to expand the role of the US on the world stage and create the post-war consensus, they established themselves as capable leaders during some of the heights of their countries’ powers.

Eisenhower: Septimius Severus

I don’t really like Ike, I’m afraid. Eisenhower deserves tremendous plaudits for his service as the Supreme Commander in Europe during World War II, but his status as “the last good Republican president” has mythologized him in a way that feels undue. Eisenhower was a fine president, a conservative who did not push to end the New Deal and who tacitly opposed McCarthy, but he was also reticent on Civil Rights, supported the largest mass deportation program in US history, and empowered very bad people like Hoover and Dulles. And of course, while he is remembered for his speech warning about the Military Industrial Complex, it’s a little cheap coming from the president who himself authorized several coups and scaled up said military complex while president.

Septimius Severus had his own impressive accolades, including a string of victories, highlighted by his emergence as emperor during the Year of Five Emperors and, a few years later, the sack of Ctesiphon, capital of Parthia, enemy of Rome for two hundred years. Severus also laid the groundwork for some of Rome’s own issues, as his decisions which might have worked out well in the short term: debasing currency, increasing military pay, had long term ramifications that led to…the military gaining more and more power. He’s like Ike.

JFK: Titus

“It is maintained that Augustus would never have been loved had he lived a shorter time, nor Titus had he lived longer.” Titus was the golden boy, the dutiful and diligent son of his father who should have ushered in a new era of prosperity but instead his life was tragically cut short after only two years. There’s no doubt that Titus, at least from what we know, would have been a fine emperor, surely better than the latter years of his predecessor, but that he owes some of his continued acclaim to his early and unforeseen death.

So it is with JFK, the boy wonder who continues to inspire wonder sixty years after his death. Ruling over Camelot, the youngest elected president seemed poised for eight years of glory, perhaps followed by eight years of another Kennedy. Yet, it’s hard against the fact that the tragic events of November 22, 1963 allowed JFK to achieve mythical status. Not only did they rob America of their president and a family of a son, husband, brother and father, but they also led to historians embellishing his successes and toning down his weaknesses. Would he have been able to get civil rights over the line? Would the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis be looked upon more critically by his contemporaries if not for his death? Just as with Titus, it is impossible to know the answer.

LBJ: Diocletian

The one that a very small but dedicated segment of followers have been waiting for. No president has a greater gap on domestic and foreign policy success than LBJ, whose leadership in Vietnam was utterly porous, while he is equaled by only Lincoln and FDR when it comes to domestic policy. During his five years in office, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of both 1964 and 1968, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Immigration and Naturalization Services Act of 1965, and created Medicare and Medicaid. He was also the Senate Majority Leader who shepherded through the Civil Rights Act of 1957, expertly convincing horrific racists like Richard Russell to get on board with the proposal.

When it comes to evaluating presidents, I subscribe to a judgement akin to WAR (wins above replacement, not a series of battles). By that metric, Lyndon Baines Johnson is the third greatest president of all time. He was a politician of extraordinary gifts, the greatest counter in Senate history, and each of his successes was perhaps only possible because of who was; if another man had tried to accomplish his priorities, they would have failed. Conversely, I’m unconvinced that another president acts substantially differently than LBJ does in Vietnam after decades of American involvement in the region and the foreign policy establishment’s desire to confront communism.

Like LBJ, Diocletian was an unbelievably capable man, a dextrous administrator who ended the Crisis of The Third Century and created a new political system: the Tetrarchy. For a century and a half after Diocletian’s reign, the empire continued, in no small part because of him. Yet, Diocletian’s legacy is also murky. The Tetrarchy collapsed upon his death, unable to exist in Diocletian’s absence. As Mike Duncan says: “I think at the end of the day Diocletian was a victim of his own success. He was so good, so personally magnetic, wielding such – dare I say – divine gravitas, that it would have been almost impossible to make accurate assumptions about what would happen when he was removed from the equation.”

LBJ and Diocletian are two sides of the same coin: men of surpassing ability who could achieve things that no one else at that time could. Yet, while LBJ’s downfall was that he could not separate himself from the rest in foreign policy as he could shepherd through domestic success, Diocletian’s legacy was doomed because the system that had worked for him could not work for another, for there was no other Diocletian waiting in the wings.

Nixon: Domitian

Richard Milhous Nixon was one of the most devious presidents in history, a man who fought to win at all costs, no matter the underhandedness of his tactics. He was a pioneer of the Southern Strategy and the beginner of the war on drugs, but also the creator of the EPA and the endorser of the Equal Rights Amendment. Personally, I will always abhor Nixon for preventing the greatest candidate to not become president—the Orator of the Dawn—from achieving the highest office, but if not for Watergate Nixon likely would have netted out to a middling presidency. Alas, he allowed his paranoia to get the best of him.

For centuries, the Emperor Domitian was considered a bottom-feeder, a tyrant of epic proportions whose only good deed had been the collapse of his reign and the rise of the Five Good Emperors. It seems self-evident that, while Domitian was more autocratic than some of his predecessors with the Senate, it was the Senate’s particular enmity towards him—and their influence with the historians of the day—that catapulted him to such a low standing. Domitian was a capable administrator who achieved the unthinkable, a reduction in inflation, that no other Roman Emperor has been able to accomplish. Yet, the promise of Domitian’s early reign (to some) devolved as the emperor grew increasingly paranoid, until he was finally stabbed in his chambers.

Ford: Magnentius

Both of these men were defined by their unpopular predecessor and questions about their legitimacy. Ford was never elected, neither as president or vice president, and while he might have looked to distance himself from Nixon, by pardoning him he certainly appeared to be embracing him. For his part, Magnentius was obsessed with proving that he was a legitimate emperor after his deposition of Constans. At the end of the day, both these men managed to serve for only three years before being knocked off the highest office.

Carter: Alexander Severus

It’s a bit of a cliche to compare Jimmy Carter to one of the “nicest” Roman emperors, but that’s where we at. Carter is best known for his post-presidential activities, which I have written about previously, and he was undoubtedly a decent man. He was also, unfortunately, not a particularly successful president, in part because of conditions outside of his control.

Alexander Severus was also placed in a difficult situation, the last Roman emperor to rule before the Crisis of the Third Century, a half-century calamity that plunged Rome into a succession of civil wars, invasions, economic catastrophe, and splintered the empire. Severus’ heart appears to have been in the right place, but he was ultimately done in by an attempt to secure peace with Germanic tribes, as opposed to crushing them.

Reagan: Theodosius

It’s become rather trite to blame Reagan for the present ills of U.S. politics, but he really was a very bad guy with bad policies that had lasting and, you guessed it, bad ramifications. There is perhaps no more overrated president than the Gipper, who was the greatest influence on the modern conservative movement for nearly two score.

Theodosius was lionized after his death by Christian writers, but his legacy is really quite awful. The emperor allowed the empire to go to his sons, who were only eighteen and ten upon his death, splitting the empire and ultimately seeding the end of the Western Roman Empire. Again, he allowed a child of ten to inherit the West, no surprise that his child ended up being perhaps the worst emperor in history (see: Buchanan, James).

Bush: Claudius Gothicus

George HW Bush was the least bad of the last several Republican Presidents and had a few genuine bipartisan achievements, including the ADA, the Clean Air Act, and loosening immigration restrictions, as well as the US’ role in ending the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait during the Gulf War. Simultaneously, he was dogged by connections to the Reagan administration and pardoned some of those implicated in Iran Contra, as well as appointing one of our very worst Supreme Court justices. Lastly, he committed the original sin to American voters and raised their taxes after famously saying “no new taxes”.

Like Bush, Claudius Gothicus had success in foreign affairs, winning a major victory against the Goths (hence Gothicus) and managing to continue the turnaround of Rome during the Crisis of the Third Century that first occurred under Gallienus. However, he also had a short rule, dying after only two years due to plague.

Clinton: Constantius II

Put this in the category of morally questionable people who were also pretty good leaders. Clinton was lucky in many ways, leading the nation in a period of relative stability in prosperity nestled between the fall of the Soviet Union and 9/11. Although part of the whole premise of this substack is that a great, great deal has become substantially better since the 1990s—after all, hyper partisanship and crime were exploding and there were a series of high profile genocides during this decade—it is true that America in the Clinton years enjoyed a strong economy, increased access to other markets, and by the end of the decade a large reduction in crime. It is also true that Clinton had some personal foibles that color how some of us view his legacy today.

Constantius II’s personal foibles were a little more serious than Clinton’s—he killed half of his family—but aside from that small hiccup he managed to keep the empire mostly stable and united for 24 years even as it was wracked by a series of civil wars and invasions.

Bush: Valens

George Bush’s legacy as president is foreign policy disaster, which committed the US to Iraq with a lie and ended American credibility on intervention, to our detriment. He shares this dishonor with Valens, whose defeat and death at the Battle of Adrianople was a turning point for Rome, the start of barbarian invasions that would characterize the last century of the western empire’s existence.

Obama: Vespasian

Hope and change was not Vespasian’s motto when he proclaimed himself the fourth and final emperor of the year 69 CE, but it may as well have been. After fourteen years of Nero, the realm had convulsed in civil war as first Galba, then Otho, then Vitellius staked their claims. But it was Vespasian who would restore stability to the empire and provide it with much needed reforms. Not to mention, Vespasian was perhaps the wittiest emperor, a nice comparison to Obama’s own wit. Unfortunately, just as the Obama coalition provided optimists with a belief in an emerging Democratic majority, Vespasian’s Flavian dynasty fell apart within three decades.

Trump: Commodus

People usually compare Trump to Nero or Caligula (or if you’re Curtis Yarvin: Caesar), but neither of those feel quite apt. There’s a good chance that both Nero and Caligula have been vilified more than is perhaps their due (still bad, though), as I mentioned earlier. There is only one real comparison to the mendacious, actively self-sabotaging president at present, and that’s Commodus.

Better known as Joaquin Phoenix, Commodus is different than the other worst emperors in history (Honorius, Valentinian III, etc…) because he was not only weak and feckless, but seemed to revel in actively destroying the empire, ending the Pax Romana and steering it into less stable waters. Sound familiar?

Biden: Nerva

Joe Biden was a good president. At present, so close to the end of his term, it also appears that his legacy will focus most prominently not on his outstanding domestic policy accomplishment, but the man who followed him. Nerva was a less good emperor, but like Biden, he has been defined by successor. It is a pity that America in 2024 did not luck out nearly so much as Rome in 98.

All this is to say that it is worth celebrating the things that Mississippi does right, and notwithstanding its various issues, Mississippi is showing a way forward in one of the most important measures of a state: the education of its children.

Every few years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is conducted among 4th and 8th graders throughout the country. It is the most prominent measure of student achievement, and after a dip in 2022 compared to 2019, educators and policy experts anxiously awaited the January 29 release of the 2024 data. Unfortunately, the nationwide results were not particularly encouraging; while math scores rose overall with 4th graders, reading scores fell among both 4th and 8th graders.

At first glance, Mississippi’s performance by this metric is not particularly outstanding. Math and science scores among 4th graders mostly rose by small amounts, while there was very little change for 8th graders outside of small increases in the number who were proficient or advanced in math. Mississippi now has a math score two points above the national average and a reading score four points below. But these stats mask a larger shift that has taken place over the past decade-plus.

In 2013, Mississippi had a 4th grade reading rating of 209, making it 49th in the country by that metric. 41% of children read at a level below “basic”, in contrast to only 21% who were proficient. Fast forward to 2024, and Mississippi sits at 219. To put that in context, the best rated state is the perennial top performer Massachusetts, at 225, while the lowest rated is West Virginia. Mississippi has moved from a bottom-dweller to within shouting distance of the top spot.

The jump in proficiency has been equally impressive, as 32% of children are now proficient, compared to 35% below “basic”. That’s still cause for concern, with considerable room for improvement necessary, but a 50% improvement in the number of students proficient in reading in eleven years is no mean feat.

In fact, Mississippi has experienced the largest increase in NAEP scores among 4th graders, for both reading and math, of any state in the country.

What’s more, there’s a pretty strong case to be made that student performance is being underrated in Mississippi. Over the last several years, the Urban Institute has taken the NAEP results and adjusted them by demographics to assess which states are the greatest over and underperformers. The argument is that certain states have demographic makeups that make them more likely to have higher test scores: higher incomes, more parents with college degrees, access to free meals, etc… Massachusetts, for example, has the highest median income of any state and over 50% of citizens 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree, the most outside of DC. Student achievement will naturally be higher because of that.

I’ll give you one guess which state is the top performer once demographic adjustments are applied. This is true not only for 4th grade reading and math, but also 8th grade math. On 8th grade reading, Mississippi is in 4th.

So, what exactly is Mississippi doing right? At first blush, it’s tremendously hard to believe that a state that pays its teachers worse than all but two other states is comparatively succeeding in its education program. And to be clear, its refusal to pay teachers what they’re worth is absolutely not the reason they’ve made these great strides. Rather, the turning point was the 2013 passage of the Literacy Based Promotion Act (LBPA).

The LBPA constituted a few parts, including an emphasis on teaching kids to read starting in kindergarten, identifying kids from K-3 who most needed extra attention, holding back those few 3rd graders who failed to demonstrate sufficient aptitude to advance to 4th grade, and requiring teachers to learn how to teach “the science of reading.”

These latter two efforts were the most controversial steps. Grade retention has both its proponents and its detractors. Those who oppose it traditionally point at studies that show short-term boosts, before a drop in performance from those who were retained, such that in the end they perform comparably to their peers who were not retained or even worse.

But this is hardly set in stone. Other studies, done particularly on the effect of retention on 3rd graders, show a different story, with short and long-term improvements among those who were retained compared to peers who were not. A study of the first Mississippi 3rd grade cohort to experience the LBPA also found that when they entered 6th grade, the retained students were achieving at a level far above their peers.

And Mississippi doesn’t merely abandon students who repeat a grade, trusting that retention alone will solve the problem. The LBPA requires intensive intervention for students who are retained, and in 2016, the law was amended to create individual reading plans for struggling students. In 2019, the standards for promotion to 4th grade were raised, leading to a temporary jump in the number of retained students, but in the years since it’s trended downwards. The upshot of this is that over time, even as Mississippi raises the bar for moving onto 4th grade, fewer people are being retained. We’ll have to wait until the spring to see if Mississippi experiences rising graduation rates (the first class of Kindergarteners after the LBPA should graduate in 2025), but all signs suggest that the policies are working!

Feelings around grade retention pale in comparison to the ire over the very strategies we used to teach kids to read. I’ll probably cover the “Reading Wars” at some point in the future, but the short version is that over the past two centuries, advocates of different ways of teaching reading have been fighting pitched battles, with policy and public opinion shifting over time. The most recent iteration has been decades in the making, pitting the advocates of “balanced literacy” against the legions in favor of the “science of reading”.

Balanced literacy was ascendant for an unfortunate amount of time, with a philosophy that emphasized learning to read based on story and theme. The idea was that this would inculcate a love for reading among students, as opposed to putting them through the boring repetition of sounding out words. The only problem with this approach: that boring repetition, also known as phonics, is the best way to teach students how to read.

By requiring teachers to learn the science of reading, Mississippi was an early (re)-adopter of phonics. Over the past ten years, the backlash against balanced literacy has been swift, with one of its top proponents, Lucy Calkins, going from superstar to public enemy number one overnight. And 40 states, as well as DC, have passed laws pushing for science of reading in the last several years.

Close readers of this post might remember something I mentioned at the beginning that is not at all encouraging: while Mississippi reading scores are improving, the nation’s are falling. It is not hyperbolic to say that reading levels are at their lowest in the 21st century, and that while Covid made things worse, it is hardly the sole cause. I won’t mince words here, this is awful.

Mississippi’s success is hardly a silver lining when the state of student achievement is so porous, but it can provide lessons that other states should follow. Despite the poverty, segregation, and comparatively low levels of school investment in Mississippi, the state has still made progress. And it’s hardly resting on its laurels because it recognizes there’s far more work to be done; a bipartisan bill that would expand the LBPA through 8th grade just passed the House Education Committee. Some states have followed their lead, but every state should do so. They have the resources to replicate it, if only they have the bravery and leadership to get it done.

Mississippi’s problems are massive, and its politicians routinely act in dangerous and cruel ways, including in their education policy. But when it comes to the single, crucial topic of teaching kids how to read, one of the most necessary and important things a government can do, I think we can all agree.

Thank god for Mississippi.