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A recently-published memoir making headlines suggests a trend: Polyamory is going mainstream among high-status Americans. Culture critic and environmental studies professor Tyler Austin Harper joins Christine and Shadi to make sense of this fad, and explain why it’s both an upper-class luxury and a raw deal. Along the way they discuss happiness, self-expression, race, love, self-immolation, parenting, and a better way to live.

Required Reading:

* Tyler Austin Harper, “Polyamory, the Ruling Class’s Latest Fad.”

* Tyler Austin Harper, “I’m a Black Professor. You Don’t Need to Bring That Up.”

* Tyler Austin Harper, “The 100-Year Extinction Panic Is Back, Right on Schedule.”

* Shadi Hamid, “Is Polyamory the Future?”

* Molly Roden Winter, More: A Memoir of Open Marriage.

* Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton, The Ethical Slut.

* Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud.

* Christine Emba, Rethinking Sex: A Provocation.

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

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