Quillette Read Aloud

By Quillette

News & Politics

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A sample of Quillette articles read aloud using a text-to-speech generator.

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Quillette Read Aloud episodes:

08.23.2018
Danger’s Deliverance
We encounter dangerous things and seek to get rid of them, often for good reason. But what about when doing so makes the world more dangerous? Consider, for example: Parents who refuse to vaccinate create disease epidemics that harm children, including...
08.21.2018
Banning Bitcoin to Complete Big Tech Censorship
Bitcoin’s survival might prove intolerable to our Internet gatekeepers. To rid the web of troublesome opinion makers you ban them from online platforms while terminating their ability to raise funds from supporters. Corporate giants can use their control over Internet...
08.18.2018
The Forgotten Story of How “Punching Up” Harmed the Science-Fiction/Fantasy World
The recent blowup over New York Times editorial board hire Sarah Jeong and her racially charged Twitter trail turned into a brawl over a key question in today’s cultural polemics: Whether derogatory speech about whites should be considered racist and,...
08.17.2018
The New McCarthyism: Blacklisting in Academia
Blacklisting is back. In the days of Joe McCarthy, Hollywood screen writers and actors were the targets. Today, it is University professors accused of sexual harassment. Being accused is enough to destroy a professor’s career. Even speaking out against a...
08.17.2018
A Closer Look at Anti-White Rhetoric
Online controversy erupted earlier this month when The New York Times announced that technology writer Sarah Jeong would be joining its editorial board. Almost immediately, old tweets from Jeong containing derogatory remarks about white people were being shared widely on...
08.13.2018
The Problem with ‘Facts Not Feelings’
In the midst of our turbulent political and cultural moment there endures an intellectual sub-culture that refuses to be dislodged by the relativism prevalent on the Left and the Right. In the crosshairs of postmodernist excess and ‘alternative facts,’ a...
08.06.2018
Democratic Socialism is a Scam
When I attended a rally with my family in Little Havana for then-Senator Barack Obama in 2007, our old neighborhood greeted both us and the future 44th president as if we were traitors. Older, conservative protestors yelled “Comunistas!” at us...
08.05.2018
The Infantilization of Black America
In contemporary political discourse, black America often seems to be perceived as a monolith. We are expected to think, act, and vote as one, and any attempt to step outside the bounds of our pre-determined spectrum of thoughts can lead...
08.03.2018
Britain’s Populist Revolt
More than two years have passed since Britain voted for Brexit. Ever since that moment, the vote to leave the European Union has routinely been framed as an aberration; a radical departure from ‘normal’ life. Countless journalists, scholars, and celebrities...
08.02.2018
The Death of the Author and the End of Empathy
In 2015, President Obama described the Nation as “more than a magazine—it’s a crucible of ideas.” If it was ever entitled to this descriptor, it isn’t anymore. Academic identity politics may be importing an obsession with phantom victimhood into the...
07.23.2018
The Peculiar Opacity of Jordan Peterson’s Religious Views
During a recent conversation in Vancouver—the first night of a massive four-part event sponsored by Pangburn Philosophy—Sam Harris asked Jordan Peterson a question that he can never quite answer: “What do you mean by God?” If you’ve ever heard Peterson...
07.23.2018
The Public Humiliation Diet
Reading about James Gunn’s defenestration by Disney for having tweeted some off-color jokes 10 years ago, I was reminded of my own ordeal at the beginning of this year. I’m British, not American, a conservative rather than a liberal, and I...
07.19.2018
Black American Culture and the Racial Wealth Gap
There is arguably no racial disparity more striking than the wealth gap. While the median white household earns just 65 percent more income than its black counterpart, its net worth is fully ten times as high. And, unlike income, which...
07.18.2018
I Was a Female Incel
Author’s Note: I have chosen to publish this essay under a pseudonym to preserve my anonymity and the anonymity of others mentioned in my story. I respectfully ask anyone who believes they can identify me from what follows to respect...
07.17.2018
What Is the Tribe of the Anti-Tribalists?
Near the end of a much-discussed podcast in May entitled Identity & Honesty, Sam Harris and Ezra Klein have the following telling exchange: Ezra Klein: You have that bewildering experience because you donʼt realize when you keep saying that everybody...
07.14.2018
I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me
I drive food delivery for an online app to make rent and support myself and my young family. This is my new life. I once had a well paid job in what might be described as the social justice industry....
07.09.2018
On Toxic Femininity
Male lions can be monsters, murderous and focused. Toxic, if you will. Given the opportunity, male lions will kill the kittens in a pride over which they have gained control. They commit infanticide, which brings the new mothers, freshly childless,...
07.04.2018
The New York Times Comes Out Against Free Speech
According to a front page New York Times news (not opinion) article by Adam Liptak “Weaponizing the First Amendment: How Free Speech Became a Conservative Cudgel,” we must adopt a stance of skepticism toward all this talk of free speech: if...
07.02.2018
Political Moderates Are Lying
Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once suggested that we should “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Mead is largely correct. Change is wrought by those...
07.02.2018
Through the Looking Glass at Concordia University
It was in a class called Representations of Minorities in Documentary Film, the last elective I needed to receive my BA at Concordia University in Montreal, that I first realized something was very wrong. The class had just watched Sound...
06.21.2018
A Literary Inquisition: How Novelist Steven Galloway Was Smeared as a Rapist, Even as the Case Against Him Collapsed
On August 8, 2015, a day after the University of British Columbia announced the sudden resignation of its president, Arvind Gupta, UBC’s Jennifer Berdahl, professor in Leadership Studies in Gender and Diversity, published a blog post in which she opined...
06.20.2018
Notes From an Academic Paper Mill
One evening last fall, my de facto supervisor e-mailed me an audio file consisting of a three-minute conversation between a college sophomore from Saudi Arabia and his English professor in New York. The student had just surreptitiously recorded this chat...
06.19.2018
Why Women Don’t Code
Ever since Google fired James Damore for “advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace,” those of us working in tech have been trying to figure out what we can and cannot say on the subject of diversity. You might imagine...
06.08.2018
Race, Gender and Trump: Everything You Think You Know is Wrong
Following Election 2016’s “shocking” finale, many in academic and journalistic circles have seemed less interested in dispassionately analyzing why Trump won than finding excuses for why Hillary lost. As far as excuses go, sexism or misogyny (like racism, “foreign meddling,”...
06.07.2018
Explaining Monogamy to Vox
In the first episode of their new Netflix series, entitled Explained, the folks over at Vox set out to explain monogamy. Or at least, that is what the title (“Monogamy, Explained”) appeared to promise. But by the time it was...
06.05.2018
At this Portland Bakery, White Guilt Poisons the Batter
The menu at the Back to Eden Bakery in Portland, Ore. features vegan and gluten-free ice cream, cookies and cupcakes, but it might as well itemize its impeccable intersectional credentials. Before hungry customers even set foot in the small shop...
06.05.2018
The High Price of Stale Grievances
They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it. ~ Thelonious Monk (Monk’s Advice, 1960) As against our gauzy national hopes, I will teach my boys to have profound doubts that friendship...
05.28.2018
Why Sam Harris—Not Ezra Klein—Is the One Making Space for People of Colour
The demand that we transcend tribalism in public debate sits on the schism line of today’s culture wars over speech, scholarship and art. On one side (loosely, if inexactly, called “the left”), there exists a deep conviction that the social...
05.24.2018
Why Can’t a Woman be More Like a Man?
A fascinating paper about sex differences in the human brain was published last week in the scientific journal Cerebral Cortex. It’s the largest single-sample study of structural and functional sex differences in the human brain ever undertaken, involving over 5,000...
05.22.2018
Jordan Peterson and the Failure of the Left
Like most people, I’d never heard of Jordan Peterson until a short time ago. In my case, the first signal of his arrival on the cultural scene was a friend’s series of Facebook posts vividly denouncing him as a reactionary cult-like leader. Seeing a...
05.14.2018
The Racism Treadmill
The prevailing view among progressives today is that America hasn’t made much progress on racism. While no one would argue that abolishing slavery and dissolving Jim Crow weren’t good first steps, the progressive attitude toward such reforms is nicely summarized...
05.13.2018
Libel of Jordan Peterson by the Forward—A Story of Journalistic Failure
On Friday, a left-leaning Jewish magazine, the Forward, published an article by Ari Feldman titled “Is Jordan Peterson Enabling Jew Hatred?” accompanied by a picture of Adolf Hitler giving the Nazi salute next to Peterson. The Forward explains Vox-style: “Jordan...
05.13.2018
Glamourising the ‘Childfree Life’ Ignores Reality for Most Childless Women
Twenty-five years ago, I made the decision to marry the man I love. I was 23 when I packed up my life in Montreal and moved to New York City for him. I had yet to actually meet this man,...
05.08.2018
The Problem with Candace Owens
Dissent in the ranks of so-called “marginalized groups,” often viewed as natural constituencies for the left, rarely fails to draw a backlash from progressives and sympathy from conservatives. Recently, such a controversy erupted when rap artist Kanye West voiced support...
04.28.2018
The Tragic Case of Alfie Evans
Three days after Tom and Kate Evans abandoned their legal fight, their son Alfie has died. Both parents have shown immense courage over the past months and in the final few days they have demonstrated a quiet dignity as Alfie’s...
04.24.2018
Kanye West and the Future of Black Conservatism
On April 21st, Kanye West sent a tweet out to his 13.4 million followers that read: “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.” A celebrity endorsing his favorite political pundit is hardly unusual, but one of the most famous rappers...
04.20.2018
Steven Pinker: Counter-Enlightenment Convictions are ‘Surprisingly Resilient’
Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist and is the author of several books including Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progresspublished by Viking Press earlier this year. Editors at Quillette contacted Professor Pinker for a Q&A: what follows is...
04.12.2018
Sam Harris was Right; Ezra Klein Should Know Better
Earlier this week, Ph.D. neuroscientist turned pop-philosopher Sam Harris invited Vox Editor-at-Large Ezra Klein to debate Harris on his popular podcast. The topic: Harris’s decision to feature Charles Murray for the purposes of defending him— from charges of racism, on his show last...
04.05.2018
The Case for Sustainable Meat
I. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics Meat, we are told, is bad for the planet. It causes global warming, destroys forests, diverts substantial proportions of the world’s grain for feed, all to produce meat which only wealthy Westerners can afford....
03.22.2018
Why Jordan B Peterson Appeals to Me (And I Am on the Left)
As a writer who identifies as a leftist, and who sympathizes with Noam Chomsky’s anarcho-syndicalism on a root personal level, I should theoretically be joining the chorus of critics who have decided that Jordan Peterson is a reactionary. In fact,...
03.21.2018
Why Do Men Rape?
One of the keys to understanding the underlying visions of conservatives and progressives is to observe how they interpret crime. Progressives tend to believe that people are not born to be criminals; one way or another, crime is perceived to...
03.15.2018
Why They Hate Margaret Atwood
On March 9, a University of Alberta English professor named Julie Rak headlined a speaking event that was billed as a showdown on the issue of “bad feminism.” A promotional poster done up in a boxing motif included a picture...
03.14.2018
Britain’s Grooming Gang Crisis
The scale of the street grooming crisis in the UK almost defies belief. Hundreds of girls and young women were raped in the city of Rotherham, and hundreds by similar exploitation rings in Rochdale, Peterborough, Newcastle, Oxford, and Bristol. Now,...
03.11.2018
Steven Pinker’s Counter-Counter-Enlightenment
A review of Enlightenment Now, by Steven Pinker. Viking (February 2018) 576 pages. Every so often, something will unite individuals in outrage who disagree furiously about virtually everything else. For the moment, that something is Canadian psychologist Steven Pinker’s latest book, Enlightenment...
03.10.2018
The Psychology of Progressive Hostility
Recently, I arrived at a moment of introspection about a curious aspect of my own behavior. When I disagree with a conservative friend or colleague on some political issue, I have no fear of speaking my mind. I talk, they...
02.25.2018
Damore, Diversity, and Disruption at PSU
I held my breath as the protesters stood up and began their walk-out. “Please, let it be peaceful,” I said to myself. In the weeks leading up to the event, we had received threats of violence. One person on social...
02.21.2018
Our Search for Meaning and the Dangers of Possession
“There is no such thing as not worshipping,” wrote novelist David Foster Wallace. “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” G. Jung would have wholeheartedly agreed. He posited that psychic life is motivated by a religious...
02.17.2018
Thinking Critically About Social Justice
Yesterday, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) released a memo written by an attorney, Jayme Sophir, which determined that Google did not violate United States federal law when it fired James Damore. Sophir reasoned that references to psychometric literature on...
02.15.2018
The Peterson Principle: Intellectual Complexity and Journalistic Incompetence
It was while I was watching Channel 4 news presenter Cathy Newman’s spectacularly disastrous interview with University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson that what was wrong with much of journalism today crystallized in my brain. I’d been oscillating between anger...
02.15.2018
Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies
Many academics in the modern world seem obsessed with the sex difference in engagement with science, technology, mathematics, and engineering (STEM) fields. Or rather they are obsessed with the fact that there are more men than women in some of...

What's Quillette Read Aloud about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Quillette Read Aloud episodes:

Danger’s Deliverance

Banning Bitcoin to Complete Big Tech Censorship

The Forgotten Story of How “Punching Up” Harmed the Science-Fiction/Fantasy World

The New McCarthyism: Blacklisting in Academia

A Closer Look at Anti-White Rhetoric

The Problem with ‘Facts Not Feelings’

Democratic Socialism is a Scam

The Infantilization of Black America

Britain’s Populist Revolt

The Death of the Author and the End of Empathy

The Peculiar Opacity of Jordan Peterson’s Religious Views

The Public Humiliation Diet

Black American Culture and the Racial Wealth Gap

I Was a Female Incel

What Is the Tribe of the Anti-Tribalists?

I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me

On Toxic Femininity

The New York Times Comes Out Against Free Speech

Political Moderates Are Lying

Through the Looking Glass at Concordia University

A Literary Inquisition: How Novelist Steven Galloway Was Smeared as a Rapist, Even as the Case Against Him Collapsed

Notes From an Academic Paper Mill

Why Women Don’t Code

Race, Gender and Trump: Everything You Think You Know is Wrong

Explaining Monogamy to Vox

At this Portland Bakery, White Guilt Poisons the Batter

The High Price of Stale Grievances

Why Sam Harris—Not Ezra Klein—Is the One Making Space for People of Colour

Why Can’t a Woman be More Like a Man?

Jordan Peterson and the Failure of the Left

The Racism Treadmill

Libel of Jordan Peterson by the Forward—A Story of Journalistic Failure

Glamourising the ‘Childfree Life’ Ignores Reality for Most Childless Women

The Problem with Candace Owens

The Tragic Case of Alfie Evans

Kanye West and the Future of Black Conservatism

Steven Pinker: Counter-Enlightenment Convictions are ‘Surprisingly Resilient’

Sam Harris was Right; Ezra Klein Should Know Better

The Case for Sustainable Meat

Why Jordan B Peterson Appeals to Me (And I Am on the Left)

Why Do Men Rape?

Why They Hate Margaret Atwood

Britain’s Grooming Gang Crisis

Steven Pinker’s Counter-Counter-Enlightenment

The Psychology of Progressive Hostility

Damore, Diversity, and Disruption at PSU

Our Search for Meaning and the Dangers of Possession

Thinking Critically About Social Justice

The Peterson Principle: Intellectual Complexity and Journalistic Incompetence

Sex and STEM: Stubborn Facts and Stubborn Ideologies