The case in question is Barbara v. Trump. Where did it come from? In January of 2025, Trump signed Executive Order (EO) 14160, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” This EO denied birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants and temporary workers with legal visas. You might remember from grade school social studies that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that right to every child regardless of the status of their parents.

However, the issue of the controversy arises—at least in the elite, intellectual, and removed world of the Supreme Court—in the language (you probably forget) within the Fourteenth Amendment that states “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States...“ Nearly all federal judges that heard this case at the District level shot it down and quite conspicuously. Some even called it “blatantly unconstitutional” in their rulings. Where do conservatives and liberals come down on the matter? How should Gadflies come down on it?

Conservatives stood in Court to support Trump’s Executive Order. Pointing to history, the Solicitor General argued that the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment were primarily meant to give citizenship to recently freed slaves and their children. He also pointed out that most countries do not award citizenship merely for birth in their respective countries. The Solicitor then introduced selected historical commentary to suggest that temporary visitors or their kids were never intended to receive citizenship. Beyond history and commentary, he pointed the language in the Fourteenth Amendment that reads “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in order to insinuate that those without allegiance or domicile should be excluded from citizenship. Finally, he raised policy reasons that should bar citizens to advance the government’s position. Specifically, the Solicitor lamented that this would encourage “birth tourism” and create “a whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties to the United States.”

The Court took significant exception to some points offered by the government. Justices scoffed at the notion that policy should control or even be considered in the realm of jurisprudence. This logic extended to the relatively minimal weight they seemed to put on the government’s use of congressional discussions surrounding these laws and references to legal standards from thousands of years ago. They also took notice of the fact that Congress enacted laws in the 1940s and 1950s that endorsed the original views of birthright citizenship.

The opponents of Trump’s Executive Order also had their chance to speak and they did vociferously. Their main argument against the EO is that the Constitution plainly allows citizenship due to birth inside America. It was what Congress passed in 1868 (and meant to overturn Dred Scott v. Sandford) and reaffirmed in the case that ruled on the matter squarely in 1898, United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Responding to the government’s case, opponents dismissed the byzantine logic of the Solicitor and referred the Justices back to the bright line rule of the constitution: people born here are citizens. Finally, they agreed with policy considerations mentioned by some Justices themselves. Particularly, they doubted that this citizenship stance could be enforced practically. It would require women to show papers and prove citizenship right after giving birth and they opined that that would be impossible and perverse. With the debacle in Minnesota just a few months ago, does anyone want ICE roaming hospitals and harassing new mothers?

The Gadflies among you might note some interesting and disturbing things after perusing this legal battle. First, where have all the conservative textualists gone? These are the same group of people that used to decry arguments outside of the plain text of the statutory or constitutional language in controversy including other countries’ standards of laws, congressional testimony, or policy considerations. Second, the hypocrisy of conservatives and others supporting this EO bely their intentions. They are not attempting to protect American citizenship so much as they are trying to exclude certain groups from it. Third, this is not the first time this has happened.

American history is littered with despicable individuals and groups who have sprung up at various times to attack foreigners on the back of racist, nativist intentions covered in the sheep’s clothing of heritage and security concerns: Know Nothing Party (attacking the Irish), Chinese Exclusion Act (attacking, predictably, the Chinese), Ku Klux Klan (attacking African Americans, Jewish, Catholic, and any other person that was not crazy enough to put on a hood and ride around the country like a lunatic).

This is just a pile on of an unfavorable and unfortunate group. More than mere bullying, it has the tinge of racism too. One is reminded of the Willy Horton ads from the 1980s by the way that this EO and its supporters talk about whom they are trying to keep citizenship from and why.

Also, it is pure hypocrisy. If you take a gander at any of the people endorsing it-Trump, the Solicitor General, leading Congressional figures-all of them are from groups that were previously feared and barred from entering the United States. Have we forgotten our history? Maybe we have because we are clearly repeating our mistakes. Have we forgotten our values? Maybe we have because we used to be a “Big Brother” country shining a light of freedom across the globe inviting the poor huddles masses from anywhere to enter always.

Now, it seems that our leaders are trying to make American citizenship as exclusive as a country club membership. America is remarkable for the opposite reasons: open, inclusive, confident, and optimistic. We take pride in being the melting pot for the world. We let all people jump in and add their lives to the mystical recipe of American society. Let us not limit that experience and our exceptionalism out of racist and nativists fears. The broad shoulders we let the world jump on-especially those otherized groups shunned by the rest of society-makes us stronger, not weaker. The weird, oppressed, and degraded groups that followed the promise of liberty we beamed through their lives and showed up at our shores seeking a better life adds to the brilliance of our exceptional legacy. They always have.

How can we claim to be the land of the free and the home of the brave if we lead our lives blinded by fear and racism. Let us not fall into the shadows of doubt and despair but raise our heads high and step into the light of our true American character to find our way forward.

The Supreme Court will decide Barbara v. Trump later this summer.

There are some films you want to see, and some films you feel you should see. Then there’s Eddington. It was a cinematic root canal I was dreading, but couldn’t stop watching once it started drilling. Writer-director Ari Aster did it again: he turned modern American despair into a work of art so queasy, compelling, and darkly funny that you can’t look away, even as your sanity starts to unravel like a loose sweater thread.

I’ve been thinking about Eddington since I saw it last November. Not occasionally, in the passive background-hum way you think about a film you enjoyed—I mean thinking about it. It colonized a corner of my brain and set up camp there. So when the 98th Academy Award nominations dropped earlier this year and Eddington wasn’t on the list anywhere (not a single category, not even a crumb thrown in the direction of Joaquin Phoenix’s genuinely unnerving performance), I made a sound I typically reserve for stepping on a Lego barefoot in the dark.

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Jesse James was born in Missouri to slaveholding parents. The larger community he grew up in also sympathized with this unholy institution. As he entered his teenage years, the dawn of the Civil War arose, and the debate over whether to allow slavery spread across his homeland. The James family was decidedly pro-slavery. However, nothing really establishes Jesse’s concern for the secessionist cause until he and his family were harassed and attacked by Union forces. This led Jesse to jump into the Southern guerrilla camps and launch various assaults on Northern armies. He also took part in atrocities himself, including the famous Centralia Massacre of 1864. Like claims he made later in life, objective observers found it difficult to separate his complaints from his own acts of violence.

Following the war, James and his brother, Frank, formed various gangs and began attacking and robbing trains, banks, and other establishments, some tied to former Union leaders. Historians even surmise that they probably conspired and executed the first daylight robbery of an American bank, Clay County Savings Association, on February 13, 1866. Their assaults in general featured violent acts on innocent bystanders as well as a wave of terrorism across the affected areas.

As his notoriety emerged, and was aided by political letters he wrote to prominent newspapers and the people running those papers (especially the Kansas City Times), many began to see this bandit on the run as a Robin Hood figure. Yet, historians point out substantial fallacies in that comparison because Jesse robbed small, local establishments, did not distribute the proceeds beyond his cadre of criminals, and typically involved reckless violence.

While some continued to admire Jesse James, state and federal authorities did not. They posted bounties for his capture. They sent forces to bring him to justice. This drove the James gang on the run for the better part of ten years from Missouri to Texas, Minnesota to Iowa, Mississippi to West Virginia, and all sorts of other places in the United States. Along the way, Jesse and his brother lost most of their fellow rebels in different skirmishes with local militia groups.

Eventually, they were forced by necessity to bring in conspirators with less experience and even less familiarity with the James brothers. Jesse began to doubt the faithfulness of his new gang members towards the end of the 1870s. He had good reason not to believe their criminal intentions. In fact, some of them (including Robert and Charley Ford, the former of whom would later be Jesse’s executioner) were already colluding with government authorities to bring him to justice. Several politicians and even many large corporations had offered rewards for their death or capture for a long time. Now, Jesse had men in his midst without loyalty to him and enticed by these offers.

On April 3, 1882, the Ford brothers were eating breakfast with Jesse James in their home in Missouri. James had invited Robert and Charley to live with him out of concerns for the safety of him and his family. Though over time, he began to suspect they were going to stab him in the back because they did not tell him another co-conspirator had confessed. Unfortunately, on the day in question, his fears had not yet reached a boiling point.

If they had, maybe Jesse James might have been more careful and watched his back. He did not. The trio were set to rob a bank on April 3rd. After breakfast, they rose to exit. Jesse went to clean some dust off a picture en route as he left. Fearing Jesse knew of their deceitfulness (and justifiably because the pair had been negotiating with Governor Crittenden about apprehending him for a reward), Robert drew his gun and fired into the back of the famous outlaw.

And that’s the way Jesse James has stayed ever since that day. His notorious life still erupts debate over its meaning, just like during the days in which he was alive. Today, on the anniversary of his death, we should reconsider that topic.

Join us tonight at 9 PM EST for Arcade Gadfly, our weekly trivia game. The game has four rounds of five questions each with increasing point values. They are designed to test even the smartest Flies among you. Fly in and see how well you stack up!

Here are the instructions:

· To play, purchase a subscription on Substack at w…

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The first thing to understand about women’s college sports is the problem was never talent, never effort, never even audience interest. The problem was belief. Specifically, the belief around who was valuable and who wasn’t.

For decades, women’s college sports existed inside a carefully constructed paradox. Games were good, athletes were exceptional, and fans who showed up were deeply loyal. However, the money, marketing, media coverage, and mythology that turn sports into big business all lagged behind, stuck in a different era. The excuse, or explanation if you want to call it that, was always this: women’s sports were growing. The word was everywhere: growing, emerging, building. Growth is a great excuse when you’re looking to justify not yet investing in something. Growth is later vs. not now. It means you can keep budgets small and expectations smaller.

So, we learned to live with the lie. We were told women’s sports were important, but not important enough for prime time. Women’s sports also weren’t important enough for major marketing campaigns, not important enough for the kind of infrastructure that turns college football and men’s basketball into billion-dollar cultural machines.

The system wasn’t saying women’s sports didn’t matter, it was saying they didn’t matter quite enough. That simple phrase, not quite enough, shaped everything.

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Looking around at the incredible esteem and inimitable adoration across the globe for Quentin, it is hard to imagine him as a lowly worker at a video store. Then again, does anyone remember video stores either? Anyway, it would not take long for this cinematic prodigy to eclipse the shadow of Hollywood. His earliest work signaled his talents, scripts for True Romance and Natural Born Killers. However, it was not until he took over and directed his own films when society could truly see his unique storytelling in action. In Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, he achieved success and notoriety at least in the indie scene. This propelled him to a bigger stage where he would perform more brilliantly and produce classics nobody saw coming.

Yet, his earlier movies illustrate themes and styles that he would later repeat and refine. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction both contain sharp, sophisticated dialogue but also dark comedy as well as dramatically violent climax scenes. These were not just new movies. They were new kinds of movies. They let viewers jump into them and have entirely different experiences that they could not have with other cinematic works. His point of view and his mechanical storytelling made him not just one of the best filmmakers of his generation, but the creator of a new category of films. This might not be better reflected than in the fact that whenever someone asks you to go see the new Quentin Tarantino movie with them, you can kind of expect what you’re going to get. Also, you know that you’re going to love it!

Upon the back of his initial (and largely cult) successes, Quentin launched a colossal career that would ultimately become his own brand. He crafted generation-defining hits. The Kill Bill series of movies was not liked, it was not admired, it was beloved. But he kept going: Django Unchained, Inglourious Basterds, The Hateful Eight, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (a personal favorite of yours truly), and many, many more.

Yet, along the way, he stayed true to his roots and the vision of filmmaking he articulated from the very start of this extraordinary career. His movies found the light of the silver screen that he himself emanated from, but they maintained his true colors. This can be particularly spotted in Jackie Brown and Death Proof. No one ever says Quentin Tarantino sold out to the crowds. Rather, the crowds bought into him.

And boy did they ever. His movies amassed billions of dollars in revenue. Most of them lately have made hundreds of millions. Ok, but what about critical success? Well, Quentin himself won Oscars for Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained. Tarantino’s movies also racked up more awards for Inglourious Basterds and The Hateful Eight. With an original voice and unique storytelling techniques, Quentin Tarantino brought us a host of new movies and wonderful experiences. Happy Birthday QT!

One of the key items they took up and debated over Saturday and Sunday was the SAFE Act. Gadfly City has covered this proposed legislation and topic in general as it snakes its way through the House. The Senate took up and debated the matter through the weekend and to great huff and puff. After our esteemed senators have exhausted their opinions and their lungs, they will likely vote on the matter in the coming weeks.

Remember, the federal government cannot tread into and legislate over state elections. While the feds can set minimum standards for voting, the provenance to hold, review, and determine elections largely arises from states’ rights. Therefore, this development in Congress suggests an extraordinary shift in the historical balance of our federal system. While putting aside the hypocritical nature of Republicans and conservatives attempting to have Big Government review states’ elections when they have typically decried such a federal invasion of state sovereignty, let us review their offered justifications for this proposed legislation.

Though critics deride this Act as a “show your papers” mandate, advocates say that it merely seeks to prohibit and prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections. They continue that this would increase the nation’s confidence in general over our electoral process and democratic system more broadly. Plus, they conclude that this Act could reduce fraud and interference, especially foreign collusion.

Putting aside the glaring contradiction that Republicans want these background checks of a sort before Americans can vote but do not want them before Americans can buy guns, critics raise other concerns. Primarily, as mentioned above, this is an unwarranted federal intervention that undoes the traditional system of the voting system, including voter eligibility supervision. Further, they dismiss the alleged problem of voter fraud. In their view, it is simply a boogeyman used to consolidate power and manipulate elections.

What are Gadflies left to think? Whom should we fly towards or attack and sting if they get too close? Well, maybe they are both wrong. Let us examine the party in power first. This whole effort to pass the Safe Act seems more like an act of political theatre. Designed to shock their foes and pump up their friends, this stunt is surely not connected to any legitimate effort to accomplish anything. What a terrible waste of time. As prices soar (despite Trump’s denial), as more pork comes out of D.C. than Chicago, as our country gets thrown into another war, our government is fixated on the dramedy of the Safe Act. This is not leadership. Where are our national figures that will stand up and act for their country, instead of themselves?

As for the minority, where are their alternatives? Main Street America does not see them coming down our block with any serious options to combat the garble trickling out of the swamps over in the District. Where is their spine? Just like during the debate on gun control legislation, when they again had public opinion on their side, all they seem to offer is a weak and tepid response before they eventually (and predictably) bemoan their failure.

One party is delusionally denying the facts and the other is feebly fatalistic over them. We should not wonder why solutions to our problems do not come from our government. They are not trying to save anything but their own political futures. We should not protect leaders that do not (even attempt to) address our concerns. Gadflies, when was the last time you thought of voter fraud? Have you ever connected any problem in your life to voter fraud? Speak up. Yell. Politicians work for you. You might want to tell them what their job is and maybe soon.

Forgive my theatrics, it does seem fitting for an article about modern AI though.

After all, AI tools have taken hold of innovation in health and science in many inspirational – and unsettling – ways. Nearly every major scientific journal has published papers on the use of AI in their specific field, from benchmarking studies to editorial ethics statements.

The truth is I don’t believe that AI is either a savior or future enslaver of humanity. As a health and science writer who has spent years writing about its pragmatic uses and flaws in those fields, I find I’m far more interested in how oddly human AI seems to be.

To that point, I would like to share my favorite example of some weird humanity at the center of this technology:

You’ve probably heard that AI models use artificial neural networks, like those in our brains, to compute vast amounts of information. But do you know how those neural networks – the foundational concept of AI technology – were developed in the first place?

It all started with a “quack” German physician by the name of Hans Berger, whose unusual contributions to medicine and the study of the human brain became surprisingly useful in the world of advanced computing.

Berger, who was born in the small German town of Neuses on May 21, 1873, was a textbook example of a medical gadfly. As a kid, he dreamed of becoming an astronomer and mathematician. Unfortunately, he failed to reach those academic goals, so instead of equations and stargazing, he joined the German cavalry when he was 19 years old.

But his fortunes did not improve. During a training exercise, Berger fell off his horse onto the ground directly in front of another horse who nearly trampled him to death. Berger lived, but this terrifying near-death experience would be a major turning point in his life – and potentially all our lives. Just not in the way you might expect.

After his fall and before he could write home, Berger received a letter from his father telling him that his sister had a sudden sense of dread that he had died, which might seem normal except that she was many miles away from Berger at the time and had no knowledge of his close brush with death-by-horse. Possibly even less normal, however, was Berger’s interpretation of this letter and his sister’s concern: he became convinced that humans possessed telepathy.

So Berger went back to school at the University of Jena to study psychiatry and neurology. In 1897, he received a medical degree and started working at the university’s clinic. This is where he began his experiments on the human brain to unlock its telepathic potential.

While Berger never found any evidence that telepathy was possible, he did make a notable discovery that would shape the future of medicine, science, and computational engineering.

By the early 1920s, Berger was considered by his German contemporaries to be a quack. Despite those doubters, Berger still managed to become an expert – as gadflies often do – in the emerging field of electrical activity in the human brain. Most importantly, he developed a way to measure it.

In his desperate and doomed efforts to discover telepathic power, Berger created the first ever electroencephalogram, more commonly known as an EEG, and this device would prove to be a critical tool in many groundbreaking discoveries, such as the existence of brainwaves.

By the mid-1930s, the EEG shifted from being a scientific oddity to being a critical clinical research tool for a wide range of conditions, including brain tumors, strokes, epileptic seizures, sleeping disorders, and even explorations of consciousness. It also aided in the discovery of billions of interconnected neurons in the brain, which came to be known as neural networks.

Enter Warren S. McCulloch, an American scientist and another gadfly of his time, who made notable contributions to medicine, engineering, and cybernetics, which is the study of self-regulating systems. Sounds familiar, right?

McCulloch was known as “an intellectual showman” who adopted numerous professional identities throughout his life, including philosopher, neurologist, neurophysiologist, neuropsychiatrist, engineer, and – just to be more well-rounded I guess, poet.

Despite the diverse range of interests, he claimed all those roles were in service of a single pursuit: understanding the relationship between the mind and the brain. It’s worth noting that both Berger and McCulloch made incredible contributions to the development of AI, while passionately pursuing answers to completely unrelated problems.

It might also be worth noting that neither man succeeded in finding their answer – the brain-mind connection remains a mystery and we still don’t have telepathic powers. So maybe give yourself a break; you aren’t failing, you’re just setting up humanity for a major technological leap… in the distant future.

Anyway, McCulloch eventually started collaborating with Walter Pitts, a logician, neuroscientist, and a real-life Will Hunting. The two men ended up working on computational models using mathematical algorithms based on something called threshold logic. With McCulloch’s research on brain activity and the nature of neurons and Pitts’ mastery of logic and computing, they started publishing papers that would establish the foundation for current AI models.

Eventually, they published a paper titled “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity,” which introduced for the very first time the idea of artificial neural networks in computing.

In that truly groundbreaking entry into the scientific literature, Pitts and McCulloch explained how artificial neural networks could compute information more effectively and efficiently – and exactly like the human brain. This paper was published in 1943 – roughly 80 years before ChatGPT 3.5 took the internet by storm.

Whether you think AI is a herald or harbinger, you can thank or curse three true gadflies of medical and scientific research. While McCulloch and Pitts were more respected and contributed more directly to this ever-evolving technology, it was the ideas and obsessions of a “quack” German doctor who made a critical, albeit unheralded, contribution to AI.

In a way, the very foundation of AI computing was built on the mad pursuits of an unusual scientist who just wanted to have a telepathic connection with his sister.

For me, knowing this part of its origin story makes AI technology feel a little more human – and a lot weirder. With DNA like that, it might not be so bad after all.

By Michael DePeau-Wilson, Health and Science Contributor

*Photo Credit: Medical Republic

One of the most inflammatory turning points arose out of the Dred Scott case of 1857. The Supreme Court held here that slaves had no standing to sue because they were not citizens. It also ruled that slavery could not be limited in federal lands, effectively undoing many of the compromises and progress that anti-slavery advocates had accomplished until that point. Plus, even more unsettling for the proponents of freedom, Dred Scott sued for his freedom in northern, free territory, but the Court decided that Southern rules applied. This disturbed many in the North and led them to scrutinize the unholy institution even more as they saw slavery creeping into their towns and homes against their will due to these legal developments. It was no longer an abstract and distant topic once the Court held that any state was a slave state once slaves entered into them, voluntarily or involuntarily, despite local rules (which is ironic because the idea of states’ rights is a Southern notion and was hypocritically mentioned as a rebuttal to civil rights immediately following the Civil War and 100 years later).

However, apart from their ideological or jurisdictional frustrations, many in the North were not viscerally or emotionally moved to the abolitionist cause until the publishing and distribution of maybe the greatest novel of its century, trailing only the Bible in sales during that 100-year period: Uncle Tom’s Cabin. On this day in history, March 20, 1852, it was published thanks to the remarkable mind and indelible words of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Let us consider her great work for a moment.

The story kicks off with tumult. A number of slaves were set to be traded away from what is described as a very benevolent slave-holding family in Kentucky. The sale was required after the financial misfortunes of their owner. The story from here splits in two. The first part focuses on the maid, Eliza, who takes her son and flees to Canada to prevent their separation. Her storyline follows the drama and fright of her flight to freedom, all wrapped in violence and panic like a fever dream.

The other side to this book follows the eponymous character, Uncle Tom, after he is removed from his wife and kids from the same plantation. He meanders his way through the South as Eliza searches for freedom in the North. Along the snake route Tom takes (read: is sent on through via the slave trade), we encounter unrepentant racists, racists in denial, and decent people here and there. In the winds of these degrading experiences, Tom resolutely stands for integrity, turns the other cheek to his tormentors, and forms decent bonds in indecent lands. He exits the stage of this story as a martyr, refusing to bend and bow to the demands of the damned, and setting an example for generations.

Many that read this book came away with a negative understanding of it. They believed it characterized African Americans as subservient children trying to please their white masters. These toxic views were underscored in countless minstrel shows and other works of art and across popular culture decades after the book was released. In fact, this is where the term “Uncle Tom” came from after all. To be sure, this only arose from a tragic misunderstanding of the story.

A more refined analysis of this novel would point out how white people engage with and learn from black people, especially with respect to Uncle Tom. Eventually, many white characters (illustrated as villains of a sort) come to see the error of their (racist) ways, largely due to these interactions. It would also highlight how most of the good qualities that Stowe points to are found pretty much solely (and soulfully) in slaves. She forges the archetype for anti-heroes long before they were regularly adopted formally into modern literature plots.

Also, beyond just a literal misreading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, what critics fail to realize, even if they can point to misguided people using this work to reinforce negative stereotypes, is that history demands consideration of other facts. For one thing, it also reinforced positive stereotypes of African Americans. It paints them as honest, loving, smart, dignified, and forgiving people.

Further, beyond the positive light it casts upon this dispossessed group in an individual sense, it also called a generation to stand and fight for them as a class of subjugated Americans. This inspired millions to the factions of freedom fomenting just before the Civil War where they were ignorant and distant before its publication. How did it attempt that? For one thing, it pointed to the shared traits of both sets of people. Then, it painfully illustrated the abuse and oppression they were presently experiencing.

Anyone following Eliza’s journey feels not only heartbreak but hope as well that she will make it to Canada. We come to root for her and hate the white villains hounding and haunting her trail. Unlike the animalistic and Sambo image that racist types drew of African Americans (and that still prevailed long after this era as seen in Black Boy by Richard Wright), Stowe portrayed them as similar to Northerners but in dire straits.

Here’s the thing too, and here’s what critics fundamentally ignore: it worked. Whereas many in the North lulled in a state of blissful ignorance regarding slaves prior to the distribution of her work, albeit maybe with some latent sympathies, now, no one could ignore or disagree with the battle they were called to enter after Stowe’s siren call spread across the country with every word she wrote.

As we all remember too, they did not. Millions took up arms, gave their lives, and inscribed their names onto the torch of liberty – the real trophy of humanity – to guarantee it would keep burning for generations to follow. Maybe that’s why President Lincoln only had one thing to say to Harriet Beecher Stowe after meeting her years later: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!” Maybe this story will remind you once again that the pen is mightier than the sword (yay, nerds) and that you should read this book. It’s a classic!

For four seasons, we have watched Harper and Yas grow up. Harper, brilliantly played by Myha’la, is whip-smart. She grew up in Binghamton, New York. She has an estranged twin, an estranged mother, no father in the picture. She didn’t graduate college. She fights her way into this male-dominated space and dominates. Sure, sometimes she engages in insider trading, and sure, sometimes (most of the time) she is hard, borderline cruel, in her aspirations, but she is really the heart of the show. Maybe even its moral compass, if a moral compass can exist in the grey area. Harper, for all her intelligence and strength, comes off as the villain for much of the show. There is no softness to her because she cannot allow herself to be soft. She has experienced significant trauma and heartache in her life. The glimpses we get of her past are depressing. She has been trying to prove her worth since she was born.

Yasmin, played by the incomparable Marisa Abela, on the other hand, seems to be Harper’s opposite. She grew up with means—with more than means, with a whole treasure chest. Her father, who we don’t meet until season two, is a publishing magnate. Her mother, who leaves at the end of season one, is an artist. She grew up with everything handed to her on a silver platter. The best schools, the best nannies, the best clothes, the best experiences. Her life drips of wealth and privilege. But still, we learn throughout that she has also experienced significant trauma. We learn that her father not only had many mistresses, but paid them all off. He has had her on a tight leash. She’s financially dependent on him. He’s used her and called it love. She tries to live life on her own terms. And it’s hard for her. And because she is beautiful, rich, soft-spoken, and behaves the way beautiful, rich, soft-spoken women are supposed to behave, she is painted as the show’s victim and the audience feels for her, wants her to pull herself out of the pit her father dug for her, do better, be better. Because what’s the point of being beautiful and rich if you can’t enjoy it?

For a while, Harper and Yasmin are friends. For a while, Harper and Yasmin are enemies. They are polar opposites. They shine a light on each other’s pitfalls. They try, each in their own ways, to help, but they are not equipped.

So that brings us to this latest season. Harper is leading her own firm. Yas is married to Sir Henry Muck, played by Kit Harington, a spoiled, depressed aristocrat who wants so badly to be good but just can’t. To pull him out of his depression, she gets him a job as the new CEO of a banking app called Tender. But, unfortunately, the CFO, Whitney (Max Minghella), has been weaving an intricate web of fraud. Harper’s team is onto Tender’s financial crimes and intends not only to expose it as money laundering and gambling, but to short it and make an incredible amount of money. These things are happening at the same time. Henry takes over the role of CEO after Harper has already put the wheels in motion to short the business.

When it all comes crashing down, Henry is the one left to take the blame. Yas finds a way to extricate herself from him, lay it all on his head, assuming no responsibility for the inner workings of the business and its inherent failings. His life is ruined, her life is spared. More than spared. She starts hosting parties to raise money for…whoever wants to raise money, evidently.

And here is where the audience is met with the reality that Yas is no victim, that Harper is no villain. To call the finale, which aired on March 1, 2026, explosive and shocking would be an understatement. The finale is entitled “both/and,” just like this article. Yas invites Harper to a fundraising dinner in Paris. There, she, the lone black woman in the room, is seated between two Nazis, forced to listen to another thinly-veiled Nazi fundraising for his Reform party (right-wing extremism) campaign. Later, Harper and Yas find themselves seated together. Harper comments on the extreme viewpoints of the people in the room which Yas calls “fresh ideas for a broken social contract.”

As if that wasn’t jarring enough, Harper (and the audience) notices young girls walking into the party, draping their bodies over much older men. Harper asks who they are. Yas says they’re there for a good time. She says they have no education, no prospects, that she pays them to attend her parties because “it’s for the gender balance of a good party. I mean, they make the whole thing visually memorable.”

But it doesn’t sit right with Harper and it doesn’t sit right with the audience, especially amid the horrific revelations coming out of the Epstein files in real time. Harper is uncomfortable. Then, Yasmin says: “Do you have any idea how this kind of access changes people’s lives? How it levels them up? I mean, she’d never have fucking seen Paris if it wasn’t for me. We both know that this world will own you if you don’t harden up.”

She says the quiet part out loud. She frames the exploitation of these young girls as opportunity, like she is somehow giving these girls a chance to rise up beyond their means. She says, “I lost my virginity at 14, okay? I became a woman as soon as I wanted someone. Besides, the world is not exploitation or opportunity. It’s both/and. That’s the world, Harper. Both/and. That’s maturity.”

It hits like a slap. In the real world, we are being inundated by the horrific things Ghislaine Maxwell did for Jeffrey Epstein. I have spent literal years wondering how any woman could do the things Maxwell did to other women. The way she promised a life of luxury and comfort and opportunity to girls still in high school, and in some cases, middle school, never fully explaining what they had to do to get it. Putting them directly in harm’s way for…what? To please rich men? How could someone…?

But with Yasmin’s character arc, we can see how. We see her in the first season, young and timid, trying to be anyone but a Kara-Hanani. Also trying to sexually control a man who very obviously loves her from the moment he sees her, which was the first red flag. In the second season, she verbally abuses a new girl fresh out of college to the discomfort of everyone. But, you reason with yourself, you tell yourself, well that’s all she knows. That’s how she was treated in her first year, she might think it’s a rite of passage. But then again, shouldn’t she know better? Then, in season three, we start to see her world unravel. Her father is dead and she is kind of the reason for it. He invited her and Harper onto his boat in Mallorca. It looked like an innocent party at first, then you start noticing all the young, scantily clad girls. Then he has sex with a stewardess in Yasmin’s bed, intending on Yasmin walking in on them. He relishes her discomfort. He jumps off the boat to make a spectacle. She doesn’t help, doesn’t tell anyone. He drowns. She has to pick up the pieces, harden herself, become someone new who the world won’t break.

Then, we meet her in season four, married to an aristocrat, but bored out of her mind, so she gets rid of him. She starts this venture planning parties for the rich and famous. She brings in “escorts,” to Harper’s horror. Back on the couch, Harper tries to reason with her, tell her that it’s not her, that she can leave. But Yas simply says, “I’m sorry, the world is showing you what it is. You said that to me. So, you metabolize hard feelings and become someone. I feel important here, do you see that? I’m necessary. I feel new. I feel less pain. That’s it.”

And that’s it. Harper can’t push Yasmin off this train. And we finally, jarringly, see that Yasmin is anything but a victim. Or maybe she was once but has learned all the wrong things from her own exploitation. Rather than trying to help girls in the very precarious positions her father put her in, she puts them in those positions herself. Unapologetically. Because it’s all she knows. She later tells one of the girls, first in French, then in English, “she is tossed by the waves, but she does not sink,” as if this is an affirmation for her tumultuous life.

Later, at the very end of the episode, Harper sits down for an interview. It goes like this:

And there you have it. At first, Industry makes it seem like, at its core, the story is about pitting these two young women from vastly different backgrounds against each other. That there is no world in which they can be mutually successful, supportive of each other’s strengths. And in a way, that’s true. Harper and Yasmin, in a perfect world, would help lift each other up. And Harper does try, but Yasmin is just too far gone. She subscribes to the belief that she is helping the girls she “hires” as escorts. She believes that she has to be hard and play this dangerous and deceitful and disgusting game to keep her head above water. She actively chooses to participate in the ongoing exploitation of young women. Whereas Harper steps into the role of truth-teller. She has seemingly changed for the better since we first met her, though she still occasionally engages in questionable financial practices, her moral compass remains true. Where Yasmin will do anything, good or bad, right or wrong, to get ahead and stay ahead, Harper is considering a different path. True, she will do what she can for prosperity and success…but we found her line this season.

And therein lies the existential question at the end of the show: does telling the truth and being right feel like vindication or loneliness? Can one get ahead in this world without tearing other people down, or will there always be casualties—corporeal or financial—along the way? Both/and.

Now I’m all caught up. Now I have to wait and see how their roads continue to diverge in the final season next year (I hope next year???). Can Yasmin redeem herself? Where will we find Harper? I’m dying to know.

What was that, by the way? Born out of the 2008 financial recession and the Wall Street Reform Act, the CFPB was empowered to detect and root out abuses in the consumer financial market industry. Since then, it has successfully cracked down on payday lenders, mortgage companies, and other shady market participants. It has done so to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

However, following Vought’s declaration, the momentum and good work that this organization manufactured has been brought to a halt. The CFPB has terminated roughly half of all actions since the new administration took over under President Donald Trump. These included serious cases against major players in the industry that many Americans have a lot of experience with, like Zelle. Yet, the Bureau has also announced the termination of cases against lesser-known parties sporadically in recent weeks and months. The regulatory body also short-circuited existing orders against parties already in the vice grip of the American government, such as Apple and U.S. Bank (read: they let them off the hook). Additionally, the CFPB has signaled that it will no longer focus any attention at all on alternative financial products and markets. Rather, they will focus their attention on traditional areas of fraud in the financial industry with admittedly lesser resources and concentration.

Maybe we should expect this as just yet another example of a starvation campaign designed to kill a regulatory body that political establishment forces did not like from the start. However, industry experts disagree. In a joint comment letter, an interesting alliance (the American Bankers Association and the Community Bankers Association) voiced opposition to CFPB limiting its own authority and supervisory responsibilities. Rather, they urged the Bureau to utilize the broad authority given to it under the Dodd-Frank Act to identify any “risk to customers” and prosecute cases against entities that perpetrate such harms, especially on retail customers.

The presentment of a white flag by the CFPB comes at an interesting crossroads in American history. Modern technology has brought financial products into the hands of a whole new class of Americans seemingly overnight. With this profound sense of possibility, many jumped into the market like hordes of people rushing west for land in the 1800s. Reports suggest the number of customers investing in the stock market has risen by approximately ten percent over the last ten years. This can be partially attributed to new forms of market access placed right in the palm of your hand (i.e., Robinhood) to every customer, regardless of sophistication level or income level. We can be sure that many of these newly-christened stock traders, crypto holders, and other Gordon Gekko-wannabes have little of either.

The collision of the CFPB’s decisions and these trends suggests an ominous future when we look at other storms building on the horizon. Specifically, many financial and technology companies have recently announced plans to incorporate historically alternative financial products (like cryptocurrencies and complementary protocols) into their lineup of offerings to the general public. One such item that many are working to offer is called Stablecoin. This is a new breed of cryptocurrency (with a lot of the same problems as the old ones) but different in that it is constructed to hold a certain value, at least that is how they are being discussed and possibly marketed. Creators of these so-called stablecoins hope to deliver on that advertised-stability (it’s right in the name!) by tying it to something else, like fiat currency, other cryptocurrencies, commodities, or algorithms. The promise of stablecoin offers the speed and convenience of crypto (i.e., Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, etc.) with the stability of traditional, fiat-backed currencies (i.e., United States Dollars, Euros, etc.).

Some of the biggest players in the financial and technology space have already signaled their intention to offer such products, including but not limited to Stripe, PayPal, Circle, and Tether. The interesting (and eventually disturbing) development here is the entrance into and imprimatur given by such well-respected players in the industry to a new and untested product. This is most easily and obviously seen through their insertion of the word stable into the coin’s name. Despite their best intentions, to be sure, they are letting a fox into every henhouse across America. How can you spot the wolf in sheep’s clothing here?

First, remember, these are derivative products and by their very nature prone to instability and manipulation belying the stability that’s injected into their names. If you cannot recall how much we should question the marketing and sale of these things (CDOs, MBSs) in general, please revisit the financial recession from almost twenty years ago. Relatedly, the underlying products they are derived from are historically and logically unstable. They fluctuate legitimately due to market forces—stocks go up and down. They also rise and fall because of corruption—pump and dump schemes or other garden-variety market collusion and impropriety. Watching a whole new class of unsophisticated customers being told that these are stable-coins is as surreal as hearing salesmen selling fixed waterbeds (the very thing beneath its surface belies its name and points to its contradiction and possible defects). What is this? A block of ice? It’s illogical to the point of insincerity. And remember, just because they promise you stability and put it in their name, doesn’t mean they can or will deliver on it. Funds, public companies, and exchange-traded financial products in general often miss their mark and don’t execute on their stated objective and we should look beyond their marketing to scrutinize their products and their underlying components to decide for ourselves objectively what they are offering and if they should be marketing it that way at all.

Second, security issues abound in stablecoins like any other crypto asset. Their issuers can be compromised by wrongdoers through hacking or other nefarious means, and they typically are. Their customers can be exploited via phishing or other attacks, and they frequently are. Where will these people run once their stablecoins flip out?

Third, aside from general market instability and historical manipulation pervasive in the financial industry, peculiar technological issues also poison the underlying stability promised to customers. Self-regulatory organizations like FINRA, which manages the broker-dealer profession, have been dealing with this problem for a long time. Algorithms (or algos as the tech bros call them) bust all the time. Their busts cause the American financial system and customers that are a part of it lots of time and money. It also forces regulatory and governmental actors to take their eyes off the real prize of targeting and catching serious financial criminals (including those using crypto to mask such crimes) to address these ever-present problems. Tech breaks all the time. Everyone that has ever used any kind of technology knows that. They will break here too, especially with their algos, and once they do, customers will have no recourse holding a stablecoin that is flipping out and losing value right in front of their eyes. One might wonder too how these problems will be put on steroids once institutional investors start trading stablecoins across all markets. Will these unstable coins poison every other coin we have in our collective piggy bank and the structure it all sits upon?

Possibly! We’ve noted historical, logical, marketing, technological, logistical and other problems that deconstruct any hope of stability in stablecoins. Also, following Vought’s pronouncement at the CFPB, there’s the disturbing reality awaiting misled customers once they discover there is no route to recovery. The force and effect on Main Street America could be devastating. Consider it was just a small segment of society trading toxic assets twenty years ago that brought our economy to a screeching halt and required everyday Americans to bail them out. But who will bail out Main Street once we all get in the game and place our hopes on these so-called stablecoins? For now, that’s why I’m against stablecoins. One might say I’m unstable, but after reading this, and my thoughts on the economy, aren’t you too?

We have all heard the song, but can anybody really sing along with “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel? The jingle gets stuck in your head, but it’s as inscrutable as a James Joyce novel. However, if you listen closely, it does mention some important historical events. While everyone surely understands the reference to the JFK assassination, listeners may not realize what Billy means when he sings about Dien Bien Phu. They should! On this day in 1954 in Dien Bien Phu, the Viet Minh launched a surprise attack and siege to take the area from the French. More than a battle, it would prove to be the first domino to fall in a cascade of rebellion.

Located in northwest Vietnam, Dien Bien Phu had been turned into a military base by the occupying French forces. This was not the first time that the Vietnamese had to deal with a foreign power in their midst. In fact, off and on for thousands of years, various countries had ruled their lands: China, Japan, and the French, among others over the ages. Now, in the early fifties, France was attempting to rebuff the growing nationalist movement spreading across the globe and hold onto Vietnam to maintain its empire.

They built a base in Dien Bien Phu to block entry to freedom fighters crossing over from Laos into Vietnam. They were coming to aid the rebel forces antagonizing the occupying French. The French presumed that guerrilla forces could not touch them because of the dense forest wall guarding the area and its distant location. They were mistaken. The Viet Minh coalition, organized by Ho Chi Minh in the early 1940s to achieve Vietnam’s independence, carried armaments and everything they needed for a siege on their backs, through the jungles, and over the mountains. When coalition forces finally unleashed their fury onto the French, they were surprised to say the least.

While the French had as many as ten thousand troops standing guard, Viet Minh strength easily outnumbered them. Plus, the rebels maintained the high ground. War raged back and forth between the two for months, and thousands and thousands of people died in the process. Eventually, the French realized they were surrounded and surrendered.

This defeat precipitated France’s retreat from the whole country. America soon followed in their footsteps and learned the hard way over the next decade and a half that they should not have entered either. Both misunderstood the nature of the Vietnamese resistance. Where America and France assumed that local rebels were instigating violence to push a communist ideology over the region, the Viet Minh were actually organizing around nationalistic principles. Ho Chi Minh himself adopted the language of our Founding Fathers to gain assistance after World War I and World War II before turning to communist countries for help only out of necessity. He recited specific parts of the Declaration of Independence in front of American military forces to really lay it on them that he wanted to work together. Unfortunately, the US did not get the message, so they went looking for help from China and the Soviet Union. This decision would haunt the US government.

Maybe this misunderstanding is what led to so many years of violence, death, and destruction. American history describes the folly of its actions in Southeast Asia as an example of a proxy war gone wrong: when two countries indirectly fight each other by supporting opposing sides of a battle. This is true. However, the corollary of this lesson is often ignored. We should listen to the rebels. We should understand their concerns. We should not cover our ears as we cover their lands with military force. We should not project our values and agenda onto our neighbors or distant lands. This will only breed confusion, just like listening to Billy Joel’s classic tune.

Her look was all her own, and that’s exactly the look she was going for.

Naomi Saalfield, better known as Nai Palm, is one of the most iconic front persons in music history.

Lead singer and guitarist for the already iconic band Hiatus Kaiyote, her physical aesthetic, playing style, and songwriting are all equally unique. I mean, her nickname is Nai Palm – she was an easy choice for the Gadfly music series.

Music That Don’t Fit in a Box

Though you may not guess it from looking at her, or from Hiatus Kaiyote’s album cover art, Nai Palm is a big fan of jazz chords. “Nakamarra”, the song that landed her first Grammy nomination, is almost exclusively made up of major 7th chords. (Sure, as far as jazz chords go, the major 7th is probably the most accessible. You might call it a “gateway chord”. But, it’s a tasty lil jazz chord nonetheless, and anyone who says otherwise is a dork.)

The hook for “Nakamarra” just goes back and forth between D Major 7th and C Major 7th a whole bunch– and goddamn, it’s catchy. But “Nakamarra” is what Nai Palm might call an accessible “gateway song” into the world of her totally unorthodox songwriting.

Hiatus Kaiyote’s first album, Tawk Tomahawk, kind of blew open the Neo-Soul genre back in 2013. This was partly due to the instrumentation– a combination of typical acoustic soul instruments (bass, drums, guitar, & keys) with psychedelic, futuristic synths, a Roland Space Echo, tons of layered background vocals, and even more layers of various hand percussion instruments.

It was also partly due to the band’s proggy edge: its constant experimentation with rhythm and weird time signatures, lots of seemingly random and sudden tonal shifts right in the middle of songs.

But, it was mostly due, in my opinion, to Nai Palm’s out-of-the-box songwriting style. As she’s stated in many interviews, she generally writes the basics of a song (the chord structure, lyrics, and vocal melodies) and then brings it to the band.

Listening to one of her songs feels like walking through a dream – it doesn’t move in a straight line, it’s constantly morphing, you never know where it will take you next. The lyrics are equally dreamy – poetic, impressionistic, what I’d call “spaced out” in the best way. The structures are asymmetrical, the chords are dense and don’t care about key signatures.

None of this is normal for Neo-Soul, or Soul, or R&B: the three genres the band is usually tossed into. So, they made their own genre: Future Soul. You don’t really get more outsider than that.

“People think we’re a punk aesthetic

because of how we look, but the music is soul —

and that contrast is part of who we are.”
~Nai Palm

The Look is the Feel

At the Grammys, as always, Nai Palm did her own makeup. She’s talked about how makeup artists tend not to understand her style. They end up making her look like a clown. Her heavy eyeliner, bold, colorful eyeshadow, and even bolder lipstick combined with her “punk” hairstyles, piercings, and tattoos have made her immediately identifiable.

Rather than creating a character or putting on a show, Nai Palm’s look is clearly genuine self-expression. The look, the songwriting, the singular vocal tone and playing style – they’re all a reflection of her spirit.

“The way that I adorn myself is an extension

of who I am: my sense of spirituality,

my sense of playfulness, my sense

of curiosity in the world.”

~Nai Palm

There is no doubt that Nai Palm’s undeniable talent sets her apart in a music industry overcome with predictability. But, to me, the thing that rings out most about her, the thing that truly gives her an edge, is her presence. Not just on stage, but in every video I’ve ever seen of her – she radiates beauty and positivity and love.

Even when she’s not smiling, she’s smiling. And in this historical moment when negativity is so often fetishized, when suggesting the world is a beautiful place can get you labeled as ‘ignorant’, Nai Palm’s unfaltering smile might be her biggest rebellion.

If you opened the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1972, you would have found homosexuality listed as a mental disorder. In 1973, if you opened the same, you wouldn’t find it. So, what changed?

Here’s the thing: nothing changed in those twelve months. Not biologically. There were no gene mutations, no new brain scans to reveal a hidden structure. There hadn’t been a pharmaceutical breakthrough rendering the category obsolete. No, the change came about because the American Psychiatric Association took a vote, which led to a page revision removing the diagnosis, retroactively rendering millions of people no longer sick.

In part, this moment can be seen as a triumph of science over prejudice. Unfortunately, there was also something more unsettling at play. This moment demonstrated how profoundly identity in the modern world is mediated by institutional classification.

If all it takes to change someone’s status from “mentally disordered” to “normal variation” is a simple committee vote, then the story we tell about psychology as a purely discovery-based enterprise becomes harder to sustain. It’s important to understand the DSM doesn’t simply describe human nature—it stabilizes it, drawing borders around behaviors to declare them medical. The DSM offers names that harden into identities.

We can’t look at the story of psychology over the last century as one of scientific refinement. We have to look at it for what it truly is: a story of classification, revision, and removal—a choreography between culture and clinic.

Classification: Turning Experience Into Condition

The DSM first came to be in 1952, part of a larger project within the psychiatry community, but quickly spread to broader society. The DSM was designed to bring coherence to psychiatry and standardization to post-war America. There needed to be a shared vocabulary among courts, hospitals, insurers, and researchers. Having a classification system solved that problem, creating the necessary language required for these systems to talk to each other.

When we name something as a disorder, we relocate it. Naming something that might previously have been described as eccentricity, sin, weakness, or temperament makes it medical. It acquires codes from the DSM. It becomes something a doctor can bill for. We name it so it can be studied, tracked, treated, and managed. But we can’t call this transformation trivial. Naming a disease or disorder changes how people see and understand themselves and others.

Beginning with Sigmund Freud’s influence, mid-century psychiatry framed sexuality, gender variance, and other behavior forms as developmental deviations. Over time, these theories became categories, leading to entries in the DSM, which filtered out to courts, schools, and families. Classification has a quiet force, making it feel explanatory rather than coercive.

Although it may change lives immeasurably, receiving a diagnosis can also bring a sense of relief. Having a concrete name for feelings can make it easier to figure out how not to feel that way. We have a name for what we are, what we have. In addition to legitimizing suffering, having the vocabulary for our feelings can help crystallize identity around pathology. The DSM isn’t merely a book. It is so much more—a cultural artifact with institutional backing. By naming something in the DSM, we help it enter broader society.

The Vote: When Categories Move

While it was voted on by APA members, removing homosexuality from the DSM didn’t come from anything happening in a lab. The decision to vote came from years of activism, internal debate, and shifting cultural norms. Psychiatrists were facing growing tension between the day’s research and moral assumptions made by broader society.

This is not to say there wasn’t significance to the vote made by the APA. There is no doubt about the significance of that vote, but it goes beyond what was removed from a book. This vote, and the years of research and debate that led to the vote, revealed that diagnostic categories are dynamic, rather than static. Yes, there needs to be data to back them up, but more importantly, there are cultural thresholds and institutional self-understanding.

By declassifying homosexuality as a disorder, psychiatry showed a capacity for correcting itself, while showing the boundary between illness and variation is moveable and ever-changing. By removing an entire category, the APA showed that identity categories are administrative, rather than geological formations.

Declassifying this didn’t dismantle the APA; it simply showed there was willingness to adjust their thought processes and beliefs.

Revision: Renaming Without Surrendering Structure

Transformation isn’t always dramatic. Transformation doesn’t always mean removing a category—there can be category refinement, too. Language is constantly changing. Emphasis shifts. But the key to it all is that the diagnosis remains.

In the fifth edition of the DSM, Gender Identity Disorder morphed to Gender Dysphoria, with the goal of focusing on distress rather than identity as a way of reducing stigma. This revision showed how and what words matter while preserving the ability to diagnose the disorder. Diagnostic language is important to maintain insurance coverage for medically necessary interventions.

While a diagnosis may be difficult to come to terms with, having one can open up resources that might not have been available prior to diagnosis. However, this is a double-edged sword of sorts: communities may want to resist pathologization while maintaining the practical necessity of having a concrete diagnosis in order to take advantage of available resources.

Thus, we need to be careful when making revisions. We have to adjust the language we use as we seek to maintain institutional access. We need to avoid ideology while preserving scientific credibility.

It is not just within gender where these patterns have been found. Autism expanded to be a spectrum, establishing new ways of supporting those on the spectrum. By renaming Multiple Personality Disorder to Dissociative Identity Disorder, hysteria dissipated to appear in other categories.

It should be noted that removal from the DSM is rare, while mutation is more common. The DSM isn’t getting smaller across the years; instead, we are revising how disorders and diagnoses are classified.

Removal: Erasure or Transformation?

When people speak of removing a diagnosis from the DSM, it’s never entirely erased—there will always be traces of that diagnosis. Hysteria, previously mostly applied to women, has simply been redistributed following its initial appearance in the DSM. The behaviors still exist; they just go by another name. The same applies to homosexuality. The stigma didn’t vanish overnight—it took years for cultural attitudes to change (and there will likely always be a stigma among some societal groups).

Removal can lead to liberation, but it can also lead to concealment in that it may be reclassified to a different category, changing, but not erasing, the stigma. Committees evaluate and re-evaluate criteria many times between editions of the DSM; revisions are made, decisions are recorded. To the APA, it is, simply, procedure.

The Loop: How Categories Create the People They Describe

The diagnostic categories within the DSM are not confined to psychiatrists’ offices or within clinics. The DSM is available to anyone who wishes to have access, but more than that, the diagnoses become mainstream. People see themselves in books, in films, in television shows. They meet people in real life and online who are like them, creating community where there previously wasn’t. Language develops around a diagnosis.

In doing this, a feedback loop is created: the condition is named, language is adopted, cases are generated, research develops based on those cases, refining the criteria, which in turn creates categoric stability.

Finding a list of symptoms or having a diagnosis can help cohere internal turmoil and shape perception. Getting a diagnosis makes temperament, stress, or confusion legible. Once we understand what’s happening, we can take steps to adjust or fix it. We no longer have to struggle—we can firmly say we have ADD or autism or whatever we have been diagnosed with. The language of disorder transforms into the language of self.

Institutional Neutrality and Cultural Drift

Today, psychology can be seen as empirical, data-driven, and neutral. Additionally, psychology and psychiatry are more methodically rigorous than before. This began with the DSM-III, which held greater diagnostic reliability and preferred observable criteria over theoretical speculation. However, reliability does not equal permanence.

We can’t ignore the boundary between disorder and difference. It is still porous, but there is more pressure for adjustment: cultural change, activism, insurance systems. Diagnostic language is referenced in courtrooms, schools use it to establish accommodations for their students. Classification is everywhere.

In modern society, stability is important. We want to know what counts as illness, what variation looks like, and what is considered normal. We can get that, albeit temporarily, stability from the DSM. However, the DSM’s revision history shows that stability is negotiated, not discovered. Diagnostic classification helps to manage ambiguity, while revision manages dissent and removal manages embarrassment.

The Present Tense

We live in a time when identity language proliferates faster than institutional consensus can consolidate it. Social media increases the spread of diagnostic terminology, making self-diagnosis more common. Communities form before professionals can render official judgments. Institutions lag behind culture. It is only once they catch up that they can respond and revise.

The deeper question is not whether any particular identity is real. We need to be asking how reality is filtered through institutional frameworks. When does difference morph into disorder? How does disorder become variation? Who gets to answer those questions, make those decisions?

The answers are never purely scientific. They are shaped by values, incentives, and historical context.

Psychology’s shifting models of identity do not prove that identity is fictitious. They demonstrate that identity in modern society is mediated—stabilized through classification, softened through revision, occasionally erased through removal.

If the last century has taught us anything, it is that the most stable feature of psychological identity is not the diagnoses themselves. It is the institutional impulse to name, manage, and reorganize them. The manual will be revised again. And with it, some of us.

Good writers borrow from the greats. Great writers borrow from the Bible. It may be because recasting modern battles as ancient ones brings our struggle into some mythical battlefield where we can find salvation. The icons before Bruce riffed off that pattern quite successfully: Pete Seeger, Aretha Franklin, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez, and one of my personal favorites, Billie Holiday.

Springsteen’s “We Take Care Of Our Own” does that too in ways that galvanize the masses in a spirit reminiscent of “We Shall Overcome” or “Blowing In The Wind.” This track marches towards themes found in the rest of the album including protesting injustices, especially those from corrupt leaders, organizing the oppressed, uniting rather than dividing, blue collar evangelizing, and criticizing big business. “We Take Care of Our Own” rocks these chords to the max and is most viscerally felt through these lyrics:

I’ve been knockin’ on the door that holds the throne

I’ve been lookin’ for the map that leads me home

I’ve been stumblin’ on good hearts turned to stone

The road of good intentions has gone dry as bone

We take care of our own

We take care of our own

Wherever this flag’s flown

This rhythm and noble vibe are put on high gear with another song in the album called “American Land.” The whole track rides like a souped up, modern take on “This Land is Your Land.” It kicks electric! You don’t have to listen closely to hear promises of a journey with others towards something legendary. The spirit of these lyrics jolts our hearts and awakens our conscience. We are transformed from “unfashioned creatures” to complete human beings with a place in this world. This change naturally endears us to the singer, but of course, we always loved the Boss.

As the album weaves in and out of stadium rock (”Land Of Hope And Dreams”) and acoustic sentimentality (”You’ve Got It”) or completely mesmerizing (”Rocky Ground”), its brilliant notes ring through our ears - thank goodness - and reinforce its central messages along the way. That is seen especially in “Easy Money.” The song puts populist themes front and center early on that reminds one of Occupy Wall Street. Take a look:

When your whole world comes tumbling down

And all them fat cats they just think it’s funny

Then, the song takes an interesting turn that John Dillinger might have appreciated as well as any other Robin Hood outlaw like him:

I got a Smith & Wesson .38

I got a hellfire? and I got me a taste

Got me a date on the far shore, it’s bright and sunny

I’m going on the town now looking for easy money

Again, Bruce is highlighting a folk hero that many people can understand, and he continues these ideas in his next song, “Jack Of All Trades.” This one paints an everyday hero trying to push back against similar foes. In the end, he expresses the frustration that many of us feel when we run smack into the wall of corporate monolithic power and feel powerless.

The banker man grows fat, the working man grows thin

It’s all happened before and it’ll happen again

So you use what you’ve got and you learn to make do

You take the old, you make it new

If I had me a gun, I’d find the bastards and shoot ‘em on sight

These storylines and the ideas embedded in them are most obviously displayed in “Death to My Hometown.” This song takes it a step further though. It distinguishes modern villains from old ones. By doing this, Bruce suggests we update our idea of what it means to be a bad actor in today’s society. He does it well:

Send the robber barons straight to hell

The greedy thieves who came around

And ate the flesh of everything they found

Whose crimes have gone unpunished now

Who walk the streets as free men now

… Ah, they brought death to our hometown, boys

I imagine many communities across America have felt invaded and leveled by the companies (especially multinational corporations) and individuals Bruce targets in this anthem. Yet, he is not a rebel without a cause. He doesn’t just scream to be heard. Rather, like any leader, he guides us towards harmony and fairness by encouraging collective action to overcome social inequities - all wrapped in beautiful Irish beats.

I saved my favorite tune on this album for last. It would perfectly complement any Edgar Allan Poe story. Both are unmatched in their use of ominous imagery and superior storytelling, blending the visceral and supernatural in ways that make us soar through the pains of hell into the clouds of heaven. It is called “We Are Alive” and folks, I think that when you hear it, you’ll feel the same way yourself. Here is a part to focus on:

A voice cried I was killed in Maryland in 1877

When the railroad workers made their stand

Well, I was killed in 1963 one Sunday morning in Birmingham

Well, I died last year crossing the southern desert

My children left behind in San Pablo

Well, they’ve left our bodies here to rot

The initial two lines reference a railroad strike that ended in violence and death of about a dozen workers. The next part mentions the infamous 16th Street Baptist Church bombing which saw the killing of four little girls at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. Finally, the last part tells of the migrants leaving behind their families, crossing deserts, and coming to America in search of freedom and a new life.

He is singing for the lowest among us who cannot sing for themselves and maybe because they are the ones most subjugated and dispossessed of their humanity. Then, Bruce threads all these specific events together for us so we can understand our role and the consequences at stake in the context of the larger story:

We are alive

Oh, and though we lie alone here in the dark

Our souls will rise to carry the fire and light the spark

To fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart

Wrecking Ball has the glitz and glamour of rock songs like “American Land” and “Shackled and Drawn,” but “We Are Alive” mixes beauty and history with a call to arms in a way that reminds me of “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” mixed with “If I Ever Leave This World Alive.” Again, as seen in the last line, he reminds us that our road to redemption should not be endeavored alone.

For so long, I really only listened to a few songs on this album when I worked out. However, as I looked a little deeper, or looked at it a little differently really, I found a diamond within my reach in this album, and I hope you are as lucky as me to find it yourself one day. Happy early St. Patrick’s Day, my funny little flies. And don’t ever forget, as I heard somewhere one time, wherever you go, there are people that are Irish, or there are people that want to be. None others.

-Billy O’Brien

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Here’s my proposition: I’m going to make the case that Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976) is not merely a great film; it’s a prophecy. And not the vague, Nostradamus-in-a-cold-sweat kind of prophecy either. I mean the specific, uncomfortable, almost surgical kind, where you watch a fifty-year-old movie and feel the creeping suspicion that screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky (who won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar) had a time machine and didn’t tell anyone. So let me walk you through what Network is, what it means, and why, in 2026, it hits harder than ever.

Network follows the fictional UBS television network, a struggling fourth-place broadcaster hemorrhaging ratings and dignity in equal measure. When veteran news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch, in a performance for the ages) is fired after decades on air, he announces on live television that he will kill himself on the broadcast the following week. What happens next is not a mental health intervention. It’s a programming opportunity that presaged infotainment and tabloid television.

Network exec Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway, who won the Best Actress Oscar) sees Beale’s breakdown not as a crisis but as content. She’s a woman so consumed by ratings that she experiences what can only be described as genuine arousal at the prospect of unhinged must-see TV. Max Schumacher (William Holden), the old-guard news division president and Diana’s lover, is the film’s moral compass, which means, of course, that he is completely powerless. He watches the institution he built be devoured, consumed, and shat out by the machine Diana represents.

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The “I’m mad as hell” sequence is the obvious starting point for the film’s most enduring appeal, and it earns its reputation. Beale, this shattered, rain-soaked, pajama-clad man, leans into the camera and tells his audience to open their windows and scream their frustration into the night—and they do. Millions of Americans throw open their windows and howl. It is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying, and Finch plays it like a tent-revival preacher who has lost his faith but not his fire. The staging is crucial: Lumet lights Beale from below, frames him with biblical grandeur, and transforms a nervous breakdown into an act of evangelism. He’s not a newsman anymore. He’s no longer suicidal. He’s been given his own primetime slot. “The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves,” UBS calls him. The show puts him in church-like staging, mixes his political rage with spiritual imagery, and sells it all as entertainment. Sound familiar?

Worth noting: Beale delivers his generation-defining, nation-rousing call to arms while visibly wearing his pajamas under that soaked overcoat. Lumet and costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge weren’t being sloppy; they were being precise. This man is unraveling in real time, and his wardrobe confirms it. What’s remarkable is that in 1976, a grown man in pajamas on national television read as a symbol of psychological collapse. Today, it’s just Wednesday at the airport. Or Walmart. Or, increasingly, everywhere. Beale was ahead of the curve there, too: he predicted not only our media landscape but apparently our entire relationship with getting dressed. Peter Finch, who died of a heart attack a few months after filming (some say the rigorous role—as well as Lumet’s 20-day shooting schedule—did him in), was posthumously awarded Best Actor at the Oscars in 1977.

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Film buffs still talk about Beatrice Straight as Louise Schumacher, Max’s wife, who gets approximately five minutes of screen time and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (one of the shortest winning performances in Oscar history). When Max confesses his affair with the much-younger Diana, Louise doesn’t collapse. She burns. Straight delivers grief and fury with such concentrated precision that the scene feels like watching someone press their thumb directly onto an open nerve. It’s the kind of acting that makes you set down your popcorn.

Beyond that, Network is a full ensemble of corruption.

There’s Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), the corporate shark installing himself in the news division on behalf of the parent conglomerate. And there’s Laureen Hobbs (Marlene Warfield), leader of the Ecumenical Liberation Army, a radical revolutionary group that UBS contracts, letting them negotiate the terms of their own violent guerrilla television show. In 1976, that was satire. Today, you can find real-time death livestreams garnering billions of views on social media before the police even show up (assuming they haven’t been defunded).

And corporate overlord Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), the billionaire who summons Beale, is like a deity calling down a prophet for a very different sermon. It’s about how the true religion of the modern world is not nations, not peoples, not God. It is commerce. Corporations. Capital flows. “The world is a business,” Jensen tells him, and Beatty plays it not as villainy but as sincere belief, which is so much worse. It’s three and a half minutes of the most chilling corporate theology ever put on film. Even more impressive, it was done in one take.

Here are a few examples of how Chayefsky earns his prophet’s mantle.

· In 1974, Florida news anchor Christine Chubbuck died by suicide on live television. Chayefsky wove that real tragedy into his fictional architecture. Today, we have normalized watching people self-destruct in public so thoroughly that it barely blips as news.

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· In 1975, President Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts within seventeen days. The film captures the unease of a country that felt genuinely unmoored, politically volatile, and living in what felt like a tinderbox moment. Fifty years later, the parallels to attempts on Donald Trump’s life are not subtle. The country remains a place where political violence simmers, and where, critically, that violence becomes content.

· Beale rails against Arab oil money manipulating American energy and economy. He warns that billionaires, not governments, pull the levers of daily life, including what you pay at the gas pump. He says, with devastating accuracy, that the American public has been pacified: give them their television and their couch and they’ll swallow anything. In an era of algorithmic content and infinite scroll, that observation has not aged—it has evolved. Despite all our advances, we didn’t prove him wrong. We just upgraded the couch.

· The revolutionary group with their network television contract? That’s every polarizing ideological faction that has leveraged media visibility into cultural power, from any angle of the political spectrum. Outrage, it turns out, is evergreen. Extremely monetizable, too.

· And everyone’s fate in Network—Beale’s, Max’s, Diana’s—is determined entirely by ratings. Not merit. Not truth. Ratings. Replace that word with “engagement,” “followers,” or “algorithm performance,” and you have described 2026 without changing a single idea. The metrics have evolved. The emptiness behind them has not.

Journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849 that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Paddy Chayefsky wrote Network in 1976 and essentially said: don’t worry, I’ll prove it. Fifty years on, this film doesn’t feel like history. Which is, of course, exactly the point.

In other words, it’s not typically treated as an opportunity to be condescending about the people not in the room with you.

How I wish the U.S. men’s gold-winning Olympic hockey team locker room looked more like Ted Lasso’s AFC Richmond soccer team’s on the hit Apple TV show. In that (unfortunately) fictional locker room, they generally try to support each other in their sport and in their personal lives – sort of how I described women’s locker rooms. Instead, we saw the team laugh along with President Trump about the apparently ridiculous prospect of inviting the U.S. women’s Olympic hockey team -- who also won a gold medal -- to Washington for a special congratulations.

Let’s be clear about that: the women’s team achieved exactly the same thing as the men’s team, but for some reason it was hilarious that Trump would treat them the same as the men’s team. Why is that?

As women athletes know all too well, their performance is treated as less than men’s in every way. Spectator engagement is often lower, media attention is lower, and excellence is overlooked or diminished. Yet, this year at the Winter Olympics in Milan, women won six gold medals to the men’s four, and 17 overall (compared to 12 for men). And women winning more gold medals is not a fluke; it’s a trend.

Of course not everyone on the men’s team laughed. Some cheered for the women in the moment, and the men’s team has been very supportive of the women’s team -- publicly.

In an interview after the ordeal, Jack Hughes, who scored the winning goal for the U.S., said, “People are so negative about things. I think everyone in that locker room knows how much we support [the women’s team], how proud we are of them. The same way we feel about them, they feel about us.”

It’s wonderful to see members of the men’s team supporting the women’s team. However, solving misogyny is going to take so much more than saying nice things to the press. Most people, Trump excluded, would not openly sneer at women’s achievements, and yet we still live in a society where women are subjugated. That’s why women everywhere were so angry when they saw the locker room video. It confirmed what we already knew to be true: most men might be nice to our faces, but we either can’t trust them to speak up for us, or to be truthful with us. It feels as if most of them really do think we deserve less.

Women are paid less than men; reproductive rights that dramatically and permanently alter our entire lives are denied; our voting rights are at risk; our health is, at best, disregarded and at worst deliberately ignored; and we are still judged more by what we look like rather than what we have to say or what we can do – on the ice, as well as in an office or factory or assembly line. That’s just the start. It’s no wonder that, according to the UN, 50,000 girls and women worldwide were killed by an intimate partner in 2024. We are seen as less practically everywhere you look.

The efforts of feminists worldwide have helped to turn the tide, but the job won’t be complete until men refuse to accept this kind of “locker room talk” every single time. As long as they allow each other to diminish women, we are forced to continue to live in a society that believes it’s what we deserve.

Rather than a few relatively quiet cheers for the women’s team while Trump was on the line, what if Hughes and others had spoken up in that moment? What if they’d stopped the President and said, “We’re so proud of the women’s team, too. They accomplished just as much as we did, and we hope we can celebrate together.”

What if?

Monica Cardenas writes the Bad Mothers Substack and hosts its sister podcast.

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Like most good things, the inception of this debauched holiday arose from the hearts and minds of the city’s youth population. Returning from France, many young adults bristled at New Orleans’ prohibition on public celebration, private balls, and masks. Their time abroad in France engendered an interest and appreciation for these cultural activities. However, these parties and their accompanying costumes had been banned in New Orleans since before the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

Over time, many in New Orleans got fed up with this policy. They sought to bring back the public celebrations and revelry associated with Mardi Gras. Ignoring local bans on celebrating the holiday, lots of them took to the streets in what would become the all too familiar garb and spirit to hail the start of Mardi Gras on this day in 1827. The party took off from there as well as its place in the cultural legacy of America.

Today, millions of people travel to New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras. Looking down on the town from above, you can see thousands and thousands of people crammed in on every block. Some of the largest events, including parades, regularly draw hundreds of thousands of people excited to get their freak on and more. If that weren’t enough, the holiday brings in hundreds of millions of dollars to the local economy each year.

Today, we may rightfully look back on them as the original founders of the “let’s get weird” philosophy of life. We should honor their methods of shedding conventions with respect to clothing and comportment. While we reenact their bacchanalia every February, we carry their sense of independence and affection for strangeness always, especially those among us who only feel at home in the world – be it in New Orleans or anywhere for that matter – once we put on a costume and embrace a new identity. So, today of all days, try and have a little weird fun.

If you like this, follow me on Bluesky for more musings @chibillyob.bsky.social.

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