The Conversation

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How Anti-ICE Organizing in Minnesota Reactivated Mutual Aid Networks Started After George Floyd’s Murder

PUBLISHED 2/23/2026 by

The residents of the  metropolitan area known as the Twin Cities—Minneapolis and Saint Paul—quickly came together to try to prevent their neighbors being caught up in ICE raids.  As well as monitoring ICE activities, block by block, people organized mutual aid for neighbors fearful of going out in case of immigration raids.

Daniel Cueto-Villalobos, a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota, who lives in southern Minneapolis and studies race, religion and social movements, tracks the neighborhood groups that have sprung into action in response to the ICE presence, back to mutual networks set up during the 2020 COVID pandemic, and in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

The Intensity and Perfectionism That Drive Olympic Athletes Also Put Them at High Risk for Eating Disorders

PUBLISHED 2/18/2026 by

Olympians—athletes at the top of their sport and in prime health—are idolized and often viewed as superhuman. These athletes spend their lives focusing on building physical strength through rigorous training and diets that are honed to provide the nutrients necessary to excel at their sport.

However, athletes are at considerable risk for eating disorders and having an unhealthy relationship with food and their bodies.

Rest in Power: Catherine O’Hara Lit Up Every Scene She Entered

PUBLISHED 2/2/2026 by

Catherine O’Hara—the beloved actor and comedian who died on Friday at the age of 71—occupied that rare position in contemporary screen culture: a comic actor, a cult figure and a mainstream star.

Her work spanned more than 50 years, from improv sketch comedy to Hollywood features and off-beat TV classics. Her beloved characters proved that comedy doesn’t require mockery; only commitment, timing and trust in character.

Her role as Moira Rose, the eccentric, ex-soap opera star in the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek, created by Eugene Levy and his son Dan, became O’Hara’s most significant late career move. Written for O’Hara’s unique talents, Moira was a larger-than-life character with a bizarre, unforgettable vocabulary, dramatic mood swings and a wardrobe that became nearly as famous as the character herself. Feminist media scholars have noted the rarity of such complex roles for older women, particularly in comedy, making O’Hara’s performance culturally significant.

Musk Isn’t Stopping Grok From Creating Explicit Photos of Minors Using AI. Here’s What Can Be Done.

PUBLISHED 1/12/2026 by

Since the end of December, X’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, has responded to many users’ requests to undress real people by turning photos of the people into sexually explicit material. After people began using the feature, the social platform company faced global scrutiny for enabling users to generate nonconsensual sexually explicit depictions of real people.

The Grok account has posted thousands of “nudified” and sexually suggestive images per hour. Even more disturbing, Grok has generated sexualized images and sexually explicit material of minors.

X’s response: Blame the platform’s users, not us.

RFK Jr. Wants to Scrutinize the Vaccine Schedule—But its Safety Record Is Already Decades Long

PUBLISHED 1/5/2026 by

The U.S. childhood immunization schedule, the grid of colored bars pediatricians share with parents, recommends a set of vaccines given from birth through adolescence to prevent a range of serious infections. The basic structure has been in place since 1995, when federal health officials and medical organizations first issued a unified national standard, though new vaccines have been added regularly as science advanced.

Vaccines on the childhood schedule have been tested in controlled trials involving millions of participants, and they are continuously monitored for safety after being rolled out. The schedule represents the accumulated knowledge of decades of research. It has made the diseases it targets so rare that many parents have never seen them.

But the schedule is now under scrutiny.

Six Ways Masculine Stereotypes Are Still Limiting Boys

PUBLISHED 11/24/2025 by

Rigid norms of manhood—based in manly confidence and toughness, emotional stoicism, disdain for femininity and dog-eat-dog banter—are influential among boys and young men.

Between one quarter and one half of boys and young men endorse these norms. Over half feel pressure from others to live up to them, believing most people expect them always to be confident, strong and tough.

These are some of the findings from a new Australian survey of adolescents aged 14-18 years, conducted by The Men’s Project at Jesuit Social Services.

In a climate of heightened concern about boys and young men and violent masculinity, this study provides invaluable data on boys’ and young men’s own views. This includes the pressures they feel to live up to stereotypical masculine norms and the profound impact of those beliefs.

Rest in Power: Jane Goodall, the Gentle Disrupter Whose Research on Chimpanzees Redefined What It Meant to Be Human

PUBLISHED 10/7/2025 by

To the public, she was a world-renowned scientist and icon. To me, she was Jane—my inspiring mentor and friend.

Goodall spoke of animals as having emotions and cultures, and in the case of chimps, communities that were almost tribal. She also named the chimps she observed, an unheard-of practice at the time, garnering ridicule from scientists who had traditionally numbered their research subjects.

Goodall was persuasive, powerful and determined, and she often advised me not to succumb to people’s criticisms. Her path to groundbreaking discoveries did not involve stepping on people or elbowing competitors aside.

How the Take It Down Act Tackles Nonconsensual Deepfake Porn—And How it Falls Short

PUBLISHED 5/16/2025 by | UPDATED 5/20/2025 at 12:51 P.M. PT

President Trump signed the Take It Down Act into law, a bipartisan bill that makes it a federal offense to share both real and digitally altered sexually explicit images of individuals online without their consent.

While the Take It Down Act offers a lifeline to victims of deepfake and revenge porn, critical blind spots, burdensome procedures, loopholes for offenders and a reactive framework threaten to undercut its promise.

Scientists Understood Physics of Climate Change in the 1800s—Thanks to a Woman Named Eunice Foote

PUBLISHED 3/31/2025 by

Long before the current political divide over climate change, and even before the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), an American scientist named Eunice Foote documented the underlying cause of today’s climate change crisis.

The year was 1856. Foote’s brief scientific paper was the first to describe the extraordinary power of carbon dioxide gas to absorb heat—the driving force of global warming.