Check out these recent articles from around the web:

America Unraveled by Ian Marcus Corbin: “In the meantime, we also need renewed visions in our communities — our churches, families, neighborhoods and schools. Like MLK in Birmingham jail, Christ in the desert, Thoreau at Walden Pond or Dostoevsky in Siberia, we need leaders who can step back from the toss and turn of daily life and our virulent politics and ask afresh who we are and what we care about together, and answer in a way that makes our belongings feel strong, deeply bonded. None of this will be simple or quick. But it is the task handed to us by our moment in history, the only way to draw our season of precarity and whack-a-mole crisis management to a close and to inaugurate a period of civic creativity, solidarity and genuine, shared growth.”

Why Parents Struggle So Much in the World’s Richest Country by Stephanie Murray: “The job of raising children is simply different in the U.S. It comes with fewer assurances and requires navigating a level of precarity that is unique in the developed world.”

The Struggle for Meaningful Work by Elizabeth Anderson: “Democratizing work is a powerful way to promote democratic skills and dispositions, demonstrate that democracy can respond to ordinary people’s concerns, and thereby strengthen democracy at the state level. Most people want meaningful work as understood in the progressive work ethic tradition: work that affords a means for a person to exercise their agency and skill in the course of helping other people. Democratizing work, through workers’ cooperatives and enhanced models of codetermination, is a promising way to secure meaningful work for all.”

Polyamory, the Ruling Class’s Latest Fad by Tyler Austin Harper: “We might call this turbocharged version of authenticity culture “therapeutic libertarianism”: the belief that self-improvement is the ultimate goal of life, and that no formal or informal constraints—whether imposed by states, faith systems, or other people—should impede each of us from achieving personal growth. This attitude is therapeutic because it is invariably couched in self-help babble. And it is libertarian not only because it makes a cult out of personal freedom, but because it applies market logic to human beings. We are all our own start-ups. We must all adopt a pro-growth mindset for our personhood and deregulate our desires. We must all assess and reassess our own “fulfillment,” a kind of psychological Gross Domestic Product, on a near-constant basis. And like the GDP, our fulfillment must always increase.”

Why Don’t We Hang Out Anymore? by Jancee Dunn: “It’s well-documented that friendships improve our physical and mental health and are vital for well-being. But I was inspired to make it even easier to see friends after reading “Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time” by Sheila Liming, which argues that unstructured time with others can improve our relationships.”

Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out by Derek Thompson: “If Putnam felt the first raindrops of an antisocial revolution in America, the downpour is fully here, and we’re all getting washed away in the flood. From 2003 to 2022, American men reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent. Boys and girls ages 15 to 19 reduced their weekly social hangouts by more than three hours a week. In short, there is no statistical record of any other period in U.S. history when people have spent more time on their own.”

Dobbs Didn’t Reduce Abortions. The Anti-Abortion Movement Needs a New Vision. by Daniel K. Williams: “Abortion opponents should demand that lawmakers at both the state and national levels prove their pro-life bona fides by supporting measures such as these that will offer positive alternatives to abortion — just as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other abortion opponents (including myself) joined with supporters of abortion rights in pushing for protections for pregnant workers.”

Andre Braugher played the best Catholic character on TV by John Dougherty: “When I think of Andre Braugher, I think of Detective Frank Pembleton. The prolific actor, who passed away this week at the age of 61, played many men in uniform over the years—most recently the erudite and eminently meme-able Captain Raymond Holt on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” But Pembleton, whom Braugher portrayed across six seasons of NBC’s long-running “Homicide: Life on the Street,” wasn’t just a cop. He was the best Catholic character in television history.”

Mom laments the stress of kids’ travel sports: ‘There’s no fun time anymore’ by Arielle Tschinkel: “If your evening and weekend hours are largely spent schlepping your kids and all their sports gear to far-flung locations, one mom is with you, lamenting the loss of rec sports. TikTok mom Alli is so over the ultra-competitive nature of travel sports, arguing that it eliminates fun and free time for kids who just want to spend some time playing with their pals.”

Herring fishermen, Justice Kagan, truth and Cardinal McElroy by Michael Sean Winters: “Gorsuch and his libertarian friends think unlimited human freedom, and the invisible hand of the market, is the best resolution of any and all problems. As Catholics, nothing is more offensive to our intellectual tradition than libertarianism.”

How to Save a Sad, Lonely, Angry and Mean Society by David Brooks: “I’d argue that we have become so sad, lonely, angry and mean as a society in part because so many people have not been taught or don’t bother practicing to enter sympathetically into the minds of their fellow human beings. We’re overpoliticized while growing increasingly undermoralized, underspiritualized, undercultured.”