Ideas

Our Timeless Romance With Screwball Comedy

Born Out of the Great Depression, the Genre Reminds Us That Even in Hard Times There’s Laughter, Love, and Light

Ninety years ago, Columbia Pictures released a film that transformed the trajectory of American screen comedy.

Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night tells the story of spoiled Park Avenue heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert), who meets newspaper reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable) on a Greyhound bus in Miami. Ellie has just run away from her overbearing father, who disapproves of her recent elopement. Peter recognizes Ellie from the headlines and makes her an offer: He’ll help her return to New York to reunite with her husband if she gives him an …

by Olympia Kiriakou |

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California Keeps Repeating Its Own Election Lie

Spring Elections Aren’t Primaries. Let’s Stop Calling Them That

by Joe Mathews |

My fellow Californians, your government is lying to you. Without conscience or remorse. About two very important subjects: democracy and elections.

The lie is not new. It is 14 years old. …

Cowboy Boots Were Made for Everyone

For Over a Century and Half, the Footwear Has Carried the Story of a Nation

by Jackie Mansky |

“In these anxious days,” wrote Aaron Latham in the original Esquire article that inspired the movie Urban Cowboy, “some Americans have turned for salvation to God, others have turned to …

The Black Songwriter Who Took Nashville by Storm

Before Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” Won Song of the Year at the CMAs, Hit Maker Ted Jarrett’s Music Topped the Country Charts

by Robert M. Marovich |

Singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman made history last year when she became the first Black artist to receive the Country Music Association’s Song of the Year Award, after Luke Combs remade a …

The Road to Climate Hell Is Downhill—and Scenic

Death Valley’s Present Is a Window Into the Future

by Joe Mathews |

If the world really is going to hell, you should get your brakes checked. The ride is going to be very downhill.

I learned that lesson, among others, after my own …

Raging Against the Political Machine

The 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles Tells the Story of a City—and Nation—in Transition

by Ben Austin |

In 2000, I ended up in a cage outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in downtown Los Angeles wearing a dark suit, swimming against the current in a sea of …


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