The Top 5: Religious healthcare, TikTok therapists, villain arcs, memories, Albuquerque's homeless policies
Welcome to the latest edition of the Top 5 articles we’ve read this week. Each week, we read dozens of articles in the hope we find essays and reporting that speak to big ideas, trends, future looks, and incredible human stories. We hope you enjoy our list, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation!
We have a special guest on the podcast this week — Chris Crawford of Protect Democracy (and founding board member of the Center for Christianity and Public Life!) — who explains what we mean when we say “free and fair election” and “election integrity” with the presidential election less than 6 months away. We also ask him — what’s changed or improved since the running of the 2020 election? How could a Christian get involved in the election process? Episode 108: Free and fair elections, election integrity, & 2024 with Chris Crawford of Protect Democracy
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The Top 5 articles for your week:
“God’s Doctors” (The Atlantic)
Because if you only have time for one of our featured essays this week, let it be this one from photographer Matt Eich and journalist Bryce Covert. It concerns how faith-based nonprofits and volunteers are stepping into the gap providing healthcare to those without financial access across Virginia.
Bryant doesn’t think the point of being a Christian is just to get to heaven after death, but to see the kingdom of heaven on Earth, too. She’s realized that “giving these people a new community, a healthy community, is one of the best things we can do for them,” she said. “We all need each other. That’s just how we’re created.”
“When TikTok therapy is more lucrative than seeing clients” (Vox)
Because Rebecca Jennings chronicles the rise of hugely popular therapists and counselors on TikTok.
At a time when people may be getting fatigued with therapy, it seems like some therapists don’t want to do it anymore, either. Hence the sheer number of them who are spending less time seeing clients and more time producing content in the hopes that millions of people will see it. While most full-time therapists whose rates are set by insurance companies max out at around $100,000 per year, therapists who are full- or part-time content creators can make much, much more.
“Albuquerque Is Throwing Out the Belongings of Homeless People, Violating City Policy” (Pro Publica)
Because Nicole Santa Cruz looks at how “[Albuquerque] has violated a court order and its own policies by discarding the personal property of thousands of homeless people, who have lost medications, birth certificates, IDs, treasured family photos and the ashes of loved ones.”
“How the Language of TV is Influencing How We See Ourselves” (New York Times Magazine)
Because Kim Hew-Low recognizes a pervasive trend in online culture.
There is a certain permeability between art and life, and pleasure in perceiving it: We take satisfaction in recognizing our lives in onscreen plot lines, as we thrill to real-life moments that feel “just like a movie.” But TikTok’s video-based format has wildly amplified the impulse to collapse the distance between the two and imagine yourself as an onscreen character. The app’s tools make it easy for people to film and edit footage of themselves, narrating their own stories in breezy narrative beats — making life look like an episode of television. The result is a perfect ecosystem for watching and being watched, where once-passive audiences are encouraged to see themselves as the writers, directors and stars of their own motion pictures.
“How to Live Forever” (New Yorker)
Because David Owen argues in favor of writing down our memories.
Einstein wrote that “the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” He presumably didn’t mean that, after death, he expected to travel back and forth through his life, as though riffling the pages of a book. Or maybe he did. At any rate, his statement hints at a better strategy, one that I myself have practiced for decades. The simplest, most foolproof way to extend life is to do so backward, by adding years in reverse.