6 curated picks from Vox's editor-in-chief

Hello! Welcome to the first edition of our newsletter, Vox Recommends. 

I’ll start by highlighting a piece that embodies Vox: exploring and highlighting emerging ideas to solve some of the biggest problems in our society. Rachel M. Cohen has written previously on America’s growing struggle with homelessness, capturing the nuance and complexity of the crisis with compassion. 

In her latest piece, she reports on another aspect of housing policy: a new effort by the federal government to see whether cash would help low-income tenants find and maintain affordable housing better than housing vouchers do. This initiative is partly inspired by policies the government deployed during the pandemic and the growth of successful universal basic income pilot programs. It will be interesting to watch how widespread they become and what long-term benefits they have.

I loved this piece simply because Vox’s mission is to help people gain a much deeper sense of the world we’re living in and, when we can, to help people live better lives. This article embodies that goal, and we’ll keep exploring solutions and ideas that chip away at the greatest of hurdles.

Some homeless people won’t go to shelters. Should they be left outside?

Continuing her coverage of America’s homelessness crisis, Rachel Cohen traveled to Portland, Maine, to report on the city’s growing homeless tent encampments and what can be done when homeless residents don’t want to go to shelters.

The backlash against Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, explained

In this smart piece about the controversy around the character letters actors Ashton Kutcher and Mila wrote for Danny Masterson’s sentencing for rape, Alex Abad-Santos looked beyond the controversy and talked to a legal expert to explore the questions: What is the point of character letters? Why do people write them, and what purpose do they serve? 

🎧 Seeing ourselves through darkness

In this episode of The Gray Area, host Sean Illing talked to philosopher Mariana Andressi about our darkest feelings — depression, pain, grief — and the pressure to always have more positive feelings. Why do we think dark emotions are inherently “bad” and light emotions are inherently “good”? What if we didn’t think that way? This episode challenged conventional thinking around positivity and offered a whole new way to think about our emotions. 

🎧 Blame Capitalism: Souring on the system

This is the first episode of a series from Today, Explained exploring how Americans came to blame capitalism for societal ills. Host Noel King traces how capitalism became so popular — and then how Americans began to turn on it. I’m very much looking forward to what comes next in this series.

📹 A fact-checked debate about euthanasia

Here we present a radically innovative approach to holding a policy debate. What if debates were centered on a shared set of facts that both sides agreed upon? What if these discussions were respectful and generous to each side, instead of a shouting match? This is a new format that directly challenges the way our society has approached differences in opinion, and I’m excited to see what topic is up next.

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