Host Sasha Sagan talks to NYT best-selling novelist KILEY REID (Such a Fun Age) about a tradition that has evolved out of necessity from family and community participation to an economic arrangement with strangers.
Children
Posted inReligious News
Once again, the Satanic Temple reminds Christians about the wall of separation
Reading Time: 10 minutes This past week, an Oklahoma school board rejected a Catholic church’s application for a taxpayer-funded charter school, all because another Catholic warned them that the leaders of the Satanic Temple exist—and that they delight in taking advantage of the exact same funding and laws that Christians do. Therefore, if Oklahoma gave funding to Catholics for […]
Posted inStrange Customs with Sasha Sagan
Troian Bellisario—The Portal
Sasha Sagan talks to actor TROIAN BELLISARIO (Pretty Little Liars, Life on Mars) about a tradition older than our species, and the unusual and slightly terrifying way Troian once experienced it.
We’ll also hear from professor and author RANDI HUTTER EPSTEIN (Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank) about the often strange and disturbing history of the tradition.
Posted inReligion
Downsides to the hope offered by Christianity: it makes God a jerk + infantilizes Christians
Reading Time: 4 minutes When tragedy hits, we can imagine that God has a plan. But why can’t God accomplish that plan without the collateral damage? And why do adults seek out the chance to be childlike and dependent?
Posted inDeep Dive
What makes ‘skeptical’ kids grow up to be God-believing adults?
Reading Time: 8 minutes If kids are the savvy, skeptical creatures that Will Gervais proposes in his recent essay, why do endless hordes of them in each generation turn into conservative American adults who uncritically worship invisible gods with zero objective verification? And what makes these same supposedly mature folks end up uncritically adoring visible but damaged demigods on […]
Posted inReligion
The Bible on child sacrifice
Reading Time: 5 minutes The Bible clearly demands child sacrifice. And it also clearly forbids it. How do we make sense of this?
Posted inParenting & Family
Parenting a precocious child
Reading Time: 3 minutes She was savvy even as a toddler, with apt facial expressions to match—the knitted brow, narrowed eyes, faraway gaze, puckish grin, chin in hand. When she was three, I asked her to her face if she was the Buddha. She demurred. And so it went through years of parenting a socially astute, logically shrewd child. […]
Posted inParenting & Family
You don’t have to ‘be fruitful and multiply’: More Americans having just one child
Reading Time: 7 minutes For much of history, “only children” were rare. Whether due to religious traditions, lack of birth control, cultural norms, or the simple need for manual labor, women commonly gave birth to numerous children. Having multiples also offset the common childhood deaths resulting from harsh conditions of life. In 1800, American women typically had seven to […]
Posted inPolitics
I would like to wish Republicans a very nice ‘shut-up about children forever’
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Senate Republicans interviewing Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson can’t suddenly pretend to care about children, can they? Oh, no…no no no…
Posted inWar and Peace
Child Evangelism Fellowship ‘caring for Ukrainian children’ with threats of hell
Reading Time: 3 minutes Child Evangelism Fellowship is now targeting Ukrainian children under the guise of refugee relief.