Matt Pearce

What if everybody argued at the same time? AI's flawed experiment in deliberative democracy. You may know the feeling: There’s a 60-minute Zoom meeting with a dozen people to gnaw over a problem. Person #1, the hothead, makes big criticisms and doesn’t of... See more

The limits of giving it all away On Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World." No book from my shelves features more daunting blurbs than my 25th anniversary edition of Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the ... See more

Dead dreams of the emperors Reading Marguerite Yourcenar's "Memoirs of Hadrian” in the age of Musk and Trump. One of the oldest desires in philosophy was Plato’s fantasy of a philosopher-king. Oh well. A few weeks ago, you may remember novelist Joyce Caro... See more

Four big things I learned in 2025 Lessons about media and politics from one of America's weirdest years. 1. The new superspender economy rules everything around us. If there’s a single stat to capture what’s happening to the economy, it’s this: The top 10... See more

An unsentimental education Organizing the unaligned and their theories of inequality. I’ve spent much of my past decade as a journalist as a organizer, trying to deal with collective problems no one can solve on their own: first, persuading other journali... See more