Author: Milton Magazine

What does it mean, in a fractured time like this, to be funny? What—in the midst of public health, political, social, and environmental crises—does a sense of humor look like? Comedians have always served society by highlighting the absurd and the ironic, even the darkly morbid opportunities to laugh. Satire, play, jokes, mimicry, and mockery mark thousands of years of art and storytelling around the world. Although humor doesn’t always translate across cultures, funny people—from jesters to playwrights to stand-up comedians to TikTok stars—have played important roles in diverse world traditions. They speak truth to power, call out hypocrisy,...

How to talk to a teenager as an adult—especially in deep conversations about emotions, life goals, relationships, sex, alcohol, or drugs—is a timeless quandary. But KIMBERLY MCMANAMA O’BRIEN ’96 does it every day and loves it. As a clinical social worker and research scientist at Boston Children’s Hospital, O’Brien says she enjoys “the feeling of trying to connect to the soul of the kid I’m sitting with. It’s a privilege to hear teens talk about what they are going through and what’s hard for them. I do whatever I can to give them a space to talk it through...

MAGGIE JACKSON ’78, a renowned journalist and social critic, wants people to understand how digital technology threatens the crucial work of focusing well and thinking deeply. In the introduction to the second edition of Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention, published in 2018, Jackson writes: “The way we live our lives is eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention.” Last year, Distracted received the Media Ecology Association’s Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Writing on Technology and Culture. Jackson’s new book-in-progress explores the critical role that uncertainty plays in higher-order cognition. Milton Magazine recently spoke...