This week, Jason and Fitz write about two authors who shaped their ambitions (and perhaps their styles) as writers, David Foster Wallace and John Updike.

Or, how I'm abandoning the clamor of public opinion in favor of generous conversation

In Not Your Mother’s Morals: How the New Sincerity is Changing Pop Culture for the Better, Jonathan D. Fitzgerald argues that today’s popular music, movies, TV shows, and books are making the world a better place. For all the hand-wringing about the decline of morals and the cheapening of culture in our time, contemporary media brims with examples of fascinating and innovative art that promote positive and uplifting moral messages—without coming across as “preachy.”

If life has become an endless series of sarcastic jokes and pop references, a competition to see who can care the least, we've made a collective misstep.

A recent hipster-hating New York Times column got our pop-cultural moment exactly backwards.

The movement away from irony and toward sincerity is reflected in the so-called "authenticity" advantage Trump holds over his rivals.