Cognoscenti

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Cognoscenti

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Cognoscenti

Mourners outside the Colorado Springs City Hall, where a rainbow flag was draped over the building on Nov. 23, 2022 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in honor of the victims of a shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ club where a gunman opened fire, killing five and injuring 25 others. (Chet Strange/Getty Images)

Nov 29, 2022

The Club Q shooting is not the queer story I wanted to tell

Clubs were where I could stop calculating how to stay alive and calculate how to ask a boy to dance, writes Jason Prokowiew.

The author's son. (Courtesy Nazli Kibria)

My son’s autism is profound — and more common than you think

Nov 28, 2022

The author’s grandmother, Marie Moran, in Breezy Point, 1947.

I Know The Water Is Coming. But I Can't Bear To Sell My Family's Cottage

05:08May 28, 2021

Nancy Pelosi, then a candidate for Congress, waved from her campaign headquarters in San Francisco on April 7, 1987. (Paul Sakuma/AP)

Nancy Pelosi's long road

Nov 23, 2022

Support the news

Everything is fine, until it's not

Why we should care about Herschel Walker

My son’s autism is profound — and more common than you think

My son decided against college. To my surprise, he's where he should be

My Wife Is Black. My Son Is Biracial. But White Supremacy Lives Inside Me

The Club Q shooting is not the queer story I wanted to tell

In Case You Missed It

Female nurse and surgeon in scrubs during surgery (Getty Images)

I'm a high-risk OB-GYN: Abortion helps me save lives

Jul 1, 2022

The author and her sister, Cheryl. (Courtesy Lynne Reeves Griffin)

My sister’s death was hard enough. The silence afterwards was unbearable

Oct 3, 2022

Maura Healey may win in a walk — but that's not good for her or Mass. voters

Sep 13, 2022

Celebrating 10 years of Cognoscenti

Sep 30, 2022

On Air Commentaries

The Lazy Susans from left to right: Imge Ceranoglu, Leila Mitchell, Joanna Weiss, Martha Kennedy, and Heather Shaw, at Milton Porchfest, 2022. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

‘Five moms gone electric’: The Lazy Susans will rock you

06:29Oct 25, 2022

Ted Flanagan: "In the hills outside of Cooperstown this past July, 11 boys reminded me that there is still joy to be had in picking up the lance and jousting at windmills. There’s more than one way to be built to win." Pictured: The author and the Lions talk strategy in right field before a game in July, 2015, at the annual Cooperstown Dreams Park Tournament. (Alex Belisle/Courtesy)

They came in 104th out of 104 teams. And they won big

05:38Oct 16, 2015

The author's grandmother, Ethel, pictured in 1974. She was 55 years old. (Courtesy)

'Just Ethel': What my grandmother, who was much more than a domestic worker, taught me about Black patriotism

05:59Nov 1, 2022

Grace Segran with her two grandchildren, Lily and Ella. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

'I have loved and am loved': I am at peace

07:32Aug 12, 2022

Politics

Edmund Burke affirmed that "a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation." That goes for parties as well, writes Rich Barlow. (Getty Images)

Nov 23, 2022

Why I'm still a Republican

Being a Republican requires some stubbornness these days. I won't give up on the GOP yet, writes Rich Barlow.

A sign encouraging voting sits along along a roadway on November 6, 2022 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

The biggest lesson Democrats should take from the midterms

Nov 16, 2022

Woman with protest sign reading "stop election fraud" while holding a U.S. flag on January 16, 2021. (Ty O'Neil/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Disdain won’t get us far with election deniers

Nov 15, 2022

Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman speaks to supporters with his family during an election night party on November 9, 2022 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Fetterman defeated Republican Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

The press should put away its crystal ball

Nov 9, 2022

Governor-elect Maura Healey speaks with supporters on Election Day evening at the Fairmont Copley Plaza. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

Maura Healey, 'first of her name': May she be unabashedly herself

Nov 9, 2022

More From Cog

Everything is fine, until it's not

“Pray for boring days,” my grandmother used to say. I never really knew what she meant. Now, I think I do, writes Holly Robinson.

Nov 22, 2022

The author's son, doing production work for a client. (Courtesy Erica Youngren)

My son decided against college. To my surprise, he's where he should be

These days, my son is a different person, writes Erica Youngren. It turns out he’s not unfocused — he just wasn’t inspired by the intangible rewards of school work.

Nov 21, 2022

Members of the University of Virginia community attend a candlelight vigil on the South Lawn for the victims of a shooting overnight at the university, on Nov. 14, 2022, Charlottesville, Virginia. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

At UVA, choosing to believe in a 'path out of the darkness'

These moments of gun violence and school shootings defined my adolescence, and I’m thinking about them as I park my car in the faculty parking lot at the high school...

Nov 18, 2022

NASA’s Artemis I Space Launch System rocket, with the Orion capsule attached, launches at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Nov. 16 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Artemis finally launched. But we’ll need humility to return to the moon

Despite 50 years of technological advance, going to the moon is still hard, writes Joelle Renstrom.

Nov 16, 2022

The unbearable whiteness of being

I’m raising my sons to be proud of their Blackness, writes John Vercher. But I also know that they’ll benefit from their lighter skin.

05:39Nov 15, 2022

People watch the Cherry Blossom Festival Veterans Day Parade on Nov. 6, in Macon, Georgia. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

What I really want on Veterans Day

We veterans don’t serve for the thanks, writes Laura McTaggart. We serve for each other, and for the country.

Nov 11, 2022

If only we felt free to say I don’t know, writes Leah Hager Cohen. If only our culture placed less value on judging and gate-keeping, and instead honored vulnerability. (Getty Images)

The courage to say 'I don't know'

So much becomes possible when we honor doubt, writes Leah Hager Cohen.

04:56Nov 8, 2022

The author's daughter at the Franklin Park Zoo. (Courtesy Aimee Seiff Christian)

'You don’t have to be like everyone else,' I tell my daughter. I hope she can believe me

My daughter, John Fetterman and other disabled people are not asking for accommodation, writes Aimee Seiff Christian. They are asking for what everyone wants.

Nov 8, 2022

What to do about Twitter? It’s complicated

Elon Musk’s ownership of the platform poses a unique quandary, writes Kaivan Shroff. Is sticking around fighting the good fight -- or being complicit?

Nov 7, 2022

Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker addresses the crowd of supporters during a campaign stop on October 20, 2022 in Macon, Georgia. (Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)

We need not accept the sordid world Trump left us

The party of Lincoln has decided that being unmoored from reality is a winning political strategy, writes Eileen McNamara. Vote.

Nov 4, 2022

Thousands of Protesters March up Washington Street on their way to rally at the Massachusetts State House. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Cognoscenti at 10: Holding the ordinary and unfathomable

In 2020, the whole world got turned upside down. Cog became a record of what we were experiencing, collectively and individually, when there were so few answers to be had.

Nov 4, 2022

A pedestrian crosses the street at the entrance to Chinatown, April 24, 2020, in Boston. (Michael Dwyer/AP)

My daily walk through Boston’s suffering and wealth

I never realized how much segregation continues to shape Boston, not just geographically but medically, measured in health inequities and life expectancies, writes Joshua Budhu.

Nov 3, 2022

A night view of The Capitol building dome in Washigton DC on October 20, 2022. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

How Democrats can win, even if they lose

With Democrats’ midterm election prospects looking grim, the party needs to make sure citizens stay engaged in the political process. They should seek change at the state level, writes Steve...

Nov 2, 2022

The Kendall Square Station in Cambridge, MA on the Red Line on September 22, 2021. (Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

How the MBTA could help Mass. combat the opioid epidemic

Access to naloxone can be the difference between life and death. Making the drug more widely available in T stations would save lives.

Nov 1, 2022

The author and her parents at her college graduation. (Courtesy Kathy Gunst)

Cancer haunted my family for generations, until I found a way to leave my fear behind

After finishing her treatment for stage III/IV Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, Kathy Gunst wanted to get back to living. She had some bigger healing to do first.

Oct 28, 2022

A view of the Daily Mail first edition printing on April 9, 2021 in London. (Edward Smith/Getty Images)

It's election season. The newspaper endorsement should endure

Yes, it's risky for newspapers to take a stand, writes Renee Loth. But newspapers must be more than traffic cops, waving around opinions regardless of their relevance or truth.

Oct 27, 2022

Stickers reading "I Voted By Mail" are displayed as the Wayne County Board of Elections prepares absentee ballots in Goldsboro, N.C., on Sept. 22, 2022. (Hannah Schoenbaum/AP)

The sorry state of voting rights in America

As the midterm elections approach, restrictive new laws could destabilize our democracy by disenfranchising eligible voters, writes Jamie Hoag.

Oct 27, 2022

Election helpers are seen as they count the last votes in the municipality of Stockholm at the Stockholm City Hall on September 14, 2022. Never before has a Swedish government relied on the support of the anti-immigration and nationalist Sweden Democrats, the big winners of the vote. (Photo by Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images)

A letter from Sweden: The far right is shifting public norms

What happens in Sweden matters in America and vice versa, writes Julie Lindahl in this reflection on the reemergence of the far right in Europe -- and lessons for the...

Oct 26, 2022

Climate Change activists gathered in a protest in Washington, D.C., 2019. (Aurora Samperio/Getty Images)

The world is burning. Our politics are broken. And we still need to vote

In building a new society, young voters cannot afford to entirely turn their backs on the existing one, writes Julie Wittes Schlack.

Oct 25, 2022

The author, third from left, in a "quad" on the Charles River, 2022. (Courtesy Colin Lee)

On the Charles River at dawn, we're all in the same 'Breakfast Club'

As I get more fit, my age feels like wisdom, as long as I stretch first, writes Bethany Ericson. I may have needed to be in my 50s to have...

Oct 21, 2022

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The Club Q shooting is not the queer story I wanted to tell

My son’s autism is profound — and more common than you think

I Know The Water Is Coming. But I Can't Bear To Sell My Family's Cottage

Nancy Pelosi's long road

Everything is fine, until it's not

Why we should care about Herschel Walker

My son’s autism is profound — and more common than you think

My son decided against college. To my surprise, he's where he should be

My Wife Is Black. My Son Is Biracial. But White Supremacy Lives Inside Me

The Club Q shooting is not the queer story I wanted to tell

I'm a high-risk OB-GYN: Abortion helps me save lives

My sister’s death was hard enough. The silence afterwards was unbearable

Maura Healey may win in a walk — but that's not good for her or Mass. voters

Celebrating 10 years of Cognoscenti

‘Five moms gone electric’: The Lazy Susans will rock you

They came in 104th out of 104 teams. And they won big

'Just Ethel': What my grandmother, who was much more than a domestic worker, taught me about Black patriotism

'I have loved and am loved': I am at peace

Why I'm still a Republican

The biggest lesson Democrats should take from the midterms

Disdain won’t get us far with election deniers

The press should put away its crystal ball

Maura Healey, 'first of her name': May she be unabashedly herself

Everything is fine, until it's not

My son decided against college. To my surprise, he's where he should be

At UVA, choosing to believe in a 'path out of the darkness'

Artemis finally launched. But we’ll need humility to return to the moon

The unbearable whiteness of being

What I really want on Veterans Day

The courage to say 'I don't know'

'You don’t have to be like everyone else,' I tell my daughter. I hope she can believe me

What to do about Twitter? It’s complicated

We need not accept the sordid world Trump left us

Cognoscenti at 10: Holding the ordinary and unfathomable

My daily walk through Boston’s suffering and wealth

How Democrats can win, even if they lose

How the MBTA could help Mass. combat the opioid epidemic

Cancer haunted my family for generations, until I found a way to leave my fear behind

It's election season. The newspaper endorsement should endure

The sorry state of voting rights in America

A letter from Sweden: The far right is shifting public norms

The world is burning. Our politics are broken. And we still need to vote

On the Charles River at dawn, we're all in the same 'Breakfast Club'