Kyra Peralte is a mother of two in Montclair, New Jersey. A year ago, she started keeping a journal about the challenges of juggling marriage, work, and motherhood during a global crisis. She found the experience cathartic and wondered how other women were dealing with the overwhelming stress of the pandemic. So she decided to invite women from around the world to fill the remaining pages of her composition notebook with their own pandemic stories. She wrote an article about... Read more

Bill and Melinda Gates announced this week that they are divorcing after twenty-seven years of marriage. Forbes reports that their split could yield the largest divorce settlement on record, eclipsing the $35 billion breakup of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott. Yesterday we learned that they have hired “a team of high-profile lawyers” to handle their divorce. The couple created the $50 billion nonprofit Gates Foundation, one of the biggest philanthropies in the world. It gave $5.1 billion in 2019... Read more

According to a poll taken last weekend, Americans are more optimistic about the nation’s direction than we have been since December 2006. However, our partisan divide remains: 78 percent of Republicans think keeping taxes the same is more important, while 80 percent of Democrats say it’s important that the government spend money to help the economy. The next generation of COVID-19 vaccines could come as a pill or a nasal spray and be easier to store and transport. They have... Read more

Emily Smith is an epidemiologist at Baylor University, the wife of a Baptist pastor, and a mother. She has been working hard to help her fellow evangelicals understand the urgency of getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Though she has received vociferous criticism and even death threats, she is committed to her calling: “I just feel such a sense of obligation, especially from a Christian perspective, to be the Good Samaritan, and hopefully get people to band together and still wear their... Read more

A gay man who is also a drag queen was recently confirmed by a Methodist church in Illinois as a candidate for ordained ministry. He wore wigs and full makeup while participating in his church’s “Drag Sunday” in April. Another Hillsong pastor resigned last week after sharing explicit photos on social media. A Southern Baptist pastor in North Carolina resigned after being arrested and charged with child pornography. And Josh Duggar, a former star of the television series 19 Kids... Read more

The American media continues to cover President Biden’s Wednesday night address to Congress and the reactions to it. Meanwhile, another politician is making news in ways that are deeply encouraging. Scott Morrison is the prime minister of Australia and a very public Christian. He spoke recently to the Australian Christian Churches’ national conference, where he shared his personal faith and sense of call to his position. The Guardian reports that “Morrison is far from alone among Australian prime ministers either... Read more

The Constitution requires the president to “from time to time give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union.” Though technically not a State of the Union address, President Biden fulfilled this obligation last night in front of a joint session of Congress. While most recent presidents have delivered such an address earlier in the year, the Coronavirus and other factors combined to delay last night’s report. Biden began his speech with an update on where the country... Read more

Thirty-three-year-old Jesse Larios from California has been in the news recently after deciding “on a whim” to don a bear suit and walk four hundred miles from downtown Los Angeles to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Larios doesn’t have a specific timeline or plan for how to get there. But, he says he’s enjoyed meeting new people, including a rather perplexed member of the Santa Clarita Sheriff’s Department who stopped him briefly in a notable exchange before sending... Read more

President Joe Biden made history this past weekend when he became the first sitting US president to recognize the massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Empire—present-day Turkey—in the early twentieth century as a genocide. It’s taken this long for the United States to officially describe horrific slaughter with accurate terminology because Turkey has long been seen as an important ally in the Middle East, and they are predictably hesitant to accept that classification. That... Read more

Pixar Animation Studios has become perhaps the most preeminent name in children’s entertainment. They have been a mainstay at the Oscars for more than two decades and, this year, developed two of the five movies nominated for Best Animated Feature Film. Soul took home the award, becoming the eleventh such Pixar property to do so. The success of their recent offerings is not the only reason they are in the news today, however. Last week, word began to circulate that... Read more