Hot Girl Summer Is a Utopian Notion

We’ll Never Reach Its Coconut-Scented Siren Call, But That Shouldn’t Stop Us From Trying

Here in Southern California, the Santa Ana winds are blowing, summoning us back to school, back to our routines, back to our lives.

The potential that once hung so heady in the sun-warmed solstice air is no more.

Just another year waiting on Hot Girl Summer.

Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion popularized the phrase “hot girl summer” before COVID, releasing a 2019 song of the same name that became her first No. 1 hit. Of its meaning, she told the Root, “It’s about women and men being unapologetically them, just having a good-ass …

My Adolescence in an Attempted Utopia | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

My Adolescence in an Attempted Utopia

Coming of Age Amid Adults Questing for Self Actualization at South India’s Theosophical Society Headquarters

When I turned 14, I made two discoveries.

First, I learned that I would never inherit the smooth drape of my grandmother’s skin. Like my father, I would battle hillocks …

Nostalgia’s Ingenious Potential | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Nostalgia’s Ingenious Potential

Often Associated With People Who Are Angry About a Lost Past, These Feelings of Longing Can Help Inspire an Inclusive Future

When 19-year-old Swiss medical student Johannes Hofer first coined the term “nostalgia” in 1688, he had wanderers on his mind.

With this neologism, Hofer was describing the deep melancholy—a “wasting …