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December 2020

[Memoir]

False Labor

Giving up on motherhood

by ,
[Report]

Skin in the Game

Wall Street’s answer to the student-debt crisis

by ,
[Essay]

The Silenced Majority

Can America still afford democracy?

by ,

Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response.

Email us about articles in the magazine.

[Harper’s Index]

Hypothetical median income of full-time U.S. workers if income were distributed as evenly as it was in 1975 : $92,000

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Actual median income of full-time U.S. workers : $50,000

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage change since last year in the number of U.S. homes for sale : -35

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

In the median home price : +11

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans aged 18 to 29 who live with one or both of their parents : 52

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Rank of this percentage among the highest ever recorded in the United States : 1

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of Americans who believe that someone will become a trillionaire during their lifetime : 1/2

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of unpaid taxes that are owed by the richest one percent of Americans : 70

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which the richest one percent of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 50 percent : 2

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Metric tons by which Donald Trump’s deregulatory policies will increase greenhouse-gas concentrations by 2035 : 1,800,000,000

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which this exceeds Germany’s annual emissions output : 2

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of utility companies worldwide that are expanding the production of gas or coal more quickly than renewables : 9/10

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of Americans who have been exposed to unhealthy air this year as a result of wildfires : 1/7

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Number of the twenty largest wildfires in California’s history that occurred this year : 5

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans who think climate change poses a risk to people living in the United States : 61

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Who think it poses a risk to them personally : 43

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of coronavirus deaths that the average American believes occur among those aged 44 and younger : 30

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of coronavirus deaths that have occurred among those aged 44 and younger : 3

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans with symptomatic COVID-19 who deny having symptoms when asked by others : 34

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Who try to conceal their symptoms : 55

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which men are more likely to try to conceal their symptoms than women : 32

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage by which someone who trusts Fox News more than CNN was more likely in May to visit someone else’s home : 9

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

To have a visitor over to their own home : 14

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

To attend a gathering of more than ten people : 10

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Portion of Democratic or Democratic-leaning Americans who are trying to “tune out” coronavirus news : 1/5

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Of Republican or Republican-leaning Americans who are : 2/5

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of immigrant television characters last year who were portrayed as victims or perpetrators of a crime : 22

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Who were portrayed as undocumented or seeking asylum : 63

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Estimated percentage of U.S. immigrants who are undocumented or seeking asylum : 24

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of people arrested by the NYPD before the department implemented racial-bias training who were black : 47

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage after the department implemented racial-bias training who were : 48

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. adults who think integrating the suburbs would “very likely” lead to more crime and lower property values : 13

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Who consider those outcomes “not at all likely” : 23

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of U.S. Black Lives Matter protests in which no people were harmed and no property was damaged : 93

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Percentage of Americans who say that protests by athletes make them less likely to watch games : 36

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Who say protests make them more likely to watch : 12

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Number of hours it takes for the average American to “unwind” after work on Fridays : 2

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Time on Sundays at which the average American begins to feel anxiety about work : 3:58 pm

December 2020
[Harper’s Index]

Factor by which Americans are more likely to say that this summer was the worst of their lives than the best : 8

December 2020

Readings

[Essay]

Fathers, Sons, Screaming Eagles
by ,
[Illustrations]

Lowellcats
by ,
[Debate]

A Case of Mistaken Identity
[Correction]

Grounded in Truth
by ,Translated by ,
[Housewares]

Gilded by Reason of Insanity
[Request]

Essential Miracle Workers
by ,
[Advertisement]

More Problems, More Money
[Interrogation]

Friend Zone of Conflict
Edited by ,
[Gospel]

The New New Testament
[Statements]

The Umpire Strikes Back
[Orders]

Some Like It Scott
[Ruling]

Sleep No More
[Definitions]

Scotched Efforts
by ,
[Fiction]

Christmas in Cochinchina
by ,Translated by ,
[Rules]

Parental Guidance Suggested
by ,
[Poem]

Penelope Waits for Odysseus
by ,
Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, a seventeenth-century painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, whose work is on view through January at the National Gallery, in London.
Photograph © Dominique Provost, Bruges, Belgium. Artwork courtesy private collection
A collage by Ricardo Miguel Hernández from the series When the Memory Turns to Dust. Hernández’s work was on view last month at Isolo17 Gallery, in Verona, Italy.
© The artist
Domino Hunters, a painting by Denzil Forrester, whose work is on view through January at Spike Island, in Bristol, England.
© The artist. Courtesy Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
A photograph by Alessandra Sanguinetti from her monograph The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Illusion of an Everlasting Summer, which was published in September by MACK.
Courtesy the artist and MACK
Lights, a painting by Ben Reeves, whose work was on view in October at Nicholas Metivier Gallery, in Toronto.
© The artist. Courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
[Letters]

Letters
[Editor’s Desk]

Future Sense
by ,
[Easy Chair]

Solo Act
by ,
[Harper’s Index]

Harper’s Index
[Memoir]

False Labor

Giving up on motherhood

by ,
[From the Archive]

A Perfect Woman
by ,
[Report]

Skin in the Game

Wall Street’s answer to the student-debt crisis

by ,
[Annotation]

Abstract Expression

The former Yugoslavia’s enigmatic memorial architecture

by ,
[Essay]

The Silenced Majority

Can America still afford democracy?

by ,
[Letter from the Northwest Territories]

Thing of Ether

Chasing the aurora borealis

by ,
[Poetry]

Two Poems
by ,
[Criticism]

“If Only I Could Begin Again!”

The mystery of a writer’s métier

by ,
[Fiction]

Drawing From Life
by ,
[Reviews]

New Books
by ,
[Reviews]

The Art of the Aftermath

On Alfred Hayes

by ,
[Reviews]

Flaws, Issues, Assassinations

The story of character

by ,
[Puzzle]

Theme and Variations
by ,
[Findings]

Findings
by ,
[Findings]

Robot elephants are becoming increasingly popular at Indian temples.

[Findings]

Early Bronze Age burials in the Upper Tigris may have accorded special favor to dead adolescents, whereas after the emergence of social hierarchy burial privilege shifted to dead elites.

[Findings]

The dismembered skeletons in a pit at Bayanbulak, possibly the site Emperor Wu of Han’s chief historian termed the Fortification for Receiving Surrender, were likely farmers from northern China conscripted during the Han–Xiongnu Wars.

[Findings]

The first antique instance of cinnabar-stained teeth was documented in a Subeshi woman in Grave M11 at Shengjindian Cemetery.

[Findings]

Greco-Roman sculpture was perfumed.

[Findings]

Dogs act more jealous when their owners interact with robots than when they read magazines.

[Findings]

The foreheads of teddy bears grew significantly taller between 1900 and 1980, though the bears did not become appreciably cuter over the same period.

[Findings]

Across racial categories women’s eyelash length is perceived as increasingly healthy up to one third of the width of the eye, past which further elongation becomes perceived as less healthy but increasingly indicative of sexual receptivity.

[Findings]

Male fruit flies seek out alcohol because it makes them more attractive to female flies and more successful at mating, not, as was previously theorized, because they are depressed about not yet having mated.

[Findings]

Male bluelined octopuses inject poison into the aortas of their female partners at the start of copulation, likely to avoid being eaten afterward.

[Findings]

Chemists grew gold in total darkness.

[Findings]

Five zebra fish per liter of tank water can be collectively euthanized by electric shock.

[Findings]

Rats can distinguish between Riesling and sauvignon blanc.

[Findings]

A literature review enumerated cases of envenomation by dead snakes, including those of a Chinese chef killed by the severed head of a spitting cobra, a child in Minnesota injured by a freeze-dried prairie-rattlesnake head worn as a tie tack, and two drunk Indians hospitalized after they chewed on the head of a dead krait.

[Findings]

Americans with open personalities are less likely to express end-of-life regret about how much they spent on food, whereas agreeable people are disposed to regret spending money on food, clothing, leisure, and financial help to others.

[Findings]

Polish doctors urged further investigation into compulsive frotteurs.

[Findings]

Scottish hen parties were deemed to contain ritualistic profanation.

[Findings]

The mummy of the Mysterious Lady was not pregnant.

[Findings]

A skull previously thought to belong to Cleopatra’s sister was found to be that of an Italian boy with a deformed jaw.

[Findings]

Fifty-two experts were consulted to produce a six-criteria test for predicting vasectomy regret.

[Findings]

French archaeologists discovered a Gaulish curse tablet tucked between a skeleton’s legs.

[Findings]

A Viking grave in Norway appeared to contain a vulva stone.

[Findings]

Chinese scientists successfully raised to adulthood, then dissected, mice born of two fathers.

[Findings]

Rabbits are capable of digesting their teeth as they wear down and reusing the calcium to grow new ones.

[Findings]

It is possible that songbirds who migrate at night socialize with one another in flight and speak to other species.

[Findings]

A survey of 1,328 urinary events found that, unlike contagious yawning, the contagious urination of chimpanzees appears to be correlated to social rank rather than social closeness.

[Findings]

Coyotes in dense areas of Chicago die younger if the average human income is high.

[Findings]

Physicists detected negative time.

[Findings]

Excessive tearfulness in the right eye of a fifty-five-year-old Japanese woman was traced to a supernumerary punctum.

[Findings]

Six dead dolphins who washed up in Texas were found to have fentanyl in their blubber.

[Findings]

Archaeologists speculated that, in the largest known Bronze Age massacre in Britain, attackers killed, butchered, and ate men, women, and children as a political statement.

[Findings]

Scientists urged the abandonment of attempts to create mirror life, against which existing life-forms may possess no defenses.

[Findings]

Monkeys are faster at spotting a snake among salamanders than a salamander among snakes.

[Findings]

Medication may treat those who suffer from disorders that make them smooth-brained.

[Findings]

Brain scans corroborated the unpleasant psychoacoustic effects of Aztec death whistles.

[Findings]

Assamese tribesmen were found to identify with elephants through a sense of mutual loss, poverty, and uncertainty.

[Findings]

Scientists suggested that human culture is superior to that of other animals because it can integrate limitless sequences of subgoals.

[Findings]

In Europe, conservatives are outbreeding progressives.

[Findings]

Researchers noted the positive effects of ecstatic epilepsy and synthesized fifty-three theoretical models of delusion.

[Findings]

Witnessing cringeworthy moments improves the observer’s self-perception.

[Findings]

In Japan, erectile function among young men was determined to be low by the first nationwide survey employing the internationally validated Erection Hardness Score.

[Findings]

Pentoxifylline can mitigate the damage caused by subjecting stallions to scrotal heat stress.

[Findings]

Bay Area researchers debuted a Narcissism Interview Scale for Employment.

[Findings]

More than half of U.S. civilians tasked with evaluating a bombing target endorsed killing unidentified bystanders.

[Findings]

Solitary chicks emit fewer anxious peeps if given a mirror for company.

[Findings]

Marine biologists described the Red Sea’s grumpy dwarfgoby.

[Findings]

Bottlenose dolphins, who were found to inhale and exhale microplastics, respond to a smile with a smile one third of the time.

[Findings]

Archaeologists identified the skeleton recovered from the Sverresborg Castle’s well in 1938 as the man described in the Sverris Saga as having been thrown into the well in 1197.

[Findings]

A primatologist, a mammalogist, and a linguist concluded that the jerky, rhythmic dance of sexually mature female black crested gibbons is innate rather than culturally transmitted.

[Findings]

Parmesan researchers found that “benevolently sexist” adults are less likely to own “clit-oriented” sex toys.

[Findings]

Germans under thirty experience more climate distress and have more rough sex.

[Findings]

Mars gained and then lost a second moon in the autumn.

[Findings]

Scientists determined why some aging gray horses turn white faster than others.

[Findings]

The stranger churches of sixteenth-century London extensively spied on their congregants, noting when women accused other women of being “pocked whores.”

[Findings]

Evidence supporting the hypothesis that the Proto­-Indo­-European language was spread by humans on horseback may have overlooked how humans who ride cows, donkeys, and wild asses exhibit the same hip­ -socket deformations, as previously observed in twentieth­-century nuns.

[Findings]

Scientists allowed a king oyster mushroom mycelial culture to control the movements of a soft five-limbed robot and a four-wheel vehicle.

[Findings]

Juvenile Japanese eels can escape from the stomachs of dark sleepers by pushing their tails back through the fish’s esophagus and out its gills.

[Findings]

EEG experts disagreed on whether, in the future, brain waves could be used to read dreams and long-­term memories.

[Findings]

Turkish doctors reported a case of penile autoamputation with religious delusion.

[Findings]

AI researchers determined that large language models pose no existential threat to humanity and created an AI algorithm that can detect scientific articles written by other AI algorithms.

[Findings]

Mammoths may have been killed with planted pikes rather than with thrown spears.

[Findings]

The birth of a white buffalo fulfilled a Lakota prophecy portending better times.

[Findings]

Wildfires near Canadian mines were found to have released unprecedented levels of arsenic, and wildfires in Maui were making residents unhappy.

[Findings]

Living near oil and gas development sites depresses people who are trying to get pregnant.

[Findings]

The Journal of Pediatric Genetics retracted a study on Islamic beliefs concerning the possible supernatural causes of birth defects on the grounds that the research lacked a scientific basis.

[Findings]

A researcher noticed that a Tartessian slate tablet depicting battle scenes also contains a previously unknown alphabet.

[Findings]

The royal swan marker reported that the depression of the Thames population, previously noted during the late queen’s reign, continues under the king.

[Findings]

Researchers claimed that researchers have been underreporting same-­sex sexual activity among animals.

[Findings]

Cocaine trafficking was found to threaten the golden­-cheeked warbler.

[Findings]

A survey of 7 million parliamentary speeches across eight countries and several decades found that politicians use less complex language as it gets hotter.

[Findings]

The diet of Japanese youth is growing more confectionary, and Americans are poisoning themselves more severely.

[Findings]

Unaffiliated voters are growing more spiteful toward both Democrats and Republicans.

[Findings]

Researchers debuted an 88 percent accurate hate­-speech detector and a superior sarcasm detector and may be able to send messages back in time.

[Findings]

Increased border­-wall height was tentatively linked to a thirtyfold increase in the rate of migrant drowning deaths off San Diego.

[Findings]

Women bond more closely with therapy bulls than men do.

[Findings]

The perceived onset of old age increases by approximately one year for every four to five years a person ages.

[Findings]

A study of brain­-injured but not brain­-dead patients found that many would have survived had their families not chosen to withdraw life support.

[Findings]

Sets of both fraternal and identical twins exhibit internally similar metacognitive abilities, suggesting that metacognition is environmental rather than heritable.

[Findings]

Southern California beach erosion is expected to increase by 50 percent by 2050.

[Findings]

Archaeologists translated cuneiform tablets recording shareholder agreements for the first company in Anatolia.

[Findings]

The melting of the poles is making Earth’s days longer.

[Findings]

The hatching season of a male spear squid (Heterololigo bleekeri) determines whether he will pursue bold or sneaky mating tactics.

[Findings]

A bionic eye deciphered a scroll carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that reveals the burial place of Plato, who was found to have complained about the musical abilities of the enslaved Thracian girl who played the flute for him as he lay dying.

[Findings]

Humans are losing their ability to digest cellulose.

[Findings]

Toxicity has remained a consistent feature of online interactions since 1989.

[Findings]

Microplastics were found in sixty-two of sixty-two human placentas from a biobank in Texas.

[Findings]

A metal scar on the surface of the white dwarf WD 0816-310 indicated that it has cannibalized other bodies in its orbit.

[Findings]

An orca acting alone killed a great white shark and ate its liver.

[Findings]

Genomic analysis indicated that psychedelic mushrooms emerged around the time of the Mesozoic–Cenozoic mass extinction.

[Findings]

The playing speed of a metal guitarist directly correlates with his intrasexual competitiveness but not his mating success.

[Findings]

Depression in humans is correlated with higher body temperature, and cold-water swimming mitigates menopause symptoms.

[Findings]

Researchers warned that, as temperatures rise, humans should prepare for more diarrhea.

[Findings]

A mother is 4.6 percent more likely to give birth in the same month she was born, and adjacent siblings are 12.1 percent more likely to be born in the same month as one another.

[Findings]

Electric eel discharge transforms the DNA of zebrafish larvae.

[Findings]

An AI that was fed the employment and health data of six million Danes turned out to be more accurate than existing sociological methods at predicting if a given person was about to die.

[Findings]

Onshore wind turbines severely deter German bats from foraging.

[Findings]

Astrophysicists argued that the development of advanced alien technology requires an atmosphere composed of at least 18 percent oxygen.

[Findings]

Off the Five Finger Islands, a team of cetologists aboard the Glacier Seal conducted an extended conversation with a female humpback named Twain.

[Findings]

True crabs independently evolved to live out of the ocean up to seventeen times.

[Findings]

The average American girl born in 2019 will take prescription drugs for more than half her life.

Cover design by Jessica Hische Microfiche

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