December 2020 Issue | Harper's Magazine

Sign in to access Harper’s Magazine

Close   X

Need to create a login? Want to change your email address or password? Forgot your password?

  1. Sign in to Customer Care using your account number or postal address.
  2. Select Email/Password Information.
  3. Enter your new information and click on Save My Changes.

Locked out of your account? Get help here.

Subscribers can find additional help here.

Not a subscriber? Subscribe today!

Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99.
Subscribe for Full Access
Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99.
Subscribe for Full Access

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 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

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

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

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]

Neuropsychologists developed a shorter IQ test for children with shorter attention spans.

[Findings]

The depression-prone are less attracted to the political right.

[Findings]

The nocturnal heart rate of young men can be predicted by their female partners’ daytime feelings of intimacy or annoyance.

[Findings]

Men who pose for photos with cats are seen as less datable.

[Findings]

Men can rate the facial attractiveness of women without paying attention, but women cannot do the same for men; gay men find the faces of purportedly fertile women and men more attractive; adolescents and adults both rate the faces of children younger than 4.6 years old as more appealing than those of older children; and body odors associated with fear quicken the visual processing of others’ facial expressions of fear.

[Findings]

Beak covering and nape-feather ruffling indicate calmness in sulfur-crested cockatoos.

[Findings]

Repetitive negative thinking was associated with an increased risk of dementia, and self-harm in female adolescents may prevent suicide.

[Findings]

Psychopaths recommend harsher punishments for homicides, whether accidental or motivated by profit, but exhibit relatively low concern about killing in general.

[Findings]

Online murder-for-hire advertisements seek to convey professionalism yet tend not to provide references up front.

[Findings]

Convalescent plasma helps Syrian hamsters fight SARS-CoV-2.

[Findings]

Plastic surgeons suggested that Botox could reduce the expression of negative emotions by masked faces.

[Findings]

The presence of a professional sports team increases a city’s seasonal flu deaths.

[Findings]

A psycholinguistic analysis of posts on Twitter and Weibo during COVID-19 lockdowns found that residents of Lombardy grew increasingly focused on leisure and residents of Wuhan grew increasingly focused on religion.

[Findings]

Recent toilet-­paper hoarding was more prevalent among Americans than Europeans and more prevalent among the old than the young.

[Findings]

Gerontologists cautioned that it would be difficult to predict individual Holocaust survivors’ trauma or resilience in response to the pandemic, which was expected to strengthen the market for laboratory mouse-suffocation chambers.

[Findings]

Researchers proposed replacing the paradigm of extinction with that of evanescence.

[Findings]

Climate change was expected to drive American lobsters to seek deeper waters, beavers to colonize new parts of Canada, and wolf spiders in the high Arctic to produce a second annual brood.

[Findings]

Humboldt penguins who nest in the open have more pollutant metabolites in their blood than do penguins who nest in guano-rich burrows.

[Findings]

The tiger snakes of Perth have heavy metals in their livers.

[Findings]

Satellite imagery captured ecosystem damage from fog loss, and aerial photography confirmed the existence of Roman military camps revealed by the 2018 Welsh drought.

[Findings]

A young woman in a Vilnius plague pit was found to have been coinfected with yaws.

[Findings]

A man buried at Newgrange passage tomb was found to be the product of first-degree incest, indicating that he was a member of the elite.

[Findings]

Scientists trained subjects to exercise control over a single neuron, linked the hippocampus to regret, and concluded that humans smell in stereo.

[Findings]

Straight Slovakians assume that a woman in high heels will inspire more intense mate-guarding.

[Findings]

Women who receive continuous rather than interrupted sutures for perineal repair after vaginal delivery report higher sexual levels of arousal and orgasmic function.

[Findings]

Pinkness predicts aggression in flamingos.

[Findings]

Chimpanzees have a bone in their hearts.

[Findings]

Rising population density, poor hygiene, and cold, moist weather led to a spike in ear infections in the Levant around 4000 bc, and postwar atmospheric nuclear testing led to increased cloud thickness and rainfall in the Shetland Islands.

[Findings]

A period of global coolness 4,200 years ago accelerated the diversification of japonica rice.

[Findings]

Ostrich-­shell beads indicating the onset of the Initial Upper Paleolithic were found to have reached Shuidonggou by 39000 bc, and strontium isotope levels revealed the social exchange of ostrich-­shell beads during the Late Quaternary in the Karoo Supergroup.

[Findings]

Interviews with reptile poachers in southwestern Balochistan indicated that the Caspian cobra, the desert monitor, the Iranian mastigure, Maynard’s longnose sand snake, the Persian spider gecko, and the Tartar sand boa were being captured for use by snake charmers.

[Findings]

Herpetologists inventoried the scars of snakes found in the Danube Gorge.

[Findings]

Half of Algeria’s marine turtle strandings are inexplicable.

[Findings]

Hemotoxic snakebite may be treatable with a heavy-­­metal chelator.

[Findings]

The mating calls of male Panama cross-­banded tree frogs are synchronized to confuse bats and midges.

[Findings]

Arson dogs’ noses remain better than lab equipment at detecting certain accelerants.

[Findings]

CBD improves quality of life in arthritic elderly dogs.

[Findings]

Finnish scientists identified the genomic region associated with fearfulness in Great Danes.

[Findings]

The decreasing transpiration of plants, a result of rising carbon dioxide levels, was partly to blame for recent heat waves in northern latitudes.

[Findings]

Peatlands, which now store roughly as much carbon as Earth’s forests or its atmosphere, can hold more carbon if exposed to low-­intensity fires.

[Findings]

Inland waters are emitting previously unaccounted-for levels of carbon dioxide, and freshwater insects are flourishing even as terrestrial insects are dying off.

[Findings]

Ocean acidity can now be predicted five years ahead of time.

[Findings]

Green snow is spreading across Antarctica.

[Findings]

The deepest octopus observed to date was photographed in the Java Trench.

[Findings]

Terrestrial bacteria can grow on extraterrestrial nutrients; the black hole nearest Earth was discovered in the constellation Telescopium; and X-­ray experiments conducted at the European Synchrotron indicated that moisture is destroying The Scream.

[Findings]

A fungal parasite that afflicts the reproductive organs of millipedes was named in honor of Twitter.

[Findings]

In Maine, a loon stabbed a bald eagle through the heart.

[Findings]

Six new coronaviruses were discovered in bats.

[Findings]

Falling levels of tourist trash during pandemic lockdowns was found to have caused rat infighting, and macaques were reported to have attacked a lab assistant in Delhi and stolen vials of COVID-­19-­infected blood, which at least one monkey then tried to eat.

[Findings]

Vampire bats who are strangers will groom one another before sharing blood via regurgitation.

[Findings]

Skin swabs are three times as accurate as fecal samples at predicting a person’s age.

[Findings]

Young burglars are driven first by thrills, then by skills.

[Findings]

Half of the flights taken by British men aged twenty to forty-five are for stag parties.

[Findings]

Drivers of fancy cars yield to pedestrians less often than drivers of humble cars, and still less if the pedestrians are non-white men.

[Findings]

Los Angeles scientists found that the city’s road network could be more efficiently designed by P. polycephalum, a slime mold.

[Findings]

Stinging water was blamed on jellyfish mucus.

[Findings]

Engineers reported success in deploying “ultra-­gentle” robotic “linguine fingers” to grab deep-sea jellyfish.

[Findings]

Children, unlike adults, are resilient against the Pinocchio Illusion when their fingers are pulled upward in sync with a tone ascending from 700 to 1200 Hz.

[Findings]

Fingertip injuries can indicate child abuse.

[Findings]

Damage to parts of the right frontotemporoinsular lobes that spares the anterior hypothalamus was linked to the emergence of acquired pedophilia.

[Findings]

Five primate electrophysiologists agreed that, upon 50 Hz stimulation of the central lateral thalamus, anesthetized Wisconsin monkeys become wakeful.

[Findings]

The high contrast provided by humans’ white scleras enhances our awareness of one another’s gazes.

[Findings]

It remained unknown whether Shanidar Z received a Neanderthal flower burial.

[Findings]

An extinction-­risk model was found to work well for bumblebees.

[Findings]

An interdisciplinary team suggested that climate-­driven societal collapse may stabilize once humans start accepting years with many disasters as the new normal.

[Findings]

The formation of pre–Silk Road Eurasian empires was driven partly by the spread of northern Chinese broomcorn millet; nano­diamonds and meltglass at Abu Hureyra point to a cosmic impact at the onset of the Younger Dryas; the collapse of Harappan society coincided with the loss of the Ghaggar River’s perenniality and the onset of the Meghalayan Stage; the breakdown of Easter Island society and the cessation of megalithic statue-building postdated European contact; and epigraphic evidence suggested a descent into total war during the Terminal Classic era of Mayan civilization.

[Findings]

A 46,000-year-old bird recovered from the Siberian permafrost was determined to be a female horned lark.

[Findings]

The tail of an unidentified herbivorous dinosaur in Alberta was found to contain a type of histiocytic tumor that primarily affects young children.

[Findings]

The exoplanet NGTS-10b was found to have a year lasting eighteen Earth hours and to be at risk of falling into its star.

[Findings]

Astronomers recorded, in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, the largest known post–Big Bang explosion, which lasted several hundred million years and created a void of fifteen galactic widths in the plasma around the cluster’s central black hole. “People were skeptical because of the size of the outburst,” said one of the scientists. “We don’t know why it’s so big.”

[Findings]

A spineless hedgehog in Fishcross regrew its spines and was released into the wild, and officials blamed the deaths of British black bees at Wisbech Castle on “morons.” 

[Findings]

A soggy Suffolk owl found in a ditch was diagnosed as too fat to fly.

[Findings]

Mount Vesuvius turned a Herculaneum man’s brain to glass, according to archaeologists, who also revived the voice of a priest from the reign of Ramesses XI and determined that a mummy in the Ulster Museum had been stabbed in the back.

[Findings]

Crystallized mud-wasp nests were used to revise the age of Aboriginal rock art, and a sheep hunters’ encampment was discovered in Nachcharini Cave.

[Findings]

India’s Supreme Court approved the importation of Namibian cheetahs.

[Findings]

Researchers who wear orange catch more anoles, and Australia began culling thousands of camels with helicopter snipers.

[Findings]

Sheep compensate well for lameness.

[Findings]

Southern white rhinos are threatened by inbreeding.

[Findings]

Veterinarians developed an ultrasound schedule for pregnant dolphins, and marine biologists discovered four new species of walking sharks and found that gray seals clap at each other to communicate underwater.

[Findings]

Cetaceans are least likely among mammals to dream profoundly.

[Findings]

African penguins were found to be the first non-primates whose speech exhibits both the Menzerath–­Altmann Law and Zipf’s Law of Brevity.

[Findings]

The asteroid strike at Yarrabubba may have ended Snowball Earth.

[Findings]

Ocean currents are speeding up.

[Findings]

Scientists looked forward to studying the flow of Antarctic bottom water from the Weddell Sea into the Scotia Sea.

[Findings]

Climate change will not encourage sugar maples to move northward, but it will drive Americans from the coasts toward Las Vegas.

[Findings]

Rising climate skepticism among Republicans in recent decades was attributed to backlash against Democratic elites.

[Findings]

Automation of the labor force may lead humans to overcome their differences, and researchers seeking to use personal voice-assistance to detect dementia among their users were awarded a $12 million grant.

[Findings]

Sugar ants will mine dried urine from sand.

[Findings]

The axolotl’s unusually large genome may be useful for something.

[Findings]

The world’s oldest bamboo fossil turned out to be a conifer.

[Findings]

Rumors seem more truthful when sourced to a friend of a friend.

[Findings]

Adolescent Dutch boys who instrumentalize sex are highly likely to nonconsensually forward sexts they receive from strangers.

[Findings]

A review of 250,000 pieces of erotica published between 2000 and 2016 found no significant increase in “transgressive” content, Saudi Arabians do not linger on porn websites, and neuroscientists reported that forceful, prosaic self-squeezing of the penile shaft more closely evokes the neurological signature of erotic touch than does gentle, prosaic self-squeezing of the glans.

[Findings]

Heterosexual women and men rated the erogeneity and appropriateness of having digital avatars of themselves touched by virtual men or women.

[Findings]

Straight women who can see and those who are blind care equally about dating good-looking men, though blind women place more importance on their partners having pleasant voices and odors.

[Findings]

Taiwanese men increase their odds of getting married in a given year by 3.92 percent for every 10 percent increase in the value of their real estate.

[Findings]

Red-haired or freckled women in high-UV latitudes have lower mortality risks, light-skinned sex workers in Mexico command higher rates, Brazilian men who self-identify as black are slightly happier with their penis size than those who self-identify as white, and a survey of forty countries found Colombian women to be more than five times as happy with their breast size as Japanese women.

[Findings]

Japanese macaques were recolonizing the abandoned zone around Fukushima.

[Findings]

Mantled howler monkeys howl for longer in the resource-rich interiors of forests than in areas impacted by human activity.

[Findings]

Baboons’ clear articulation of proto-vowels led scientists to conclude that speech could have begun developing twenty million years earlier than was previously thought.

Cover design by Jessica Hische Microfiche

Subscribe to the Podcast

Past Issues

August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
August 2021