Whether as innocent as a young child moving to her favorite Disney tune or as highly choreographed and tightly executed as the moves of a K-pop band, dancing is an elemental expression of the self and a universal form of communication. At the Busan International Dance Festival, which took place from June 2-4 in the southern port city, 40 dance teams from around the world communicated pure joy, whimsical caprice, despair and hope, human struggles and victory. Watching the dancers perform on an ou

Some of us are more optimistic than others about the future. We optimists recognize that it is still possible to escape from the traps that America’s Second Gilded Age has laid. During a gilded age, productive capabilities are directed away from providing most people with necessities and conveniences, and toward exorbitant spending on status-seeking and other worthless activities. Inherited wealth typically plays a major role, and it is often deployed to block and delay any transformation

This summer, Japan intends to begin releasing wastewater into the sea from the destroyed Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Japanese officials assure that the operation spanning decades will not endanger marine life or the environment. And to help convince skeptics, they have a willing neighbor, according to Japanese news reports. Quoting a diplomatic source, the reports say that President Yoon Suk Yeol vowed to make all-out efforts to remove public concerns in Korea about the wastewater disch

Today we will be exploring why Donald Trump’s little-understood MAGA Republican base has seemed so stunningly shatterproof -- despite being pounded by nonstop news revelations of potential prosecutions, more unsavory conduct and eruptions that sound unpatriotic to outsiders’ ears. Now this: The 2024 presidential campaign attacks are just getting started. Former Trump endorsers are now campaigning against him in the 2024 presidential primaries. No one knows what to expect. And there a

In 1992, when Francis Fukuyama published his celebrated book “The End of History and the Last Man,” people thought that liberal democracy would be the predominant form of government on Earth after the disappearance of the Soviet Union. Despite Fukuyama’s optimistic prediction, however, ideological evolution did not end even after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, and consequently, liberal democracy is in crisis today. In his article “Populism is a Symp

With the enactment last year of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the United States fully joined the rest of the world’s advanced economies in combating climate change. The IRA authorizes a major increase in spending to support renewable energy, research and development and other priorities, and if estimates about its effects are anywhere near correct, the impact on the climate will be significant. True, the design of the law is not ideal. Any economist could have drafted a bill that woul

Artificial intelligence is, suddenly, everywhere. We are awash in ideas about how we can use AI productively -- from agriculture to climate change to engineering to software construction. And, equally, there are plenty of cautionary notes being struck about using AI to control societies, manipulate economies, defeat commercial opponents, and generally fulfill Arthur C. Clarke’s visions of machines dominating man in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Thus far, however, relatively little has

As Europe sets its sights on becoming the world’s first carbon-neutral continent, it must perform a delicate balancing act. Can the European Union transform its economy while enhancing its competitiveness? And can it achieve these goals while maintaining its status as a shaper of global standards and adhering to its principles of fiscal responsibility? The answer to these questions is a resounding no. Trade-offs are unavoidable, and identifying the concessions required to strike the ri

A few weeks ago, I visited Japan for the first time in four years. I expected to find many changes but was surprised to find things almost the same as they were in 2019. Compared to South Korea and the US, where some pandemic era innovations have become the norm, Japan feels the most like 2019. As I traveled, I began to wonder why and came up with several possible answers. Compared to South Korea and the US, Japanese society changes more slowly. Japanese organizations are wary of sudden change a