What’s the point of a fictional utopia during a non-fictional dystopia?

2020 has been a strange year to be someone who thinks a lot about Star Trek, just as it's been a strange time to be, well, literally anyone.

“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth”: Chernobyl, The Inventor, and the inconvenience of objective reality

If the FYRE documentary felt like a dark comedy, The Inventor gets a little bit closer to dystopia ... and Chernobyl takes that progression to its logical, horrifying, heart-breaking endpoint.

FYRE and our con-man culture: The bigger the lie, the more we believe

There's a moment in HBO's The Wire that has really stuck with me since I first watched it. At the start of the show's final season, we watch as Detective "Bunk" Moreland tricks a suspect into confessing through a series of increasingly elaborate and ridiculous stunts, like passing off the police station's photocopier as a lie detector. …

“Good man” entitlement in The Handmaid’s Tale … and in real life

Actually doing good would require the Commander to relinquish the monstrous power he's granted himself, and it would never occur to him to do that ... but neither would it ever occur to him that he isn't entitled to feel like a good person, regardless.