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1 week ago | 
newamerica.org | Haley Swenson
What We’re Trying to Solve: The work of cooking for a household during a busy work weekTarget Audience: Members of a community, any household typeAges: AdultsCategory: Meal Planning and CookingEstimated Time: 1-2 hours per weekLength: At least two weeks, but we recommend committing to fourDifficulty Level: MediumInterested? If you're willing to give this a try, we'd love to hear from you about how it went! Take our survey here.
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1 week ago | 
newamerica.org | Haley Swenson
Shannon Amspacher has a dream. What if we cut our weekly cooking time nearly in half, added more variety and home-cooked food to our family’s weekly menu, and built meaningful community ties at the same time? That’s the idea behind Potluck, a technology platform that Amspacher is in the process of developing that would match individuals with someone in their community who also wants to share the load of weekly meal planning and preparation.
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2 weeks ago | 
newamerica.org | Haley Swenson
Are we headed for a recession? Will long-standing political institutions and norms fall? Will the public policies our families and communities rely on be there in the coming years? Are my basic political rights going to change? Today, Americans face a near-avalanche of uncertainty about major social, economic, and political questions. In the midst of this public uncertainty, they continue to navigate the big, deep, and personal questions people have asked themselves throughout history.
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2 months ago | 
newamerica.org | Haley Swenson
My friend texts me, worried that her husband—a federal worker—might lose his job. Even if he keeps it, he’ll have to begin commuting to an office he’s never set foot in, throwing their child care into disarray. I commiserate. My wife and I still haven’t found a solid, affordable child care option; our son is two.
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Feb 7, 2025 | 
newamerica.org | Haley Swenson
Stephanie LeBlanc-Godfrey self-identifies as a nerd. She’s felt pulled toward numbers, analytics, and experimentation her whole life. She loved math and science growing up and studied electrical engineering in college. In her first job as an engineer, however, she felt isolated. She was the only young Black woman in her work world, and her colleagues all seemed to be in different life stages.
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Feb 7, 2025 | 
newamerica.org | Haley Swenson |Stephanie LeBlanc-Godfrey
Have you ever been asked to help a child with math homework, and then immediately panicked when you looked at the page? You aren’t alone. Today, homework help, like most childcare activities, falls more on women’s shoulders than on men’s. The latest data from the American Time Use Survey suggests women in households with children under 18 spend about four times as much of their day helping kids with homework than do men. But it does not need to be this way.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thepersistent.com | Haley Swenson |Francesca Donner |Ruchika Malhotra
💛The Persistent is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. This week, the CNN journalist Christina Macfarlane asked the World Cup rugby star Ilona Maher how she overcomes her imposter syndrome. If you don’t know Maher, you should. She’s not only a brilliant athlete who helped Team USA win its first Rugby medal in 100 years at last year’s Summer Olympics, she’s also an outspoken feminist who constantly challenges gender and body norms on social media.
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Jan 23, 2025 | 
thepersistent.com | Haley Swenson |Francesca Donner
As millions of eyes were turned toward Monday’s inauguration of Donald Trump, another well-heeled event was getting underway a few thousand miles away. This week marks the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum—a gathering of billionaires, hosted in the Swiss Alps—known affectionately as “Davos,” the town where it all takes place.
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Jan 23, 2025 | 
thepersistent.com | Haley Swenson |Francesca Donner
AI — 10 min read 💛The Persistent is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. When my now wife and I moved in together in 2019, I was pretty smug about my lesbian lifestyle. We were two women with good incomes, who knew how to handle our business, keep a tidy house, and communicate about everything from our deepest feelings to the tedium of household life. Five years later, I am not as smug. We have a house and a busy 1-year-old to care for.
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Jan 22, 2025 | 
thepersistent.com | Francesca Donner |Holly Baxter |Haley Swenson
šThe Persistent is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. My wife and I share the load of parenting and housework, but having a toddler and engaging in paid work has pushed us beyond our capacity. I started forgetting tasks on my to-do list and dropping the ball on appointments and other important life business. After talking with dozens of fellow parents and a few thoughtful AI experts, I realized that AI could be as useful in the home as it could be at work.
