When you identify so strongly as someone who cares about youth, then lose your little brother to suicide, that just heightens and highlights that responsibility. 
But also, in a way, it became a weight for a few years, and I didn’t know if I could continue to bear it after losing the young person that I’d been caring for and mentoring for their entire life. Five years later, I’m more comfortable with that heightened responsibility, which led to the film.

Rilla glanced out the window. The smoke was so dense that the teachers’ parking lot was no longer visible. She closed her eyes for a moment and listened: The brush fires couldn’t be seen. Nor could the snapping and cracking be heard.

My first encounter with Amanda Gunn’s “Ordinary Sugar” was through Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó’Tuama, not long after I read his bread recipe-poem and reflections on soup. Poems and recipes are kindred spirits, both in form and function. And, as Anthony Bourdain writes in Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, “the ability to feed yourself and a few others with proficiency” is a vital, fundamental skill. Perhaps the same is true of poetr

Our responsibility is not to hand the next generation a version of the past stripped of discomfort. It is to help them carry its hard truths without being crushed by them—and to trust them to create something wiser and more compassionate from what remains.

Last quarter, I was lucky enough to take a class called Medieval Dreams and Visions. After reading works by Chaucer, Dante, and other authors who lived centuries ago, we ended the quarter by watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Youth are increasingly faced with climate anxiety and strong opinions about wars they aren’t signing up for, yet will inherit. The environmental cost of war shows that these two issues are interconnected and that this data is not being provided to them.

I’ve felt it before—that subtle tightening in my body when the bill arrives. A kind gesture should feel warm and generous, but sometimes it leaves lingering doubts: What does this cost me? I’ve always bristled at the word beholden: obliged, indebted, bound by someone else’s favour. Raised to value independence, I learned to resist becoming indebted to others. Yet I also absorbed the unspoken social rules around me: the expectations about who pays, who owes, and what it all me

Eugenics isn’t a new word by any means. We’ve seen it in the Fitter Family Competitions that rated families based on physical traits and perceived social status, in the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, aiming to prevent “race defilement,” and in the forced sterilization of countless innocent women deemed unsuitable for reproduction. Eugenics has been admonished by most of the modern greater society, particularly after becoming synonymous with World War II.

And at the peak of FIFA 2026, there’s an undeniable sense of unity and community ritual as bars draw crowds that spill out onto the street. Everyone seems to be in a flurry of doom and uncertainty. For a few months, they believe that their team—and by extension themselves, the underdog—can win in a world that feels like a magnet for loss.

We’ve all heard it. The quick deflection after a slur slips out, after someone mimics an accent for laughs, after a name is butchered one too many times and met with giggles instead of correction: “Relax, it was just a joke,” or “Chill out, it wasn’t that deep.” But there’s something we don’t say: Those words aren’t light. They’re heavy. They’re tiny cuts that accumulate until belonging feels conditional, until you begin editing yourself before you even speak.

Young people are constantly criticized for being “too disconnected” from politics. Headlines often describe Generation Z as apathetic, distracted, or uninterested in civic engagement. Older generations frequently argue that young people spend more time scrolling through social media than paying attention to elections, policy, or democratic participation. Yet, this narrative ignores a much more important question: Why do so many young people feel disconnected from politics in