February Love Issue
L-O-V-E, that four-letter word! Here part of our focus steered to children. For example, while flipping to Fox News recently I saw Roger McNamee being interviewed. Roger is known as a successful Silicon Valley insider who was one of Mark Zuckerberg’s early mentors. Upon seeing some strange developments over the last year he turned into a whistleblower, suggesting that technology has a surprising dark side that is making young people especially vulnerable. He mentioned that many tech leaders limit their own kids’ exposure, whereupon I had an aha! moment, thinking, “Maybe he could be our interviewee for the Love issue—but we’d call it ‘For the love of our kids.’” It worked.
Roger considers himself a musician first. A longstanding Deadhead who started Moonalice and the Flying Other Brothers with his wife, Ann, he considers tech investing his day job. He explained how he gained entrée into the nascent computer industry by being a skilled guitarist who knew the words to more than 200 songs, having played happy hours since college. The blow-by-blow of how he met Mark Zuckerberg is fun. You’ll learn terms such as “brain hacking” and “filter bubbles” and come to understand how enemies of democracy were able to affect our election process as well as the Brexit vote in England—not to mention how our kids are being ensnared.
Warren Farrell is my other interview, based on his book The Boy Crisis. Warren was the male voice of the women’s movement in the ‘70s, working side by side with the likes of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, but his views evolved to become inclusive of men’s perspectives. Though he’s come to be known as the father of the men’s movement, he now advocates for neither a men’s movement nor a women’s movement but for an all-gender movement. His focus over the last dozen years has been how boys are failing to launch and have fallen behind girls in key success markers. His interview points to divorce and fatherlessness as the leading causes of the crisis and suggests many remedies—some that could benefit single mothers raising sons. Plus, he tells a funny story about how he spoke with John Lennon for an hour without realizing it.
In this vein we created a pictorial homage called “Fathers’ Love” which speaks for itself. We’ve a lovely essay by Zoë Kors, who discusses an unforgettable hug she received from her father as a six-year-old after she accidentally killed her pet parakeet. You’ll enjoy Janna Barkin’s essay about being a mother to her transgender boy in “He’s Always Been My Son.”
In “Diving Deep: True Joy in an Age of Customizable Love,” Christian Pedersen talks about his odyssey bouncing from woman to woman as a young man but never finding satisfaction until he made a more profound commitment. Corine Farago provides a surprising essay, “Positively Kinky,” on the intimacy and relationship consequences of kink. She suggests that lack of novelty leads to straying in a partnership but that one doesn’t need to find a new partner to find someone new. Finally, you’ll surely enjoy Malini Patel’s personal essay “Eastern Love in the West: The Ups and Downs of Arranged Marriage.”
We look forward to seeing you at the Wisdom 2.0 conference. As ever, please show your support by patronizing our advertisers. March is our Food issue and our theme for April is Green.
For the love of our kids,
ROB SIDON, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR IN CHIEF