Author: Shalem John

 “If I wish to name-drop, I have only to list my ex-friends.”  So wrote editor and essayist Norman Podhoretz in the early pages of a 1999 book titled (unsurprisingly) Ex-Friends. Podhoretz, who died last month at age 95, was until his mid-30s part of New York’s left-of-center intellectual community. He broke with it once the “New Left” became more extreme and friendly to Marxism and communism.  Born in Brooklyn in 1930, Podhoretz was the son of Jewish immigrants who came to America from a region that has changed hands between Poland and Ukraine in the century since. In 1956, he…

Jennifer Bute, the executive partner at a large general practice in Southampton, UK, was driving to her office in 2004 when she got lost. Suddenly, the 59-year-old doctor couldn’t remember how to get to the medical center she had worked at for the past 25 years.  When she finally showed up and told the staff why she was late, no one believed her. Bute realized something was wrong.  Over the next four years, more troubling things happened. She began forgetting her passwords. Her sister came over for a visit and on her way out the door remembered she’d left her…

 New data from the federal government shows that spending on new construction of churches and other houses of worship increased by 17 percent from June 2024 to June 2025, even as overall annual construction spending dropped by 3 percent. This is the first serious rebound in church construction in 20 years. Spending peaked at $8.8 billion in 2001 and has slid downward since then, reaching a low of $3.4 billion in 2014 and $3.1 in 2021. Spending went up, however, in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. The reasons for the rebound are unclear. Several consultants told The Wall Street Journal…