Olivia Campbell

Ezra Klein is Wrong About Abortion Abortion *is* a big tent issue

While everyone is rightly aghast at Klein's defense of Charlie Kirk as "doing politics the right way," I feel like this terrible opinion didn't get enough coverage.
open.substack.com/pub/jessica/...

We have allowed the lazy, grifting Silicon Valley charlatans into the front door, & in doing so, we have learned just how many of our own colleagues & administrators simply are not interested in the actual business of education. It's incredibly demoralizing.

bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Why I do what I do.

Everything is bad, but books are good. Get a book. Read the book. Cherish the book. Finish the book. Tell your friends about the book, and leave a review of the book. Hold the book close. Listen to what it tells you. Do as it commands. Place it on the dread altar and let it guide your every choice.

Poster for the 2026 Tucson Festival of Books

See you on the science and history panels! Excited to say yes to scary things (public speaking, flying) that mean I get to explore a part of the country I've never seen before.

Karen Attiah, a black woman, got fired for
A: accurately quoting what Charlie Kirk said about Black women
B: Accurately observing that most white Americans seem permissive of white violence.

It's bullshit, but almost expected in this white supremacist country.

A deep dive into the destruction of US cancer research by @jonathanmahler.bsky.social “It’s an absolutely unmitigated disaster,” a former top official at NIH told him. “It will take decades to recover from this, if we ever do.” Gift link: nyti.ms/48iH3Cr

bronze art nouveau dancing scarf lady bookends

Obsessed with these bronze art nouveau dancing scarf lady bookends. I'm so happy I trusted my gut and snapped them up at the thrift store. $25 is a bit more than I usually spend on my little thrift trinkets, but some googling tells me they're worth around $150 to $500.

Every pundit article: BLUESKY IS A HOTBED OF RADICALIZATION

Majority of posts in my feed: Check out this cool bug/bird/random historical personage I found!

Small but vivid minority of posts: Do you think Gritty and Alf are in a polycule or nah?

An Environmental Villain, Reconsidered

Had the great pleasure of reviewing @peterbrannen.bsky.social’s extraordinary new book (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/b...

Facts are the mortal enemy of arbitrary and unchecked power, which feeds on concealing reality to evade accountability.

Which is why authoritarians in every era, on the Left and Right, suppress facts and attack experts at every opportunity.

We have forgotten all the ways people used to get toxins out of their food before federal regulation. It's not that food and water used to be cleaner -- it's that domestic work used to include detoxing everything we put in our mouths!

Freelance Writer Guidelines

I'm looking for pitches for @MotherJones' print culture section, Mixed Media! These are ~2,000-word essays that combine reporting, cultural criticism, historical research, and/or personal narrative. More details in our pitch guidelines here: www.motherjones.com/contribute/w...

Screenshot of my latest newsletter post on how today's attacks on science mirror those of the Nazis

Screenshot of my latest newsletter post on how today's attacks on science mirror those of the Nazis

Screenshot of my latest newsletter post on how today's attacks on science mirror those of the Nazis

Screenshot of my latest newsletter post on how today's attacks on science mirror those of the Nazis

I feel like Chicken Little, but as a science journo, what can I do but write? open.substack.com/pub/oliviaca...

Attacking Science for Ideological Reasons: Just Like the Nazis What I learned from researching my book on science under the Nazis has felt terrifyingly relevant this year.

If you read anything I've written lately, I hope it's this post.

open.substack.com/pub/oliviaca...

People who can afford to take unpaid newsroom internships ... newsrooms full of ivy leaguers who got into college as legacies.

Attacking Science for Ideological Reasons: Just Like the Nazis What I learned from researching my book on science under the Nazis has felt terrifyingly relevant this year.

If you read anything I've written lately, I hope it's this post.

open.substack.com/pub/oliviaca...

The Dead Come to Stay book

That's what reminded me I needed to read the first one! I'm really loving it.

The Framed Women of Ardemore House book

Reading!

Trump’s Decapitation of CDC Takes Darker Turn—and Hands Dems a Weapon Illinois’s JB Pritzker is leading a charge other Democratic governors should take up: In our America, we’ll make sure public health systems remain strong.

States hold a tremendous amount of public health power. They should use it.

Great article on the need for Democratic governors to step up and protect public health, featuring the incredible @gregggonsalves.bsky.social.

💗💗💗

Ad for my book, SISTERS IN SCIENCE, being on sale for 1/2 price at Barnes & Noble

One of my main goals as an author is to sell enough books so they'll let me write another one. Currently, it looks like that's not going to happen since my publisher is not happy with the sales of my second book. A sophomore slump. I'm open to promo ideas & would appreciate any shares of this post!

#ScholarSunday Thread 238 Published on August 24, 2025

After a week off for bday celebrations, & belated after moving our son into college, here’s my 238th #ScholarSunday thread of public scholarly writing, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from these 2 weeks. Add more below, share widely, & enjoy! 🗃️

americanstudier.substack.com/p/scholarsun...

I may be biased but BWDR is one of the only film sites out there that lets writers - and readers - go long on their love of all the aspects of movies, from the niche to the global, from craft to theme to acting and directing to personal weird and great rabbit holes. Please subscribe!

MAHA is rebranded healthism, which has been around forever.

As one can imagine, I have some thoughts. Here’s a thread no one asked for:

1. SCIENCE IN THE US IS POLITICAL. No matter how much you want to ignore that fact, it is supported by taxpayer dollars and is therefore, political by nature.

2. BUT it has had bipartisan support for decades, which…

Sisters in Science: How Four Women Physicists Escaped Nazi Germany and Made Scientific History|Hardcover The extraordinary true story of four women pioneers in physics during World War II and their daring escape out of Nazi Germany In the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of scientific thought. But after the ...

www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sisters-in...

Ad for my book, SISTERS IN SCIENCE, being on sale for 1/2 price at Barnes & Noble

One of my main goals as an author is to sell enough books so they'll let me write another one. Currently, it looks like that's not going to happen since my publisher is not happy with the sales of my second book. A sophomore slump. I'm open to promo ideas & would appreciate any shares of this post!

FT headline saying reading for pleasure has fallen 40% in the US

But what about reading for pain?

FT headline saying reading for pleasure has fallen 40% in the US

But what about reading for pain?