In The News: College of Liberal Arts

Mail-in ballots play a big role in Nevada elections. Taking a look at the general election in 2024, 45% of voters voted by mail. Now there is a big divide on whether this executive order will benefit the Silver State.
In his latest book A World Appears: A journey into consciousness, Pollan charts the work of scientists and philosophers, weaving in literary perspectives along the way. He spoke to New Scientist about the value of writing a book where you know less at the end than before you started.
Michael Pollan (A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness) is a science and environmental journalist. Michael returns to the Armchair Expert to discuss why choosing surrender is liberating in both psychedelics and life, what the “hard problem” of consciousness is and how we get to it, and how sentience serves homeostasis in living beings. Michael and Dax talk about asking what the world would be like without consciousness, the remarkable fact that plants can see, hear, and fight, and experimental evidence via the ginger test that disgust originates in the gut. Michael explains the qualitative redness of red, that there’s so much more going on in consciousness besides computation, and what strange places to visit our minds are.
A recent study published in Psychology of Women Quarterly suggests that young men who favor the internet subculture known as the tradwife movement tend to hold hostile and patronizing sexist attitudes. The findings provide evidence that the appeal of this lifestyle for men is rooted in a desire for traditional power dynamics rather than a simple preference for a stay-at-home partner.
Earlier this month, Wisconsin lawmakers passed a bill that would expand sports betting in the state by allowing people to make wagers online. Governor Tony Evers will soon have to decide whether to sign the bill into law. Evers has said his decision will hinge on whether the state's 11 tribes with gaming compacts can agree on how to offer online sports betting throughout Wisconsin. In the meantime, a multitude of questions still exist around what online sports betting could mean for Wisconsin.

Chavez was a widely admired Latino icon who brought to light the struggles of farmhands and led the United Farm Workers union until his death in 1993. Earlier this month, labor rights activist Dolores Huerta revealed she was among multiple women and girls who say they were sexually abused by César Chavez.

Pollan, a science writer, spent five years trying to understand how consciousness worked. The more he learned, the weirder things got.

North Las Vegas is the latest battleground in efforts to confirm how long Nevada elected officials are allowed to serve.
The image is carefully curated: sourdough cooling on a scrubbed wooden counter, a woman in a floral apron, a husband greeted at the door. The #tradwife movement has attracted millions of followers across TikTok and YouTube since it began gathering momentum during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020, and it presents itself as a domestic idyll, a nostalgic retreat from the grinding complexity of modern life. You might reasonably reckon the men drawn to it are the chivalrous sort. The ones who believe women deserve protecting, cherishing, putting on a pedestal. Turns out, no.

Last year, North Las Vegas’ code enforcement division received a jarring complaint. People were living “all around” the Silver Nugget casino property, but “most disturbing” was an encampment in back that was under the building, according to the complaint from a homeless-services manager with the city.

The pay gap—or the difference in earnings between men and women—persists throughout the U.S., with full-time working women earning just 81 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024. A recent business.com analysis of U.S. Census data shows Nevada’s full-time workforce faring better than all but Vermont, but Henderson remains a major outlier. The city had the 15th largest gap in the study, with an average female resident earning $19,645 less than her male counterpart. That’s about 2.5 times greater than Las Vegas’ $8,172 and Nevada’s $7,805, and consistent with a 2024 UNLV Lincy Institute and Brookings Mountain West study ranking it 21st. Let’s take a closer look at these trends in honor of Equal Pay Day on March 26.

Founded in 2009 by UNLV alumna Kathryn Kruse, Neon Lit began without a name, just as a loose gathering of Master of Fine Arts students reading their work to one another, as Wright describes it. By 2010, the series adopted its moniker, and over the past 16 years it’s expanded beyond the university corridors into a broader civic space, drawing audiences hungry for literary community.
