I’ve often thought the landmark TV series The Wire was one of the most searing social commentaries on American society. On the surface, it was about drugs, but it had layers of complexity around issues of race, politics, education, justice and humanity. The creator of that series, David Simon, is back with a new show called The Deuce about the pornography industry. If you haven’t seen it yet, I encourage you to give it a try. The look and feel of the show – set in New York in the 1970s – is magnificent, but as with Simon’s earlier work, The Deuce offers a deeper view of society. Today in The Conversation Canada, Rebecca Sullivan of the University of Calgary’s Women’s Studies Program and Laura Helen Marks of Tulane University offer an analysis of the show’s take on the ‘70s sex industry and its impact four decades later.

“Simon has repeatedly insisted pornography is central to problems of 21st century labour and gender relations,” they write. “But if we accept pornography (and the sex industry in general) is to blame for everything that went wrong with postmodern America, what does that mean for the progressive politics of work and sex?”

One of the puzzles that climate scientists are trying to understand is the connection between climate and carbon dioxide. Karen Kohfeld, professor of climate, oceans and paleo-Environment at Simon Fraser University, and Zanna Chase of the University of Tasmania, explain their research into the climate of past ice ages and the role carbon dioxide played. “Many studies have focused on how carbon dioxide escaped from the ocean when the last ice age ended,” they write. “But how did the carbon dioxide get there when the Earth cooled?”

Regards,