Elizabeth Spiers opinion writer, digital strategist, co-host of Slate Money

Elizabeth Spiers

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Latest — 30 Apr 2026

I Went to Duke With Justin Fairfax and Cerina Fairfax. Decades Later, He Killed Her

I wrote about Justin and Cerina Fairfax for Vanity Fair. I wrestled with this one for a while and it was hard to write for reasons you'll see in the column, but I hope it makes people think about these systemic problems that put women's lives

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Palantir’s Manifesto Promises a Dystopian Future

I regret to inform you that the Silicon Valley billionaires keep doing and saying dumb horrible things, and so I must continue to write about them. This week's ambulatory polar fleeced repository of hubris is Palantir's Alex Karp. Below is my column for The Nation about

The Anti-Intellectualism of Silicon Valley Elites

I recently re-read Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, and now every time a reactionary Silicon Valley billionaire opens his mouth, I think about it. So I wrote about it for The Nation. Here's the column: On Instagram, there’s an activist named Brian Patrick (@pano.

Lindy West, Polyamory, and How to Correctly Perform Feminism

The NYT asked me if I had any thoughts about the discourse around Lindy West's new memoir, and her throuple and whether you can be a feminist and maybe be married to a shitty guy. Because I reliably have opinions on everything, I said yes, and they are

How I Got That Job(s)

Every now and then I get asked to explain how I ended up with the career I have, and it’s been happening a lot lately, so I thought I’d write it up. (The more general and frequent inquiries come from students, and the more specific ones from other

Revenge of the Angry Bot

Alternative titles: PERLs Gone Wild, Bots Behaving Badly, Rage Incensed the Machine I wrote a column for The New York Times about agentic AI and a bot that wrote a hit piece about an engineer who rejected his code. The text is below, with some annotations I'm adding

On the Epstein Files and Oligarchs with Room Temperature IQs

One of my ongoing frustrations of our culture's veneration of capitalistic success is that it causes people to ascribe positive qualities to rich people that they may or may not have--intelligence and competence, in particular. I wrote about evidence of this in the Epstein files for The Nation,

Spring Workshop Schedule

I've added some new dates for opinion writing, personal essay, and creative/writing practice workshops. The schedule is below, and I hope to see you in one of them! WINTER/SPRING 2026 WORKSHOP SCHEDULE AND REGISTRATION OPINION WRITING Opinion Writing | Tuesday, February 10, 2026 | 3:00 pm -

Melania: The Movie Review

Doing it for JournalismTM Some brave journalists go to war zones and get shot at. I went to the Melania "documentary" for The Nation. Here's the column: Melania at the Multiplex Packaging a $75 million bribe from Jeff Bezos as a vapid, content-challenged biopic. by Elizabeth

Eating the Chess Pieces

This is not about "Spheres of Influence" Pundits and talking heads who insinuate that what Trump just did in Venezuela (or what he wants to do in Greenland or Nicaragua or Cuba) is part of some larger coherent foreign policy strategy as if he and his toadies are