Billie Eilish is perhaps the most talented artist of our generation…and I don’t throw that around lightly. At only 13, Eilish wrote “Ocean Eyes” alongside her brother Finneas and launched her prolific career. And at the fair age of 22, Eilish has 24 GRAMMY Award nominations and nine wins, two Oscars, two Golden Globes, and countless other accolades.
Beyond that, she recently announced her third album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, to be released May 17, 2024. She spent the days leading up to the announcement building excitement by adding all of her Instagram followers to her “Close Friends” list. Eilish had the most Instagram followers in 48 hours…with her count increasing by 7 million followers total.
While her debut album, when we all fall asleep…where do we go?, was a chart-topper in its own right, it landed Billie every GRAMMY it was nominated for at the ripe age of 18…Eilish has solidified herself as one of the most revered and sought-after popstars in the world.
Eilish recently caught media attention for quietly revealing her sexuality. In an interview with Variety, she states that she’s always liked girls…and assumed people always knew that. In a viral snippet from her new song, LUNCH, she details a love affair with a girl.
But people don’t only adore Billie for her catchy tracks that consistently top the charts. It’s not just her songwriting ability and unique vocals that keep us hooked. People love her because she’s unafraid to speak her mind.
Whether it be complaining about too many influencers being at an awards show, or calling out other artists for using unsustainable practices…Billie does not hold back.
Billie Eilish On Sustainability
Eilish home
rethinkingthefuture.com
The Eilish home is iconic for many reasons: it’s where Billie and Finneas recorded her debut album, countless other songs, and EPs, in an effort to conserve water there’s no grass, and the roof is covered in solar panels. And being environmentally conscious extends beyond the four walls of their home.
When the hottest young talent is discovered at such an early age like Eilish, record labels are chomping at the bit to sign them. It’s like when a D1 athlete is ready to commit to college…you have your pick.
But what Eilish and her mom, Maggie Baird, were looking for wasn’t about money or label-perks…they were seeking a solid sustainability program. And while that may seem like standard practice, most labels didn’t bring up environmental policies during these meetings at all.
After signing to The Darkroom via Interscope Records, the struggle didn’t stop there. Billie Eilish and her family have been consistent contributors to the fight against climate change.
Maggie Baird has since started Support + Feed, which focuses on the climate crisis and food insecurity. Support + Feed helped Eilish’s 2022 Happier Than Ever tour save 8.8 million gallons of water through plant-based meal service for the artist and crew members.
During Billie’s 2023 Lollapalooza performance, she aided the launch and funding of REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project – which guaranteed all battery systems used during her set were solar powered. The MCD’s overall mission is to lower – and eventually eliminate –the music industry’s carbon emissions.
But more recently, Billie Eilish called out other artists for releasing multiple versions of vinyls in order to boost vinyl sales. In an interview with Billboard, she says,
“We live in this day and age where, for some reason, it’s very important to some artists to make all sorts of different vinyl and packaging … which ups the sales and ups the numbers and gets them more money and gets them more…”
Artists convince fans to buy different versions of their albums by offering exclusive features on each vinyl. Take Taylor Swift, for example, who released five separate vinyl versions of Midnights, each with a different deluxe “Vault” track.
While Billie may not have been trying to shade one artist in particular, the point is that she’s fed up. After being the rare artist in the industry who go out of their way to remain environmentally conscious, Eilish sets the bar high.
How Eilish’s New Album Is Sustainable
Billie for "Hit Me Hard and Soft"
William Drumm
Social media users were quick to claim Eilish was hypocritical by announcing that HIT ME HARD AND SOFT will have eight vinyl variations. However, each vinyl is made from recycled materials – either 100% recycled black vinyl or BioVinyl, which replaces petroleum used during manufacturing with recycled cooking oil.
This just illustrates that Eilish wasn’t directing criticism towards other artists for using vinyl variants to gain album sales…but she does think there are better ways to do it that benefit the environment without hurting their sales.
Faith, Politics, and Abortion: Is Joe Biden a Real Catholic?
If the USCCB had their way, no Catholic would be qualified for political office.
In 1960, as John F. Kennedy was running for president of the United States, a question of his faith became a major issue in the campaign.
Only one previous Catholic candidate had ever been nominated by a major party — Al Smith, a Democrat who lost badly to Herbert Hoover in 1928. Many protestant voters believed that Kennedy would be subject to the will of the Vatican and would serve the pope before he served the American people.
Kennedy managed to assuage those fears by assuring the voting public that his faith would be separate from his governance, stating, "I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair." But 60 years later, as Joe Biden settles into his role as the second Catholic president in America's history, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City has rejected this approach and reopened the question of whether a true Catholic should be allowed to be president.
Kennedy Special: JFK & The Pope | Historywww.youtube.com
According to Naumann, it is not enough that Joe Biden is the first president in decades to regularly attend Sunday church services. It is not enough for him to follow Catholic teachings in his personal life — to mourn his son Beau in funeral services at a Catholic Church and visit his grave in a Catholic cemetery. According to Naumann — who is the chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop's Committee on Pro-life Activities — Joe Biden may not call himself a "devout Catholic," unless he takes a political stance against legal abortion.
This declaration came a month after USCCB president Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles declared that Joe Biden had "pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender." As upsetting as that claim is, Archbishop Naumann managed to take his criticism a step further.
In an interview with the Catholic World Report, Naumann claimed that Joe Biden "is going to force people to support abortion through their tax dollars" and that he is "acting contrary to Church teaching." By his metric this means that "when [President Biden] says he is a devout Catholic, we bishops have the responsibility to correct him."
But, whatever their political disagreement might be, does it really warrant an attack on the sincerity of his personal faith? Leaving aside accusations of sexual misconduct — as those leveled against Trump are both more numerous and more egregious (and the Catholic Church's capacity for "forgiveness" has been made all too clear on this issue...) — hasn't Biden's private life demonstrated Christian virtue far more clearly than Donald Trump's?
Yet Naumann seemed to think that Donald Trump — a serial-adulterer, twice divorced, who has never engaged in regular church attendance — was a better ally for Christian morality. While Pope Francis slyly criticized Donald Trump for the hypocrisy of taking pro-life stances while tearing children from their families at the border — until the courts put a stop to the practice — Archbishop Naumann said that "the Trump Administration deserves our praise" for cutting off government funding to charities and non-profit organizations that provide abortions.
That statement came in August of 2020, just weeks after the Trump administration began a spate of federal executions that would go on to end the lives of 13 people between July of 2020 and January of 2021. While the Catholic Church — along with Naumann himself — has taken clear stances against the death penalty in all instances, Naumann did not seem to think this was as worthy of rebuke as Joe Biden's plans to reinstate funding for organizations that provide free and low-cost abortion services.
Naumann has not simply voiced his political disagreement or stated that the church opposes the stance; he has attacked the notion that a person can truly be a Catholic while supporting political policies that the the church opposes. He has essentially embraced the notion that the Vatican should dictate how a Catholic president governs a nation in which the separation of church and state is enshrined in the First Amendment.
To meet Archbishop Naumann's standard as a "devout Catholic," would Biden likewise have to maintain political opposition to gay marriage, divorce, and contraception? Considering the truly unhinged, outdated, and functionally evil anti-sex stances that the Catholic Church has continually taken — actively fighting the distribution of condoms in Africa at a time when AIDS was killing millions on the continent every year — any reasonable person should pray that Archbishop Naumann's vision of a Catholic president never exists.
We can ignore the fact that the modern notion that "life begins at conception" is far from consistent in early Christian doctrine. We can ignore the portion of the bible that seems to call for inducing a miscarriage in the case of adultery. We can ignore the fact that canonized theologians from St. Thomas Aquinas to St. Augustine to St. Anselm differentiated between the early stages of pregnancy and the period after "ensoulment" — often associated with the "quickening" — when kicking and other fetal movement become detectable around 18 weeks.
We can ignore all of that, because the solidity of Catholic dogma has no relevance in secular law. Joe Biden could hold it as a religious belief that abortion is wrong — he could personally abhor the practice and even consider it murder — but there is no secular or scientific basis for that belief, so he would have no right to impose that view on anyone else.
For the vast majority of development, embryos and fetuses have non-existent or largely inactive brains. To claim that the supposed existence of a divine soul makes them as worthy of human rights as a conscious person whose body is being co-opted requires religious faith which the laws of a modern, secular nation cannot be allowed to incorporate.
This is the reality that predominantly Catholic nations like Ireland and Argentina have acknowledged in legalizing certain forms of abortion in recent years. Or would Archbishop Naumann like to challenge the devout Catholicism of the citizens of Ireland, as well?
Pro-Life Archbishop Joseph Naumann Shares Reaction to Pro-Abortion Policies | EWTN News Nightlywww.youtube.com
So while Naumann engages in baseless, partisan slander when he claims that Joe Biden is not "as orthodox in his Catholic faith as he is in doing what Planned Parenthood instructs him to do," there is a grain of truth in his statement. Because an organization like Planned Parenthood — with a basis in science and medicine (and completely removed from the beliefs of its problematic founder) — has a far more legitimate place in American politics than does the Catholic Church.
In the past, immense crimes have been done as a result of the Catholic Church's stance against the "moral hazard" of making sex safer or less shameful. Whether that means victims of rape being further traumatized by pregnancy and birth, HIV spreading in Africa, LGBTQ+ people being forced to deny who they are, or hundreds of children being taken from unwed mothers to die in the 1950s under the "care" of the Bon Secours nuns in Tuam, Ireland.
Maybe its time to consider the moral hazard of allowing men who have taken solemn vows of abstinence — and who all too often break them — to speak as authorities on matters of sex and sexuality that have nothing to do with them. At the very least, it's time for Archbishops Naumann and Gomez to recognize that a president's religious views "are his own private affair."
Exploring the controversies surrounding the Peace Corps
Volunteers look to change the world but the agency's practices have been debated for decades
In February 2013, 23-year-old Peace Corps volunteer Nick Castle died in a hospital at West China Hospital of Sichuan University of a gastrointestinal illness. He had fallen into a coma after feeling sick for months, losing weight and, finally, collapsing in Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province. Carrie Hessler-Radelet, the director of the Peace Corps in 2013, told the New York Times that the agency had been examining and revising its entire practice since the death of another volunteer in Morocco in 2009.
Deaths in the Peace Corps are not frequent, but they rightly call into question the program's training processes, medical resources, and the security of volunteers.
The physician who treated Castle, Dr. Jin Gao, became the center of a report by the Corps' inspector general about miscommunication and delayed reactions in the agency's healthcare system that might have led to the volunteer's death. Though the report didn't blame the Peace Corps for the man's death, it revealed inefficiencies and errors made by the doctor and others (including the ambulance getting lost on the way to pick up Castle) that added to concerns about volunteer welfare.
Many testimonies—positive and negative—reached reporters following the death. Chance Dorland, a volunteer in Columbia, said, "I was forced to leave my site . . . early because I was made sick by the inadequate and unprofessional medical care the Peace Corps offered its volunteers." Nancy Tongue, founder and director of Health Justice for Peace Corps Volunteers, wrote that a sick volunteer carries the "burden of proof." She expects volunteers who maintain a successful claim to be left "living slightly above poverty level regardless of prior earnings," waiting months or years for proper treatment or attention.
The Peace Corps has also been criticized for failing to keep its volunteers safe. In 2007, Juan Duntugan, a Filipino woodcarver, confessed to killing Julia Campbell because she had bumped into him while he was enraged by a fight with a neighbor. The organization cannot possibly guarantee the safety of its thousands of volunteers in hundreds of countries around the world but it can better prepare them and be more transparent about the dangers they might face.
It can also offer better mental health services. During the application process, the Peace Corps might require, from a person who has a mental illness, letters from mental health professionals, clearance from a psychologist, and participation in a sort of exam. "Transition can often be one of the biggest triggers for mental health issues," writes Ross Szabo, a former volunteer. Even in people not diagnosed with a specific mental illness, adjusting to life among strangers in another country can be massively stressful. And the pressure to succeed can make a difficult situation unmanageable. Another former volunteer, Emily Best, ended her stay in Senegal in 2012 after a year of frustration. She writes, "The onus of success seemed to be placed solely on the volunteer. If the volunteer struggles, it's because she isn't trying hard enough to adapt."
Some volunteers have struggled with a lack of education after being handed a project in an unfamiliar field or with too little training. Kelli Donley returned home from her agricultural posting after only five months because, she realized, "the audacity of my arrogance in assuming that this time abroad would do Cameroon any good was apparent on Day 1." Benjamin Clark was sent to Senegal as a 23-year-old with a graduate school degree. "I taught them a little about accounting and some basic math," he writes, "but my real value was being one extra person to hold a shovel." He thinks of the Peace Corps as a cultural exchange program more than an international aid group.
The loudest controversy for the Peace Corps in recent years has been their alleged mishandling of rape and sexual assault. On average, twenty-two female volunteers reported being raped or being victims of attempts between 2000 and 2009. In 2016, the percentage of women who said they've been sexually assaulted rose to 38%.
Danae Smith was attacked in the Dominican Republic and reported it to the Peace Corps in 2015. The Corps responded by blaming her for not doing enough to prevent it from happening. They sent her home immediately afterward. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel wants better training for host families and other in-country workers, including fellow teachers and priests, who represent a significant percentage of the attackers.
The agency is also being asked to provide much better access to victim care, including medical treatment and counseling.
The Peace Corps has drawn criticism since its inception in 1961 for its actions and intentions as an international development organization. Some think that its goal is mainly to create a positive image of the U.S. despite the country's imperialistic military engagements. Others think of the Peace Corps, itself, as an imperialistic strategy, developing Western culture and planting American influence in impoverished regions around the world. Hayley White, a volunteer in Uganda, wrote that the Corps should work more closely with in-country social entrepreneurs than with nongovernmental organizations that are "often too indoctrinated in Western ideas of how things must be done."
It is difficult to separate imperialism from a foreign aid program such as the Peace Corps or WorldTeach. After all, how can a U.S. citizen, perhaps only recently graduated from college, and maybe on their first trip outside of the country, provide meaningful help to a foreign community based on any other system than the American one in which they grew up? Instead of ending the imperialism argument outright, this is a question that is worth answering as a step toward a solution.
This article has focused on the controversies that surround the Peace Corps not to debase the organization's mission, but because without the constant discussion of weaknesses and the incessant push to do better, these dangers will remain. Many volunteers who write about their unsatisfactory experiences maintain that the organization needs revision to do its work better, not to cease working altogether. The mission of the Peace Corps is important; therefore, it is important to ensure that its mission is carried out correctly and with care.