Time:

Like the “problem that has no name,” the disquieting malaise of frustration and repression among postwar wives and homemakers identified by Betty Friedan more than 50 years ago, this moment is borne of a very real and potent sense of unrest. Yet it doesn’t have a leader, or a single, unifying tenet. The hashtag #MeToo (swiftly adapted into #BalanceTonPorc, #YoTambien, #Ana_kaman and many others), which to date has provided an umbrella of solidarity for millions of people to come forward with their stories, is part of the picture, but not all of it.

David Leonhardt, writing for The New York Times:

The project’s latest paper, out Sunday, looks at who becomes an inventor — and who doesn’t. The results are disturbing. They have left me stewing over how many breakthrough innovations we have missed because of extreme inequality. The findings also make me even more frustrated by new tax legislation that will worsen inequality. This Congress is solving economic problems that don’t exist and aggravating those that do.

The key phrase in the research paper is “lost Einsteins.” It’s a reference to people who could “have had highly impactful innovations” if they had been able to pursue the opportunities they deserved, the authors write. Nobody knows precisely who the lost Einsteins are, of course, but there is little doubt that they exist.

Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons has stepped down following new accusations of sexual assault.

The New York Times:

The reckoning over sexual harassment in the workplace toppled another leading television personality on Wednesday when NBC fired its leading morning news anchor, Matt Lauer, over an allegation of sexual misconduct.

“On Monday night, we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer,” Andrew Lack, the NBC News president, said in a memo to the staff.

Caitlin Flanagan, writing for The Atlantic:

Every day seems to add another man to the list, and precious few of them have flatly denied the accusations. The strangled, vague, blanket apology—intended not to rile up any other potential accusers, leaving plenty of maneuvering room if the charges end up in court—has become an art form.

How many women will find some kind of justice for terrible things that have happened to them at work? And how many women won’t ever have to face such things because of this profound episode? We don’t know the answer to either question, but we do know this: There is a gathering sense that all of this has just gone too far. It was fine in the beginning, when a handful of Hollywood monsters were brought to account. But as the tide keeps roaring onto the beach, depositing flotsam of all kinds, the sentiment has begun to turn. It seems that this is just too many women saying too many things about what has happened to them, and something needs to be done about it. The approaches are various: it’s a witch hunt; it’s a sex panic; it’s destroying good men’s careers.

Maria Sherman, writing for Track Record:

I reached out to Sheridan Allen, a Philadelphia-based social worker who runs Punk Talks, an organization that offers free professional therapy to music workers. They provide education, awareness, and advocacy around mental illness and accessibility to treatment. She and her team of 15 volunteers (including three licensed therapists and a pharmacist) have been asking the same questions for a long time, so I asked her: What does restorative justice look like within the music industry?