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Nik Narain

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OPINION | CAMPUS VOICES

Revisiting the complicated history of the Duke rice diet

By Nik Narain | December 4, 2024

Although it’s now considered a “fad diet" on many popular health websites, it’s a mind-boggling reality to reflect on how powerful the Rice Diet was in shaping the landscape of diet culture not just in Durham, but the country. What this story shows us about the allure of weight loss and the lengths our culture pushes to pursue it can be an entire thesis.

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OPINION | CAMPUS VOICES

Is my algorithm transphobic? And other questions for the algorithm

By Nik Narain | November 8, 2024

But the more I found myself on trans YouTube, and LGBTQ+ YouTube in general, the more I found myself surrounded by blatant queerphobic rhetoric. As in, the more I tried to look for information about LGBTQ+ topics, the more I found my For You page on YouTube suddenly full of armchair activists weighing in on the “trans debate”; therapists encouraging what is essentially a diluted form of conversion therapy and news anchors “roasting woman with pronouns.”

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OPINION | CAMPUS VOICES

Scientology and the dangers of neuroessentialism

By Nik Narain | October 28, 2024

Scientology can feel like this momentous connection between the two, a bridge between science and the spiritual, a biological essentialism to questions often regarded to be supernatural. But bringing an essentialist argument into a spiritual intervention is more fertile ground for psychiatric abuse than it is for self-transcendence.

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OPINION | CAMPUS VOICES

Searching for resonance in a sea of contention: A coming out piece

By Nik Narain | October 11, 2024

I feel like my collegiate life has been measured in these cycles of self-beration, self-liberation, self-deliberation and back again, a recognizable oscillation that has served as the drumbeat for my own semblance of self-transformation as a young adult (emphasis on the trans). I’ve spent so long trying to rationalize my reasons for shifting place in a system that is, at its core, irrational, one whose rigidity and unnecessary reinforcement has been the cause of suffering, violence and death for too many people around the world.

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OPINION | CAMPUS VOICES

Imagining the restorative justice crime drama

By Nik Narain | September 28, 2024

With crime TV being one of the most popular genres, media has played a major role in shaping our relationship with crime and punishment, sometimes as major as the policies around criminal justice themselves. It’s certainly not my position to tell you what to watch and not watch, but perhaps this piece can offer a nuanced perspective on the dark realities of these stories that not only miseducate but perpetuate harmful ideas about crime that inevitably contributes to real-life violence.

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