Leigh Anderson
Lifehacker
New York, NY, United States
Contact Leigh
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
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Past articles by Leigh:
What to Do If Your Child's Behavior Is Ruining Your Relationship With Your Partner
“You know those ABC after-school specials where the parents get divorced, and they tell the kids it’s not your fault,” asks Catherine, a mom of three in Florida. “They lied. If we get divorced, it is totally their fault.” → Read More
How to Demand Action on Climate Change
Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report—a klaxon, really—warning of the catastrophic consequences of climate change if global political leaders don’t take action right now. For people who’ve been sounding the alarm for decades now, this report is depressing but not surprising; for those of us who’ve not paid as much attention to the science as we should have,… → Read More
How to Have a Conversation With a Conspiracy Theorist Without Losing Your Mind
Faked moon landing, #PizzaGate, September 11th was an inside job, Vince Foster was murdered by the Clintons to cover up Whitewater, the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax—the list of American conspiracy theories is long and bizarre. Side-show paranoid nonsense becomes alarming and enraging, however, when ordinary people base important decisions—how they vote, for example—on whatever fevered internet… → Read More
How to Rage-Donate Against Chuck Grassley
Well, that was quick: Less than a day after Grassley’s performance at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing investigating Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation of sexual assault against nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a Crowdpac has been started to fund his future opponent in 2022. In roughly 14 hours, it’s raised about $63,000. → Read More
How to Stay Politically Active When Everything Is Overwhelming
The news cycle is enough to make you lose hope. Every day brings some fresh horror, or an update on an ongoing horror, or rumblings of horrors to come. It’s like being repeatedly smacked in the face with a tetherball. The events of the last couple of years have pushed some of us to be more politically active, which obviously leads to more political awareness ... which can lead to despondency.… → Read More
Use This 'Pain Scale' to Assess Your Mental Health
If you’ve ever been in the hospital recovering from a surgery, you know the health care providers will ask you to “rate” your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, so they can administer pain relief if you need it. But assessing mental-health distress doesn’t have a simple 1-10 scale, because mental health isn’t as straightforward as physical pain. But nonetheless, people suffering from depression,… → Read More
Set a 'Rejection Goal' and It Might Just Lead to Success
Actors have a saying: You don’t get 100% of the parts you don’t audition for. If you’re an artistic type, or a writerly type, or even just someone who’s looking for a job, you may have found rejections to be so painful that you’ve just stopped applying for things. Social media and streaming TV is so soothing—why would you put yourself out there for stuff you’re not going to get anyway? → Read More
How to Roast Someone Like a Pro
Unless you were hiking the Appalachian Trail this weekend, you probably know that Michelle Wolf delivered the standard “roast” at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night and delivered some choice lines skewering the Trump administration and the media. From the reaction, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Wolf spent the entire evening mocking Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ looks: → Read More
What Happens When Every Citizen Receives a Universal Basic Income
Later this year, Stockton, a city in California with a 25% poverty rate, will conduct an unusual experiment: Roughly 100 of its citizens will receive $500 a month for 12-18 months, with no work requirements and no strings attached. Researchers likely will regularly assess the recipients’ health, childcare arrangements, education, and general well-being in order to measure how this kind of… → Read More
How to Tell a 'Crisis Pregnancy Center' from a Legitimate Abortion Clinic
Last week a vandal, presumably a right-to-life activist, spray-painted “Baby Killer” across the front of a women’s health clinic. The catch? In a plot twist worthy of The Gift of The Magi, it turns out that the clinic was actually a “crisis pregnancy center,” or an anti-choice operation dedicated to talking women out of having abortions. The CPC looked so much like a legitimate abortion provider… → Read More
A Student's Guide to Walkouts and Protests
The school shooting in Parkland, Florida has sparked a wave of student activism across the country: Teenagers are marching, organizing, and taking to social media to pressure their reps for meaningful gun legislation. In the last two weeks students have walked out of school to protest, and there are more protests planned: One planned for March 14 encourages students to walk out of their… → Read More
How to Fight 'Chill Girl' Teen Culture
High school and college students are suffering from unprecedented levels of anxiety, and anyone raising teenagers these days knows they’re coping with huge amounts of stress. This goes double for girls, who have what Rachel Simmons calls “role overload” in her new book Enough as She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standards of Success to Live Healthy, Happy, and Fulfilling Lives.… → Read More
How to Demand Action on Gun Control
On Wednesday, a gunman murdered 17 people in Parkland, Florida, which brings the country’s 2018 gun-death tally to 1,859. Feeling helpless and enraged? You’re not alone—and you’re not helpless. I spoke to Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, for some instruction on concrete steps the average citizen can take. → Read More
How to Stay Anonymous When You Win the Lottery
We all have fantasies of hitting the lottery, right? The new cars, the boat, the...lawsuits, predators, and bankruptcies? The winning ticket isn’t necessarily the winning ticket for a happy life, which is exactly why the winner of January’s Powerball jackpot of $560 million wants to keep her name out of the public record. But New Hampshire, where the she lives, doesn’t allow winners to claim… → Read More
If You Have Something to Return to LL Bean, Do It Now
Bought anything from LL Bean in the last year? Not totally happy with it? Return it now. The century-old catalog retailer for outdoorsy types has changed its famously generous return policy: Previously, you could return anything, anytime, no receipt necessary; now you must keep your receipt and take your items back within a year. → Read More
How to Respond to a Racist Comment
People will say all kinds of offensive things if they think you share their views. Take, for example, this terrific essay by Katherine Fugate, in which a locksmith assumes she wants sturdy locks to keep out all the potential black intruders (though he uses an uglier word). Or Trump’s blithe assumption that everyone agrees that Haiti and various African nations are “shithole” countries. → Read More
Become a Better Leader by Improving Self-Awareness
When we think of leadership qualities, we generally think of the ability to rally the troops, a clarity of vision, and the willingness to coax to the best work out of each team member. What we don’t tend to think of is self-awareness. Self-awareness, in fact, has a certain new-age ring to it—what leader is lying on her hemp bedspread, staring at the ceiling and thinking deeply about whether she… → Read More
How to Rock Your Car Out of a Snowbank
The morning after a big snowfall here in Brooklyn, us city-dwellers always awake to the same awful, desperate noise: The sound of a million New Yorkers trying to pull their cars out of parking spaces that haven’t been adequately shoveled out. This means an ongoing high-pitched whirring of tires and revving of engines, sometimes for hours, while I lie with the pillow over my head and pray that… → Read More
If You Want to Stick to a New Year's Resolution, Phrase It Diffferently
In 2017, for the first time in my life, I actually stuck to a resolution. What’s more, I’d failed at the same resolution—to make a budget and stick to it—for many previous years. Now, if you think there’s something shameful in a grown person not being able to handle her finances, you’re right! But what’s even more shameful is that I had tried, for literally 20 Januaries in a row, to figure out… → Read More
How to Report Sexual Harassment
In the deluge of sexual-harassment allegations over the last few months, one question keeps coming up: Why didn’t the victims report at the time? Well, for a bunch of reasons: they didn’t think anyone would believe them, or they didn’t think it was “bad enough” to warrant an HR complaint, or they believed that speaking out would torpedo their career. But of all the people who’ve ever been… → Read More