All posts by Eric Shepherd

Eric Shepherd

About Eric Shepherd

Eric is a marketing professional working and living in Portland, ME. His writing on politics, science, and culture has appeared on NPR.com, Babble.com, and other national and regional outlets. Eric is also a public speaker on topics related to branding, social media, and cause marketing. He spent 10 years as a recording and touring musician. He has lived up and down the East Coast, but loves Portland the very most.

The vile treatment of Christine Blasey Ford is exactly why sexual assault victims don’t come forward

If we’ve learned anything in the few short days since Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser revealed her identity, it’s that we should never again wonder why most sexual assault victims don’t come forward. The vile attacks against Christine Blasey Ford have been relentless, coming not only from internet trolls and your crazy uncle on Facebook, but also […]

Trump’s uncanny knack for hiring only the very best worst people

They were the best of people, they were the worst of people. Trump promised us excellence. “I’m going to surround myself with only the best and most serious people,” he said in a 2016 interview with The Washington Post. “We want top of the line professionals.” Yet, time and time again, we have seen the […]

With Roy Moore’s defeat, we are witnessing the end of the party of family values

The party that said that gay marriage would lead to the normalization of pedophilia is normalizing pedophilia. The party that asked “How can you keep someone like Anthony Weiner in your orbit?” is urging Americans to keep someone like Anthony Weiner in their orbit. The party that routinely accuses Mohammed of being a pedophile is […]

We have a gun problem, and it’s totally the right time to talk about it

Here we are, reeling again from another uniquely American gun massacre. Cue the same debate on gun control, the same arguments with family members and friends on Facebook. The same finger-pointing, the same lack of progress. The snake eats its tail, over and over, forever and ever, amen. Each time a mass shooter strikes in […]

Confession: I went record shopping right after the towers fell on 9/11

“Where were you when the planes hit?” – that’s my generation’s JFK question. I remember it well. Unless you were directly involved in the day’s events, the answers are all strikingly similar. I was working in my (then) company’s office in downtown Boston. Someone yelled across the room, “Go to cnn.com.” The image on the […]

Everything you know is wrong: Wikipedia’s ‘List of Common Misconceptions’

We are gullible people, as we painfully learned over the course of the 2016 election cycle. Even the wackiest of claims, repeated often (and loud) enough, will often become “true.” And while many misconceptions are trivial, some perpetuate ignorance and can lead to harm. The very nature of Wikipedia, which relies on the general public to […]

Tolerance doesn’t require that we tolerate the intolerant

It never fails. As soon as people of sound moral and ethical character protest acts of hatred or inequality, there are cries of “the tolerant left” being intolerant of anyone who doesn’t share their views. Whether it be the post-election anti-Trump rallies, the Hamilton-Pence dust-up, or former Red Sox hero (and current embarrassment) Curt Schilling’s firing […]