(From left, counterclockwise) R. Lyon’s ‘The Artist’s Bank Account and Pin Code Embedded in a Magic Square,’ stills from Endia Beal’s ‘9 to 5’ and Catherine Telford-Keogh’s ‘See Inside,’ and a view under the trading desk of Sarah Meyohas’s ‘Stock Performance.’

(From left, counterclockwise) R. Lyon’s ‘The Artist’s Bank Account and Pin Code Embedded in a Magic Square,’ stills from Endia Beal’s ‘9 to 5’ and Catherine Telford-Keogh’s ‘See Inside,’ and a view under the trading desk of Sarah Meyohas’s ‘Stock Performance.’

(From left, counterclockwise) R. Lyon’s ‘The Artist’s Bank Account and Pin Code Embedded in a Magic Square,’ stills from Endia Beal’s ‘9 to 5’ and Catherine Telford-Keogh’s ‘See Inside,’ and a view under the trading desk of Sarah Meyohas’s ‘Stock Performance.’

Somewhere embedded within the 500 pages of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber—a leading thinker behind Occupy Wall Street—almost proposes that debt is good. After all, he writes, debt is unlike barter in that debt extends a relationship rather than ending it. In that sense, all relationships are made up of an exchange of debts and credits.

It’s a provocative idea because we don’t want to think of relationships quantitatively. And yet if there is not a certain amount of equality in a relationship, it cannot be healthy. We are making quantitative calculations all the time, just not actually verbalizing them…

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...