It occurs to me that the OP is asking for column ideas without answering a fairly basic question: What is the reason for resuming the column, and what is it intended to accomplish?
Two years ago, Cecil floated the idea of resuming columns on a kind of subscription basis, both to generate column topics and to raise funds for the board. As usual, many posters liked the idea and others were critical, but Cecil closed the thread after three days, and ultimately nothing came of it.
This was before WBEZ acquired the Straight Dope and the Chicago Sun-Times in January 2022. I may have missed it, but ISTM that the SDMB’s financial status has not been much discussed since then. But there have been threads about the declining membership of the board, and what can be done about it.
Then a few months ago, the columns resumed as a “dry run to see if the Master can still endure the grind of producing 1,000 scintillating words every week,” according to @engineer_comp_geek. But AFAIK, there has been no explanation as to why they have resumed, or what the goal is.
Obviously, if the goal is to help raise money or increase membership, at least some consideration should be given to whether any proposed questions would work towards those ends. Likewise if there are other reasons. If it’s just to fill Cecil’s spare time, then I guess anything goes.
So what is the purpose of the column, Cece?
That said, here are my thoughts about future columns and the latest batch of new ones. I came to the Straight Dope sometime in the late 1970s when it was published in the Baltimore and Washington editions of the City Paper, an alternative weekly newspaper. I loved the column’s snarky humor and its tackling of questions that you might have wondered about but couldn’t easily research. I read the column religiously for as long as the City Paper was published, bought all the books of collected columns, watched the brief TV show, and even had one of my question answered by Cecil.
I joined the SDMB in 2003 after @C_K_Dexter_Haven advised me that Cecil was not going to answer another question I submitted, and suggested I ask it on the board. I quickly became addicted, and signed up a charter member while that option was still available.
Let’s take a look at some random columns from the first few decades:
In the song “Hotel California,” what does “colitas” mean?
Where did two-letter postal abbreviations come from?
Is it dangerous to eat magic mushrooms before they have dried out? What mushrooms are safe to eat?
How does my nose produce so much snot so fast when I have a cold?
These are light-hearted but interesting questions that many people might have wondered about without pursuing on their own. And perhaps most importantly, they had arguably verifiable answers that Cecil could assert authoritatively. (Not that he wasn’t subsequently corrected on occasion.)
Now a sample from the past few months:
Is longtermism the world’s most dangerous belief system?
Could artificial intelligence replace journalists?
Why does an induction cooktop heat iron and steel pots but not copper or aluminum ones?
What was neoliberalism, is it dead, and was it really so bad?
The first is about an obscure so-called philosophical theory that is absurd on its face and doesn’t deserve the airtime Cecil gave it.
The second was an enjoyable romp at trying to get ChatGPT to write a Straight Dope column. But that was followed by another speculative column about the dangers of AI.
The third was one of the only new columns that I felt really followed the style of “Golden Age” Straight Dope columns. A little dry, perhaps, but not bad.
The fourth was yet another examination of a ludicrous theory unworthy of Cecil’s attention, and was the first Straight Dope column in 45 years that I didn’t bother to finish reading. TL/DR. As Cecil himself said, “This is making my head hurt.”
A point I’ve noticed about the recent batch: they seem to be longer on average. Obviously, on the Web we no longer need to be concerned about fitting into a limited space on a printed page, but longer is not necessarily better. Brevity is the soul of wit, and wit is a feature I’ve always associated with Cecil Adams, although, sadly, somewhat less so since January 2023.
I haven’t closely read all of the suggestions in this thread, but personally I would prefer to see columns closer in theme and tone to the old days, rather than long dense essays on speculative, philosophical, or political issues. Although these are common and welcome on the SDMB, in their proper places, they are not what I have come to expect from Cecil’s columns over the past five decades.
If you want a concrete suggestion, I still haven’t gotten a good answer to the question that brought me to the SDMB in 2003.