March 24, 2023 | Stanford’s Jo Boaler wants to revolutionize how math is taught. Critics say her claims don't always add up... more »
March 23, 2023 | Can the liberal tradition be rescued from the crisis of liberalism? Michael Walzer takes the long view... more »
March 22, 2023 | What does it take to get “roughed up” by Quakers? The relentless truth-telling and radical politics of Benjamin Lay were enough... more »
March 21, 2023 | Brittle arms, unsentimental gaze, nervy glamour: How to make sense of the photographic power and presence of Joan Didion?... more »
March 20, 2023 | At 61, the queer theorist McKenzie Wark still goes to raves, but is circumspect now: “I just don’t want to break a hip!”... more »
March 17, 2023 | Down and out in the cute economy. Small dogs with flat faces are all the rage. And it's killing them... more »
March 16, 2023 | “Many innocent girls become the dupes of a sincere, affectionate heart,” warned Mary Wollstonecraft. Then she herself was duped... more »
March 15, 2023 | Orwell and Camus. Though they never met, they were preoccupied by the same question: How to think truthfully in a world of untruths?... more »
March 14, 2023 | How to make sense of the impossibly eclectic life of Ernst Jünger: dandy, uncanny futurist, wartime occupier, intrepid entomologist, psychedelic spelunker ... more »
March 13, 2023 | Large language models like ChatGPT, beguiling and amoral, are the bullshitter’s Platonic ideal... more »
March 10, 2023 | Philosophers don't philosophize; they “do philosophy.” But Justin E.H. Smith isn't like other philosophers. Especially when he's stoned... more »
March 9, 2023 | In a world of screens and ChatGPT and metaverses, will people's sensory memories atrophy? It's already happening... more »
March 8, 2023 | Two years after a mental breakdown, Gary Hunt, an introverted young Brit, tried cliff diving. Now he dominates the sport... more »
March 7, 2023 | “Is it possible for a good marriage to end in divorce?” For the philosopher Agnes Callard, such questions are not just theoretical... more »
March 6, 2023 | Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, we entered an ice age of politics. Now everything is again political. How should this era be understood?... more »
March 5, 2023 | In 2011, in the Gulf of Thailand, whales started feeding in a new way. Then scholars found an ancient Greek manuscript describing the same thing... more »
March 3, 2023 | Book blurbs existed long before the practice had a name. For more than a century, they’ve trafficked in hyperbole and hysteria... more »
March 2, 2023 | By Diderot’s time, parchment production was neat and orderly. In the premodern period, it was an industry of gristle, stink, and carcasses... more »
March 1, 2023 | For the philosopher Jane Bennett, stuff has agency. Inanimate matter is not inert, and everything is always doing something... more »
Feb. 28, 2023 | Generation-defining, silly, innocuous, exceptionally bad: The endless debate about Jeff Koons is heading to the moon... more »
Feb. 27, 2023 | Alan Lightman on a unifying theory of nature: “We would never know that we were in possession of a final theory, even if it existed”... more »
Feb. 25, 2023 | Journalism and the “digital thunderdome.” The war between Bari Weiss and the New York Times has culminated in a new news outlet ... more »
Feb. 24, 2023 | Will ChatGPT kill the college essay? A bigger issue may be professors using AI to write journal articles, books, and conference papers... more »
Feb. 23, 2023 | To understand the book business, look no further than the failed Simon & Schuster - Penguin Random House merger ... more »
Feb. 22, 2023 | What killed Edgar Allan Poe? Binge drinking, heart disease, carbon-monoxide poisoning, rabies, and murder have all been put forth... more »