Aug. 28, 2023 | Radical mycology. Mushrooms have real ecological promise. But they also offer themselves as a medium of mythic truth... more »
Aug. 25, 2023 | We think of atoms as mostly empty space. But protons' and neutrons’ interior is likely the most complex place in the universe... more »
Aug. 24, 2023 | A museum at Emory University wanted only the finest antiquities. Many of them, it turns out, may have been looted... more »
Aug. 23, 2023 | The works of Murakami, Ferrante, and Atwood are being used to train AI models without permission. Is that a problem?... more »
Aug. 22, 2023 | Toni Morrison knew the monumental worth of her work and was unembarrassed to be honored for it... more »
Aug. 21, 2023 | European identity conveys a sense of cosmopolitanism, inclusiveness, and cooperation. But darker forces underlie all that... more »
Aug. 18, 2023 | Hollywood shows the "Mona Lisa" in flames, the Guggenheim in ruins. What’s behind our cinematic appetite for artpocalypse?... more »
Aug. 17, 2023 | The punk scene has never suffered a dearth of jerks. Yet even in that caustic, self-righteous milieu, Steve Albini stood out... more »
Aug. 16, 2023 | “Where once it was occasionally possible to opt out of ‘reality’ (by taking drugs, say), it is now increasingly necessary to think about how to opt in to it" ... more »
Aug. 15, 2023 | If categorization is crucial to making sense of the world, how should we classify Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy?... more »
Aug. 14, 2023 | A rich history of extravagance sustains lyric poetry. But new poets explore themes that are muted, withdrawn, and inscrutable... more »
Aug. 11, 2023 | In debates over the restitution of cultural objects, the modern left stands in support of individual property rights, and against its own past values... more »
Aug. 10, 2023 | Walter Benjamin's radio tales. He was dismissive of his work as a broadcaster. But the transcripts are more than mere ephemera... more »
Aug. 9, 2023 | Is one future of journalism a 20-page, print-only broadsheet that appears six times per year and is powered by a 19th-century business model?... more »
Aug. 8, 2023 | Bessel van der Kolk, former Harvard “traumatologist,” is adamant: He is not to be held responsible for how his work on trauma therapy is used... more »
Aug. 7, 2023 | James Longenbach, who died last year, told elegant tales of discovery, experimentation, and transformation in 20th-century poetry... more »
Aug. 4, 2023 | With chronodesign, chronotherapy, and chronoethics, our interest in circadian rhythm has reached new heights. What’s next?... more »
Aug. 3, 2023 | Evelyn Waugh wrote two kinds of books: the good ones, which are funny, and the bad ones, which are pious... more »
Aug. 2, 2023 | Borges’s second wife, María Kodama, was a prickly and litigious executor of his literary estate. It would have been comic, if not for the human costs incurred... more »
Aug. 1, 2023 | Every American is “a torn divided monster,” wrote D.H. Lawrence. “America has never been easy, and is not easy today”... more »
July 31, 2023 | Meet Eliza, the world's first chatbot, who's now 57. Her creator turned against her. His views are urgently relevant now... more »
July 28, 2023 | “Dear Abby” and “Ask Ann Landers” were written by twin sisters who feuded and sought relentlessly to dominate the advice business... more »
July 27, 2023 | Simone de Beauvoir, one way or another, is always contentious and relevant. “Good,” writes Ali Smith. “Let her disturb you”... more »
July 26, 2023 | For Robert Bellah, secularism is impossible, individualism is an illusion, religious worship is inescapable... more »
July 25, 2023 | “Can you read anything at all from start to finish, i.e. an essay or a short story, without your mind being sliced apart by some digital switchblade?”... more »