Feb. 12, 2024 | What – or who – killed Pablo Neruda? That is just one of the questions dogging his legacy and reputation... more »
Feb. 9, 2024 | “Our premodern precursors often had a special mechanism for dealing with old people who faltered. Quite simply: they killed them... more »
Feb. 8, 2024 | “Lives of wives” books, like those about Véra Nabokov and Zelda Fitzgerald, often define their subjects via their spouses. That misses the point... more »
Feb. 7, 2024 | Artists used to obsess over what it means to be a person in the world. Now they obsess over how to turn themselves into a brand... more »
Feb. 6, 2024 | How did China Medical University and King Abdulaziz University overtake UCLA and Princeton in rankings of math departments?... more »
Feb. 5, 2024 | The asphalt whisperers. When noise pollution requires treatment, acoustic ecologists and urban soundscape planners get called in... more »
Feb. 2, 2024 | Humanist vs. non-humanist battles can feel narrow and academic. But the political and cultural stakes are enormous... more »
Feb. 1, 2024 | How to make it in the art world? Anna Weyant and the occupational hazards of being young and successful... more »
Jan. 31, 2024 | When a scientist lopped off the heads of worms, he discovered a new possibility: You don't need a brain to be intelligent... more »
Jan. 30, 2024 | Goodbye, “Cooper’s hawk.” The American Ornithological Society has decreed no birds will be named after people. How come?... more »
Jan. 29, 2024 | The language of Scotland was not English, but the Germanic-infused Scots, which fell out of favor in the 17th century... more »
Jan. 26, 2024 | What happened to David Graeber? Late in his career he seemed ready to reject or severely qualify his radical anarchism... more »
Jan. 25, 2024 | Bored with concrete and steel, architects are backing away from ultra-modern design. But classical design has the same flaw: predictability... more »
Jan. 24, 2024 | If listening to the same songs year after year sounds boring, get ready: That’s where we’re heading... more »
Jan. 23, 2024 | George Orwell’s father was a civil servant of the most dismal variety: He helped oversee opium production for the British Raj, in India... more »
Jan. 22, 2024 | Twenty-five uninterrupted hours of Moby-Dick being read aloud might seem hellish. To participants, it’s paradise... more »
Jan. 19, 2024 | There are more dialects of American English than you might expect, including seven in New Orleans alone... more »
Jan. 18, 2024 | Language, meaning, and perception. An old debate over linguistic relativity has new implications ... more »
Jan. 17, 2024 | Ever wondered why every coffee shop looks the same? They are beholden to sad, algorithmically-driven design trends... more »
Jan. 16, 2024 | Mansa Musa, a 14th-century West African monarch, possessed nearly half the gold known to exist in the Eastern Hemisphere... more »
Jan. 15, 2024 | A bruiser until the very end, Milton Friedman knew the value of adopting the role of the underdog... more »
Jan. 12, 2024 | The most surprising thing about a writing group at the CIA? No one is working on a spy novel... more »
Jan. 11, 2024 | The classical-music establishment’s challenge: How to foster the passionate devotion that allows an art form to survive... more »
Jan. 10, 2024 | Our punctuation, ourselves. What are we really talking about when we talk about exclamation points? ... more »
Jan. 9, 2024 | The first influencer, Beau Brummell, exuded “calculated nonchalance.” He was a harbinger of our celebrity culture... more »