Feb. 17, 2025 | Épater la bourgeoisie. Artists once sought to disturb the conventions and the complacency of polite society, but no more... more »


Feb. 14, 2025 | In 1945, Olivier Messiaen split the Parisian music scene: Was his work modernist genius? Or hopelessly lost in idolatry and kitsch?... more »


Feb. 13, 2025 | R.E.M. had a sound that was "sonically sui generis and abnormally normal" and a knack for cashing in without being seen as selling out... more »


Feb. 12, 2025 | The misadventures of Augustus the Strong include an epic drinking bout with Peter the Great and an obsession with the crown of Poland... more »


Feb. 11, 2025 | The paradox of Marx’s popularity: His genius is widely acknowledged precisely as the political horizon of Marxism has diminished... more »


Feb. 10, 2025 | Simone Weil adored her parents and refused to let them into her inner life, especially once Christianity began to engross her... more »


Feb. 7, 2025 | We have little to fear from machine-generated art, argues David Hajdu, citing the player piano. But generative AI is not like the player piano... more »


Feb. 6, 2025 | As a critic, W G Sebald produced something rare in German: criticism that functions between academic study and journalistic discussion... more »


Feb. 5, 2025 | Bibliophobia presents occasionally as a literal fear of books. More often it’s an anxiety about reading for those with deep connections to literature... more »


Feb. 4, 2025 | When Isaac Newton broke white light into colored rays, he did not find pink. But it was evident in nature, and rapidly became fashionable... more »


Feb. 3, 2025 | A prodigy of Renaissance Italy, Pico della Mirandola devised his grand unified theory of mystical learning at the age of 23... more »


Jan. 31, 2025 | For Flaubert, Balzac “was no writer, merely a man of ideas and of observation; he saw everything, but he didn’t know how to express anything”... more »


Jan. 30, 2025 | The evolution of Jonathan Haidt: He used to be open-minded and humble; now he’s polemical and grumpy ... more »


Jan. 29, 2025 | Cellphones, social media, AI. “The more we communicate, the worse things seem to get,” says Nicholas Carr... more »


Jan. 28, 2025 | What’s the result of endless music, organized into playlists seamlessly optimized just for you? Aural wallpaper... more »


Jan. 27, 2025 | If dogs are natural philosophers, what do their boundless joys and anxieties reveal about the human condition?... more »


Jan. 24, 2025 | What can material objects — a comb, a brooch, a board game — tell us about the violent history of the Vikings?... more »


Jan. 23, 2025 | The annual Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology reveals the state of fiction. It’s less concerned with “good” politics than in “bad” characters... more »


Jan. 22, 2025 | “What will come from my whole life?” The Tolstoy problem won't be solved by some clever lifestyle hack... more »


Jan. 21, 2025 | Chomsky, with his long and snowy beard, has come to physically resemble the biblical prophet he’s always wanted to be... more »


Jan. 20, 2025 | World War II was fought on the battlefields. But perhaps it was won in the libraries... more »


Jan. 17, 2025 | Joseph Epstein: “I may very well be one of those pathetic types whose ambition is four or five times greater than his talent”... more »


Jan. 16, 2025 | How did "diet" go from a way of life to a sum of calories and carbs? The shift began in the 17th century... more »


Jan. 15, 2025 | Are Amazon reviews art? The writer Kevin Killian posted more than 2,000 of them. Now they're collected in a book... more »


Jan. 14, 2025 | Bohemians and bohemia. How does a neighborhood become a cultural magnet? Consider Greenwich Village ... more »


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