Nov. 27, 2021 | Ancient robots. Human interest in intelligent machines and AI dates back more than 3,000 years ... more »
Nov. 26, 2021 | George Sand’s cross-dressing served a pragmatic purpose in her everyday life. In her fiction, it serves more elusive ends ... more »
Nov. 25, 2021 | The nature of scent. The olfactory realm is subjective and mysterious. What about for a master perfumer? ... more »
Nov. 24, 2021 | “The time is long overdue for the world of bodybuilding to acknowledge the queerness of its historical foundations” ... more »
Nov. 23, 2021 | The pigeon puzzle: How do animals with little detectable ability to navigate travel long distances so precisely? ... more »
Nov. 22, 2021 | Many people traveled during the 15th and 16th centuries, but we know little of their experiences. Albrecht Dürer, though, wrote home, and kept a journal... more »
Nov. 20, 2021 | According to Timothy Morton, black holes, oil spills, and tectonic plates are hyperobjects, and their totality should fill us with dread... more »
Nov. 19, 2021 | In the “woke” wars, combatants hurl intellectual insults from their ideological battle stations. It’s all a huge waste of time ... more »
Nov. 18, 2021 | Historically, the classics have been most popular not among the elite, but among the rising middle class... more »
Nov. 17, 2021 | A political obstacle separates boomers from Gen Xers from millennials: lazy generational thinking... more »
Nov. 16, 2021 | How does the esteemed literary scholar Mark McGurl go from Henry James to Space Raptor Butt Invasion?... more »
Nov. 15, 2021 | He wasn't the most gifted trumpeter or the most impressive vocalist. But Chet Baker was the epitome of West Coast cool... more »
Nov. 13, 2021 | We know the poet Phillis Wheatley for her suffering and resistance to enslavement. But don’t overlook her humor ... more »
Nov. 12, 2021 | In an age of ambient unwellness, how should we think about the chronically ill? ... more »
Nov. 11, 2021 | The humanities have a chronic morale problem. Is that because the field’s tenured professors are trapped in jobs they no longer want? ... more »
Nov. 10, 2021 | David Graeber, disheveled and politically radical, was always ill-suited to the academy ... more »
Nov. 9, 2021 | Do you blame Plato for philosophy’s obsession with metaphysical abstraction? Not so fast ... more »
Nov. 8, 2021 | Wittgenstein wrote like a "poet trapped inside a philosopher.” Philosophy can describe the world, but only fiction can create it... more »
Nov. 6, 2021 | "There are so many self-delusions that are involved in being an artist," says David Salle, "most of which are necessary" ... more »
Nov. 5, 2021 | Female protagonists in great books are usually great beauties. What about the plain-looking female protagonist?... more »
Nov. 4, 2021 | Torture devices, evil eyes, tufts of hair: Edgar Allan Poe created a lasting aesthetic of disgust... more »
Nov. 3, 2021 | Most of us have an inner voice that sounds like us. But what if your inner voice is a bickering Italian couple? ... more »
Nov. 2, 2021 | At tens of thousands of pages, Claude Fredericks's diary is engrossing, tedious, and quite possibly a masterpiece ... more »
Nov. 1, 2021 | H.G. Wells called himself a “Don Juan among the intelligentsia.” His affairs led to children, bad feelings, and several novels... more »
Oct. 30, 2021 | Two of the most influential American men of the past 100 years have surprising parallels in their biographies: W.E.B. Du Bois and Barack Obama... more »