March 29, 2024 | H.P. Lovecraft, philosopher. His fiction blended materialism, determinism, atheism into a new school of thought: “cosmic indifferentism”... more »


March 28, 2024 | Daniel Kahneman, who marveled at “endlessly complicated” human psychology, is dead. He was 90... NYT... Daniel Engber... more »


March 27, 2024 | Caravaggio’s final crimes: carrying a sword without a permit, smearing excrement on a house, smashing a plate of artichokes in the face of a waiter... more »


March 26, 2024 | Joseph Epstein, with scores to settle, wrote a memoir. Why was he fired as editor of The American Scholar?... more »


March 25, 2024 | The physical world is full of inefficiencies. Cue the “digital twin,” where they can be ironed out virtually then reflected back into reality... more »


March 22, 2024 | Marilynne Robinson: “I consider the Bible to be the most complex document on the planet”... more »


March 21, 2024 | Does “coming out of the closet” turn gay men into oppressors of the more marginalized? Queer theory seems to think so... more »


March 20, 2024 | The publishing industry is notoriously sleepy. But here come the Silicon-Valley inflected CEOs spouting MBAisms... more »


March 19, 2024 | Whither the “litblog”? Blogs were once at the center of the online cultural ecosystem. The appetite for such work has diminished... more »


March 18, 2024 | Wicked baronets and disastrous marriages — the “sensation novels” of the 1860s updated Gothic elements for Victorian sensibilities... more »


March 15, 2024 | In 2020, a star physicist claimed an incredible advance: a room temperature superconductor. Retractions followed... more »


March 14, 2024 | Wonders emerge in the ocean’s deepest trenches: corals, crustaceans, a multitude of bizarre fish. Also: nuclear waste and tins of Spam... more »


March 13, 2024 | What can a generation of deeply religious thinkers in a moment of disenchantment teach modern humanists? Everything... more »


March 12, 2024 | Nietzsche’s misogyny. Yes, he railed against intelligent women, said Helene Stöcker, but anyone could see he meant it ironically... more »


March 11, 2024 | For decades, rumors circulated about Charles Bukowski’s pro-Nazi letters. Now discovered, they reveal a surprise: Bukowski was joking... more »


March 8, 2024 | In 1819, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, a philologist and theologian, was jailed. His crime: teaching gymnastics and calisthenics... more »


March 7, 2024 | Gabriel García Márquez wanted his final novel destroyed. Now, a decade after his death, it will be published... more »


March 6, 2024 | Unesco has tasked itself with safeguarding “intangible cultural heritage.” Does Belgian horseback shrimp fishing need protection?... more »


March 5, 2024 | When philosophers had sharp elbows, idiocy was mercilessly mocked. Now the field is kindler, gentler, and awash in silliness... more »


March 4, 2024 | Miles Davis’s Take 3 was nine minutes and thirty-five seconds of musical transcendence. His impromptu solo has gained immortality... more »


March 1, 2024 | Hollywood’s obsession with constructed languages started with The Lord of the Rings and continues in the latest Dune movie... more »


Feb. 29, 2024 | Black weddings, vampire plagues, a blood tax — in Eastern Europe, storytelling and ritual were key to regional identity... more »


Feb. 28, 2024 | In the 1960s a team of scholars explored interspecies communication with dolphins. Then the experiments with LSD began... more »


Feb. 27, 2024 | Tarek Masoud: “The problem is not our students. It is us: faculty and administrators who are too afraid”... more »


Feb. 26, 2024 | The case for ethical fandom. Being a sports fan doesn’t diminish one’s ethical obligations — it heightens them... more »


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