Reading List Books for advancing the humanities and affirming our shared humanity May 06, 2025 According to the recent World Humanities Report, the humanities are threatened for the very reasons they are powerful. Literature, the arts, philosophy, aesthetics, history: these disciplines鈥攐nce considered vital to understanding what it means to be human鈥攔emain crucial in providing frameworks for understanding human experience, fostering ethical reasoning, countering authoritarianism, and addressing societal problems. Read More
Essay Lars Krutak on Indigenous Tattoo Traditions May 05, 2025 Transporting readers through history, anthropologist Lars Krutak explores the art and customs of tattooing across numerous ancestral lands, including Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, the Arctic, Oceania, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Siberia. Read More
Podcast Steadfast Democrats, Five Years Later May 01, 2025 An innovative explanation for why Black Americans continue in political lockstep, Steadfast Democrats sheds light on the motivations consolidating an influential portion of the American electoral population. Read More
Reading List Books for finding balance May 01, 2025 Research shows conclusively that overwork can be harmful to employees and humans at large, and yet it can be hard to find public examples of choices that support true balance, or guidance that puts health ahead of hustle. Read More
Podcast Leonardo da Vinci: An Untraceable Life April 30, 2025 Stephen J. Campbell examines the strangeness of Leonardo鈥檚 words and works, and the distinctive premodern world of artisans and thinkers from which he emerged. Far from being a solitary genius living ahead of his time, Leonardo inhabited a vibrant network of artistic, technological, and literary exchange. Read More
Essay Personal advice columns, then and now April 30, 2025 Mary Beth Norton's research into "The Athenian Mercury" reveals what has changed鈥攁nd stayed the same鈥攐ver the long history of advice columns. Read More
Video Jaap de Roode on the medical wonders of the animal world April 30, 2025 In this series of videos, Jaap de Roode聽introduces "Doctors by Nature" and answers questions about animal healing. Read More
Essay Why linguistic diversity matters April 29, 2025 Over 7,000 languages are spoken today, but nearly half could vanish by the end of the century. Read More
Video PUP Speaks: R. Jisung Park on the hidden health impacts of wildfires April 29, 2025 It鈥檚 hard not to feel anxious about the problem of climate change, especially if we think of it as an impending planetary catastrophe. R. Jisung Park encourages us to view climate change through a different lens. Read More
Essay Bookstores are arsenals of democracy April 25, 2025 As long as there have been bookstores, booksellers have been threatened, arrested, jailed, fined, and prosecuted. Read More
Podcast Attention, Shoppers! April 24, 2025 Attention, Shoppers! traces the origins and evolution of American retail capitalism from the late nineteenth century to today, uncovering the roots of a bitter equilibrium where large low-cost retailers dominate and vast numbers of low-income families now rely on them to make ends meet. Read More
Podcast In Covid鈥檚 Wake, Part II April 22, 2025 With In Covid鈥檚 Wake, Macedo and Lee offer the first comprehensive鈥攁nd candid鈥攑olitical assessment of how our institutions fared during the pandemic. They describe how, influenced by Wuhan鈥檚 lockdown, governments departed from their existing pandemic plans. Read More
Interview Brian Bruya on A Cure for Chaos April 21, 2025 C. C. Tsai is one of Asia鈥檚 most popular cartoonists, and his graphic editions of the Chinese classics have sold more than 40 million copies in over twenty languages. In A Cure for Chaos, he uses his virtuosic artistic skill and sly humor to create an entertaining and enlightening illustrated version of key selections from the Mencius, a profoundly influential work of Chinese philosophy. Read More
Essay Fire sermons: Seneca and Thoreau on climate trauma April 21, 2025 鈥淐limate trauma鈥� is a phrase that has now entered the global lexicon. As global temperatures rise and population densifies in settled areas, the effects of catastrophic weather events like floods, hurricanes, and fires, which are increasing in frequency and intensity, are proving ever more destructive to human lives and livelihoods. Read More
Podcast In Covid鈥檚 Wake, Part I April 17, 2025 The Covid pandemic quickly led to the greatest mobilization of emergency powers in human history. By early April 2020, half the world鈥檚 population鈥�3.9 billion people鈥攚ere living under quarantine. Read More
