Essay Turkish Kaleidoscope musical playlist April 28, 2021 The Turkish Kaleidoscope Musical Playlist is a kaleidoscopic view of the musical backdrop from 1970s Turkey. It explores the music scene of the period, from Anatolian rock & pop to modern & traditional folk music (t眉rk眉) and arabesk. Read More
Essay 鈥淪ay it came from Billie鈥� April 26, 2021 Anyone who鈥檚 ever seen Sugar 鈥淜ane鈥� Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe)鈥攄ressed in a form-fitting black skirt, frilly overcoat, and flapper hat, carrying a fiddle in one hand and a small, boxy suitcase in the other鈥攎aking her grand entrance at the Chicago train station in Billy Wilder鈥檚 Some Like It Hot (1959) likely still has a relatively sharp memory of it intact. Read More
Essay Russia beyond Putin April 26, 2021 Weak Strongman aims to improve our great national debate about Russia by drawing on a host of fascinating new research that views Russia in comparative perspective. Read More
Essay Fracking, freedom, and the tragedy of the commons April 21, 2021 Whenever Earth Day rolls around, I think about Cindy Bower, one of the most dedicated environmentalists I know. When I first met her, in 2013, the silver-haired sexagenarian reminisced about carrying signs for the first Earth Day, many Aprils ago, in 1970. Read More
Essay The paradoxical pleasures of reading literature April 21, 2021 Reading literature is a deeply dialectical experience, one that offers a variety of paradoxical pleasures. One of the most salient of these is that in reading well we both submit to the text and resist it. Read More
Essay Crossing Medieval borders: Chaucer and Europe April 20, 2021 At the moment, almost no one is crossing borders. We aren鈥檛 allowed to travel, and many of us are separated from family, missing our international colleagues, and wishing we could go on holiday. Read More
Essay Minds wide open April 14, 2021 How to Keep an Open Mind is a selection of writings from the ancient Greek skeptic Sextus Empiricus. The title is mine, not his. Sextus鈥� skepticism is all about suspension of judgment concerning the true nature of things. Read More
Interview Chris Bail on Breaking the Social Media Prism April 14, 2021 In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. Read More
Essay To discover that which was believed lost April 13, 2021 I thought it was gone. I thought it had left me or I had left it somewhere in the street, in a cabinet, inside the grocery store, at the gas station. The arguments were depleting, had become idiotic, fantasy. Read More
Interview Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro on Minds Wide Shut March 31, 2021 Polarization may be pushing democracy to the breaking point. But few have explored the larger, interconnected forces that have set the stage for this crisis: namely, a rise in styles of thought, across a range of fields, that literary scholar Gary Saul Morson and economist Morton Schapiro call 鈥渇undamentalist.鈥� Read More
Essay The dark neuron problem, or mind reading at 90% accuracy March 30, 2021 I鈥檓 going to read your mind. Right now. Ready? Don鈥檛 get freaked out. Deep breath. Here we go鈥� Read More
Interview Marci Kwon on Enchantments: Joseph Cornell and American Modernism March 29, 2021 Joseph Cornell (1903鈥�1972) is best known for his exquisite and alluring box constructions, which transform found objects into enchanted worlds that blur the boundaries between fantasy and the commonplace. Read More
Essay A new vocabulary for social life March 27, 2021 What if we lived in a society where women had the power to make the world anew? What would life look like today if women played a definitive part in governance and had the resources to create sustainable lives? Read More
Essay Nabokov: When playfulness is serious March 22, 2021 A rather common response to Nabokov has entailed complaints that he is altogether too cerebral or calculating a writer. Read More
Essay The hidden economic lives of women March 18, 2021 Women are everywhere in economic life, and nowhere very much in economic history. In Joseph Vernet鈥檚 great series of paintings of the 1750s and 1760s, the waterfronts of the ports of France are crowded with women pulling carts and selling fish, talking and bargaining. Read More
