Interview Radcliffe Edmonds on Drawing Down the Moon September 12, 2019 What did magic mean to the people of ancient Greece and Rome? How did Greeks and Romans not only imagine what magic could do, but also use it to try to influence the world around them? Read More
Interview Eric D. Weitz on A World Divided September 03, 2019 From Greek rebels, American settlers, and Brazilian abolitionists in the nineteenth century to anticolonial Africans and Zionists in the twentieth, nationalists have confronted a crucial question: Who has the 鈥渞ight to have rights?鈥� Read More
Essay In Dialogue: Reframing how we think about bugs August 26, 2019 We live in a world dominated by insects. Sometimes it may seem to us that all of them are pests, but in reality, pest species are an infinitesimally small component of our biodiversity. Read More
Interview Sharon Marcus on The Drama of Celebrity August 19, 2019 Why do so many people care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? What are the privileges and pleasures of fandom? Do celebrities ever deserve the outsized attention they receive? Read More
Essay Celebrating Eid al-Adha August 11, 2019 The Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, commemorates the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son in obedience to God鈥檚 wishes鈥攁nd God鈥檚 mercy in providing a lamb to sacrifice instead after Ibrahim鈥檚 faith had been tested鈥攁nd also marks the end of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Read More
Interview Artemis Leontis on Eva Palmer Sikelianos: A Life in Ruins August 05, 2019 This is the first biography to tell the fascinating story of Eva Palmer Sikelianos (1874鈥�1952), an American actor, director, composer, and weaver best known for reviving the Delphic Festivals. Read More
Interview Hanna Gray on An Academic Life June 19, 2019 Hanna Holborn Gray has lived her entire life in the world of higher education. The daughter of academics, she fled Hitler鈥檚 Germany with her parents in the 1930s, emigrating to New Haven, where her father was a professor at Yale University. Read More
Essay Sketches from Red Meat Republic June 15, 2019 Joshua Specht puts people at the heart of Red Meat Republic鈥攖he big cattle ranchers who helped to drive the nation鈥檚 westward expansion, the meatpackers who created a radically new kind of industrialized slaughterhouse, and the stockyard workers who were subjected to the shocking and unsanitary conditions described by Upton Sinclair in his novel The Jungle. Read More
Essay Getting outside when day turns to night May 29, 2019 What鈥檚 the best way to commemorate a historic scientific experiment? Centenaries are popular, and one of the biggest is upcoming, the centenary of the 1919 eclipse observations that confirmed Einstein鈥檚 theory of general relativity. Read More
Interview Daniel Kennefick on No Shadow of a Doubt May 01, 2019 In 1919, British scientists led extraordinary expeditions to Brazil and Africa to test Albert Einstein鈥檚 revolutionary new theory of general relativity in what became the century鈥檚 most celebrated scientific experiment. The result ushered in a new era and made Einstein a global celebrity by confirming his dramatic prediction that the path of light rays would be bent by gravity. Read More
Essay In Dialogue with Eelco Rohling and Sean Fleming: Earth鈥檚 changing bodies of water April 20, 2019 Earth鈥檚 bodies of water have gone through considerable changes over time. We asked Eelco J. Rohling and Sean W. Fleming if聽these changes can tell us anything about climate change鈥攁nd the future? Read More
Essay In Dialogue with Thomas Seeley and Nick Haddad: Why is insect conservation important? April 18, 2019 Thomas Seeley and Nick Haddad sound off on why insect conservation is important, and to reflect on the magnitude of the loss of key populations.聽 Read More
Interview Jonathan Bate on How the Classics Made Shakespeare April 16, 2019 Ben Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having 鈥渟mall Latin and less Greek.鈥� But he was exaggerating. Shakespeare was steeped in the classics. Read More
Interview Justin Smith on Irrationality April 08, 2019 It鈥檚 a story we can鈥檛 stop telling ourselves. Once, humans were benighted by superstition and irrationality, but then the Greeks invented reason. Later, the Enlightenment enshrined rationality as the supreme value. Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the 鈥渞ational animal.鈥� Read More
Interview Walter Mattli on Darkness by Design April 02, 2019 Capital markets have undergone a dramatic transformation in the past two decades. Algorithmic high-speed supercomputing has replaced traditional floor trading and human market makers, while centralized exchanges that once ensured fairness and transparency have fragmented into a dizzying array of competing exchanges and trading platforms. Read More
