Skip to content

All Articles


While artificial intelligence has yet to realize its often dramatic promises, the development of brain science has led thinkers to prioritize the mind over the body as the center of the self.
“‘Democracy’ in the abstract misleads us. Living in a democracy—and it is lived experience that must be our theme—becomes a different thing in each generation,” begins Kenneth Minogue.
P.J. O’Rourke has a clever idea for reviving newspaper sales—the pre-obituary: “official notices that certain people aren’t dead with brief summaries of their lives indicating why we wish they were.”
A new book examines the lives of the Romantic poets in their well-intentioned but ultimately ambiguous morality. It is a case of life imitating art, writes Laura Miller for Slate.
“While taking a more relaxed attitude towards the pursuit of wealth may make sense as a personal philosophy, it is an uncertain guide to public policy,” says the Financial Times.
THERE is an exhibit more ghastly and gruesome than the tatty stuffed Alsatian dog, awarded the Gustav Husak medal for sinking its teeth into a record number of attempted defectors […]
Only recently has vegetarianism become a diet that could survive natural selection, so could it be that vegetarians are smarter than the rest of us? Surprisingly strong evidence says yes.
Barry Estabrook says the common knowledge that locally grown food is the most sustainable form of agriculture is incomplete and should allow for regional distribution networks.
Ross Douthat asks why adoption is so difficult while going to a fertility clinic is so easy, especially when children of anonymous sperm donors often have deep psychological dilemmas.
Evolutionary biology may explain differences in mortality risks between genders, says Daniel Kruger at the University of Michigan; men take more risks to attract a mate, i.e. to have sex.
“Nowhere is it written that the United States can never decline,” says Richard Posner in his analysis of the economic problems befalling the E.U. and U.S. He and Gary Becker propose solutions.
In his new book, Clay Shirky says that what we do with our free time is changing: from passive TV watching to active online engagement, we are motivated by a desire for self-fulfillment.
When a college degree no longer guarantees a good job after leaving university, maybe it’s time to be less pragmatic about career choices and prefer a cultural education to a vocational one.
“He was almost certainly the best-known man in England in the middle of the nineteenth century, and certainly the most loved,” but was Charles Dicken’s internal life as celebratory?