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Elif Batuman unearths seven unproduced screenplays written by famous intellectuals, including Nabokov’s story of a sexually frustrated London circus dwarf, and Sartre’s failed Freud epic.
There may be plenty of fish in the sea, but we humans tend to get overwhelmed by too many possibilities—whether in choosing potential mates or choosing between brands of jam […]
The recent case of a Tennessee woman who sent her 7-year-old adopted Russian child back to Moscow is becoming a test for the international adoption vetting process, writes Daniel Wood.
“If the Rubik’s Cube is like life … then a good life is like a good puzzle,” writes Stefany Anne Golberg. “It can be solved within the order of solitude but is more rewarding in the chaotic company of others.”
Stress hormones may indirectly promote the spread of cancer in the body by hurting the immune system’s anti-tumor mechanisms and encouraging new blood vessels to form.
Does assassinating top terrorists really make us safer? Robert Wright looks at research suggesting that “decapitation doesn’t lower the life expectancy of the decapitated groups.”
Despite the fact that cilantro is happily consumed by millions of people around the world, it inspires “a primal revulsion among an outspoken minority of eaters” who say it tastes like soap.
“Hyenas … have been terribly misunderstood,” writes Constance Casey. “The creatures may not be beautiful, but they don’t deserve contempt.”
Scientists now believe that the trace metal contaminants around ancient sun-like stars are “remnants of rocky, potentially water-bearing bodies that crashed into their mother stars.”
A new study suggests that birds, bats, and lizards may play an important part in preserving the Earth’s climate by eating insects that forage on plant life.
A recent study on college students’ preferences for dating vs. hookups is, unaccountably, generating national media attention. The authors found that a bunch of 19-year-old college freshmen in the South […]
If looking for ancient bones to dig up sounds like hard work, that’s because it is. According to anthropologist Donald Johanson, even modern tools such as GPS don’t save scientists […]
Poorly rendered female characters proliferate in crime novels because their authors are lazy, writes novelist Christopher Rice. He lists four clichés that come up again and again.
New protostars that will eventually be 10 times as large as the sun have been discovered in the massive Rosette molecular cloud, 5,000 light years away.
The number of large earthquakes in Southern California and Baja California has increased significantly in 2010, and scientists are thus far unable to explain why.
How can we make sure that the technology behind digital medical records actually does all the things that advocates believe is possible? Jacob Goldstein writes that we must pay attention to how they’re designed.
The commercial future of solar energy may have gotten a big boost. Researchers have solved two major problems that had been hampering the efficiency and affordability of solar cells.
In Eastern Europe, “the open discussion of a tragedy represents a revolutionary change,” writes Anne Applebaum of reaction to the plane crash Saturday that killed members of the Polish government.