COLOR ME SKEPTICAL: Study finds no association between daily testosterone levels and men’s sexual desire.
Articles of Note
Noel Parmentel Jr., “a man who attracted women by insulting them,” was Joan Didion’s first great love... more »
New Books
Richard Dawkins has long been the doyen of grandiloquent science writing. His new book feels like the end of an era... more »
Essays & Opinions
Barre, Pilates, the Alexander technique: Is our quest for straighter spines a moral panic or a legitimate concern over back pain?... more »
Articles of Note
Jordan Peterson has wrestled with God and himself to confront the specter of nihilism, falling into the same pitfalls as Nietzsche ... more »
New Books
America’s “Bone Wars”: The first triceratops fossil on record was discovered by a cowboy when he lassoed it by the horns... more »
Essays & Opinions
The Magic Mountain is a novel of ideas, yes, but also a fairy-tale of illness and health, waking life and dream, love and pedagogy... more »
Articles of Note
A drilling project at the moon's south pole has academics and activists wondering: Does outer space need environmentalism?... more »
New Books
In the absurd guise of Dr. Pangloss, Voltaire took devastating aim at his real foil: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz... more »
Essays & Opinions
Art is about selection and omission. Melville goes on and on about whales; another writer would sum it up with “etcetera”... more »
Articles of Note
For 10 years, academics have fruitlessly bent their expertise toward the goals of left-wing political activism... more »
New Books
Milton, dismembered. In 1790 his coffin was pillaged. Several thousand people bought what they believed to be one of his teeth... more »
Essays & Opinions
“When the world’s most influential, best-funded exhibitions are dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices, are those voices still marginalized?”... more »
Articles of Note
The marketing of olive oil suggests artisanal traditions from the Mediterranean. The flavor is actually produced by heavy machinery... more »
New Books
The love affairs of Thomas Hardy followed a pattern: He would give his beloved a ring and then break off the engagement when he met someone else... more »
Essays & Opinions
Democracy dies in darkness? Journalists’ aspiration to save democracy is counterproductive, argues Yascha Mounk... more »
Articles of Note
Violet Powell, a first-class nitpicker, loved nothing more than picking at the writing of her husband, Anthony... more »
New Books
No matter how brilliant or original their work, environmental historians face a challenge: Are they just doomsayers?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Modern museums are designed to focus attention. But now our attention is fractured, and our art is changing... more »
Articles of Note
Sanora Babb had big talent and the worst luck. The wonder isn’t that she wrote so little, but that she managed to write anything at all... more »
New Books
“Gluttony is the forechamber of lust.” In premodern Europe, how to eat was a way to answer questions about how to be... more »
Essays & Opinions
The hard problem of dark comedy. “When I laugh with Céline, is my open mouth a gate to the Holocaust?” Michael Clune explains... more »
Articles of Note
The Soviet Union's Plant Institute stored seeds to safeguard against famine. Amid a famine in Leningrad, did scientists eat the seeds to save themselves?... more »
New Books
“Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan?” Joan Didion infuriated Eve Babitz... more »
Essays & Opinions
We live in the age of the internet novel, with its dispassionate, deadening style and lack of formal innovation... more »
Articles of Note
The Magic Mountain turns 100. Thomas Mann’s novel captured an era of humanism and nihilism — one that parallels our own... more »
New Books
Plunder and provenance. The origins of many museum collections are scandalous, criminal, and impossible to reduce to any one story... more »
Essays & Opinions
To calm the identity wars, don’t underestimate the power of thinking in the third person. Kwame Anthony Appiah explains... more »
Articles of Note
Theater tickets and copies of Playbills are by definition ephemeral. But they also serve as a history – a record that’s vanishing... more »
New Books
The bubonic plague’s origins were in the Tien Shan mountains in modern Kyrgyzstan. It spread not via rats and ships, but with gerbils... more »
Essays & Opinions
Margaret Fuller had “a predetermination to eat this big universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be absolute empress of all height and glory”... more »
Articles of Note
The pedagogy of Paracelsus. The Renaissance physician thought little of canonical texts: “Not even a dog-killer can learn his trade from books”... more »
New Books
Cynicism and despair make one seem sophisticated. David Graeber taught intellectuals a riskier commitment: hope... more »
Essays & Opinions
At the age of 10, Henri Bergson was left alone in Paris — amid violence, destruction, and the fall of the Second French Empire... more »
Articles of Note
Science is the stuff of empiricism and skepticism. But don’t overlook the role of magic in scientific progress... more »
New Books
The Grimm brothers, living under French occupation, despised the Gallic plagues of industry, development, and general effeteness... more »
Essays & Opinions
A family of fascists. The Mitfords were downwardly mobile aristocrats living in great ignorance and fear... more »
Articles of Note
Are smartphones and social media harming Generation Z? The statistics are frightening. But are they true?... more »
New Books
The political theorist Richard Tuck tells progressives: Instead of condemning opponents, resolve to live with them more humbly... more »
Essays & Opinions
How did the world’s most famous swear wordearn its status? Early evidence points to the role of a man named Roger Fuckebythenavele... more »
Articles of Note
Novels are increasingly employing hyper-specific references to flatter plugged-in readers. Where does that leave the rest of us?... more »
New Books
Oxford at war. The town’s inhabitants, “dim and wildly eccentric and totally out of touch with all reality,” were essential to victory in World War II... more »
Essays & Opinions
The Emily Oster riddle: Would you rather take pregnancy advice from a pediatric epidemiologist or an economist?... more »
Articles of Note
Given enough time, would a monkey eventually type out all of Shakespeare? The "infinite monkey theorem" is most certainly wrong... more »
New Books
“Why can’t you be funny again?” Dorothy Parkerchafed at her reputation as a reliable wit... more »
Essays & Opinions
In 1939, W.H. Auden left England. He rarely returned, but his self-conception as a poet remained bound up in his Englishness... more »
