Breakthrough Research Connects Genes, Personality, and Health

Only now is it clear that genes network like busybodies, responding to every possible influence and turning one another on and off as the situation demands.

Bob Woodward and the Stories We Tell

For Bob Woodward, one answer to story is: “There is reality. As a reporter you can come up with the best obtainable version of the truth.”

The Lost Joys of Flying a Kite

Flying a kite is the simple pleasure of celebrating, in the quietest but most glorious way, winter folding into spring.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Teach a Lesson

Here is what made the difference for me: they take vows, and secretly, they take their work seriously, offering the same combination of ministry, nurture, and social justice activism to the queer and trans communities that traditional nuns offer to the rest of us.

How a Science Fiction Writer Reinvented St. Louis

In Eric von Schrader’s books, St. Louis remains a colossus of bricks, careful not to destroy its solid and elegant legacy. And Cahokia! It has been rebuilt by a pair of archaeologists, one Osage, the other White, who were fired from Washington University for their absurd insistence on the site’s significance.

Listening to Mussorgsky’s “Great Gate of Kyiv” during the Ukraine War

Mussorgsky’s music represents a tsarist, imperial vision of what Hartmann, and no doubt other Russians, wanted to see constructed so that it could adorn the capital city of Ukraine for generations. When we listen to Mussorgsky’s music we can instead, for now, call to mind the Golden Gate of Kiev that still stands.

Why the Trial over the Eagles’ Lyrics Epitomizes Boomer Rot

Ever since it was filed in 2022 this was a case shoved into the headlines by boring egos, sloppy legal work, and with the anemic celebrity appeal of America’s most blasé, greedy 1970s rock band lounging sleazily at the center of it all.

Are You Flourishing?

The modern definition of “flourish” is “to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly favorable environment.” In “The Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle plays just as fair, acknowledging the difference made by a silver-spoon birth and the finest tutors.

Why Must We Keep Hearing About the NATO Inch?

Ivan is a nationalist in the Putin mold and during our visit mistook me, at least, to have some American equivalent of his native love for authoritarianism.

The Latest Chapter in the Reading Wars

Phonics was my nemesis, and later, I heard it as Phyllis Schlafly’s battle cry. Why, I wondered, was reading instruction political?

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