Driving Is Better Than Most Brain Tests  

DRIVES is one of the first studies to measure specific driving behavior over time. And what the team has already learned is that well before any cognitive signs of dementia show up, reckless driving—hard stops, sudden acceleration, speeding—indicates its future onset.

The New Bibliophobia

Bibliophobia surfaces when other people read certain books. The fear remains irrational and uncontrollable, leaving patients incapable of conquering it on their own. The affective tone is also unchanged, marked by avoidance of books, dread of their presence, and an associated guilt or shame—although in this iteration, the guilt and shame are projected onto the person who is reading, not the sufferer of the phobia.

Why You Have Never Heard of Mickey Hahn

If you stay in St. Louis, you write your own blues. I live across the river now, a negligible distance compared to my youth’s fleeting dreams of Boston, New York, or what the hell, Bhutan—but I use St. Louis as the excuse for my lack of ambition and adventure.So maybe I should be glad no one has heard of Mickey Hahn, whose life negates my excuse.

Is Your Soul Immortal?

I hate the idea of the soul as remote, separate from the body, sealed up in some holographic tabernacle inside us. But I am afraid to lose the idea of soul altogether.

We Are Officially in Goblin Mode

The word of the year reflects the zeitgeist, and we have been bullied by social media, dictated to by influencers, terrified by physical and political contagion, until the only obvious place to land was in crazed overreaction. Goblin mode.

“It’s Not Safe Out Here”

When Sandbox VR came looking for writers to experience its new VR games—and one of them had a Star Trek theme—I gulped and said yes, then roped in my husband, who knows Star Trek the way other people know scripture.

I Am a Watercolor

Slowly it dawned on me just how hard this splashy, casual medium could be. The way real fun is often harder to find than work or habit, because it has to be spontaneous yet you have to take great pains to prepare for its possibilities.

The Mirror, Crack’d

The morality in Agatha Christie’s books plays no tricks on us. Law and order will prevail. Cozy comfort is impossible without its backdrop.And so, we have Jane Marple: clear-eyed, ruthless in the honesty of her appraisals, with a tart tongue but a warm heart.

Playing Telephone

We are overstimulated, overavailable, overbusy, and a long, meandering, curled-up-on-the-sofa chat seems an impossible luxury. Funny, how improvements so often subtract from life’s quality.

Clarice Lispector, Brazil’s Most Beloved and Enigmatic Writer

Brazilians embraced her as their finest modern author, yet. Her writing process was intuitive, soaked in emotion, and “entirely unconscious”; you would never guess she studied law.

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