A Reason to Keep Going
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”~Viktor Frankl
By Jeannette Cooperman
What Well-Trained Women Can Learn from a Mischievous Pup
Willie knows exactly when to cuddle up or do the good-dog sit—and when he can get away with doing his own thing. But women never seem to get away with it for long.
Inefficiency Can Save You
Tiny, incapacitating acts of rebellion can keep you human. Or is this masochism?
Was St. Louis’s Hamlet to Be, or Not to Be?
After a string of near-disasters, Hamlet emerges unscathed.
Zora Neale Hurston Holds Up
"It’s so easy to make yo’self out God Almighty when you ain’t got nothin’ tuh strain against but women and chickens.”
This Story Should Not Have Ended This Way
Qusay Hussein Al-Mamari gives advice regularly: so much was so hard for him, and he knows how to make it easier for other people. “Whatever you are going through, say, ‘Everything has an ending.’ We have a date to die, our food expires, a building will one day collapse. So whatever situation you’re in, it will have an ending. One day, it will be over. So there is no need to stress about life. And for any person who does not see that life is beautiful, please do not make it hard on other people.”
How to Restore the Art of Conversation
“We are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.”
The Ideological Brain
The best explanation yet for the maddening rigidity on the far right—and the far left.
Take This Sugar Pill and Call Me in the Morning
How much of a placebo's efficacy is in the brain, and how much in the heart?
What Makes Abraham Verghese Such a Great Storyteller?
Is it his cosmopolitan background? His stint at the Iowa Writers Workshop? His knowledge of human suffering?
The Spanish I Lost in Translation
La persona, a person, is feminine even if referring to a man. El vestido, the dress, is masculine, though la falda, the skirt, is feminine. Why do this to us?
Should AI Flatter or Play Devil’s Advocate?
The AI with the calm, reflective voice, encouraging us to think? They scrapped it for a fast-paced sycophant.