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?
By Jeannette Cooperman
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.
How We Learn the World
Why are we humans so impatient with any way of learning the world that is not our own?
The Rage over “Adolescence”
What disgusted a handful of people about one of the best recent shows on television—and what that reveals about us
How a Propaganda Campaign Killed Our Trust in Science and Government
Market fundamentalism’s propaganda gave us climate destruction, a housing crisis, the opioid scourge, a lousy pandemic response...and, ironically, Trump.
Inside the Kingdom of Kicks
If someone you love dies, there will be nothing more tenderly, heartbreakingly intimate than their oldest pair of sneakers. Shoes that dashed them through rainstorms, won and lost games, bounced with eager impatience, knotted stubborn in airport security lines. They have been stretched and pounded into a shape no manufacturer ever envisioned. They smell of sweat and earth and freedom.
Entering Other People’s Churches
A Dickensian outing with the ghost of Easters past.
Rite of Spring
Even Earth spring cleans. And there is power in this dreaded ritual.
What Buckminster Fuller Would Tell Us
He wanted to “make the world work, for 100 percent of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” Seems so quaint now.
Why Pamela Paul Annoyed NYTimes Readers
We are both White ladies who want everybody to be polite and nice so we can go back to reading our book.
The New Pandemic
Whoever thought a financial crisis would feel just like a pandemic?