How to Restore the Art of Conversation
“We are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.”
Dispatches
Peck of Dirt Is Heard from Again
While watching Peck of Dirt, I was thinking about the inscrutable, somewhat self-defeating, but ultimately lovable and inspiring character of the St. Louis rock music scene.
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?
Sleeping on the Moon
I felt transported and in a kind of dream long before I found a place where I thought I might rest my head long enough to fall asleep, until I was shifted again by what seemed to be the constantly drifting bags of laundry. Sleep would not come right away, a defining experience of life at sea. Added to the queasy motion of the ocean, the heat, and the noise, was a fearsome apparition that Walt had warned me about.
Henry James in St. Louis
Henry James said, “This vast grey, smoky, extraordinary bourgeois place seems to offer in a ceaseless mild soft rain, no interest and no feature whatever.” The Missouri Historical Society, for their part, has nothing tagged in their online collection for “Henry James.” Touché, maître.
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.
Photographer Joel Meyerowitz Sums the Decades
Joel Meyerowitz gives a sort of history of America from mid-century to post-9-11. He frames this, as he sits speaking to the camera, with his own experiences on “the street,” illustrated by film footage (it is unclear if it is his) and stills that he shot.