Why do people in certain cities — London, New York, Paris — become radicalized, sparking revolutions that expand the limits of what’s politically imaginable?… more »

You Are Not What You Eat

“Tell me what you eat,” it’s been said, “and I shall tell you what you are.” But a person’s diet is just as often the least interesting thing about her

Choose Your Own Dystopia

Ours is a world in which the human and the nonhuman, the real and the fake, blur together. We live in Philip K. Dick’s future, not Orwell’s or Huxley’s

The Linguistic Fad of Our Times

Neoliberalism has an identity crisis: The term is applied to disparate phenomena.

Remainders

Obscurity is a common fate for writers. What’s curious about William Melvin Kelley is that, after the early acclaim passed, he kept at it every day, never doubting himself

What was a sensitive Jewish intellectual doing with a brutal Cossack regiment? Isaac Babel would take any risk to experience unexpected situations and strange people… more »

The Joy of Criticism

Seemingly disinterested criticism: Is it really just willful schadenfreude, with a hidden killjoy locked inside even the noblest critic?

Obscure No Longer

Until recently Jordan Peterson was a little-known psychology professor who wrote a book almost no one read. Now he leads a growing flock of die-hard disciples.

Jews and Jokes

The Old Testament isn’t funny. Jews, however, produce so much humor. Why? Theories abound, few of them funny.