The Worst Racial Slur, In Context
Rare is the word that has antithetical meanings depending on the speaker and listener, the intent and reception. This is one such rarity.
Steve Salerno
· 16 min read
A Violent History Obscured
South Korean Nobel laureate Han Kang’s literary experimentation thwarts rather than advances her professed concern for the suffering of everyone, everywhere, all the time.
Brad Strotten
· 8 min read
Slim Shady’s Blues
Eminem’s music helped him to cope with his own suffering. It also helped his listeners cope with theirs.
Samuel Kronen
· 10 min read
Scandalous Monogamy and Faithful Infidelity
On eros and marriage.
Marilyn Simon
· 13 min read
Peanuts in Perspective
Peanuts offered parables of existential angst and longing, described through small stories about the small affairs of small people.
George Case
· 7 min read
The Great Unfinished Generational Epic
George R.R. Martin, the Strauss-Howe theory of history, and the failure of the Baby Boomers.
Jason Garshfield
· 26 min read
Misreading a Flawed Study
Vaccination against UTIs is a novel idea that holds enormous promise, but clinical trials must be well-designed and carefully analysed.
Geoffrey C. Kabat
· 5 min read
Mammy Dearest
Richard Bernstein’s new book about Al Jolson and ‘The Jazz Singer’ offers a thoughtful reconsideration of an unfairly reviled cultural landmark.
Graham Daseler
· 14 min read
The Great Divergence
Many psychological and behavioural gaps between men and women have widened in more gender-equal countries, dealing a major blow to sociological theories of sex differences.
David C. Geary, Lewis G. Halsey
· 8 min read
Architecture as Revenge
Brady Corbet’s panoramic epic, ‘The Brutalist,’ may be technically brilliant, but it is a cheat and a fraud.
Charlotte Allen
· 15 min read
REDnote and the TikTok Refugees
If they manage to stay on REDnote long enough, former TikTokers will surely begin to notice that all is not as it seems in modern China.
Aaron Sarin
· 6 min read
The Life and Death of a Medical Study
A 2020 study found that black newborns attended by white doctors die at twice the rate of those in the care of black doctors. The study’s refutation last year has not altered the progressive narrative of systemic racism in medicine.
Stewart Justman
· 9 min read
The Thunder from Down Under
If Bach was the sound of God whistling while he worked, AC/DC was the sound of God ordering another round in a strip club on Saturday night.
George Case
· 10 min read
American Surrealist
A tribute to David Lynch (1946–2025).
Benjamin Kerstein
· 8 min read
Shakespeare Versus the Girlboss
Jodi Picoult’s latest novel is a ham-fisted expression of cultural rage, embodying the most anodyne values of corporate human-resources departments.
Marilyn Simon
· 14 min read