For humans, "I" is a letter of relationship, dignity, responsibility. Why hand it over to inanimate language models?

I had never even heard of corn sweat. But God do I feel it.

A lesser poet would never have won a National Book Award with poetry that claimed to be a transcription from the spirit world.

“It turns out that the one who destroys—at least in this case—doesn’t believe in anything but himself."

Ian Bogost reminds us that we are not yet disembodied--and can fight the trend.

The old apothecaries were far more efficient, and far kinder, than our streamlined mail order and national chains....

Why has clothing gotten less practical, less sustainable, and less comfortable?

Like comic books and animation, board games became more artful, more expensive, more interesting to adults. For millennia, games had been folk culture, passed down for generations, the play communal. ...

This is what is restoring U.S. pride?

Michel Kuka Mboladinga is iconic for his motionless tribute at DRC games, but a US World Cup repeat has been denied.

The Obama Presidential Center is an oasis of idealism and harmony. Step off campus, and the problems flood back.

The "dark patterns" that ruin online shopping, now that it has ruined in-person shopping....

How did we get Epicurus so wrong?

Not only can you not take it with you, you cannot keep it till you go.

A very old monk tells us how to stay alert (to a crazy world) without anger or sorrow.

Humor changes with us. This is not always reassuring.

“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks, and everyone has a different answer. King, prophet, peasant, rebel, son, shepherd, rabbi, redeemer—to this day, Jesus is what each of us needs him to be.

WashU students scrubbed off the racist symbols as fast as they could, but the damage would cost $10,000 to repair. Meanwhile, the video Patriot Front made of the sabotage would be seen, liked, and sha...

All that idealistic passion in Les Miserables? It was fueled by passion of a different sort.

Irrational ramblings and outbursts need not get in the way of love.

Look at the holes in English vocabulary, and you realize what our culture lacks.

Look at the holes in English vocabulary, and you realize what our culture lacks.

Because I worked for Ray at “The Riverfront Times” for 18 years, my thoughts immediately turned to the many other “RFT” alums who loved and admired him. Over the next several weeks, I contacted more t...

How a seedling can hear the rain fall, and how the sound soothes away our stress

Who knew reading and gardening had such overlap?

Some read tea leaves, but you can learn more about a marriage from its coffee rituals.

We are staying sane through political chaos...but for God's sake do not mess with the Sunday puzzle.

If you have worked for a magazine, you have met a Miranda.

Not since Prohibition has there been such a strong and widespread public warning. It feels a little odd.

Chuck away all the awards and trophies? Absolutely

He was a bundle of contradictions, but the integrity was a constant.

AOC: “Any attempt to make my femininity trivial or unimportant is an attempt to take away my power. So I’m going to wear the red lipstick.”

Finally, an explanation of AI that returns us to nature.

Geometry needs to be part of the zeitgeist.

Why do we fight so hard for dogma when there is a world of wisdom gathered for us?

Tech has altered our reality. Now it is coming for our dreams.

Introduced to a chatbot, people soon pour out doubts and questions they would not dare reveal to another human being. Why not?

Language has allowed us to be bound together by codes of law; to move easily between past and present and future; to fathom the deepest mysteries of the universe. But while scholars were busy defendin...

A world recovered from the distant past, yet not so different from our own....

“Naturally, we honour the dead, but in honouring them, we somehow make them even more dead. But to please the dead, this brings them to life again.”

All that shuddering horror, only to learn that psychopaths do not exist?

"How we see things is very different from most of the planet."

A meeting on Zoom sounds like a relief until I remember I hate it. Texting keeps me in touch with friends so swiftly and constantly, I forget how much I miss them.