Sam Kriss on AI’s false starts, doomsday scenarios, and eccentric proponents ...

EXT. 8TH STREET—LATE AFTERNOON (C. 1959). CAMERA IN NONSTOP MOTION is on the shoulder of a young man, late teens, intently walking west on a busy Greenwich Village thoroughfare. Under one arm, he’s ...

When the crow whisperer appeared at the side gate to Adam Florin and Dani Fisher’s house, in Oakland, California, she was dressed head to toe in black, wearing a hoodie, gloves, and a mask. This was a ...

May I be forgiven if I take as my text the sixth page of the fourth chapter of The Bonfire of the Vanities? The novel’s main character, Sherman McCoy, is driving over the Triborough Bridge in New York ...

I am sitting in a bland conference room in Midtown Manhattan with twenty-nine so-called business professionals, and one of our instructors, Sharon, has just told us to imagine a huge rectangular brass ...

It’s not so much where to begin as when, though in London the distinction between time and space broke down centuries ago. There’s a cast of wanderers, visionaries, and itinerants, the self-educated ...

No one is entirely sure when magical penis loss first came to Africa. One early incident was recounted by Dr. Sunday Ilechukwu, a psychiatrist, in a letter some years ago to the Transcultural ...

Does anyone believe in college education anymore? Republicans certainly don’t—a mere 19 percent of them expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education in a Gallup poll ...

Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.” Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told and acquired a ...

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I led a virtual discussion of War and Peace, with the thought that someone else might enjoy reading the novel with me. Three thousand people ended up ...

January 20, 2025, the first day of President Trump’s second term, marked a major milestone for the U.S. utility sector: a record high for natural-­gas consumption. A few weeks after, key players in ...

A Girl’s Story, by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer. Seven Stories Press. 160 pages. $18.95. A Man’s Place, by Annie Ernaux, translated by Tanya Leslie. Seven Stories Press. 96 pages. $13 ...