Women Writers on Reading Literature’s “Midcentury Misogynists”
For many of these women, the reading experience begins from a place of seething rage. Take Sara Marcus’ initial impression of Jack Kerouac: “I remember putting On the Road down…
Allusionist 60: Zillions
They look like numbers. They sound like numbers. You kinda know they are numbers. But they're not actually numbers. Linguistic anthropologist Stephen Chrisomalis explains what's going on with indefinite hyperbolic…
Mary Beard abused on Twitter over Roman Britain’s ethnic diversity
Classicist says her assertion that there was at least some diversity under Roman rule led to ‘torrent of aggressive insults’
The End of Sand
Yogita Limaye investigates concerns, highlighted in a United Nations study, that vitally important reserves of sand are running out, with serious consequences for human society and the planet. Nearly everything…
Researcher reveals how “Computer Geeks” replaced “Computer Girls”
as late as the 1960s many people perceived computer programming as a natural career choice for savvy young women.
Criminal Podcast: Bears, Birds, and Bones
As long as 2,500 years ago, Native Americans placed the bones of their dead in giant mounds of earth in the shape of animals. The Effigy Mounds National Monument in…
The Beginning or the End of America
During Black History Month we share a letter written by James Baldwin, one of the foremost novelists and public intellectuals of the 20th century. In 1970 Baldwin wrote an open letter to…
The Lost Cause Rides Again
HBO’s Confederate takes as its premise an ugly truth that black Americans are forced to live every day: What if the Confederacy wasn’t wholly defeated? By Ta-Nehisi Coates HBO’s prospective…
A Mental Disease by Any Other Name
t starts without warning—or rather, the warnings are there, but your ability to detect them exists only in hindsight. First you’re sitting in the car with your son, then he…
How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ
The cover of How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ is an eye-catcher. The lines of red text are a hard hook: “She didn’t write it. She wrote it…