Historians and Nature

Auteurs Gone Wild

Why the director’s cut often turns into an ax murder

Ice

Lunching on Olympus

My meals with W. H. Auden, E. M. Forster, Philip Larkin, and William Empson

Journeys with Joseph Mitchell

Science Doubters

When healthy skepticism turns into unhealthy antagonism

Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms The Planet, and Threatens Our Lives By Michael Spector

Laissez-Faire Run Amok

The extremist, and enduring, philosophy of Ayn Rand

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right By Jennifer Burns

Riffs and Raptures

Zadie Smith’s essays offer crisp prose and hard-won insights

Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays By Zadie Smith

Wrestling the Moose

Jefferson debunked a French theory of natural history, launching American exceptionalism

Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America By Lee Alan Dugatkin

The Writer in the Family

The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero

Birthday Boy

“The Horses” by Ted Hughes

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Amy Wetsch

Life, magnified

The Weight of a Stone

Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology

New Year, Old Year

“The Horses” by Edwin Muir

Poems read aloud, beautifully

The Snow Maiden

Our final episode of 2018 is a send-off to the solstice

Ho Ho Horror

Why not make this Christmas a little darker?

A Story for Christmas

● NEWSLETTER

Please enter a valid email address
That address is already in use
The security code entered was incorrect
Thanks for signing up