The Impulse to Exclude

Ralph Ellison wrote one great novel and then lived a life that is hard to admire

Hearsay

From the divinely inspired to the pathological, a history of auditory hallucination

Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination By Daniel B. Smith

An Epic in Flux

Gilgamesh, the world’s first great literary work, is still being pieced together

The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh By David Damrosch

Design Problem

Does the internal physiology of animals imply a harmony of structure and function?

The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself By J. Scott Turner

War Weary

If Iraq is not another Vietnam, why do I find myself rereading Dispatches?

The Dispossessed

First we stopped noticing members of the working class, and now we’re convinced they don’t exist

THE SCHOLAR AT 75: An Educated Guess

Who knew that mixing the intelligent and the idiosyncratic would yield a long life for a certain small quarterly?

Not Compassionate, Not Conservative

A political traditionalist critiques our pseudo-conservative president

Scooter and Me

Professing liberal doubt in an age of fundamentalist fervor

Fear of Falling

Working in the mop-and-bucket brigade in college created the perspectives of a lifetime

“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

“Snow” by Louis MacNeice

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Double Exposure

On our first memories

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