People Are Trying to ‘Deprogram’ Their MAGA Parents Through Book Clubs “Divisive politics have led people to go “no contact” with their right-wing parents. Some hope reading together could help bridge the gap.” A report from Wired. The Psychology Of Suspense: Why Are Thrillers So Addicting? I’m fond of thrillers, although I never thought to […]
Scientists uncover surprisingly consistent pattern of scholarly curiosity throughout history Sometimes the more things seem to change, the more they stay the same. By analyzing the recorded interests of thousands of scholars born before 1700, researchers found that intellectual curiosity tends to cluster around three broad domains: the human, the natural, and the abstract. These
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What’s Happening to Reading? “For many people, A.I. may be bringing the age of traditional text to an end.” “What will happen to reading culture as reading becomes automated?” asks Joshua Rothman in this article in The New Yorker. He examines how new technology such as ereaders and artificial intelligence have changed and will continue
A Harvard Professor Breaks Down the Real Rules of Writing Jason Hellerman summarizes an interview with Harvard linguist and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker about “what makes great writing and how you can command attention in the modern era.” The target audience for this piece is writers interested in producing fiction and screenwriting for the general
After the Deluge: What Future for Climate Fiction? Keith Woodhouse discusses “an emerging subgenre that we might call the ‘climate assessment drama.’ These books are vast in size and scope and, at the same time, narrowly concerned with the particular political, ethical, and technical conundrums of the world climate change has wrought.” Why Do Doctors
Photo by Gunnar Ridderström on Unsplash Yes, it’s our annual special day, National Book Lovers Day! In honor of which, here are some reading suggestions. (Since I’ve been abroad for the past six weeks, these suggestions are heavily travel related.) 12 Literary Cities Every Book Lover Must Visit New Lives in New Lands: 5+ Journeys
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Refugee Lit Stakes Its Worthy Claim “In a refugee camp,” Iranian American author Dina Nayeri writes in her 2019 novelistic memoir, The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You, “stories are everything. Everyone has one, having just slipped out from the grip of a nightmare, [they] transported us out of our places of exile, to
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A Deep Dive into the Mind of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson “The rise and fall of the Beach Boys leader shows how crucial the brain’s executive function is to creativity” Occasioned by the death of Brian Wilson on June 11, 2025, Scientific American has updated this article from 2017 (which was itself an update
Related Post: A look back at the archives reveals that I didn’t publish much content during June 2010. That doesn’t surprise me, since I was concentrating on finishing my dissertation so that I could graduate the following summer. Here’s the single substantive piece for that month, from June 5, 2010: The Psychology of Reading: A
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