“To Reach the Pure Realm of the Imaginary:” A Conversation with Cixin Liu
The science fiction author Cixin Liu is best known for his mind-bending trilogy The Three Body Problem.
Editors’ Picks: What We’re Reading
The history of Native resistance, the philosophy of love, the medicalization of madness, color in fairy tales, and dinosaur bones.
The Science of Baby-Name Trends
What makes a name suddenly pop—and then die? Social scientists and historians have been puzzling over this for decades.
Vulgarity: An Alternative Language of the People
Was Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue the font of all popular culture studies?
Pirating Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, in the 1840s
When Parley's Illuminated Library published a pirated version of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens decided he had had enough.
The Incredibly True Story of Fake Headlines
Are you still reading? Editors frequently use this space to include important contextual information about a news story.
Walter Benn Michaels: What’s His Deal?
The literary critic Walter Benn Michaels challenges the prevailing trends of postmodernist theory.
How Linguists Are Using Urban Dictionary
Urban Dictionary continues a long history of recording low-brow language. It’s also a repository of a specific kind of internet immaturity.