Get Out as Fugue of Double Meanings
It’s said that the best jokes, like the best mysteries, are ones where the punchline is contained in the set-up. Jordan Peele's Get Out offers a sinister reworking of this maxim.
The Inevitable Triumph of Iteration over Intellect
By virtue of pure chance, a monkey can come up with Romeo and Juliet. This suggests that we can circumvent comprehension and skip straight to competence.
The Last Jedi’s Twisted Theory of the Self
In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rey and Kylo Ren share a telepathic bond forged by the Force, brilliantly illustrating Douglas Hofstadter's "Strange Loop" theory of the self.
What Do We Lose When We Lose a Species?
Debates about the moral value of biodiversity are longstanding in the world of environmental ethics, and the issue is far from settled.
What Counts as Natural Athleticism?
Regulations banning performance-enhancing drugs raise as many questions as they answer.
Radical Questions: Am I My Memories?
"White Bear," an episode of the television show Black Mirror, documents the cruel and unusual punishment inflicted on the protagonist, an amnesiac.
Don’t Buy Into the Authenticity Scam
We choose products and services partially based on how they make us feel, on meanings we derive from our choices.
Wittgenstein on Whether Speech Is Violence
When is speech violence? Sometimes. It depends. That’s a complicated question.
The Statistics of Coin Tosses for Theater Geeks
At the beginning of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a coin toss lands as heads 92 times in a row, the odds of which are a mere 1 in 5 octillion.