What Star Trek: Discovery Can Tell Us About Tech and Social Progress
What makes Star Trek essential for any contemporary tech user is its role in helping us understand our relationship to technology.
The Most Important Rule for Startup Success
Startups often don't play by the rules. But a wifi-enabled juicer may have been "trying to solve a problem that didn't exist."
When Societies Put Animals on Trial
Animal trials were of two kinds: (1) secular suits against individual creatures; and (2) ecclesiastic cases against groups of vermin.
Why There’s A West Virginia
West Virginia declared its independence from the secessionist state of Virginia in the middle of the Civil War and became the 35th state.
Sentenced to Death (and Other Tales from the Dark Side of Language)
One cold morning in 1953, Derek Bentley, a nineteen-year-old youth in the wrong place with the wrong words, was hanged for a murder he did not commit.
How We Escape It: An Essay
Escape is an ancient word, escapism, a modern one, and the designation of a genre—“escape literature”—dates to the 1930s.
Wittgenstein on Whether Speech Is Violence
When is speech violence? Sometimes. It depends. That’s a complicated question.
Before the Civil War, Women Were Welcomed into the Sciences
Women in the STEM fields are reclaiming the memory of a richer scientific past than some might think.
Yes, Smartphones Are Destroying a Generation, But Not of Kids
Why parents need to embrace our role as digital mentors: offering kids and teens ongoing support and guidance in how to use the internet appropriately.
Fighting Words With the Unabomber
Some of the world's most baffling criminal cases were solved thanks to some seemingly harmless point about language. Take the Unabomber, for example.