The Impossible Dream

How have we come to build a whole culture around a futile, self-defeating enterprise: the pursuit of happiness?

The Rise of Junk Science

Fake publications are corrupting the world of research—and influencing real news.

The History of the Picnic

From high life to country living.

Bought This Thing Today

Good thing I have an engineering degree.

The Last of Its Kind

The biologist David Sischo has a tragic assignment: keeping vigil over a species’ sole survivor, then marking its extinction in real time.

Why We Need Court Jesters in Space

Behavioral scientists explain why Mars missions need humor.

How College Professors Are Fighting for Their Lives

A PhD might help land someone a teaching job, but it does not afford them a livable wage.

Against Disenchantment

The move away from myth and toward reason is an ancient human impulse. But must enchantment be the enemy of enlightenment?

Friends Like These

On Thoreau and Emerson.

How a 6-Year-Old Survived Being Lost in the Woods

As a child, Cody Sheehy made headlines when he vanished into the freezing wilderness of Northeast Oregon, making it out safely after 18 hours of determined slogging.

Cannonball Adderly & Miles Davis

 Autumn Leaves.

Set Up For Failure

How Iran Captured 10 US Sailors at Farsi Island.

The Spirit of History

Hegel’s search for the universal patterns of history revealed a paradox: freedom is coming into being, but is never guaranteed.

The Ironic Feudalist

Kure Tomofusa’s hatred of democracy, human rights and liberalism has found an echo in the West. But has he been joking all along?

The Great Summer Read

Why do we persist in this often futile literary quest?

Morsel

Over 100 years ago, the US government commissioned 7,500 watercolor paintings of every kind of fruit in the country.

Godmother of Intelligences

Mary Shelley foresaw that artificial intelligence would be made monstrous, not by human hubris but by human cruelty.

Containing Radioactivity at Chernobyl

Holding it all in. 

The Remains Of Stalin’s Dead Road

In Russia’s arctic wilderness, the remnants of one of the Soviet Union’s most tragic gulag projects now lies largely forgotten.

Quote from ‘Westwood Lake Chronicles’

“We can look forward to another two years of metal-on-metal ‘improvements’. As long as we reward the misguided ethos that consumers are more important than citizens, our contempt for responsible stewardship will go on forever. For how could we ever conceive of an alternative to creating yet another place not worth caring about?” 
Lawrence Winkler, Westwood Lake Chronicles