Why ‘Merit’ Should be Rejected: Michael Sandel Debates John Gray

System Fractures

Iran Just Offered to Reopen Hormuz. Today, Russia Flies In to Broker It. Will Trump Take the Exit?

Sunday Poem

Who Should Defend Democracy?

A vocabulary for the future: nature

How Corruption Got This Bad

The Hindu Temple Shooting Plot

Open Thread

The Failure of California’s Proposition 47

Americans Who Go to Church and Trust Science Are Also More Likely to Believe in Ghosts and Curses

Ohio's Democrat Momentum

A profusion of Plath. Never has so much of her work – journals, letters, prose, poems – been available. Is it too much?

Arundathi Roy: "Vitiating the fundamental relationship between humans and language will undermine all semblance of social coherence"

How Not to Waste Your Life

The canonization of Peter Hujar. Known for his photographs of the oversexed New York art scene, his work is finally receiving its due

The AI Tipping Point

A Ph.D. certifies expertise in a discipline. But ignorance is a precondition for thinking something new. James Miller explains

After his mother died mysteriously, a German doctor began to suspect a respected forensic scientist. Things got stranger from there

After an 8-Year Journey, Orbiters Are About to Give Us a Fresh Look at Mercury

$9.25M Verdict Against N.Y. Times, in Libel Case Brought by Alabama Basketball Player