David Thomson spent 60 years celebrating cinema. Now he thinks movies may have ruined us

The Renaissance didn't begin in Florence. It began six thousand years ago in the Middle East. So argues a new book

Paul Klee painted it. Walter Benjamin coveted it. And Morgan Meis spent a lifetime obsessing over it

Texas Man Gets 30 Years in Prison for Transporting 'Anti-Government' Pamphlets

David Autor named head of the Department of Economics

This Was a Big Week for Marie Curie, More Than 120 Years Ago

Supreme Court Ruling Offers Hope to an Iowa Marijuana User Who Got 4 Years for Owning Guns

James Webb Space Telescope Captures the Cigar Galaxy’s Brilliant Stellar Halo in Pristine Detail

Listening for the echoes of black holes

Open Thread

Thursday Poem

David Hockney (1937 – 2026) Artist

Darwin spent only five weeks in the Galápagos. He ate tortoise, rode tortoise, and drank tortoise urine

Is there life after death? The psychiatrist Ian Stevenson spent his life collecting evidence. What he found was suggestive, but unprovable

America Spent a Fortune Shooting Down Cheap Drones. Now the Missile Stores Are Bare.

Cities Show How Climate Action Makes Life Better

Open Thread

Why U.K. Socialism Could Soon Be America's Problem

The Secret Origins of 'Conspiracy Theory'

Dinosaurs, crocodilo-pythons, and other monsters populated the “lost world” novels that thrived between the 1880s and 1920s

Open Thread