James Wood on Flaubert, Madame Bovary and the birth of realism

James Madison on Human Nature

Birth order doesn’t predict your personality but here’s what does

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

Today in Supreme Court History: October 12, 1977

Link for Tonight’s Live Briefing

The Key to Multilingualism Lies in the Ears, Not the Mouth

Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing on Breaking Free from the Prisons We Choose to Live Inside

Hiroshi Ishii honored for contributions to global design and human-computer interaction

AI edges closer to solving the Riemann hypothesis, one of math’s hardest problems

Elephants Engineer Their Ecosystems Even in Death

James Baldwin on How Love (Finally) Finds You

Open Thread

The Canary in the AI Coal Mine

DOGE Shut Down This Agency. Now Its Employees Are Back on the Payroll With Nothing To Do.

Mencken is still relevant, but which Mencken? There were many — some confounding, some repellent, others bracing and hilarious 

Smuggling literature behind the Iron Curtain took ingenuity. Think microscopic copies of Solzhenitsyn nestled in a baby’s diaper

How to Break the German Malaise

The NFL Chooses States, Not the CFTC, in Fight Over Prediction Market Regulation

A Distant Planet Emitted a Burst of Radio Waves. Why?

MAGA’s Self-Destructive Culture War