The war between writers and editors can be long, brutish, and nasty. "Every semicolon was a matter of life or death”

Richard Dawkins on the Luckiness of Death

Your Genes Determine How Long You’ll Live Far More Than Previously Thought

Confessions of a midlist writer. Once it was okay for a writer’s debut to sell only a few thousand copies. No longer

How Not to Waste Your Life

‘What are we doing here?’ The polymaths who searched for the meaning of life

Was he an outlier? Does it matter?

New AI model could cut the costs of developing protein drugs

The New Global Order

Are we hard-wired for infidelity?

Open Thread

Penny, a Doberman pinscher, wins the Westminster dog show

Dostoyevsky, Just After His Death Sentence Was Repealed, on the Meaning of Life

This Nerve Influences Nearly Every Internal Organ. Can It Improve Our Mental State, Too?

Albert Camus on the Three Antidotes to the Absurdity of Life

The Monarchs, Music, and the Meaning of Life: The Most Touching Deathbed Love Letter Ever Written

Sleep and the Meaning of Life: Fernando Pessoa on the Existential Dimension of the Horizontal Hours

Famous for telling writers to embrace their “shitty first drafts,” Bird by Bird is one of the most popular writing guides of all time. Is it any good?

A Life of One’s Own: A Penetrating Century-Old Field Guide to Self-Possession, Mindful Perception, and the Art of Knowing What You Really Want

When Camus died in a car crash, he was carrying a return train ticket. "The greatest proponent of absurdism suffered an absurd death"

Darwin’s Greatest Regret and His Deathbed Reflection on What Makes Life Worth Living

Margaret Atwood on Margaret Atwood. "This is a very long book that is very ample on seemingly insignificant matters and oddly reticent on a few big ones"