Throughout the ages, humans have always found ingenious ways to kill each other, but a bloodletting milestone was surely reached when the great powers of the classical world—the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, et... Read More

Addiction is a disease. Let’s never categorize addictive behavior—abusing alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, pornography—as anything other than heartbreaking. Furthermore, with discipline and self-sufficiency so celebrated in the US,... Read More

In 1902, at twenty-six, Rainer Maria Rilke visited Paris for the first time, drawn by his perception—he was not alone—of France as the consummate home of the artist. He sought out Auguste Rodin and, over the course of many years, the... Read More

Upset at the cost of prenatal care, hospital deliveries, unpaid leave, and years of childcare? Imagine if all the eighteen- to forty-year-old women in the US simply refused to have babies. Do you think Washington and corporate America... Read More

The noble Pacific salmon—born in freshwater, coming of age in the ocean, back to streams and rivers to spawn and die—is so integral to the Alaskan psyche as to be family. In the broad expanses of our forty-ninth state, the return of... Read More

In the middle of the last century, before Vietnam, Iraq, immigration woes, global warming denial, and other spoilers damaged the brand, the United States enjoyed rock star status for leading the Allies to victory in WWII, defending the... Read More

Bearing a child is the greatest miracle of all. Mothers, in their ability to create life, are no less than gods on Earth. But with those special powers comes the immense responsibility of caretaking their offspring, and that’s when the... Read More

If you’re worried about computers becoming masters of the world, don’t hold your breath: the greatest minds in artificial intelligence can’t imagine even the first baby steps to building a machine as complex as the human brain,... Read More