The problem of loneliness seems to be growing. New research demonstrates many gardeners these days have a more intimate relationship with the blooms in their borders, rockeries, ...

Some people keep reading matter in their lavatories, though whether for their own benefit or that of their visitors I have never been able to determine—nor have I ever asked. I ...

Until recently, I would have guessed I’d never get to do an old-fashioned book tour in my lifetime. After all, I didn’t make a single public appearance in more than a decade, ...

My anthology Noticing is coming out in paperback this week from Passage Press for $29.95. Please buy it. Also, I’m continuing my book tour with a speaking event in Los Angeles ...

I’m not much in the business of making predictions about the future, because it’s hard enough to understand what’s happening in the present. I don’t forecast the next big ...

This festive break’s big Christmas and New Year U.S. movie release, Freud’s Last Session, stars Anthony Hopkins as Sigmund Freud, telling the story of the “great” ...

Last week a clip from something called “Timcast” went viral. Some round-faced, beady-eyed stoner (I think that’s “Tim”) was debating a manic Robert Downey Jr. look-alike ...

In his recent livestreamed interview with Hungarian-Canadian “toxic trauma therapist” Dr. Gabor Maté, besides crediting the ingestion of the hallucinogen ayahuasca with ...

During the dog days of August, there was a brief flurry of partisan excitement when Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert denounced the White House’s student loan giveaway as, ...

“As flies to wanton boys,” says Gloucester in King Lear after his eyes have been put out by the Duke of Cornwall at the behest of the evil Goneril, “are we to the gods: they ...

There are no sheep more ovine than those who get themselves tattooed in order to individuate themselves. Judging by the statistics, such sheeplike behavior is becoming more and ...

According to a Gallup poll, the percentage of the American population that now “identifies” as LGBTQ+ has doubled by comparison with ten years ago, and now stands at 7.1 ...

A curious example of the power of social trends on thought is that two years into the Covid pandemic, nobody of any influence has yet bothered to launch a campaign to persuade ...

To mark the centenary of the birth of Norman Mailer—which I shall not be celebrating wildly—a publisher decided to reissue a volume of his essays. An employee of the ...

In honor of my upcoming 53rd birthday, I’m launching a two-part (or three...haven’t decided yet) series on the changing face of my native city. I’ve never understood why ...

Nearly a century ago, in 1925 to be precise, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig wrote an article for a Berlin newspaper titled “Making the World Uniform.” It began: Despite the ...