In meritocracy - or so it seemed fifty years ago - we would look up to the best of us. It turns out now, however, that we look up to celebrities. A big difference... more

Connoisseurs take serious interest in the high arts of painting, music, and literature. Why is great perfume not seen as in the same class?... more

Witch hunters in Africa lynch "thieves" who rob men of their masculinity. Many people's grasp of economics is at the same level. The Edge economics course is an curative... more ... Class no. 1

John Milton, boring? Paradise Lost has a little bit of something for everybody. Hot sex! Hellfire! Some damned good poetry, too... more

Overparenting. Conservatives fear we're turning our kids into pampered ninnies (i.e., Democrats); liberals think we're raising selfish robots (Republicans)... more

Scandal is permanent, frozen before us. Scandals metastasize, ramify, self-replicate, clogging cable news, the blogs, and the bookstores. Scandal everywhere... more

Who'd want to make a movie that looked like a Thomas Kinkade painting? Thomas Kinkade, obviously. But who could possibly sit through it?... more

Did Proust anticipate the course of 20th-century American literature? Edmund Wilson thought so, and that Thornton Wilder's novels were proof... more

Magicians manipulate focus and intensity of human attention, controlling what we are aware of and when. Their illusions are useful for grasping neuroscience... more