Arts and Culture

"Eat what makes you happy"

Are we ever good enough, or are we doomed to self-optimization for our entire lives?More

Hotel

It means “a couldn’t-care-less attitude,” and it’s a personal mantra for comedian Norm MacDonald.More

Rewind

Blogger Mark Manson on embracing our negativity as a means of consciously choosing what we really care about.More

House on the Rock Carousel

Author Neil Gaiman on the magic beyond the House on the Rock's walls.More

Elisabeth Moss in Hulu's "The Handmaid's Tale"

The legendary speculative fiction writer on why young people identify with dark, murky futures.More

La Jolla Tide Pools

Editor and publisher Ann VanderMeer is the co-editor of the sprawling anthologies “The Big Book of Science Fiction” and “The New Weird...More

George Saunders

2017 Man Booker Prize Winner George Saunders talks about his creative process, his fledgling Buddhist practice, and the enduring fascination with Lincoln and the Civil War.More

Fargo season 3

Showrunner Noah Hawley's approach for adapting the series captures the classic film's essence.More

magic in the internet

Despite pining for landline telephones, writer Virginia Heffernan sees magic in the potential of the internet.More

recording at the rock show

MP3 formatting compresses audio so that the file becomes 75 to 95 percent smaller. What's goes missing in the process? Conceptual artist Kenneth Goldsmith explains. More

digital and analog, together

Many of us are living two lives – old-school analog and cutting-edge digital. Author David Sax says that’s okay. More

headphones

Writer and producer Damon Krukowski explains why we must take care in eschewing analog imperfection in pursuit of more perfect digital sound.More

Magazines on coffee table

When you hear "poet", what kind of person comes to mind?  Emily Dickinson in her white dress? Robert Frost in the snowy woods, with...More

Chicago skyline

A hundred years ago, the poet Carl Sandburg turned Chicago into an American icon. He called it "The city of broad shoulders" a gritty...More

refugees

Quan Barry is an award-winning poet and novelist who founded the website ASPHODEL.INFO, which is dedicated to publishing a new poem each week in response to current events.More

Glitched woman

Siri Hustvedt on developing voices on new platforms, all while coping with old-fashioned sexism. More

Roxane on Twitter

Writer Roxane Gay talks about tackling her trolls and “writing to the point of uncomfortability.”More

Gabriel Barletta

Doug Eck directs Google’s new “Magenta” project, an experiment in teaching machines to make art, leveraging advances in machine learning like neural networks to enable computers to do things like compose music.More

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