Text Is (Still) King “Why the written word will never die.” Psychologist Adam Mastroianni argues that all the current narratives about the decline of reading and the related decline of civilization itself “tend to leave out some inconvenient data points.” He concludes that “humans have a hunger that no video can satisfy. Even in the […]
The existential balm of seeing yourself as a verb, not a noun Clinical psychologist Eric Jannazzo discusses the realization that he “could start to imagine my personhood not as a thing but as a roiling together of body and breath, memory and mood, ceaselessly shifting thoughts and perceptions, all braiding with the rest of the
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Is AI hurting your ability to think? How to reclaim your brain Noel Carroll, an associate professor in Business Information Systems at the University of Galway, warns that “many people may be falling victim to the same phenomenon – outsourcing the ‘struggle’ of thinking to AI.” He calls this condition “cognitive atrophy.” Essentially, AI is
We are traveling again, and this is my first opportunity for a literature-adjacent blog post. This was our fourth visit to Sydney, and we’ve already done just about every excursion available within the city (yes, we’ve climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge). We were in town for a day and a half, and on the first
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Deep reading can boost your critical thinking and help you resist misinformation – here’s how to build the skill Two college professors, a cognitive scientist and a literacy expert, explain the drawbacks of doomscrolling and how deep reading can help overcome brain passivity. Deep reading . . . refers to the intentional process of engaging
This month’s starter is a book that topped lots of 2025 ‘best of’ lists – Flashlight by Susan Choi. first degree Although I’ve seen many good words about Flashlight, I haven’t read it yet. But a book that was on a lot of 2025 “best books” lists that I DID read is Buckeye by Patrick
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Julian Barnes Says Goodbye to the Novel “His fiction has found meaning in life’s gaps and love’s absence.” In The Atlantic literary biographer Adam Begley writes that Julian Barnes’s latest novel, Departure(s): offers only a sketchy storyline, mixed with memoir and thoughts on memory. An extended farewell, an author’s valedictory flourish, the whole package is
A simple illusion can unlock your childhood memories, according to new psychology research Recent research published in Scientific Reports suggests that “people can better access detailed memories from their childhood by experiencing an illusion of owning a younger version of their own face”: Our memories are not just recordings of external events; they are experiences
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The Unexpected Benefits of Reading at Random “Elspeth Wilson on Becoming a Literary Omnivore” Scottish writer Elspeth Wilson, author of These Mortal Bodies (July 2025), concludes “reading at random won’t solve all the issues with unequal advances, difficulties in sustaining a career, and lack of diversity in publishing. But it has helped me encounter the
Notable Literary Deaths in 2025 Dreaming of writing your novel this year? Rip up all the rules! If your New Year’s resolutions involve getting to work on that novel you’ve been meaning to write, novelist Elizabeth McCracken has some general advice to offer. Books That Open the Mind Writers for The Atlantic offer “recommendations for
