Jorell Meléndez-Badillo on Puerto Rico: A National History April 12, 2024 Jorell Meléndez-Badillo provides a new history of Puerto Rico that gives voice to the archipelago’s people while offering a lens through which to understand the political, economic, and social challenges confronting them today. Read More
Why we practice magic April 11, 2024 Not many academic philosophers discuss magic, however, five centuries ago, prominent Renaissance philosophers wrote extensive treatises on the topic. Read More
Forging an American vision of Jewish masculinity April 11, 2024 When we think of Jewish masculinity in the United States, our imagination likely conjures up the quintessential nebbish: the neurotic, bookish, geeky intellectual type: think Woody Allen or, more recently, Seth Rogen or even Timothée Chalalemet. Read More
Listen in: Puerto Rico April 09, 2024 Puerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking territory of the United States with a history shaped by conquest and resistance. For centuries, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood. Read More
PUP Speaks: Allison Daminger on the unseen cognitive labor of women April 09, 2024 Allison Daminger introduces us to the idea of cognitive labor, a form of work akin to project management, and demonstrates that this invisible burden falls disproportionately on women. Read More
Claudia de Rham on The Beauty of Falling April 02, 2024 Claudia de Rham shares captivating stories about her quest to gain intimacy with gravity, to understand both its feeling and fundamental nature. Her life’s pursuit led her from a twist of fate that snatched away her dream of becoming an astronaut to an exhilarating breakthrough at the very frontiers of gravitational physics. Read More
Amin Ghaziani on Long Live Queer Nightlife April 02, 2024 Not all gay bars are the same. And so, if there are many types of gay bars, then there must be many reasons why some of them are struggling. Those that have folded faced a variety of challenges, some unique to a particular place, others more widely shared. Read More
A twenty-first century medical zoo March 26, 2024 It has taken a long time for humans to recognize that they are animals. Contemporary scientific advances in the life sciences have added to that promising insight by painting a picture of humans, not as autonomous subjects, but rather, inextricably entwined with their environments, starting, for instance, with huge numbers of bacteria, microbes or viruses populating their guts and skins. Read More
Leslie Valiant on The Importance of Being Educable March 26, 2024 We are at a crossroads in history. If we hope to share our planet successfully with one another and the AI systems we are creating, we must reflect on who we are, how we got here, and where we are heading. Read More
Martin Thomas on The End of Empires and a World Remade March 25, 2024 Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration. Read More
How bad was the world’s first pandemic? March 25, 2024 What exogenous shock knocked the Roman Empire from its prosperous and peaceful pinnacle? In recent years, historians have zeroed in on an infectious outbreak known as the Antonine plague—an apparent pox-like disease that ravaged not just Rome, but several Roman cities during Marcus’ reign. Read More
The wonderful world of wasps March 20, 2024 Wasps continued conservation and presence are essential for our own well-being but, rather scarily, we know very little about the world’s incredibly rich species diversity, and even less about their ecological interactions. Read More
Books for understanding how we vote March 15, 2024 2024 is a momentous year for global elections, with high-stakes, historic elections in over 50 countries. Seeking clarity on voting worldwide, and the political and social factors at play? This reading list can help. Read More
ISMs: Quotations for a new generation March 13, 2024 While Einstein, Darwin, and Jung conducted most of their intellectual work in writing, artists rarely do the same. But it is still possible to know their words. Read More
AI Needs You March 12, 2024 Artificial intelligence may be the most transformative technology of our time. As AI’s power grows, so does the need to figure out what—and who—this technology is really for. AI Needs You argues that it is critical for society to take the lead in answering this urgent question and ensuring that AI fulfills its promise. Read More