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“Adam and Eve Driven Out of Paradise”, from The Story of the Bible by Charles Foster. Illustrations by F.B. Schell by Legacy Russell The cultural practice of the “perp walk” is a form of social performativity. The perp walk itself is not a performance, singular. Rather, it is a...

Aaron Swartz From The New York Review of Books: Since the sad death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz, there has been a lot of discussion of the extent to which the criminal prosecution hanging over him contributed to his suicide. Some have pointed their fingers at MIT, suggesting that,...

Girl and Three Men’s Heads, Edvard Munch From The New York Times: I’ve been living in complete silence for months, I might say for years, with just the usual dull sounds you hear at the outskirts of town, the occasional echo of steps in the corridor and, further off,...

Photograph via IFEX From Columbia Journalism Review: Award-winning investigative reporter Ahmet Sik is no stranger to danger. In 1998, he was hospitalized after a pro-police mob, furious about a murder conviction against several cops in a torture case, attacked the victim’s lawyers, the prosecutor, and journalists. In 2009, he...

An innocent-looking little book lies on our parlour-table, an extensive demand for which would imply that English households abound in perils, and are hourly at the mercy of emergencies. Harmless as it looks, its purpose is alarming. It is called "Household Surgery; or, Hints on Emergencies."

Goldfinger, United Artists, 1964 From Virgina Quarterly Review: How did Paul Dehn become the preeminent screenwriter of the Cold War? Like most information about screenwriters, the answer might as well be top secret. There exists no biographical dictionary of screenwriters. The number of good biographies of screenwriters can probably...

Breaking Bad, AMC From London Review of Books: There’s a scene in Breaking Bad, a third of the way through the 54 episodes shot and screened on US TV so far, that marks a significant moment in the gradual passage of its central character, Walter White, from hero to...

Photograph by Draculina Ak From 3 Quarks Daily: I have very fond memories from the 1990s of listening to a friend’s Gujarati Indian immigrant family butcher Christmas carols. It was an annual Christmas Eve tradition for these religious Hindus. Each year, with women on one side of the room...

Last week, the Labour leader Ed Miliband made a much-hyped speech about ‘cultural integration’. He faced the usual problem: how to placate that section of Labour’s traditional, white working class constituency which opposes immigration, without at the same time alienating minorities and the anti-racist Left. And he reached for...

Photograph by Tolga Musato by Gregory Jusdanis What was more dazzling, my view of the Bosphorus with the Aghia Sophia and the Blue Mosque or the conversation? In Istanbul last month I rediscovered what I treasure whenever I go abroad: the well-roundedness and cosmopolitanism of intellectuals in comparison with...

I remember when I was a pre-teen and they moved into a loft across the street from me in Tribeca, where I lived. And an older neighbor friend told me they were living in her building, on the top floor. I saw him at my corner deli, and on...

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Hangover II, Charles Ginnever, 1983 by Massimo Pigliucci This semester I’ve been running a graduate level seminar at the City University of New York, on the difference between philosophy of science and science studies. The latter is a broad and somewhat vaguely defined term that includes (certain kinds of)...

The Name of the Rose, Neue Constantin Film, 1986 by Natalija Bonic When Freud devised the “talking cure,” he envisaged it as having a therapeutic effect, not only on individuals suffering from neurosis, but also on society as a whole. By enabling patients to talk freely about their repressed...