The Word Choices That Explain Why Jane Austen Endures
A piece that analyses Austen’s writing to try to understand her success in the “Darwinian struggle for literary immortality”.
Al Franken, That Photo, and Trusting the Women
This eloquent piece looks at the sexual harassment allegations against Senator Al Franken and uses them as a springboard to examine humanity’s long history of identifying trustworthiness as a male trait and duplicity as its female counterpart – via Aristotle, Galen, Jezebel, Cassandra, Hamlet and others.
The Last of the Iron Lungs
A profile of three of the last polio sufferers in the US using an iron lung. The piece examines what life is like spent in one of these contraptions, used in a medical context for nearly 100 years.
Do civilisations collapse?
A piece reassessing common tropes we use to explain how civilisations decline, from Easter Island to the Maya.
Art by algorithm
An article looking at the impact of computational advances on art and aesthetics, and the potential for a future of bland, algorithmically-driven perfection. The piece also considers a more appealing path for art, exemplified by changes in chess since Gary Kasparov was defeated by the Deep Blue supercomputer, where human and computer now unite to elevate and evolve the game into something altogether different.
The Mysterious Madame Giselle
A story about friendship and trust, told through a case of high society fraud allegedly perpetrated by a woman who claimed to be the Egyptian President’s secret wife, an ex-wife of Hugo Chavez, and a mentor to Ivanka Trump.
China’s Camel-Milk Mogul
A look at the camel milk industry of China, thriving in a remote northwestern region bordering Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia.