Nura Hossainzadeh argues that motherhood is both physical and transcendent. It is often said that becoming a parent is a profound transition. This transition feels different to everyone, since it ...

“To err is human, but to really screw things up requires a computer.” Anon. We are caught between heaven and hell. The skies are full of portents of doom. Oh wait, no, those are explosive ...

Elise Beal notes a Japanese philosophy of finding pleasure in the small things, and matches it with an online trend. “Our generation is so screwed.” I hear it everywhere on social media, and whispered ...

Omar Sabbagh contemplates the use of humor, in fiction, and in life. My work as a novelist and short story writer inevitably involves plenty of moments in which I stare into space. In such moments, I ...

Alfie Bown investigates different categories of laughter. Comedy has become a pressure point for contemporary culture. It flares up in debates about censorship, cancellation, progressivism, and even ...

Slavoj Žižek uncovers political paradoxes of lying. The so-called Liar Paradox – statements like ‘everything I say is false’ – has been endlessly debated by philosophers from Ancient Greece and India ...

‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads. It was about all the things rock stars normally don’t sing about. Pop songs are usually about ...

Perhaps unshockingly for someone who is an actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, narrator and writer, Stephen Fry has a deep interest in words and how we use them. After hearing him lecture on that ...

Massimo Pigliucci looks for threads of integrity in a morally compromised world. In the tumultuous political landscape of ancient Rome, few stories better illustrate the ideal of moral courage than ...

The central problem is that the use of AI in the academy poses a threat to independent thinking. It undermines the tension thinking needs for a critical engagement with science and represents the ...

Mahmoud Khatami asks, can machines make good moral decisions? Imagine a self-driving car speeding down a narrow road when suddenly a child runs into its path. The car must decide: swerve and risk the ...

Vincent J. Carchidi agrees with Descartes and friends that our ability to use language creatively distinguishes our minds from computers. The study of artificial intelligence was originally conceived ...