When the people teaching Milton and Morrison subsist on leftover chips.
benhuberman
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Marshmallows that Gave Us the Modern Notion of Self-Control
How willpower — and its absence — turned from a moral and religious concept to a controversial scientific one.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Age of Rudeness
When society is as polarized and stratified as it is today, what does it take to imagine a definition of politeness and civility that transcends our differences?
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘The Great Shame of Our Profession’
When an adjunct literature instructor from Harvard won a prestigious literary criticism award, he chose to deliver a scathing critique of his discipline as his acceptance speech.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Against Willpower
It’s a concept that has shaped ethical debates for centuries. A clinical psychiatrist now thinks it’s time we got rid of it.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How the ‘Girls’ Cast Came to Be
Lacey Rose gives the cast and creators of Girls — from Lena Dunham to Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner — the full oral-history treatment.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
In Makeover Culture, Authenticity Doesn’t Come Cheap
If the “real” self is inside us, why do we constantly seek to transform our outer surfaces?
Posted inEditor's Pick
High-Pressure Parenting
Parents spend far more time with their kids compared to previous generations. Are they driven by the pleasures of “quality time,” or by class anxiety?
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Makeover Trap
Contemporary culture is obsessed with makeovers — of bodies, homes, even entire neighborhoods. But this quest for transformative authenticity often has a dark side.
Posted inEditor's Pick
It’s Goodbye Girls
Lena Dunham’s (often groundbreaking, often controversial) show gets its own oral history, days before its sixth and final season is about to start.