From comments published online and in media outlets upon the release of a TV commercial for the Italian company Amica Chips. The commercial depicts nuns eating potato chips in a…

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Wherein the author spends a decade acquiring knowledge of country and/or western music, Elvis’s stillborn twin, Bidenomics in the wild, bathroom cruising, wax statuary, race relations, and the soul of the nation

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From Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud, a book co-written with Stephen Greenblatt, which will be published next month by Yale University Press. The idea of the second chance is one…

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Photograms by Shao-Feng Hsu, from the series Night Swimming, in which he captures his breathing patterns while swimming under the new moon © The artist Off the Five Finger Islands,…

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The future of an ideal

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From emails sent to Alabama state representative Jeremy Gray regarding a bill to legalize the practice of yoga in K–12 schools, which was banned in 1993. I have only done…

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From an account of John 8:3–11 in a law-and-ethics textbook published by the Chinese Communist Party. In the Gospel, a group of Pharisees have gathered to stone a woman accused…

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From Angels & Saints, which was published last month by New Directions. Surprisingly little was originally known about the angels. They are mentioned fewer than two hundred times in the…

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From a verbal report given by Harold Howard to Kurt Castaldo, a deputy in the sheriff’s office in Palm Beach County, Florida, in December 2015. Howard alleged that Yousef Muslet…

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