Spring 2026 | There is nothing left to conserve.
On a typewriter.
Gaddis, DeLillo, and the assembly line of ideas.
Ride a horse and read the book.
Calvino’s literature in the anthropocene.
On inheritance.
On cultural experiences
Action comics, Dostoevsky, and how to be good in the absence of God.
On data destruction.
On the vast beyond.
The rigor and rapture of speaking in tongues.
On preserving interruptions.
A courtroom, Steinbeck, and our duty to forgive.
On the distortions of freedom.
On what truth demands.
On Czech American history and the University of Chicago.
Winter 2026 | The party’s over.
The Harper Review’s weekly newsletter: Wenders, Winter Freeze, Wikipedia, and more.
On Baudelaire’s beast of boredom.
Tocqueville and the virtue of action.
On quarter-life panopticons.
On the logic of the underground.
Liberalism and the cruelty of the joke.
On house music and the party.
On loving through looking.
Romanticism and the derivative heart.
C.S. Lewis, Taoism, and the ouroboros of grief.
On avoiding sublimation.
Nietzsche and Pynchon on letting go of guilt.
The past, present, and future of water in the West.
On distractions from bravery.
Autumn 2025 | We should still believe in progress.
Wittgenstein’s language games and large language models.
On new things and blessed problems.
Consumerism’s tailor-made alienation.
Hannah Arendt and freedom from politics.
On false realities and real people.
Running, suffering, and Sontag.
On shoddy towers and disenchantment.
On the valley of progress.
Loneliness and artificially intelligent boyfriends.
On national trauma and political disillusionment.
On the works of David Foster Wallace.
Spring 2025 | It’s all about sex.
The bind faced by America’s universities
On some things far more interesting than sex.
On Kanye’s study of sex
Lessons learned from the city of the future.
On Sex and the City.
On effing the ineffable.
Two new poems from Miles Cayman.
The new New York waterfront
On the currency of desire.
On Borges, sex, knowledge, and power.
James Bennet and the new digital media
On validation.
On possessing a sexual consciousness.
Trans rights and the left.
Winter 2025 | The ivory tower should endure.
On making a heaven of hell.
On our necessary work and responsibility.
The shoemaker’s dilemma.
On the ivory tower being built to fall.
How liberalism wrote out friendship.
On giving education a break.
The transformative experience of beauty.
On returning to the real world.
Artificial intelligence and the nature of creativity.
On The Glass Bead Game.
Hobbes, Rawls, and the nation conceived in liberty.
Autumn 2024 | You should love your country.
Writing in the age of artificial reproduction.
On boredom, anxiety, and perpetual busyness.
On loving a country’s ends, not the country itself.
The utopianism behind conspiracy thinking.
On A Farewell to Arms.
The many faces of The Chicago Canon on Free Inquiry and Expression.
On patriotism as alliance against a common enemy.
Time and the contemplative life.
On finding love in the courage of the just.
On my father’s love of country.
John von Neumann and the birth of a tragic mathematics.
On false prophets and forthright patriots.
Spring 2024 | We should tell children the truth.
On America’s pastime.
The limits of reason, from Bollywood to Isaiah Berlin.
On converting to Catholicism (or Straussianism).
A new understanding of digital hatred.
On honesty as an act of love.
On the founding and future of The Harper Review.
Europe’s attempt to wash its hands of dirty farmers.
On taking a leap of faith.
Bringing LGBT Catholics under the Church’s social contract.
On children’s natural nose for lies.
A critique of commodified resistance.
Winter 2024 | We should never forget the past.
On what remembering is for.
On remembering that you’re stronger than you seem.
The ethics of artificially intelligent weapons.
On our ever-fleeting present existence.
On whether it’s possible to never forget.
What Hamlet reveals about the pitfalls of critical art.
On Islamophobia and American history.
On building and understanding history.
Fearless journalism in Elena Kostyuchenko’s I Love Russia.
On W. B. Yeats and artistic inspiration.
On remembering and the silver screen.
Cultural alienation and the humanities.
Autumn 2023 | Friends should share your values.
Rethinking technology’s ends.
Digital formation in Antón Barba-Kay’s A Web of Our Own Making.
On combat as the pursuit of wisdom.
On choosing friendships—or not.
The problem of the twenty-first century.
On friendship as an optimization problem.
The problem with Ron Mueck at the Fondation Cartier.
On agreeing with your friends.
Soaring mental health risks for girls.
Should friends share your values? On friendship beyond values.
Michel Houellebecq and the politics of French culture.
Spring 2023 | Art must be political.
Must art be political? On the inherently political content of art.
The waning power of minimalist design.
Why you’re terrified of modern art.
Must art be political? On perpetually political symbols.
The undemocratic wages of state secrecy.
John Ruskin and the imperfect worker.
Must art be political? On Francisco de Goya’s The Third of May.
Must art be political? On the artist’s apolitical delusion.
Must art be political? On art and moral purity in today’s world.
Winter 2023 | Civility is outdated.
Rediscovering Simone Weil’s critique of liberalism.
Is civility outdated? A letter on the changing conditions for civility over time.
Our confused church-state discourse and its Jeffersonian roots.
Is civility outdated? A letter on when we’re permitted to break the law.
Is civility outdated? A letter on authentic human connection.
Our generation’s struggle with individualist activism.
Is civility outdated? A letter on confronting the humanity of others.
Truth, politics, and the polarized media.
Is civility outdated? A letter on the digital age.
Is civility outdated? A letter on drinking Fernet.
The pernicious, underlying morality of therapy culture.