Weekly Geekery
The hot young things of science fiction. Avoid IKEA with your lover today. Love, loss, and a spritz of psychology.
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Weekly Geekery
He loves me, he loves me not: science fiction’s relationship with L. Ron Hubbard. Babies will stop the bullies! The key to reckoning with climate change and nuclear bombs? Stories.
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The big bad wolf’s name is Big Data. Michael Chabon messes with our memories. Snape was always a little crabby…
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Writers gonna smoke (smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke). Find a Swedish latte papa to father your kids, says science. Fiction loves it some talking trees.
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Ladies: we’re more likely than men to cannibalize. Diversity dilemmas and the Hollywood sci-fi industrial complex. Oedipal orcas? Male killer whales need menopausal mom to survive.
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Lizard brain, meet the one-sentence novel. Sea slugs: the key to why you’ll remember this article. Are millenials “empty inside”? New books reveal the truth!
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Are cheetahs sprinting toward extinction? Chinese-American writer Ken Liu brings “silkpunk” to science fiction. Self-publishing coaches—the new sexy in a Fifty Shades world.
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Your new chatbot therapist recommends volunteering. Womp womp: those productivity hacks are making you less productive. A quick-and-dirty primer to the “Anthropocene.”
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Is Star Wars the Death Star of science fiction? Rat nirvana: being tickled till your ears turn pink. 250-million-year-old rocks might soothe science-religion conflict.
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Want to craft spy thrillers? Learn science writing. The science infusing Fantastic Beasts, and where to find it. This is why you talk like a cowboy. Turn off Beyoncé if you want to actually write today—lyrics hurt productivity.
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Why Finnish women matter to the history of science fiction. Holiday science books: let visions of squid and sarcophagi dance in their heads. Astronauts survive thanks to a black female mathematician. This robot could make your toddler Mark Zuckerberg. (Minus the billions.)
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Don’t dis slang—it’s older than you are. Regarding the pain of fish (and humanities-loving robots). Fake scientists are real. Sexism messes up men’s mental health, too. Aimee Bender and the Ladies of Contemporary Fairytale.
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Math reveals the six plots of fiction (and yoga). Messy room affecting your mood? These pessimistic pigs agree! Money buys happiness—if you pay in advance. That smile makes you look like a sucker. Arrival, CP Snow, and a place for the humanities.
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Harry Potter reduces prejudice towards immigrants. Why facts don’t change your mind. Kafka (unsurprisingly?) had insomnia. A new clue in the great German crime drama of 1694. Hands-free typing with your brain: now a thing.
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Fan fiction writers, rejoice: the future of TV is yours. Yoda-like lizard extracts water from sand without moving a muscle. Holy relics, bacteria, and the Ivy League reveal how to be a better liar. Why modern science rejected modernism. Hankering for a camel or zebra-horse? Try Missouri.
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Los Angeles: capital of science fiction? The latest Rx craze: novels. Richard Dawkins on Robert Frost. The scariest costume yesterday? A mite. Evolutionary biologists have a grudge against Frankenstein’s bride. The future of books: a bunch of Norwegian spruce trees.
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Goethe, book reviews, and why you shouldn’t use TripAdvisor. The brother-figures of bear conservation. Barack Obama talks brain-bots and “chasing the unicorn.” Meet your future neighbors: oysters. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and 19th-century fatal fashion.
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The plot thickens: literary fiction may not affect empathy after all. China’s solution to producing entrepreneurs? Science fiction. Kids of all races prefer black and Latinx teachers to whites. Science says: everything you learned about sexuality is wrong. Take back dinosaurs from the children!
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Is HBO’s bookish Westworld poised to give science fiction the Game of Thrones treatment? Antelopes, Bollywood, climate change, Brönte. National Geographic‘s autumn book recommendations—sushi, hiking, murder, oh my! Elon Musk name-drops Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Also, we’re going to Mars?) Spotting dementia through diction in Agatha Christie.
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Love = addiction. And both hijack the brain’s learning circuit. Langston Hughes and Edna St. Vincent Millay, resurrected on YouTube. The top traits of bestselling books. (Hint: Not sex.) The language you speak affects your morality. Sand avalanche! In your brain!
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Forget yoga—hallucinogenic ayahuasca is the new health cure du jour. H.G. Wells’s BFF was editor of Nature. Also from Nature: Wave goodbye to the 10,000-hours rule. Neurofiction, or stories that read your brain. Accurate AI models of existence? Not until robots dance.
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Biotech might give Icarus his wings. Solar eclipses, laser physicists… and mosquitoes? New Muslim voices in science fiction. Happy 50th, Star Trek. This unexpected writer made you what are. Oh, and starship shields: coming soon.
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Your brain on stories. (Or, molecular effects of Star Wars.) Read books, live longer… …but only Toni Morrison or Salman Rushdie will make you live better. Mapping the human condition on 10,000 New Yorkers. Startup culture meets culture culture. Afrofuturistic science fiction teleports to fashion.
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Phillip K. Dick’s holy spirits—or hallucinations? Lovecraftian scientific horror in Stranger Things. Shakespeare + math = … Narcissists doth make psychiatrists of us all. As women of color win science fiction awards, ATTACK OF THE RABID PUPPIES!
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Science fiction has a huge race problem, and stock solutions don’t cut it. You’re welcome: 19th century math genius gets Hamilton-ized. The electrifying history of modern fencing. Ah, Ancient Greece. Land of democracy—and human sacrifice? Controversy over a canonical character in neuroscience.
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Nabokov’s epilepsy, heart problems, and unpublished letters. A dictionary for the fleshy bits of brain that store our words. Ephemerality meets Instagram. The secret sauce behind NBC’s Olympics telecast. Your designated BFF might not even know your name.
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You subconsciously love car alarms and early morning construction. Nature on Mary Shelley and brains that “whizzed.” Well-aged whiskey sans barrel: researchers’ little secret. Save money! Eat salad! Click here for how! (Hint: science, not Internet scam.)
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Boy meets lichen, proves 150 years of science textbooks wrong. Want to improve your social skills? Try fiction, not speed-dating. How wasps gave us Shakespeare. In psychology, American undergrad = caveman. Birds lose sex appeal when singing over city noise. (Unlike Benedict Cumberbatch.)
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If you give a mouse an Orson Welles film, he might solve human consciousness. Your great-great grandkids might text from the grave. What Westerners consider universal about music: totally incorrect. Yes, you can be high on friendship (and it’s a painkiller!). Alas, poor Turing: a rock could pass his test.
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New York Times readers who ignore The Economist: Danger, groupthink ahead. Data suggests police de-escalation can work. Goats have feelings, too. (Sheep, not so much.) Babies brainwash you with their cuteness. If the Ghostbusters need props, who you gonna call? MIT professors!
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