Daily Interlude

Jazz is not Dead

Long before we debated what real punk-rock was, what true hip-hop was, or what made indie-rock authentic, jazz heads grappled with what is and isn't jazz music. Now, the debate is whether Jazz id dying off or not ... more >>

Rediscovering Central Asia

It was once the “land of a thousand cities” and home to some of the world’s most renowned scientists, poets, and philosophers. Today it is seen mostly as a harsh backwater. To imagine Central Asia’s future, we must journey into its remarkable past ... more >>

The Most Accurate Prediction in History

In August 1977, the British journalist and broadcaster Bernard Levin had predicted what eventually happened. He was right about why it would happen, how it would happen, and he said when it would happen almost exactly to the day. This is the article he wrote for the Times London ... more >>

The Year the World Really Changed

Forget the fall of the iron curtain: the events of '79 matter ... more >>

Survival of the Weakest

Do you want to know why neanderthals really went extinct ... more >>

A New Wrinkle in Ancient Ocean Chemistry

Scientists widely accept that the Earth's atmosphere underwent a dramatic rise in oxygen 2.4 billion years ago, which ultimately paved the way for complex life on our planet. New research has helped solve some important questions surrounding this 'Great Oxidation Event' ... more >>

Russia's Conquering Zeros

It may be no accident that, while some of the best American mathematical minds worked to solve one of the century's hardest problems—the Poincaré Conjecture—it was a Russian mathematician working in Russia who, early in this decade, finally triumphed ... more >>

Gorbachev on His Legacy, and Obama's Chance to Lead an American Perestroika

The former Soviet leader on his push for a peaceful dissolution of the Russian empire, and his idea that the US should follow suit ... more >> 

The Empire that was Russia

This is an online recreation of the Prokudin - Gorskii photographic record.  A great collection of photographs that retell the vestiges of a long gone Tsarist Russia ... more >>

Claude Lévi-Strauss obituary

French anthropologist whose analysis of kinship and myth gave rise to structuralism as an intellectual force ... more >>