Despite years of debate and follow-up studies, an odd streak of cosmic light still defies a final explanation. Is it a giant black hole screaming through intergalactic space?

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Official website of author Karen E. Bender

On irony poisoning and the importance of being earnest.

World War II has faded into movies, anecdotes, and archives that nobody cares about anymore. Are we finally losing the war?

To HIV researchers, I am an ‘elite controller’ – someone whose immune system has enabled them to live for decades without symptoms or medication. I hope that one day science will understand this tiny but lucky minority

The highest ranking Black leader in NYC has thoughts about John Davidson and the 2026 BAFTA Awards Tourette's incident.

The late queen can be held responsible for much, but nobody could accuse her of seeming to enjoy her role. For the...

Talkspace has amassed “one of the largest mental health data banks in the world,” according to reports to investors, containing 140 million message exchanges.

This week (and probably next) I want to talk a bit more Tolkien, but in a somewhat different vein from normal. Rather than discussing the historicity of Tolkien's world or adaptations of it, I want to take a moment to discuss some of the themes of Tolkien's work, which express themselves in the metaphysical architecture…

The photographer who snapped the photos of the Artemis II crew’s return to Earth spent years honing his craft on a Navy aircraft carrier.

On war and what we have to choke down.

If you asked me today, and if you'd asked me two years ago, I'd tell you I'm very fond of my house. It's nothing special. It's a townhouse surrounded by other townhouses that look just like it, forming a semicircle of beige brick at the end of a street. There's no garden, because when I

A blog series in which I reread LOTR 50 years after I first read it, age 10, over the winter of 1975-76. Pippin and Merry come as a double act (not exactly ‘dumb and dumber’, but not a million miles from that either) in the Jackson film version of LOTR, providing both light relief and…

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • HUGO AWARD FINALIST • In this poignant, heartfelt novella from the New York Times bestselling author of Spinning Silver...