Education

Curated by our editorsStories to fuel your mind

11 Chilling Facts About the 1972 Andes Plane Crash

Those who made it through the crash would need to resort to desperate measures to survive.

The Portly Victorian Undertaker Who Launched the World’s First Low-Carb Craze

William Banting tried every 19th century weight-loss fad. Polite society was shocked when he unveiled the method that finally worked.

Historians Say They’ve Solved the Mystery of a Curious 100-Year-Old Contraption Discovered in Storage

Staffers at the Dorchester County Historical Society in Maryland were baffled by the unusual machine, so they asked the public for help in determining its purpose

The Vet, the Cattle Prod, and the ‘Guttural Wail’

An equine surgeon and Texas A&M professor has been convicted of animal cruelty after repeatedly shocking a horse in front of students, among other misdeeds, exposing the shaky ethics training of some veterinarians.

Henri Matisse’s Revolutionary Colors

From 1951: Picasso’s painting style distorted familiar things. Matisse’s re-created them in brilliant new light, Janet Flanner writes.

Mati Diop and the Cinema of Impossible Returns

The Musée du Quai Branly is a long ark of a building perched over a garden, whose foliage screens the museum from its busy namesake thoroughfare on the banks of the Seine.

Lost Silk Road Cities Discovered High in the Mountains of Central Asia

Hidden in the towering mountains of Central Asia, along what has been called the Silk Road, archaeologists are uncovering two medieval cities that may have bustled with inhabitants a thousand years ago.

Researchers have invented a new system of logic that could boost critical thinking and AI

The rigid structures of language we once clung to with certainty are cracking. Take gender, nationality or religion: these concepts no longer sit comfortably in the stiff linguistic boxes of the last century.

A Man of Parts and Learning

In the autumn of 1928, a previously unknown painting turns up on the London art market. It belongs to a Major Henry Howard of Surrey. He is 45 years old. His father has just died and left him a large estate, and he’s selling off much of it – houses, land, family heirlooms.

The Economic Philosophy of Donald Harris

At the end of July, shortly after Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate for President, The Economist described her father, Donald Harris, an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford with whom she reportedly has little contact, as “a combative Marxist.

Discover More Topics

The TikTok electorate

Greetings from Read Max HQ! Today’s newsletter is about how TikTok shapes (and will shape) politics. A reminder: This newsletter is my full-time job, but it only exists because thousands of readers appreciate what I do enough to pay for subscriptions.

“Mike Knew Apocalypses Had Been Coming at Us All Along.” Rebecca Solnit on the Great Mike Davis

People were right that Mike Davis was a prophet, but wrong about what a prophet is. There’s a debased version in which prophets are oracles, like Nostodamus and witches staring into crystal balls in bad movies, equipped with a supernatural ability to see the future the rest of us can’t.

What Rivals Gets Right About British Society

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I know that if you are watching Rivals, the new Disney+/Hulu series charting the rise and fall of various people associated with an independent TV station called Corinium in the 1980s English countryside, you are watching it not for its sociopolitical insights.

What the Internet Age Is Taking Away From Writers

Authors tirelessly self-market online, but I find myself wishing that they still had the option to disappear. This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here.

A Dark Reminder of What American Society Has Been and Could Be Again

It is common, when some atrocious statement or action born of hatred comes to the fore, to hear people solemnly intone, “This is not who we”—meaning Americans—“are.

Curated by our editorsStories to fuel your mind

11 Chilling Facts About the 1972 Andes Plane Crash

The Portly Victorian Undertaker Who Launched the World’s First Low-Carb Craze

Historians Say They’ve Solved the Mystery of a Curious 100-Year-Old Contraption Discovered in Storage

The Vet, the Cattle Prod, and the ‘Guttural Wail’

Henri Matisse’s Revolutionary Colors

Popular with Pocket readersStories from across the web

Mati Diop and the Cinema of Impossible Returns

Lost Silk Road Cities Discovered High in the Mountains of Central Asia

Researchers have invented a new system of logic that could boost critical thinking and AI

A Man of Parts and Learning

The Economic Philosophy of Donald Harris

Discover More Topics

The TikTok electorate

“Mike Knew Apocalypses Had Been Coming at Us All Along.” Rebecca Solnit on the Great Mike Davis

What Rivals Gets Right About British Society

What the Internet Age Is Taking Away From Writers

A Dark Reminder of What American Society Has Been and Could Be Again

Discover More Topics