Larry Bird

The Abominably Slowman

It’s an incident that’s gone unreported outside the tightly knit community of science nerds and “skeptics.” Now, when I use the word “skeptics,” I’m not speaking of ...

Poison Pen

A few years ago, I had the bright idea of writing a book about arsenic in the 19th century. In preparation for writing it, I bought scores of books on this fascinating subject, ...

Gone Viral

An old friend of mine who once ran a small publishing house told me that a swastika on the cover of a book increased its sales by 30 percent, irrespective of the book’s subject ...

Critical Race Theory is a Complex — Oh, Who are We Kidding?

One of the unintended consequences of teachers using COVID to refuse to do their jobs in 2020 is that their students suddenly had to take classes remotely -- within earshot of ...

Grave Expression

Of late, I have taken a walk almost every day in the cemetery of Père Lachaise, which is near my flat in Paris. It is said that 3 million people are interred in the cemetery, and ...

Black Lizards Matter

A few weeks ago, I saw my first lizard of spring—except, of course, that it was still January, which is to say winter. The weather, however, was unseasonably warm, and I suppose ...

Credulity Springs Eternal

One of the few benefits of the continuing restrictions imposed on us during the seemingly endless pandemic now afflicting most of the world is that they have forced us to live ...

When Abundance Is Lacking

Thanks to my pessimism, I am generally quite cheerful (it is optimists who, because of their illusions, are most prey to misery). I do not expect that all the difficulties of life ...

A Hunger for Literature

The mice in my absence have been at my books again, with what Marx called, with regard to the manuscript of his then-unpublished Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German ...

Life’s a Boar

On Christmas Day I sat by the fire in my house in France and read a charming little book, Tea With Walter de la Mare, by Russell Brain, published in 1957. Walter de la Mare, who ...

Amsterdam, Netherlands

The New Amsterdam

Armed with the necessary certificate to justify my journey from France to the Netherlands, my presence in the latter country having become “indispensable,” I spent a couple of ...

Ask Ann Anything! ACB Edition

With the Amy Coney Barrett hearings in full swing this week, my mailbox has been overflowing with questions from absolutely no readers! Here, I will deliver the answers that no ...

The Salesman’s Nightmare

My understanding of economics must be deficient, or else my personal experience of the world is misleading. Both are possible, of course: None of us can experience more than an ...

The Science of Socks

Sometimes, like little Greta Thunberg, I long for the days when people had fewer possessions and cared for those few that they had. For example, they would have only a small ...

A Tidal Wave of Righteous Apathy

This is the year everything went wrong. The year that the dried, cracked, and frayed rubber band that seemed to be holding everything together finally snapped from all the ...

A Tangled Web

Between a hollyhock and a lavender in my garden is suspended a spider’s web. There is a part in which the prey is caught, and another part, a funnel, in which the spider waits ...


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