How AI Manages to Sound So Wise - Common Reader Finally, an explanation of AI that returns us to nature.

How DOES AI manage to sound so wise? My IT-whiz friend tells me I'm missing the beauty of it. (AUDIO 11m) commonreader.wustl.edu/ai-explained/

Thinking Outside the Box - Common Reader Geometry needs to be part of the zeitgeist.

HYBYCOZO! By summer’s end we will all know how to say it! (Audio 7m) commonreader.wustl.edu/hybycozo-at-...

no! yikes!

Why can't there be a religion that pulls all the other religions together? (AUDIO 9m) commonreader.wustl.edu/world-religi...

Dreamworks: Manipulating Our Deepest Secrets - Common Reader Tech has altered our reality. Now it is coming for our dreams.

Do you want your dreams engineered?! (AUDIO 9m) commonreader.wustl.edu/dream-engine...

We Failed Each Other Long Before AI - Common Reader Introduced to a chatbot, people soon pour out doubts and questions they would not dare reveal to another human being. Why not?

commonreader.wustl.edu/failure-ai/

The Culture of Animals, Why They Are Not Us, but Why We Need Them as Our Co-Creators of Reality - Common Reader Language has allowed us to be bound together by codes of law; to move easily between past and present and future; to fathom the deepest mysteries of the universe. But while scholars were busy defendin...

If we could talk to the animals.... commonreader.wustl.edu/the-wild-kin...

You know how strange the world is when you can’t tell the April fools satire from the real news. Golden throne toilet art installation? Jd Vance statue to the incel?

Ancient Splendor (and the Ambivalence of Its Ethics) - Common Reader A world recovered from the distant past, yet not so different from our own....

Ancient Rome was not so different from us...except that the governance back home was far more benevolent. commonreader.wustl.edu/ancient-sple...

What Do We Owe Our Dead? - Common Reader “Naturally, we honour the dead, but in honouring them, we somehow make them even more dead. But to please the dead, this brings them to life again.”

Do we have to obey our dead? Do we have the right to simulate them? (AUDIO 9m) commonreader.wustl.edu/please-the-d...

The text a retired friend of mine received on her phone. Talk about intimidation tactics! “This silence will cost you, Cecilia
We will not ask again. Complete your GOP Voter Profile to resolve the problem: gop-way.com/kh5uri
-House GOP”

Time to Turn Psychopathy Over to AI? - Common Reader All that shuddering horror, only to learn that psychopaths do not exist?

Psychopaths don't exist. Why am I disappointed? (AUDIO 8m) commonreader.wustl.edu/psychopaths/

How Most of the World Communicates - Common Reader "How we see things is very different from most of the planet."

So much to learn from those nearly invisible to us.... (AUDIO 5m) commonreader.wustl.edu/animal-commu...

Why We Need Friction - Common Reader A meeting on Zoom sounds like a relief until I remember I hate it. Texting keeps me in touch with friends so swiftly and constantly, I forget how much I miss them.

A meeting on Zoom sounds like a relief until I remember I hate it. Texting keeps me in touch with friends so swiftly and constantly, I forget how much I miss them. (AUDIO 8m) commonreader.wustl.edu/friction/

What We Need to Thrive - Common Reader Some of us need to be in a certain place, or with certain kinds of people, or in a certain emotional climate....

We all need something different to thrive--a setting, an atmosphere, a connection.... What is it for you? (AUDIO 8m) commonreader.wustl.edu/what-we-need...

Adam Phillips Is No One’s Guru The London-based shrink is the quiet confessor to the city's artists and writers, and a cultural figure in his own right. For our March issue, he made time to talk with his friend, the writer Hermione...

"It might take a certain amount of resistance to hold on to the idea these things are worth doing and protecting if we value them. Otherwise, it’s a capitulation. Pessimism is a luxury in a way." www.interviewmagazine.com/literature/a...

What a relief. The illegal white-cowboy video-game war has created an even more repressive regime! So the world will be able to have the upheaval again very soon!

And if AI Writes a Good Parable? - Common Reader Bits of untraceable wisdom are coming at us. How do we respond?

When bits of cultural wisdom are filtered to us through AI, how do we respond? I'm struggling to find a new way. (AUDIO 7m) commonreader.wustl.edu/ai-slop-or-a...

Horror Is Becoming Our Favorite Entertainment - Common Reader Why the horror genre is rising so fast

The masochism of it! Watch, on a screen, your nightmares acted out? Yet the horror genre is growing as fast as a hatched alien baby. Political commentary? (AUDIO 7m) commonreader.wustl.edu/horror-films/

The Tyranny of Masculinity - Common Reader Today’s influencers, panicked by AI and its ability to mimic or replace us altogether, preach a new vitalism. Often masculine, sometimes misogynist, this energy is wild and brave and noble, a birthrig...

Strongman. Strong man. How did we get them confused? commonreader.wustl.edu/the-tyrrany-...

Where Did I Put My Glasses? - Common Reader The only details I always remember are the things I forget.

Even if you were always absentminded, the lapses start to feel ominous.... (AUDIO 6m) commonreader.wustl.edu/memory-lapses/

Why Not Pink and Brown? - Common Reader The unbearable whiteness of being....

could words end this incessant racism? commonreader.wustl.edu/whiteness/

What Killed the Cat - Common Reader Curious women are, it seems, dangerous.

Curious women are dangerous. (AUDIO 7m) commonreader.wustl.edu/curious-women/

Why Not Pink and Brown? - Common Reader The unbearable whiteness of being....

Black and White aren't even the right colors. Was the opposition deliberate? (AUDIO 7m) commonreader.wustl.edu/whiteness/

No words needed. www.instagram.com/reel/DU1-DrF...

The Best Questions Are Not Good - Common Reader AI answers our questions. But will it change our questions?

are we (I especially mean me) letting AI explain things, explain us, to death? (AUDIO 7m) commonreader.wustl.edu/deep-questio...

How We Could Keep Holy - Common Reader The tech bros must have stumbled onto Abraham Heschel's book about the sabbath.

Why is keeping a real Sabbath so hard? (AUDIO 10m) commonreader.wustl.edu/tech-and-the...

Clarice Lispector, Brazil’s Most Beloved and Enigmatic Writer - Common Reader Brazilians embraced her as their finest modern author, yet. Her writing process was intuitive, soaked in emotion, and “entirely unconscious”; you would never guess she studied law.

It makes my insides squeamy to think that Jeffrey Epstein was was given a translation of Clarice Lispector by Noam Chomsky’s wife--but then I laugh, knowing what Clarice would have thought of her new reader. commonreader.wustl.edu/clarice-lisp...

Ritalin Works-But Not the Way We Thought - Common Reader ADHD, sleep deprivation, amphetamines and the truth of why they work

Ritalin doesn't hit the attention centers after all--and it might help prevent dementia--and ADHD is a continuum for all of us--but sometimes it's misdiagnosed sleep-deprivation... One big study can reveal a lot. (AUDIO 8m) commonreader.wustl.edu/adhd-and-rit...

Absolutely right. I mean, what does a Pride flag have to do with Stonewall, anyway??????????!