Olivia Goldhill

An influential figure in academia is under investigation following a Title IX complaint and, before the evidence has been collected, there are cries that the very act of investigating is an injustice. Such a scenario has played out many times before: Shouts of “witch hunt” and concerns about how the allegations would affect the accused followed allegations against Harvey Weinstein, Louis CK, and Al Franken. This time, though, is different: the person under investigation is a woman, and those denouncing the enquiry are feminist theorists.

When Ashlee Dean Wells gave birth to her son 13 years ago, she was determined that his life wouldn’t be limited by gender. She gave him toys and clothes traditionally associated with both girls and boys, and found he enjoyed dresses and tutus as much as shorts and T-shirts. “There was no shopping in the boy aisle or the girl aisle, he just played with whatever he was drawn to,” says Ashlee. At age three, his favorite color was pink. He was male, but he was far from typically masculine.

Imposter syndrome, according to conventional wisdom, plagues women far more than men. As if it weren’t enough that women have to deal with men casting aspersions at them for not being competent leaders or for being too emotional, the notion of imposter syndrome—whereby high-achieving people disparage their own success as pure luck and worry that they’ll be uncovered as incompetent—has typically been thought of as a female trait.

At this year’s largest conference on anesthesia, a new topic was up for discussion: Not using general anesthesia.

The British press is not known for its ethical standards. In a country of muckrakers eager to get the scoop, boundaries are often distorted in the hungry grab for salacious details. There’s one subject, though, for which this disregard for moral norms does not apply: suicide.

Plato was not a fan of democracy. Many might consider this just a blip on the philosopher’s otherwise excellent political analysis. But his description of the “democratic man” does give pause for thought.

Blame Scandinavian chic. Just as Denmark turned the concept of hygge into an international trend, Finland’s announcement in 2015 that it would trial universal basic income (UBI) started a serious fad. In the years since Finland’s much-publicized decision, several similar trials have launched in Ontario, Canada, Oakland, California, Barcelona, Spain, and southwestern Kenya.

Machines can replicate the communication style of individual humans, make moral decisions, and provide care to the elderly. There are even scientists working to create conscious robots. But could a machine ever achieve spirituality?

I’m English and have lived in England for the vast majority of my life, but I hadn’t heard of the “English vice” until last week. Apparently, British men have a longstanding reputation for enjoying being spanked.

It’s difficult to turn on the radio or open a magazine at the moment without hearing about psychedelics. A quick skim of the headlines might suggest the drugs are imbued with medicinal superpowers and Silicon Valley is collectively on one long trip.

When I visited Japan last November, I asked a few people whether everyone was as obsessed with Marie Kondo, the Japanese guru who inspires millions with her treatise on the magic of tidying up, as Americans were. Sure, they said. They knew about Kondo. But the real phenomenon, they told me, was a book called The Courage to be Disliked.

Advice can simultaneously feel well meaning, wise, and irksome. A psychology paper published earlier this year, found a compelling explanation for that last trait: giving advice doesn’t only benefit the recipient. It also makes the advice-dispenser feel powerful.

Recently, I started hanging out with a group of friends who seem intimidatingly on top of things. They respond to their emails—even non-urgent ones—politely and punctually, they freeze leftovers in neatly labeled Tupperware that they never forget about, and they sort their mail into orderly files, daily. Every chore and administrative task is completed to perfection, leading to lives that appeared to me to be organized, efficient, and incredibly boring.

Popular culture overwhelmingly tends to be straight, straight, and straight. We’re still so deeply embedded in heteronormativity that, just last week, the BBC referred to Ireland’s Eurovision gay dancers as “controversial.” So it’s distinctly notable that several cultural figures have recently broke free from the straightjacket of heteronormativity to acknowledge non-heterosexual sexuality: pansexuality.

Depression is on the rise in the United States. A quick glance at the data, which show rising diagnosis rates, could give the impression that a series of terrible events plunged millions of people into depression. (Those with different political ideologies will likely point to different events, but much of the data pre-date 2016, so the election can’t be entirely to blame.) A more nuanced evaluation, though, suggests this isn’t a tale of increasing numbers of depressed Americans. Instead, it shows that people in the US are just as depressed as they ever were—but are increasingly seeking the treatment they need.

Long before I read French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, I had a clear idea of who he was. Or who I thought he was. I knew all about the turtleneck-wearing, chain-cigarette-smoking, moody sort of soul, with a melancholy philosophy to match. After I opened his books, though, it became clear to me that this brooding reputation didn’t match the reality. His words, to me, didn’t read like those of a poet in crisis, but like something that would not look out of place in a self-help book.

Companies are keen to champion women’s empowerment. Board members attend diversity panels, female leaders are invited to give inspiring speeches, and nearly every CEO has read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. Altogether, this suggests that the corporate world is finally ready to treat women the same as men. The data, though, tell a very different story.

One hundred and sixty years ago, at a time when the light bulb was not yet invented, Karl Marx predicted that robots would replace humans in the workplace.

It’s a logical fallacy to assume that, just because x implies y, y therefore also implies x. For example, all great philosophers may be geniuses, but that certainly doesn’t imply that all geniuses are great philosophers. Kanye West is a case in point.

Eighty years ago, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had a brainwave. No, not when he claimed he’d solved all great philosophical questions at just 29 years old (that was in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, completed in 1918 and published in 1921.) Nor was it when he realized the Tractatus was wrong, and professed to have re-solved philosophy all over again (in Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously in 1953).

At Oxford University, Tony Honoré made his name as an expert on causation and moral responsibility in the law. This week, the 97-year-old legal scholar came face to face with the practical application of his theories when he was found guilty of dangerous driving.

Some 200 years after Karl Marx’s birth, capitalism has decidedly won the ideological battle against communism. The proof? To honor Marx’s May 5 birthday, his hometown of Trier, Germany, is mass-producing disposable Marxist memorabilia.

In Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Dr. Evil’s team briefly abandons its traditional hostage-taking tactics and conspires to instead take over the world by investing in Starbucks.

Driving from New York to New Jersey is all it takes to bring someone back from the dead.