Podcast Listen in: The Sounds of Life October 12, 2022 The natural world teems with remarkable conversations, many beyond human hearing range. Scientists are using groundbreaking digital technologies to uncover these astonishing sounds, revealing vibrant communication among our fellow creatures across the Tree of Life. Read More
Essay On anniversaries, time, patience, perseverance, and publishing October 11, 2022 As Cicero wrote, “we truly can’t praise the love and pursuit of wisdom enough, since it allows a person to enjoy every stage of life free from worry.” These same words of wisdom scale readily from an individual to an organization like PUP, as we navigate every stage of the book, and every stage of our life as a publisher. Read More
Essay A look inside Pandemic Politics October 11, 2022 The floor of the Bank of Oklahoma Center in Tulsa was awash in red, white, and blue. Eager supporters of President Donald Trump were holding signs, wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, and sporting T-shirts with expressions ranging from “Guns, God, and Trump” to “Make Liberals Cry Again.” Read More
Interview What is viral justice? An interview with Ruha Benjamin October 11, 2022 In spring 2020, Ruha Benjamin received a DM on Twitter from her literary agent Sarah Levitt: “I’m hungry to read anything you have.” Inspired, Benjamin began writing and spent the first few months of the pandemic conceiving what would become her new book, Viral Justice. Read More
Essay What I mean by landscape orientation October 05, 2022 I entered without words: Poems has been described as “landscape oriented” in every sense. Originally a photographic term, now applied to a horizontal page, landscape orientation is, for me, a poetics. A poetics that begins by questioning the term “landscape” itself. Read More
Interview Office hours with Ruha Benjamin October 04, 2022 For this month’s Office Hours, I’m delighted to share wisdom and inspiration from Ruha Benjamin, author of the forthcoming Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want. Read More
Interview A look inside Syllabus October 04, 2022 What really is a syllabus? Is it a tool or a manifesto? A machine or a plan? What are its limits? Its horizon? And who is it really for? And what would happen if you took the syllabus as seriously as you take the most serious forms of writing in your own discipline? Read More
Interview Book Club Pick: Viral Justice October 03, 2022 Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Read More
Interview The need for material literacy October 03, 2022 In a time of screen saturation, digitized images of objects and manuscripts, and an emphasis on “knowledge workers” rather than craftspeople, we run the risk of becoming materially illiterate. Read More
Interview Aline, Eero, my boyfriend, and me September 20, 2022 A few years ago, after I had just met my boyfriend, we found ourselves driving in circles around a Colorado carpark. He claims the carpark was confusingly oriented, that its architecture seemed to indicate that we would go either up or down if we kept going. Read More
Essay On ‘seeing’ trees and forests September 19, 2022 Forests and the trees that comprise them are understood at different scales of space and time. This is true for professional and recreational naturalists, research scientists, hikers, conservationists, eco-tourists, and ecologists. Read More
Interview The challenge of popularizing mathematics September 19, 2022 Of all the academic disciplines, mathematics is perhaps the most difficult to popularize. One must navigate a subject that is not always received with excitement by the general public. Read More
Interview Making democracy with autocrats: East Asia’s past, China’s future? September 15, 2022 Democracy is not just Western; it is Eastern as well. In a time when democracies globally—including the United States—are endangered, three Asian democracies stand out for their quality and stability: Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Read More
Podcast Listen in: Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws September 13, 2022 Adrienne Mayor is renowned for exploring the borders of history, science, archaeology, anthropology, and popular knowledge to find historical realities and scientific insights—glimmering, long-buried nuggets of truth—embedded in myth, legends, and folklore. Read More
Interview Pinning our hopes on our machines September 12, 2022 One day in 1999 some children playing in the streets of Kalkaji, New Delhi, found a computer fixed in a wall that separated their poor neighborhood from a rich office district. It might have been a strange sight for these young residents of such disadvantaged circumstances, but within hours they had mastered some basic workings of the device and had begun surfing the web. Read More