Noah Berlatsky

As a parent, you tend to assume that you have some say in forming your child's mental landscape. Then Santa comes along.

Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Edith Piaf: they're all still practically household names.

If my wife and son had thought bubbles above their heads, like in the comics, you would be able to read them saying, "dog dog dog dog dog dog dog."

Action movies don't usually bother much with romance. The trailer for The Transporter: Refueled certainly doesn't. The hero is cool — sexy women, plural, throw themselves at him, or at least stand near him and things blow up; there are fights and revenge and high production values. Romance is, at best, a secondary concern.

These covers remind us of the lengthy, rich—but often obscured—history of female songwriters.

David Ress' Aphexswift is genius precisely because it's so unlikely.

As a white woman, Swift can afford to celebrate carelessness. Beyoncé, though, knows that even her casualness has to be perfect.

Scientists are hotly debating whether we should send messages into space. Perhaps they should consult Octavia Butler for some wisdom...

Conservative fetishization of the past is myopic, simplistic, and mean-spirited—but progressives can be too quick to cede tradition.

english lit academic. wish fulfiller. thwarted world-changer.