Graphic created for the Culture Lab Detroit by Unsold Studio. History does not lend itself easily to periodization; eras have fuzzy edges. Still, I think it fair to characterize the past half century in the West as dominated by “post-modern”…
We all live in the slipstream of the ideas of our times. President Trump is no exception, drafting behind word clouds of populism. Populism is a movement, not in the political sense of organized collective action, but in the artistic…
The White House wields the most effective dog whistle in today’s politics. Every ahistorical, nonscientific, or malapropistic utterance evokes a breathless rejoinder from the Media. Each response—like a pundit’s juice cleanse—blends lamentation, pretension, outrage and disbelief. And each response is…
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust is an often cited parable about a man who trades his soul for power. Faust also is the tale of a nation oppressed by debt, the creation of fiat currency, and all that follows. Seven…
The Speed of Light & Time Dilation One hundred years after Einstein’s grand publication, his insights remain both pervasive and paradoxical to the modern mind, somehow both elemental and elusive. For me, three notions from Special Relativity have always stood…
The Great Financial Crisis jumbled the global economy. Massive public and private debt, teetering financial institutions, anemic growth, sagging labor markets—all entangled with long-term forces of globalization and technological change—conspired to create a singularly complex policy puzzle. Economists and central…
“An extreme and self-satisfied manifestation of the sanctimony that attaches to big bucks… And the result is that you can’t imagine America’s singularly depraved culture without him.” Robert Hughes’ review of Jeff Koons’‚ Balloon Dog. The walls in our office…
One hundred and fifty years ago this summer, a frustrated mathematician and part-time nanny put the finishing touches on what would become one of the world’s most popular works of children’s literature. Beneath Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’s splendid surrealism of…
Stay Ahead.
Subscribe for Expert Insights.
You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in the footer of our emails. View our Privacy Policy.