What Are We Teaching Music For?

Peter Wei | Ecumene | 7th September 2026 | U

Most parents who put children in music lessons are not seeking for them to become virtuoso performers. And yet that is how music education is structured today. What if it had a different ideal: that of the talented amateur? Before recorded music, homes that wanted music had to make it themselves. The 18C sophisticate was expected to play with friends, not perform a difficult piece flawlessly before an audience (1,600 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

The End Of Romanitas

Mathew Lyons | Engelsberg Ideas | 7th September 2026 | U

The centuries after Roman power fell in Britain tell a story that echoes throughout British history: “the insular against the incomer”. Britishness and Englishness were sometimes competing, sometimes porous identities. Surveys today report ethnic minorities are more comfortable identifying as British. “Might Britishness become a subaltern identity again, cleaving away from English hegemony?” (3,100 words)

After Work, We’ll Have Each Other

Clara Collier | Asterisk | 2nd September 2026

In a society where people no longer need to work, they will — once again — be defined by their participation in the social world. This may not be desirable. “The modern labour market has dissolved the bonds of tradition, family and clan. In the modern world, relationships matter less. And because they matter less, we can do much more inside them. They are freer. They have room to breathe” (5,500 words)

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14 Reasons Robotics Is Hard

Steve Newman | Second Thoughts | 2nd September 2026

At present, robots are nowhere near replacing humans. They cannot replicate the dexterity and coordination of the human hand. They are not yet able to break down a task, say engine repair, to individual, related steps. Computer vision has made great strides but the ability to pick out an object from a crowded space remains distant. Robots do poorly on weight, mobility, safety, speed and endurance (3,200 words)

The Darkness That Drives Djokovic

Iza Ding | New Lines | 3rd September 2026

Sympathetic take on Novak Djokovic's position as tennis's ungraceful outsider in an era when the top two players — Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal — embodied "the two ideal types of Western masculinity". With fans and other players, Djokovic quickly gained a reputation as the "party crasher" and received boos from the stands. In response, he "perfected the trick that would turn hostility into fuel" (3,000 words)

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Does Lenin’s Body Count?

Meduza | 4th September 2026

The timely "rediscovery" in Moscow of the remains of a canonised 14C army commander, Prince Dmitry Donskoy, has reignited Russian passion for saints' relics. Putin took part in a public veneration and a fragment is headed to the Ukrainian front. This writer digs into the contested history of such worship and its fraught relationship with science. Churches only sometimes like DNA evidence (2,400 words)

Podcast: A Door In The Fourth Wall | Weird Studies. In ancient Greek pottery, the only figures not in profile are Gods, monsters and other “supernatural” figures — the starting point for a conversation about fourth walls in art and reality (45m 19s)

Video: J'Ay Pris Amours | YouTube | Voices Of Music | 1m 55s

A trio of viols accompany a recorder in a Renaissance setting of a 15C love song.

A Last Interview With Brecht

Ronald Hayman | London Magazine | 14th August 2026

Originally published in November 1956. Hayman visited Brecht in his work room in East Berlin, and found him a rather less imposing figure in person than on the page, small and soft-voiced. "He spoke, too, rather like an abbot very patiently explaining points of doctrine; but in conversation, the doctrines didn’t seem as rigid as they do in print, and the faith seemed more like a personal faith" (2,500 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

The Pro Tennis Wage Gap, Explained

Takashi Williams | Strung | 1st September 2026

Last year, the US Open made $7m more just from sales of its signature cocktail than it paid to both singles tournament winners. Compared to other sports, the revenue share with tennis players is low: "Carlos Alcaraz, who made $10m in prize money in 2022, would be around the 150th highest paid player if he were in the NBA." A year on the tour costs around $200,000; lower-ranked players struggle to pay it (1,700 words)

How To Build A Cancer Vaccine

Abhishaike Mahajan | Seeds Of Science | 2nd September 2026

Primer on the forty-year attempt to create a cancer vaccine. Long considered a "grim field", there are now signs that good results may be on the horizon. Unlike conventional vaccines, which are preventative, the idea is to have something that can nudge the immune system into better action, by injecting a "cancer-flavoured protein" that delivers information without actual injection or mutation (8,000 words)

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Rogue Verbs

Mao Jian | New Left Review | 31st August 2026

Chinese culture is changing, as millions consume new — mostly more fast-paced — forms of storytelling. These include micro-dramas that tell soap opera stories across dozens of short videos, as well as "serialised, self-published, pay-as-you-go web-novels" and user-generated livestreams. These texts might be crude, but at least they prioritise action. The message to the consumer is: do something (5,900 words)

Podcast: Juliane Koepcke | What To Carry, What To Burn. Astonishing survival story of a girl who at the age of 17 survived a two-mile free fall from a broken plane into the Amazonian jungle and had to put everything she had learned from her biologist parents to use (31m 48s)

Video: Are Beavers Actually Good At Dams? | YouTube | Practical Engineering | 19m 15s

A civil engineer compares beaver dams and human dams.

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Keep Chasing That Bird

Alan Siegel | Ringer | 27th August 2026

Oral history of the beleaguered animated-live action hybrid Coyote vs. Acme, a 2010s Looney Tunes movie that was shelved by its studio for a tax write off and then improbably saved by a grassroots Hollywood campaign. An escape worthy of Wile E. Coyote himself. "Battles between art and commerce don’t tend to end well for the artists. But every so often, the little guy manages to avoid the anvil — and win" (6,000 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Paul McAdory | Paris Review | 21st August 2026

This is an account of "the Sperm Racing World Cup", and so readers should be aware that it does include reference to its fluid of choice. A competitive spectacle played out under microscopes in the name of male fertility. This "elegantly vulgar premise" speaks to old and existential fears, though. It asks questions like "Am I incapable of producing anything worthwhile? Are my devices futile?"(2,900 words)

Rehabilitating Richard

Jimmy Maher | The Analog Antiquarian | 28th August 2026

History of the pro-Richard III movement, which has origins far beyond the "king in the car park" discovery of the 21C. By the mid 16C, the reputation of the monarch often termed England's last medieval king had hardened into the "Platonic anti-ideal of a tyrant". Then in the 1920s along came the Richard III Society, also known as "the Fellowship of the White Boar", a group determined to rehabilitate their idol (7,500 words)

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No One Sings About Kalamazoo Anymore

Chris Dalla Riva | Can't Get Much Higher | 27th August 2026

In the 1930s and 1940s, songwriters loved to reference "places that (a) aren’t that large in terms of population and (b) don’t often get written about today". Think "(I’ve Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", and so on. Place mentions have been on the decline ever since, but have yet to go extinct — cities still show up on the charts, as in the case of a recent hit titled "Boston" (1,800 words)

Podcast: Why America Is Switching From Booze To Weed | Plain English. Americans are drinking less than ever before, at the same time that marijuana use has skyrocketed, with profound implications (1h 9m)

Video: Pa-Pa-Pa-Papagena | YouTube | Warner Classics | 2m 30s

Huw Montague Rendall and Elisabeth Boudreault sing a very cute rendition of “Papagena! Papageno!”, a comic-romantic duet from Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute.

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.