From the start of World War I, for about 50 years, scientists and the government were convinced that using another language alongside English decreased brain function as well as making one less than fully American. Finally we're getting to understand why and how that's not true. - Literary Hub
The acquisition of audiobook platform Findaway lets Spotify "quickly bring a large catalog of audiobooks to its massive user base … in the way the company jump-started its push into podcasts with the acquisitions of Gimlet, Anchor, Parcast and The Ringer." - Variety
In contrast to the simplistic idea that all we need to do is implement a set of technological and lifestyle changes, they offer a new way of understanding and relating to nature. - The Conversation
A cursory review of Western literature and fiction suggests that the instinct to render fictional heroines “hot” has both a long history and one which continues to this day. - LitHub
Oh: "Cliché comes from the printing process when a metal plate was used to physically transfer ink to paper. The term echoes the imitative sound of the plate coming off the page and was a way to represent an image again and again in nearly identical form." - Salon
For instance, global heating "conveys 'more emphatically the seriousness of climate change caused by human activity and the urgent need to address it.' After all, global warming connotes a kind of coziness when there is nothing cozy about a heating planet." - CBC
In the mid-1730s, Robert Walker waged a price war with the London publishing establishment, driving the cost of individual play editions down to just one penny each. This led to a significant expansion of Shakespeare’s readership. - The Conversation
Charles Blow: "Perhaps no other word of the moment is so under attack as “woke,” a word born as a simple yet powerful way of saying, be aware of and alert to how racism is systemic and pervasive and suffuses American life." - The New York Times
"Actors in training get to try out different techniques and approaches, learning to develop a character through movement, script analysis, or emotional connection; they take classes honing their bodies and voices. In my MFA writing program, we got … workshop and some books." - Catapult
Student: "ur text was good but so confusing". Vuong: "mission accomplished". Student: "So u da one that got us all fucked up". Vuong: "Don't let 'em tell you literature can't change lives". - The Guardian
"In 1598, … Sir Thomas Bodley, a retired diplomat and Oxford alumnus, offered to restore the dilapidated university library, entirely at his own cost. … (It) had stood vacant for several decades, its books removed during the upheavals of the Reformation, its furniture sold off." - Literary Hub
Those under 55 may not appreciate just how differently people in the US thought about home cooking before Child's TV shows caught on. For all her pioneering achievements, she was awfully traditional about things like sexuality — until the late 1980s. - The Guardian
