World
Kangaroo courts and bills of attainder
I want to talk about two things in this column: bills of attainder and kangaroo courts. The two often go…
Why everybody should have seen the Google Gemini blunder coming
Has it ever bothered you that all the Founding Fathers were white? Fear not: Google Gemini AI is here to…
Lessons from costly wars past
Money is often a substitute for strategy in US foreign policy. We spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan, only to lose…
Meet the Russians in Serbia who voted against Putin
Today, Russians in Serbia are heading to the polls to cast their vote and protest against what many see as…
We need to talk about war
‘Don’t mention the war!’ Remember that? Today, war seems nearly all that European leaders want to talk about. The prospect…
Nixing BRICS: how to counter the China-led alliance
Americans are used to exercising influence through international entities such as NATO, the World Trade Organization or the World Bank.…
Want student loan forgiveness? Make universities pay
At the turn of the twentieth century, Saturday Evening Post editor and Yale dropout George Lorimer bitingly summed up academia when he…
How was the puberty blocking scandal ever allowed to happen?
Remember when Irish singer Róisín Murphy was set upon by the mob last year? Her crime: she criticised puberty blockers…
An ex-German diplomat’s withering verdict on Berlin’s ‘flawed’ Russia policy
Arndt Freiherr Freytag von Loringhoven couldn’t have had a worse start as Germany’s ambassador to Poland. Germany’s fraught historical legacy…
What the rise of Islam means for Putin’s Russia
The term ‘Russians’, which the world likes to use for the 144 million citizens of my country, is often a…
The golf renaissance
Golf has never been weirder or better. As the season shifts into high gear with the Masters this month, the…
My initiation into breastfeeding
The most fastidious of us prepare for the marathon of our first labor and birth, but still fail to wrap…
My biggest regrets
Regrets, I’ve had a few, but unlike Mr. “My Way,” mine are enough to mention. (Didn’t Hoboken Frank at least…
The age of mass revenge
Journalists have never been noted for originality in their choice of metaphor, so readers must be wearied by now of…
The trials and tribulations of Orthodox Lent
The Russian Orthodox Church, which I converted to in 2018, has disgraced itself in the years since. Its Patriarch Kirill…
Montréal serves up a surprising array of off-season delights
There’s cold, then there’s winter-in-Canada cold. The kind where I’m jamming hand-warmers into my ski gloves — yet still somehow…
My first family goose hunt
It’s a slow Sunday in Paducah, Kentucky, the day before our snow goose hunt. Morning Mass down the road, where…
How serious is the feral pig problem?
Let’s play a guessing game: I’m a dangerous force threatening Americans’ health, safety and way of life. We largely rely…
The classic charm of Exiles
On Washington’s U Street, nestled between a dry-cleaners and the city’s most notorious gay gym, lies Exiles, a modest Irish…
Wild boar: a nuisance and a delicacy
“Comment trouvez-vous le sanglier?” Guillaume parent/hunter/head rôtisseur, asked me last spring, in the tiny village of Monthélie, next to Meursault,…
The magic of museum lunches
We live in times generally unfriendly to ritual, religious or civic. For fifty years now, at least, churches have stripped…
The new Dada movement
I first came across the food influencer Samah Dada while searching for gluten- and dairy-free dishes. Dada, a twenty-eight-year-old food…
In Chicago, forget deep dish. The real pride is the beef
Chicago residents bristle when you ask them whether they eat deep-dish pizza. “Yeah,” they sigh, “we might occasionally when someone…
A French symposium
Just as night watchmen are constrained by duty to make their rounds, so are writers about wine. Sometimes the rounds…
Women need nemeses
My nemesis is a student at another university. She has not always been my nemesis. We were friends until I…
