Our classics and great traditions are a corpse that we resurrect every time we engage with them. If neglected, they remain a corpse—rotten, dead, forgotten—to our eternal detriment. The collected wisdom of the ages, disposed with like so much refuse. When engaged with properly, they are made new and live once more to illuminate the […]

Ah, the sun! The great giver and destroyer of life; oppressive and deadly, illuminating and vital. I like to keep out of its reach. My summer days are whittled away in the shade or in the comforting gloom of a darkened room with my face in a book, anticipating the return of the cold somewhere […]

The story of LA as a major world city really starts in ernest with the arrival of the aqueduct. How the city acquired the water and what happened afterward is the stuff of legend. The story has been dramatized and mythologized through the years. A lot of information has been mixed up or made up. […]

When AIDS came around when I was a kid, the thing that really fascinated me about it was where it came from and how it managed to travel all around the world and become such a problem in such a relatively short time. I have always been interested in how an emerging disease manages to […]

In this first episode on Ebola, I explain how it spreads.