"[Clare Carlisle's] understanding of transcendence will draw on the ways a biographer sees as well as the ways a philosopher reflects." —Todd Shy reviews Transcendence for Beginners for @thepointmag.bsky.social

New online, Todd Shy on Clare Carlisle’s union of philosophy and biography in “Transcendence for Beginners”:

"I find the role of chance in research very interesting. I mean, it is something that is usually concealed, but I think it’s very interesting." thepointmag.com/dialogue/sea...

This is a previously unpublished, decade-old conversation between David Gutherz (with the help of "co-conspirator" Oliver Cussen) and the late Carlo Ginzburg. Below the piece, you'll find a screenshot of Ginzburg's Foucault anecdote, which appears in the text. thepointmag.com/dialogue/sea...

This is a remarkable interview. Anyone curious about the past, and the craft of history, should read it. That historical perspective comes the Christian gaze on the Jew… damn. thepointmag.com/dialogue/sea...

An amazing interview with the late Carlo Ginzburg (via @thepointmag.bsky.social). thepointmag.com/dialogue/sea...

“It almost feels as if we’re inside an AI-generated photo—not just because the surrealism of the weather has compounded that of the event but also because, when it comes down to it, none of this really means anything.” A dispatch from UFC Freedom 250:

New online, a conversation with the late Carlo Ginzburg, conducted a decade ago and published for the first time:

Read what I thought to be a very neat essay about the art of Ljubodrag Andric's photography, analyzing it through the lens of 'art without markers' such as the literature of Nirmal Verma. thepointmag.com/criticism/th...

“It is interesting how an aberrant harshness often coexists with a rhetorical or official commitment to a special care and gentleness in dealings with children.”

Top docs of the 21st century @documentary.org, Raoul Peck @hammerandhope.bsky.social, Maya Cade (@mayascade.bsky.social) @ebertvoices.bsky.social, Jafar Panahi @thepointmag.bsky.social, Screwball Summer @lrb.co.uk … Did You See This? www.criterion.com/current/post...

“Their point is not really to tell us things about the world so much as to change our ways of seeing it: throwing sudden light; showing up what is beneath the surface as if in an x-ray; making the familiar strange, stupid, often hideous.” Lorna Finlayson on the films of Frederick Wiseman:

New online, Lorna Finlayson on “Juvenile Court” and why Frederick Wiseman’s harrowing filmmaking is so paradoxically enlivening:

“It Was Just an Accident” is a departure for Jafar Panahi—a thriller at times reminiscent of Scorsese. But instead of mobsters navigating the violent codes of the underworld, he gives us a cat-and-mouse struggle between former political prisoners and the intelligence apparatus of the state.

New online, Mehrdad Babadi on Jafar Panahi’s uneasy, precise exploration of ethical impasse in “It Was Just an Accident”:

Last chance! Everything in our shop—back issues, books, hats and tote bags—is on sale until midnight tonight. thepointmag.com/shop

Introducing “Just Like Us,” a celebrity and online culture column by Grazie Sophia Christie for our Substack. First up, the Shakespearean twists and turns of Season Ten of Summer House: thepointmag.substack.com/p/vampire-we...

It’s the final day of our summer sale—shop 50% off back issues, 40% off books by Point editors and contributors, and 30% off merch here: thepointmag.com/shop

Read this good thing

“I enjoy watching games with my family so much that I sometimes get depressed even after a win. I feel suddenly adrift, my adrenaline dissipating as I return to my dull life. What is there now, I wonder, to be excited about?” New on Forms of Life, Tim Aubry on family life with the Knicks:

50% off back issues, 40% off books, 30% off merch! Now through June 15th: thepointmag.com/shop

Now through June 15th: Summer Reading Sale! To celebrate the weather (and clear out our overstock) we’ve put everything in our web shop on sale: back issues and books, as well as seasonally appropriate and rarely discounted merch like totes and hats. thepointmag.com/shop

New online, Barry Schwabsky on the letters of Harold Bloom, by turns intimate, affecting and farcical:

A charming essay by James Redfield who, apparently, has just died thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

“If Nietzsche was correct that we need the superhuman to overcome nihilism, then these technological superhumanists are effectively prescribing for the disease of nihilism the amplification of nihilistic values.”

“What Nietzsche means by super—the Über in Übermensch—is almost the opposite of how most of us have come to understand it.”

"Rather than solving the problem of suffering and revealing eternal truths, Nietzsche foresaw science uncovering the limits of human knowledge..." thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

New online, Nicholas Low on the superhumanist pursuits of Silicon Valley, and how little they have to do with Nietzsche’s Übermensch:

thepointmag.com/politics/bey... interesting take on what the Dems need. A message full of vision and hope -reorient around a basic set of common goods to which we are responsible and share in community so that more of us can simply live “good lives” of freedom, health, safety, pursuit of happiness

“In a difficult and often thankless profession, there can still be gifts: someone gets to hand this stuff to kids for the first time. That person is me.” New on Forms of Life, Joe Sloma on twelve years of teaching Camus to high schoolers:

New online, Selen Ozturk on what BookTok’s most successful reviews cost the reader:

Brilliant, moving review/memoir on what it takes to make a revolution, why Weatherman failed, and what the left should learn from the failure. (By my cousin). thepointmag.com/criticism/th...

Chicago event: “The Good of Academic Research,” hosted by the UChicago Society of Fellows on May 15th. With talks by @chadwellmon.bsky.social, Susan Buck-Morss, Pascal Brixel, Anton Ford, and others. Co-organized by Point contributing editor Ben Jeffery. Details here:

Crucial reading on what progressive education is for in 2026, from our most recent issue’s forum on the left and the good life:

New online, Barry Schwabsky on what makes “The Leucothea Dialogues” Cesare Pavese’s masterpiece:

“The universal depends on particularities of identity or nationality: it requires them in order to transcend them. When those particularities are withdrawn, the larger categories waver.” Amit Chaudhuri on the tradition of art without markers:

“To look at an Andric photograph does not involve seeing an object, but refocusing on what we know and on whatever is unaddressed by the inherited, institutional ways of recognizing a ‘Western,’ ‘non-Western,’ ‘modern’ or ‘ancient’ object.”

New online, Amit Chaudhuri on the art of Ljubodrag Andric and the tradition of which it’s a part—the “work without markers”:

“In his Cubist period, he reassembled their bodies into geometrical contortions, and even his more flattering portraits collapsed women into one of his signature styles. “ thepointmag.com/criticism/th...

In Picasso’s works on paper, writes Zachary Ginsberg, “he performs the almost impossible task, at once earnest and provocative, of transporting viewers into the mind of a monster, preserving his baseness and allowing us to empathize with him.”

New online, Zachary Ginsberg on the confessional genius of Picasso’s works on paper:

The suburbs have long been a symbol of an America devoid of politics. But in the campaign to draw up a new map for Virginia’s congressional districts, the suburbs roiled with civic fervor, Lewis Page writes:

New on Forms of Life, Lewis Page on canvassing for Virginia’s congressional redistricting in the fired-up suburbs:

New online, Scott Spillman on an ironic new account of the intellectual origins of American slavery:

The bottomless riches of Iris Murdoch's books yield this good piece in The Point by Parker Henry, specifically about Murdoch's gift for "individualizing morality" thepointmag.com/criticism/mo...

Learning to write like Leylâ Erbil—new essay for @thepointmag.bsky.social: thepointmag.com/criticism/a-...

New online, @kayagenc.bsky.social on Leylâ Erbil’s experimental novel “What Remains,” and his path toward understanding her challenge to Turkish literature and politics:

In collaging her life with the life of her country, Leylâ Erbil had fermented a new strain of autofiction, using her life to write something thoroughly historical and political.

Including @jrichards.bsky.social’s translation of Marosia Castaldi, originally published in issue 33!