If you had told me at the turn of this century that the two most hotly anticipated cultural events of summer 2026 would be a screen adaptation of Homer and a papal encyclical, I’d have blessed your heart and called you crazy. Yet here we are, and the subjects everyone told me were “useless” in school—philosophy, literature, dead languages—are informing…Read More

The beloved 1985 young-adult novel Ender’s Game tells the story of a boy who thinks he’s practicing to kill aliens using a computer simulation, until he discovers he was remotely piloting real ships and hitting real targets all along. Now, in 2026, there is a program at the US Department of Defense called Ender’s Foundry. It exists to simulate battle…Read More