Can automation help make the humanities more human?

Finding the negative space around machine capabilities is not a new challenge — but it is more important today than ever before in history

Nov 6 • 

Benjamin Breen

15

1

October 2025

The Age of Books and the Age of Brainrot

A semi-optimistic take on the future of reading and thinking

Oct 2 • 

Benjamin Breen

99

8

August 2025

All Souls exam questions and the limits of machine reasoning

The world's most eccentric exam is newly relevant in the age of AI

Aug 13 • 

Benjamin Breen

39

5

July 2025

OpenAI's "Study Mode" and the risks of flattery

Serious learning requires friction, frustration... and other humans

Jul 31 • 

Benjamin Breen

30

May 2025

Why were Belle Époque cities beautiful?

It's not because they were "traditional" or "classical" — in fact it's just the opposite

May 21 • 

Benjamin Breen

40

8

AI makes the humanities more important, but also a lot weirder

Historians are finally having their AI debate

May 7 • 

Benjamin Breen

74

14

April 2025

Onfim's world

Child artists in history

Apr 16 • 

Benjamin Breen

51

1

When Jorge Luis Borges met one of the founders of AI

One reason I became a historian is the joy of encountering moments in the past that are foreign, yet also oddly familiar.

Apr 2 • 

Benjamin Breen

62

March 2025

AI legibility, physical archives, and the future of research

A followup to "The leading AI models are now good historians"

Mar 5 • 

Benjamin Breen

38

12

February 2025

Happy Lupercalia

A special discount on subscriptions in honor of the Roman wolf holiday

Feb 13 • 

Benjamin Breen

14

5

The familiar loneliness of the Kinetoscope

One other way that the 2020s resemble the 1890s

Feb 5 • 

Benjamin Breen

33

1

January 2025

When the Sackler Brothers studied LSD

One of the stranger episodes from the 1950s golden age of psychedelic therapy, and what it tells us about the history of technology

Jan 29 • 

Benjamin Breen

23