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Keeping ideas connected to reality so they can serve our lives in reality.

Mark Knopfler: Sultan of Song

“The thing is,” Mark Knopfler says of his craft, “if you’ve energized somebody . . . or you’ve sensitized somebody, you’ve made a difference.”

“The Testaments” by Margaret Atwood

This spinoff to The Handmaid’s Tale, set in the same tyrannical theocracy (the Republic of Gilead), alternates between the perspectives of three very different women. Aunt Lydia, the only character who’s in both this novel and the original, was coerced into helping...