Nobel Prize winner William Butler Yeats was fascinated by magic and the occult

Eugene O'Neill is the lone American playwright to win the Nobel Prize

The writer was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936, with the prize committee noting "the power, honesty, and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy."

JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis met at Oxford and bonded over Norse mythology

The “Lord of the Rings” mastermind and “The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe” author were colleagues at Oxford University and shared an appreciation for Norse mythology, which continues to inform the fantasy genre. They were also a part of the same informal literary group, the Inklings, where they’d discuss one another’s works-in-progress.

Some Nobel laureates have expressed beliefs in pseudoscience after winning

Examples of the phenomenon, known as Nobelitis or Nobel disease, include promoting psychic research, harmful practices like eugenics, and seeing talking raccoons. Increased external pressures after a win and a greater spotlight may contribute to developing or exposing these beliefs.

'Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.'

- Author James Joyce (1882 -1941)

Poet Robert Lowell encouraged O'Connor to turn away from commercial appeal

When O’Connor secured a publisher for “Wise Blood,” her publisher envisioned it as a broad, commercial comedy, something Lowell—the accomplished poet whom she met after graduate school at Yaddo, an artist colony in upstate New York—suggested she avoid, encouraging her to lean into her more esoteric and darker interests. This interview with O’Connor biographer Brad Gooch elaborates on that advice.

William Blake may be best known as a poet, but he was also a painter

The author of "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" was a romantic poet and painter. "Newton," one of his better-known pieces, satirizes Isaac Newton, whom he saw as too concerned with the empiricism of science and, as a result, lacking an understanding of nature.

The magazine competition that pitted Houdini against the author of 'Sherlock Holmes'

In 1922, Scientific American magazine launched a contest to prove, or disprove, the existence of ghosts and define the limits of Spiritualism. This article details how this competition furthered the growing ideological split between escapologist...

Some believe 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' is a political allegory

Although Baum claimed his book was intended as a simple children's story, scholars challenged that notion. One high school history teacher, Henry Littlefield, began teaching the book as a satire of the Gilded Age and published an essay inspiring other scholars to consider the text as a politically charged allegory.

The Dylan/Whitman connection

Even before his 2016 Nobel Prize, critics often wrote about Bob Dylan with a seriousness typically reserved for literary figures. In this critical analysis, Jones Hogsed continues the tradition, analyzing Dylan's vision of America alongside Walt Whitman's.

Ghosts can work as powerful literary devices

Noteworthy American novels like Toni Morrison’s "Beloved" tell us how spirits help deliver information and greater truths unknown to the characters. Wondering about our souls is common in literature, and the phantoms in these tales offer a unique way of contemplating the complicated experience of being human.

During his 'miraculous year,' Einstein published four groundbreaking papers

The 1905 "annus mirabilis" papers explained the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, the absolutism of the speed of light, and mass-energy equivalence, revolutionizing scientists' understandings of space, time, mass, and energy. For the discovery of the photoelectric effect, Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics.

The widespread violence of World War I birthed surrealism

Following World War I, artists used unconventional forms of expression to make sense of the death and destruction they'd witnessed for years. Life as they knew it had ended, and movements like Surrealism, founded by André Breton, rebelled against tradition.

Salvador Dalí once conned Yoko Ono

A quirky story often told about Salvador Dalí claims that in 1969, Yoko Ono offered him $10,000 for one of his famous mustache hairs. Allegedly wary of occult intentions, Dalí instead sent her a blade of grass. While the tale is debated, it fits neatly into Dalí's eccentric public image and his later-life reputation for turning playful stunts into profitable moments.

English playwright Christopher Marlowe's violent and mysterious death

According to an official coroner’s report, in 1593 a heated argument over payment for supper escalated into a physical struggle, during which Marlowe wounded a man named Ingram Frizer, who then fatally stabbed Marlowe above the right eye. Though we still don't have a definitive explanation for why Marlowe was killed, the true motive continues to be debated, with suspicions surrounding the official account. Read more here.

'Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.'

- Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) in "Elenora"

Read Albert Camus' 'Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays'

Camus' most famous work of nonfiction is this collection of philosophical essays. Perhaps the most resonant entry is the title essay, which reimagines the Greek myth of a man condemned to roll a boulder for all eternity. Rather than presenting the story as a cautionary tale about defying the gods, as the original myth intended, Camus considered Sisyphus an "absurd hero" for his actions and imagined him smiling as he endlessly toiled at his repetitive punishment.

Mathematical breakthroughs influenced Shakespeare’s stories

New ideas in math were transforming Europe at the time Shakespeare penned his plays, including newly popular conceptions of zero via philosophers Descartes and Leibniz.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

In 1974, Norman Mailer touted graffiti as an intellectual art form

The Pulitzer Prize winner explored the style in his 1974 Esquire essay, "The Faith of Graffiti," before expanding on it in a book with 81 photos by Jon Naar. In it, he traces the form back to its ancient roots and compares graffiti writers to Renaissance painters.

In 1957, a vice president at JPMorgan became an outspoken evangelist for psychedelic mushrooms

R. Gordon Wasson wrote "Seeking the Magic Mushroom" for Life magazine in 1957. It was a groundbreaking piece of journalism that introduced mainstream society to psychedelic mushrooms. He retired from JPMorgan in 1963 and continued researching and writing about psychedelic experiences for the rest of his life.

12th-century English monks claimed discovery of King Arthur's bones

The medieval legend of King Arthur and his Queen, Guinevere, is one of the most popular to endure into the modern era. The legend regularly evolved during the Middle Ages, as is seen in this story where a historian from King Henry the Second's court claims the bones of Arthur were discovered at Glastonbury Abbey.

A pop culture taxonomy of the Byronic hero

The Byronic hero, a moody but ultimately noble archetype credited to Lord Byron, isn’t just a fixture of romanticism: the character type can still be found throughout popular culture. Look no further than this detailed explainer from TV Tropes, which illustrates the Byronic hero’s characteristics and appearances in different media.

How yoga philosophy inspired Thoreau

In the 19th century, yogis traveling in America emphasized the practice as a philosophical one rather than a purely physical act. Like many Americans at the time, including his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau was intrigued by yoga's mysticism, once writing, "I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated."

The history of blood, as told by a hematologist

Since ancient times, blood has been seen as a semi-magical substance. Alchemists theorized it was a mixture of the four elements. Others proposed it was one of four bodily fluids whose balance dictated health. This 2019 essay by a hematologist reviews blood's reputation across cultures and centuries.

The Illuminati were a real espionage society in the 1770s

Bavarian professor Adam Weishaupt founded the group in 1776 as an anti-clerical, anti-royalist sect that used hierarchy, codes, and surveillance as a proto-spy network. Within a decade, it was suppressed, but the mythology never quite died. Today, it functions as an adaptable conspiracy theory, able to fit any era's anxieties about who really holds power.

Read the first essay to define the Beats

Although Kerouac is said to have coined the name "Beat Generation," his friend John Clellon Holmes expanded on it in this 1952 essay for the New York Times Magazine. It was an anthropological attempt to define the moment that produced writers like Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and others.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

Poison ivy was sent to Europe in the 1600s as an exotic, ornamental oddity, where it was purposefully grown in the English royal gardens at Kew, the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and a few other locations.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Hookworm infection, though risky, may help fight certain autoimmune conditions by tamping down the immune system's inflammatory response.