There are a lot of writers who work in advertising, and it’s starting to have an impact. People are more likely to love brands if there is a story involved, according to a new study. “We’ve known for a long time there is no ‘buy’ button in the brain. But these results show there’s a ‘story’ button,” neuroscientist Paul Zak says. Pair with: Our essay on working at a creative agency after getting your MFA.
The Story Button
Inseparable
Male bonding can take many forms, among them the rarely-seen joint book tour, which Mike Harvkey and Josh Weil decided to undertake in support of their new novels. The two write about meeting each other, travelling around America and bouncing ideas off trusted friends in a Salon essay. FYI, our own Bill Morris wrote a piece about his own book tour for The Daily Beast.
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Our Massive, Shared, Ubiquitous Digital Brain
Michael Seidlinger writes on how consciousness occurs online. As he puts it, “We have all become Sisyphus, pushing our rocks up a hill littered with hyperlinks and tweets, perpetually, futilely, refreshing the page of existence.” Pair with this Millions piece on the best of literary Twitter.
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Refusing to be Silenced
The Brooklyn Rail‘s InTranslation section has launched a new poetry series, 100 Refutations. Created by author and translator Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., the series will feature a daily poem “from one of the countries recently denigrated by the president of the United States.” Pair with: The Millions’ Surviving Trump column.
Steve Martin on the Banjo
Actor and comedian Steve Martin‘s album The Crow: New Songs for the Five String Banjo has been nominated for six International Bluegrass Music Association Awards. Listen to tracks from the album and read more about Martin’s musical side at NPR.
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A Home at the End of the World
“I’m not paranoid, I’m really not.” The Washington Post has a profile of the so-called American Redoubt, an area of the Pacific Northwest populated by doomsday preppers. Pair with our own Emily St. John Mandel‘s reading list of five can’t-miss apocalyptic narratives.
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Congratulations friends!
Our friends over at the LARB have received two nods for the Pushcart Prize! Congratulate them by reading through the nominated essays: David Sheilds’s “Life is Short; Art is shorter” and Antoine Wilson’s “Notes on Hack.“