Author: paige laevy

When I first noticed it, I thought I had misheard. Leaning into a corner table at a wine bar close to Bishopsgate, two men in dark suits were speaking what sounded like a code. A brown-colored tumbler was in one of their hands. The other was holding a phone, screen down, against his thigh. It took a moment for the penny to drop as the words rolled in that specific melodic manner, with long vowels and rapid consonants. Welsh. Two bankers were wrapping up what appeared to be a lengthy discussion in Cymraeg on a Tuesday in the middle of…

Anyone who has recently attended a linguistics conference can sense the tension before the coffee has even cooled. The dispute has been simmering in academic corridors for years. Speaking two languages, according to some researchers, rewires the brain in ways that improve cognitive function, postpone dementia, and subtly outperform the monolingual mind. Conversely, a smaller but noisier group continues to raise the annoying question, “Where exactly is the proof that any of this raises IQ?” You can see the division if you stroll through the linguistics department at practically any major university. The bilingual-advantage camp is typically supported by younger…

You will most likely miss it if you walk into a Year 2 classroom in Tower Hamlets on a rainy Tuesday morning. No flags are being waved by the bilingual kids. They are mouthing English words they learned six months ago, coloring in fractions, and sometimes slipping a Polish or Bengali phrase to a friend at the next table. However, when the data finally catches up to them at seven, it reveals something that educators in this area of London have long suspected. These children are moving forward in silence. According to a University of Sydney study based on the…

When you drive into Lubbock from any direction, the campus appears almost instantly out of the flat West Texas plain. With its red tile roofs and sand-colored stone, it looks much more Iberian than Panhandle. There is a subtle defiance to Texas Tech. The Spanish Renaissance arches were an obstinate architectural decision made in 1925, and they continue to feel that way today. The school was constructed to insist on being on the map, even though the map didn’t quite agree. The brochures don’t tell the whole story of how Tech got here. When a sitting governor was discovered to…

You wouldn’t notice it right away if you drove into Ringgold, Georgia on a weekday morning. There isn’t a glossy promotional video playing outside a glass entrance, nor is there a marquee or rolling banner. However, for almost thirty years, this small campus has been training deaf men and women to preach, teach, and lead churches in their native tongue—something that most Bible colleges in America never try. Harvest Deaf Bible College is a part of Harvest Deaf Ministries, a larger ministry that was founded on the straightforward notion that Christian education shouldn’t treat the deaf as an afterthought. The…

What Duke softball has evolved into is almost unyielding. A program that didn’t even exist at the varsity level until 2017 continues to persist into late May and won’t go away. This usually doesn’t work like that. Decades are needed for programs. customs. a pipeline. Duke had none of that. Marissa Young, a former Big Ten Player of the Year, took over in July 2015, spent two years assembling a roster from the ground up, and then began winning games she had no right to. It was difficult to ignore how bizarre the timeline is as I watched this Arizona…

If you stand long enough at the base of Beaumont Tower, you can see why people who attended Michigan State University talk about the place the way they do. There’s a certain way the morning light hits the tower in early autumn, and the carillon bells start and stop with that slightly imperfect rhythm carillons always have. Loyalty, nostalgia, and a hint of defensiveness. It’s a campus that doesn’t really make an impression. It simply sprawls over 5,000 acres along the Red Cedar River, acting like a small city that neglected to request permission. The brochures don’t accurately depict how…

Driving down Iliff Avenue, the entrance’s lackluster appearance is the first thing you notice. There isn’t a grand gate, a well-kept stone sign, or a valet posing as someone who knows you. Tucked away in a residential area of Southern Denver, Harvard Gulch Golf Course appears more like a neighborhood park than a location where golf is played. Perhaps that’s the whole point. In 1982, when Denver was a different city and golf was a different game, this nine-hole par-3 course was constructed. It has endured four decades of real estate booms, trend cycles, and the gradual corporatization of almost…

Thursday, May 28, 2026 is the brief response. The longer answer is that Harvard’s graduation isn’t actually a day, as anyone who has spent time in Cambridge in late May will understand. It’s a slow tide of events that takes place over the course of a week, starting with quiet receptions and concluding with families dragging suitcases past the iron gates of the Yard, feeling a little confused, proud, and depressed. The date has been marked for months for the Class of 2026. Speaking with graduate students in Harvard Square gives me the impression that this commencement has more significance.…

One of the driest regions on Earth is the northern Chilean Atacama Desert. It receives less than one millimeter of rain annually in some areas. In a trial run a few years ago, a cookie-sheet-sized hydrogel panel placed out there overnight filled with moisture and released it as drinkable water the following day. This is the kind of landscape where everything seems to argue against the presence of water. The experiment was successful. Then the substance began to crumble. Water scientists and climate researchers are paying close attention to a new paper from Stanford and MIT that details this issue…