Most Read from past 24 hours
You Can Do Better Than a Beach Read
- Culture, Featured, Literature
- June 2, 2026
Message from Walker: “Intellectual Takeout depends on donors like you to bring my work and the work of my stellar colleagues to the public. I love writing about art, culture, rural life, literature, and philosophy for ITO. If you value that kind of content too, please consider making a donation today. Together, we can help spread time-tested traditional ideals.”

Everyone wants to be happy. As Aristotle explains in “The Nicomachean Ethics,” happiness is the thing we desire for its own sake. We don’t pursue happiness as a means to some other good; it appears to be the final end people pursue in life. The other things we aim at – wealth, pleasure, relationships –
READ MORE
As November sucks the color from the landscape and wind stirs the crackling leaves of the graveyards into little flurries, I stand under swaying pine branches, surrounded by headstones, and offer a few prayers. The cemetery is wrapped in a sacred stillness and silence, the kind of silence that surrounds mysteries too deep for words.
READ MORE
Recently, my YouTube feed has been dishing up videos of ambient background music created without AI. With uncanny precision, the internet gods of YouTube have identified my sympathies. They seem to know that I have declared unending war on so-called “art” made by artificial intelligence. I play these recommended videos out of mere protest –
READ MORE