Robert A. Black, Mathematical Storyteller

It was the most shocking anime plot twist I've seen in more than a decade, and for a time I wondered if the hand of Joss Whedon was at work. Two weeks ago, GeGeGe no Kitaro - a children's show - killed off its most popular character, out of nowhere and at the hands of another popular character. Let's see if I can give you a summary without running on too long. Neko-musume (the name literally means "cat-daughter") is a yokai , a Japanese fairy-like creature who looks like a stylish teenage girl most of the time but turns into more of a feral cat-like creature in order to fight (or when she smells fish). She is the best friend of Inuyama Mana, a middle school girl who serves as the audience's link into the world of the yokai . As the episode two weeks ago unfolds, the Big Bad tricks Neko-musume into attacking Mana's mother, just as Mana walks in to find her mother lying on the floor bleeding out. Mana reacts the way you might expect - only the Big Ba...

I discovered this past weekend that 2018 is the Madeleine L'Engle Centennial. What would have been her 100th birthday comes at the end of November. The first of what will probably be a number of podcasts about her life and her writing came out last month, when Marketplace's "Make Me Smart" read A Wrinkle in Time for their Book Club and interviewed one of her two granddaughters who collaborated on a new biography that's coming out. Give it a listen if you're so inclined. There are many different themes in A Wrinkle in Time , but one they discussed at length in the podcast was new to me - the idea of Meg having to be her own rescuer. Meg's father is missing when the story begins, and she's told he's been fighting a sinister dark force that threatens to consume all of creation. They go off in search of him, and at that point we think, "Once they find him, he'll be able to save the day." Only he can't. Meg has to do it i...