the study of the outer automorphism group out(f) of a free group has been a very active area of geometric group theory in the past few years, driven on many fronts by natural parallels that exist between out(f) and the mapping class group mod(s) of a surface. i will provide an overview of some of the recent developments in the theory of out(f), while emphasizing distinguishing features of out(f) that make it an often more challenging group to understand than its mod(s) counterpart.