Culture & Religion

Is Amanda Palmer (who turns 40 today!), queen of pop-up concerts, kickstarter, and social media, the prototypical artist of the future?

New research verifies that each addresses a separate cognitive domain. 

Author-musician James McBride claims that James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, holds the secret to America’s race-torn soul.

Neuroscience research shows that variety is important for healthy individuals and healthy societies. 

If you’ve ever wondered what happens to a tattoo, the answer’s more surprising than you think.

John Eliot Gardiner looks at what we know if Johan Sebastian Bach’s argumentative life.

Kevin Dutton presents the warning signs that someone close to you is a psychopath.

We often now picture our minds in unsound ways. They’re built to resonate to poetry. We’ve all but lost the memory of poetry’s historic role in molding minds (that’s the unsung pretext of Plato’s poetry ban). Poetry is a key cognitive technology , so powerful it was the Internet of its time. 

The UN Happiness Report this year includes happiness inequality. Learn how it affects you, and what you can do to lead a happier life.    

  Experiment doesn’t fund projects: it funds people. And it’s helping make scientists out of everyone – especially students.

What secrets did Shakespeare take to his grave 400 years ago?  Are the plays the thing to unlock the mysteries of literature’s king?

A DEA memo reveals that the agency is considering removing marijuana from its list of Schedule 1 substances. 

A Tibetan artist explains what’s at the center of a Buddhist wheel of life.

Impressionist master or indulgent misogynist?  Why do people either love Renoir or love to hate him?

If Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice made you mad, maybe you’re part of the modern nerd culture Batman began.

The name of our country reflects a legacy of blood-soaked European colonialism and other historical ills.  To get a fresh start, we should rebrand America by renaming it. 

As songwriters, The Beatles had a special trick for making lyrics resonate: They leveraged the power of personal pronouns to connect with listeners.

Religious talk has been eerily quiet in the GOP race. But that doesn’t mean it’s absent.

We heard the news today, 46 years ago, that the Beatles were no more.  But who was the real killer in the magical mystery tour of the Fab Four’s finale?

Respectability politics makes us comfortable. It hoists us up on our high horses, and takes away our responsibility for the way we treat other people. It puts the burden on the marginalized person to adjust their appearance or behavior to earn respect from the majority.

A ninth planet does not only exist, but it causes comets to rain upon Earth, creating extinction events, says astrophysicist. 

Over the past few years, feminism has grown in popularity, and this has led the media to put the spotlight on it to sell magazines, get clicks, and earn likes and shares. The media’s interest is not in spreading the message of feminism, but to sensationalize it by putting celebrities on the spot to see what they will say in response to bait questions.

Through his entertainment and the way he lived, Michael Jackson spread the message of peace of love, and taught the world many lessons applicable to our personal lives and careers.

It’s important to know where your food comes from. Ikea has made an easy way to grow your own salad through the power of hydroponics. No dirt or backyard required.

More than just a pretty face, the Venus de Milo (rediscovered on this date in 1820) has changed ideas of female beauty ever since, often in surprising ways.

The world is a colorful, diverse place, but we somehow minimize it to black and white. How did we come to divide everything and everyone into polarized opposites?

From MySpace and Hi5 to Facebook and Twitter, our relationship with social media has evolved over the past 15 years. Unfortunately, this may have led to the loss of curiosity and the devolution of our bonds with the people these platforms were built to connect us with, beyond the boundaries of time and space.     

Telling the stories of our lives, weaving dreams of lives we wish we had, and bringing back memories in a rush, music is a powerful force. We, as consumers, are primarily concerned with the application of the lyrics to our lives and danceability of the track.

Nearly a quarter of Americans rely on sleeping pills—a trend that’s feeding obesity and depression levels.

When I first saw the video of people playing basketball, I counted each pass — and missed the obvious. You?