Culture & Religion

The culture of corruption that Penn State’s weighty football program created must either be dissolved or dedicated to healing the school’s wounds, which will mean fielding a losing team.

Conservatives are more likely to be married and to subscribe to religion. On the other hand, they may also be less attentive to the world’s injustices and believe in free-market bliss.

University of Chicago researchers have found that words in our native tongue carry more emotional impact than words in a second language, influencing how we make important decisions. 

A slate of surveys suggesting that sex has become less of a priority to Americans mask a sinister commercialism, which companies use to suggest their product is better than sex. 

Historically, most people have worried a lot about demons. In fact, while we are accustomed to think of pre-modern history as an age characterized by belief in God, it may […]

For Safraz Manzoor, a father of a 10 month-old daughter, most of the “advice” he received came in the form of societal expectations. Now he opens up about what fatherhood is really like. 

Google’s new glasses, which work like a hands-free smartphone, will continue to erase technological barriers to entering modern culture. Our storytelling ability stands to benefit greatly. 

According to contemporary Western science, measurable consciousness is extinguished when the body dies. But Eastern traditions see it differently. Does that mean they are wrong?

Is a Harley Davidson motorcycle a masterpiece? In an effort to buoy the mid-range art market, auction houses are expanding the definition, associating the term with luxury. 

Sports psychologists have found that more ardent fans of a sports team form significant and positive social relationships that turn on identifying with the aspirations of the team. 

Who could disagree with self-fulfillment and self-cultivation? These values, however, which are centered on expressive individualism, leave the values of future generations up for grabs. 

What happens when you do make it to the top of your field, only to find that it’s not exactly what you’d expected or been told to expect?

People like us are rare. There is so much pressure to conform, but we are willing to be different. We dare to face down any crowd armed with only what […]

Art history is littered with unsavory biographies but how can works of such exalted inspiration originate in selfish characters? Extreme devotion to any singular purpose may be inhuman. 

Warren Littlefield, former NBC president, advises young people entering any field to trust in their instincts even when they run counter to common sense in the industry, then to fight passionately for the projects and ideas they believe in.

There’s no such thing as universality in art, says Stephen Greenblatt. We always create and read from the perspective of our own time and place. What then accounts for the curious power some works have to communicate with us directly across the centuries?

Something unusually delightful greeted students on the morning of June 19 as they lined up to enter Public School 10 in Brooklyn. The event had nothing to do with standardized […]

Experimental psychologists have found that memory of learned processes, such as learning to play a specific piece of music, can be activated during sleep and strengthened in the process. 

To gather data, scientists hope that tourists at this summer’s Olympics will take advantage of a new language translation app, soon to be available for free at Apple’s App Store. 

35 years after terrestrial astronomers received the Wow! signal, a radio transmission unique from the background noise of space, humanity is offering a reply. You can contribute via Twitter.

On June 30-July 1, Bing and Big Think present For Humankind, a weekend-long science, technology and design pop-up expo at 201 Mulberry Street, New York City. Here we will spotlight those […]

A new app for the iPad, which presents readers with chucks of text more like flashcards than words in a conversation, claims to be able to increase your reading speed by 30% to 300%. 

IBM computer engineers are making progress toward a cognitive computational model by combining our current knowledge of neuroscience, supercomputing and nanotechnology. 

What evolution and computer science have taught us is that comprehension is not required for competence. Similarly, the human mind may not be so mysterious as is often thought. 

By using magnetic fields to disrupt local brain regions, scientists have recreated the kinds of distractions that happen in daily life. It turns out these distractions greatly color our perceptions.

Human behavior does not follow strict cost-benefit analyses, especially when it comes to being honest. Psychologist Dan Ariely explains the more complex rules individuals follow. 

To live in society, we must predict how other people will make decisions. Japanese scientists are beginning to reveal how the brain does that, potentially improving our social systems. 

Soccer, or football as it’s known to the rest of the world, is truly a universal sport. Its popularity spans genders and continents, and in terms of equipment, it also has the lowest barrier to entry. 

The modern man supposedly sympathetic to feminist goals in the Nice Guy, who defines himself according to his liberal values. But it’s just more patriarchy in disguise, says Eva Wiseman. 

The supposed luxury of cheap fashion becomes less glamorous when you realize you’ve been dressed in rags by a corporate business model that emphasizes quantity over quality.