Culture & Religion

Scientists believe that words which are less familiar to us exert less of an emotive pull, allowing our minds to evaluate a decision on more rational terms. Pues hablas español?

We’re dreaming of the days when Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller. Why are today’s celebrities associated with mediocre intelligence and a modicum of moral sensibility? 

That’s the bold prediction of Kristian Hammond, an executive at Narrative Science, a company that translates data into natural language. He predicts a robot will win the Pulitzer in five years.

The regime of standardized testing in the nation’s public schools is expanding. Soon, children as young as 5 will devote weeks of the school year to preparing and sitting for multiple-choice exams. What is a parent to do?

Famed biologist E.O. Wilson thinks art and science can be reconciled by understanding the neurological processes which inspire our appreciation of art. But does that serve the artist?

Men and women prefer best friends of the opposite sex and second-best friends of the same sex. Until middle age, that is, when friendship patterns change in ways important to evolution. 

There are many books that purport to offer you a better life. Some such books offer fairly mundane enrichment: weight loss, professional advancement, organized closets. Others are bolder, offering salvation, […]

Competition among international film festivals is heating up, with Sundance lending its name to a new festival in London. What festivals cater to your kinds of films (and celebrities)? 

Despite the irreverence of the nation’s new favorite comic, Louis often discusses essential moral lessons through what he has experienced as a father, parent and divorcée. 

The line of battle for the future of public education is clear. The first side has money, powerful political connections, and an infrastructure of nonprofit organizations with paid staff. The other side has this: the ability to become a true grassroots movement. 

. . . figuring out what we want to do for a living is one of the most important and complicated decisions we make in our lives, and for many of us, school doesn’t provide anything close to a road map.

Jonah Lehrer talks with Big Think’s Jason Gots about failure as an integral, essential part of the creative process, and why American schools are so good at killing creativity.

In France, it seems that respect for the institution of marriage carries with it a certain tolerance for extra-marital affairs. In divorce-happy America, should we accept cheating? 

How important is gender to accessing different rights as a citizen? If gender categories are from a bygone area that restricted women’s rights, why shouldn’t we eliminate them all together? 

Experiments performed at Northwestern University demonstrate that materialistic mindsets are more closely associated with depression, anxiety, distrust and a lack of civic duty. 

When a couple philosophers weigh in on the moral implications of having children, they reach some alarming conclusions. Might the Universe be better off without the human race?

The great surge of modernization in the ancient land of India is generating enormous stress for the multitudes who are striving to cash in on the new opportunities for prosperity. 

We are the most complex thing known to exist. We are sensitive to an incredibly rich sensory environment. And we tend to give ourselves over to experience that distracts us […]

The evolutionary development of human consciousness has proven extremely successful. This is because it allows us to enjoy life and overcome the reality of our foreboding death. 

It was only about a century ago that Easter was considered by some Christians to be a good day for massacring Jews. Consider, for instance, the first Kishinev pogrom of […]

Many American TV pundits are stretching the concept of celebrity to include themselves. They function as entertainers and are massively overpaid, drawing certain parallels to Kim and her ilk. 

The invention of new 3D cinematic technology was supposed to revive the faltering film industry but more often than not, 3D filming is a gimmick, says film critic Ann Hornaday. 

It’s a wonderful oddity—I hesitate to say “coincidence”—that the best erotic poem in literary history should appear smack dab in the middle of the Bible. The Song of Songs (known […]

What’s the Big Idea? As a celebration of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, Easter is the most important day of the Christian liturgical year. This spring, megachurches are […]

What’s the Big Idea? In her essay “Outfox Them!” in the March 8th edition of the London Review of Books, Sheila Fitzpatrick, an Australian-American historian of Soviet Russia, tells an […]

One theme that consistently emerges in Teju Cole’s work is an interest in creating space, through literature, for those bits of real, complex experience that can find their expression nowhere else.   

Baratunde Thurston is a politically-active, technology-loving comedian from the future.  He has over 30 years experience being black. His first book, How To Be Black, was published in February 2012 […]

Wine is a way to add great things to your life, but there is a dark side….

Reflecting on the care she gave her husband after a massive stroke, author Diane Ackerman writes a graceful and informative piece on how the brain functions when in love. 

Researchers found that men who drank vodka cranberries performed better on standard creativity tests than those who didn’t. If you want to think differently, getting tipsy might help.