Culture & Religion

Will readers have to flounder in an ocean of slush before the new gatekeepers appear to rescue them? It’s getting harder to be a discerning reader in the digital self-publishing era.

Why was America so rattled by its disallowed goal in last week’s World Cup match against Slovenia? Andrés T. Tapia blames violation of the American sense of “internal control.”

Peering at the future of liberal education, Eric Jansson predicts that close faculty-student and student-student interaction will remain the core no matter the fancy technology.

Award-winning Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky stopped by Big Think yesterday before taking off this morning for the Gulf Coast, where he will try to wrap his head (and camera lens) […]

“The question is not, ‘Are video games art?’ The question is, ‘Can artists express themselves through the video-game medium?'” says journalist and gamer Tom Bissell.

Alan Gilbert, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, stopped by Big Think’s offices Friday afternoon to talk about his work as a conductor, about what he hears when […]

It seems America cannot escape its racial past: “‘Resegregation is a national trend [that has been building] for over a decade,’ says John C. Brittain, a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia.”

Is decriminalizing marijuana while leaving anti-drug laws on the books a bad idea? Does it allow police to selectively enforce law and create contempt among the public? The Economist weighs in.

The Financial Times appeals to an Oxford philosophy professor to find the essence of beauty. Darwin said it was sex. For Estée Lauder, it was glamor. But what does beauty mean today?

Art critic Karen Wright charts her run-ins with English painter David Hockney over the last ten years. The prolific painter has taken to photography and even drawing on his iPhone.

At what point does graphic violence and sex turn a literary work into pornography? What are the merits of a story filled with imagery so shocking that it forces some […]

Bard College President Leon Botstein believes that for about half of the high school students in the U.S., college should begin at age 16. “We should have a system that […]

TV, long considered a ‘wasteland’, is enjoying a widely acknowledged creative renaissance at the same time as movies are striking out. Joseph Childers examines why.

Research and a TV program are debunking the myth that fathers who enjoy a close bond with their children are a modern phenomena, reports Steve Humphries.

As experts go public with claims that the entertainment industry is exaggerating piracy losses, Ben Jones argues for the industry to put up (real data) or shut up.

Jarrett Barrios, the president of GLAAD, was in Big Think’s offices this afternoon to talk about some of the issues involved with gay identity and the challenge of being “out.” […]

New York is finally on the verge of joining the other 49 states that have adopted divorce laws that do not require couples to establish who is at fault for the split.

Actress and playwright Najla Said says that while growing up in New York—despite being the daughter of Palestinian-American literary theorist Edward Said—she never really identified as Arab-American. “I didn’t seem […]

Education, not just sport, has become big business, says Mitch Adams amid the decision to levy heavy sanctions on the University of Southern California’s Athletic Department.

“Why do males of some species attend to their offspring prolongedly, while others tend to spring off post-coitally?” asks Natalie Angier. The answer may relate to the varying social role of infants.

Against-the-grain linguist Guy Deutscher thinks that language isn’t completely a product of nature, but that it influences how we perceive the world and, in turn, how we express it.

“The bad news for Dad is that despite common perception, there’s nothing objectively essential about his contribution,” says Pamela Paul at the Atlantic. “The good news is, we’ve gotten used to him.”

“Today, black nonmarital births have soared to more than 72 percent among non-Hispanic blacks, compared with about 28 percent for whites,” laments Clarence Page at the Chicago Tribune.

As Parag and Ayesha wrote yesterday, if today you cannot program computers, it is as though you have the skill to read, but not to write. For this reason, kids […]

“The Department of Education is a great, burbling vat of waste,” says the National Review, and since it spends tens of billions of dollars annually with no measurable benefit, it should be eliminated.

Just as European soccer teams have physiotherapists for the World Cup, African teams have witchdoctors who invoke supernatural assistance to put their players ahead of the competition.

As the age at which people finish their education, marry and have children is increasing, a new class of individual between adolescent and adult is emerging, reports the New York Times.

“Our tendency to err is also what makes us smart,” says the Boston Globe. Ridding ourselves of the shame associated with being wrong is the first step to becoming more intelligent.

Loren Coleman is the father of American cryptozoology, or the exploration for animals whose existence is generally doubted. There’s more to it than Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, Coleman says.

A double problem faces the American arts: declining government funding and a shift of priorities in the private sector away from cultural patronage. A new approach is needed.