Derek Beres
Derek Beres is a Staff Writer for Freethink. Based in Portland, Oregon, he has served in senior editorial positions at a number of tech companies and has years of experience in health, science, and music writing. He is the co-host of the Conspirituality podcast and co-author of Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracies Became a Health Threat.
Last week I received an email asking me to appear on a radio show called ‘The Yoga of Money.’ After listing their street cred with high-end instructors who’ve guested on […]
In 1837, the Royal Danish Society sponsored an essay contest, asking participants to tackle the following question: Are the source and foundation of morals to be looked for in an […]
Fabrizio Goldstein made a splash earlier this summer when offering homeless people Spin classes on freshly minted Citi Bikes in New York City. Comedian by trade—this Vice clip in which […]
‘All man’s miseries,’ wrote the French mathematician Blaise Pascal, ‘derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’ Silence can do sinister things to a human being. […]
I learned about last week’s fire in Seaside Park through a conspiracy theory. It read simply: ‘And I’m sure this was an accident.’ Given Jersey’s long history of questionable accidents—just […]
The top rung of Patanjali’s eight-limbed Ashtanga ladder, Samadhi, has been defined in numerous ways. Usually associated with the last step before enlightenment, it is translated as ‘ecstasy,’ and has […]
When Jaleesa Martin brought her seven-month-old child, Messiah, to the Cocke County Chancery Court in August, she was waging a battle with her son’s father for rights to his last […]
The end of the world has been coming for quite some time. As Reza Aslan points out in Zealot, Jesus Christ was not the only End Times preacher with stock […]
In The Power of Myth, a book-length interview conducted by Bill Moyers with Joseph Campbell, the mythologist said ‘It’s the Christ on the cross that’s lovable.’ He was responding to […]
Two weeks ago, after turning onto Route 10 from Santa Monica, a truck sped by in the center lane. A hand truck flew from the back as it hit a […]
I first practiced Bikram Yoga over a decade ago in SoHo. The heat punched through me like a lead fist. Although a few years experienced in Vinyasa, the thick atmosphere […]
“The hero was a big man; the celebrity is a big name,” wrote historian Daniel J. Boorstin in his 1962 book, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America. The […]
In their book Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander remind us that the way we view the world is necessarily […]
One of the reasons Joseph Campbell’s work in comparative mythology continues to resonate—some, myself included, would argue grow—is due to his ability to synthesize religious and spiritual traditions from around […]
“Sure, today’s Olympics are corrupt, rife with cheating, and riddled with scandal, but at least today’s games aspire to the noble ideals of the ancient Greeks—amateurism, fair play, and peace,” […]
In traditional Sufism, a seeker would find a teacher and study under him for a number of years in a particular order, or turuq. During that time the seeker would […]
This week’s Supreme Court decisions have been the main topics streaming into my Facebook and Twitter feeds (along with a few heartfelt thoughts for Nelson Mandela). Escaping a thumbs up […]
Superman may have originally been envisioned as a telepathic bald villain bent on world destruction, but he was quickly transformed into a beloved hero of Depression-era America, with his all-American, […]
The self-help movement has come quite a way since Samuel Smiles (actual name) published Self-Help in 1859. Considering the opening sentence invokes God and the help He offers, the tone […]
In the last month, two people that I’ve critiqued in this column have replied and created fruitful dialogues. J. Brown, a teacher whom I respect for his intellectual fortitude, just […]
Last week was a big one for assumptions. There was Wolf Blitzer asking an Oklahoma tornado survivor if she was thankful that the Lord spared her life. Then that brief, […]
While in Joshua Tree this weekend for another event, my friend and I swung by Shaktifest, the sister festival of the more popular Bhaktifest, which takes place every September. Both […]
Last week two articles were published stating that meditation is not necessarily a component of living a spiritual life, as well as that we generally don’t recognize what real meditation […]
One of my first yoga instructors used to say, ‘Suffering is optional.’ In the immediate he was referencing the struggle to remain in challenging postures—our mindset could shift from one […]
After her uterus nearly erupted, Vyckie Garrison was rushed to the hospital to give birth to her seventh child. The emergency caesarean section nearly killed her. Her doctor warned the […]
Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.—Alan Watts Yesterday the NY Times published an article about the importance of play in the evolutionary development […]
For the foreseeable future, ‘terrorism’ will be the default term immediately applied to any act of public violence. While some warned against jumping to conclusions in regards to yesterday’s tragedy […]
Prayer effectively deals with sympathetic magic—the notion that your thoughts can alter reality from a distance, or influence outcomes in your life which you have no conscious control over.
A few weeks ago, when I published an article on vegetarianism as a political tool, I received emails and comments from people in India contesting the opening graphs, which were […]
Yesterday on NPR, Jenna Chavez, a member of an evangelical church in El Paso, Texas, succinctly summed up the foundation for the argument against same-sex marriage: [Marriage has] been defined…for […]