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I’m always fascinated by pop culture products that become cultural catalysts. More specifically, I’m particularly interested in foreign exports that are so interesting, exciting, addictive or just plain weird that […]

In 2018, the space program is scheduled to launch a probe that will get closer to the sun than any craft before it, measuring data in the star’s outer corona where temperatures are hellish. 

I’ve been grazing online, looking for a place to host my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. When I talk to event organizers at venues, you can hear them stop short, and […]

My friend Sarah Moglia has written an essay, titled Why I Don’t Call Myself a Skeptic, that’s been making waves in the atheist blogosphere. She’s got a thought-provoking argument with […]

 Tribalism is pervasive, and it controls a lot of our behavior, readily overriding reason. 

Danny Strong appeared LIVE on Big Think the day before the premiere of his controversial new HBO film Game Change, which dramatizes the decision by the McCain campaign to add […]

— Guest post by Emma Waldman, American University student. Scientist-turned filmmaker Randy Olson argues that it takes more than literal-minded facts and information to communicate about topics like climate change to […]

In my past writings, I’ve made it a hobby to call attention to potent, but often overlooked, reasons to believe that atheism is true. Two of these that I’ve written […]

California-based TED is perhaps the most visible of the groups that are leading the crossover of serious intellectual thought into the pop mainstream. TED’s approach – the 18 minute inspirational […]

At the Reason Rally in Washington, D.C. last month, my friend Greta Christina told me something that I, a lifelong New Yorker, never knew: Harry Houdini is buried in a […]

This essay was previously published on AlterNet. The death of Christopher Hitchens in December sparked an outpouring of tributes. Most of them praised his best qualities: his ferocious courage, his […]

Slate recently highlighted the fastest-growing industries in the USA – everything from hot sauce to self-tanning products to 3D printers to generic pharmaceuticals. Here’s one industry they missed: the recycled […]

. . . 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.

What could be better than starting your morning, visiting your online haunts, and being confronted, bleary-eyed, with a picture of a blonde woman in a catsuit having her breast suckled […]

This article was previously published on AlterNet. For the vast majority of human history, the only form of government was the few ruling over the many. As human societies became […]

Craig Taylor’s Londoners is a humbling reminder that, for all the restless energy we put into categorizing, labeling, and compartmentalizing the world, the only way to understand people and places as they really are is to shut up and listen.   

A friend recently asked me: why has public opinion on same-sex marriage “evolved,” in Obama’s coinage, while public opinion on abortion grinds itself deeper into a rut? It’s an interesting […]

What is the Big Idea? The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and more employers are looking for candidates with global experience. Now, college students are getting in on the action […]

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not an ideologue. New Yorkers tend to like him and give him the benefit of the doubt because his motivations seem transparently rational. He […]

There are approximately 105,000 people currently on the waiting list for solid organ transplant in the United States. 18 of those people die every day. These deaths are due entirely to […]

Last month, I posted my review of “An Unquenchable Thirst”, Mary Johnson’s luminous and enlightening memoir about the twenty years she spent as one of Mother Teresa’s nuns. After writing […]

Legislation has been proposed in Arizona that would allow employers to force women to provide documentation of their “medical” reasons for needing birth control before their health insurance would have […]

The news service for the College of Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin has a good summary of a recent article at The Scientist by several colleagues who spotlight […]

Here are hypotheses 10 through 18 on how social media might change your love life. Click here for Part 1… ASSORTATIVE MATING ON STEROIDS Like marries like today. “Assortative mating” […]

–Guest post by Nicole Federica, American University student. News reports tracking the obesity epidemic in the United States offer a range of possible explanations for the problem.  These include government […]

Robert Kaplan asks “How many of you want to get promoted when we talk about succession planning? If you do, you need to work starting day one on developing a […]

Editorial Note: This is a guest contribution from KristenWolf, author of The Way, which was was recently selected by Oprah for her Reading List. Everyone grows up under the shadow of religion. No matter your […]

“My earliest memory is of anxiety!” cartoonist Daniel Clowes tells an interviewer in The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist, the first serious monograph of the work of this seriously […]

We all know them: parents whose children run wild in public, allowed to behave in ways that make the rest of us cringe and calculate privately how we can avoid […]

There is no turning back. We live in a connected world and we are better because of it. We know more than ever before and we are more social than ever before. But we have to learn to take care of our brains to avoid an iDisorder. Don’t blame Steve Jobs for your compulsions. Take control and do something good for your brain.