Whether someone becomes addicted to drugs has much more to do with their childhood and their quality of life than with the drug they use or with anything in their genes. This is one of... Read More

One would expect no less than unflinching objectivity and critical thinking from Marshall Brain, the founder of HowStuffWorks.com. Still, the territory of his new book, How “God” Works, is quite different from his popular website,... Read More

Food. It’s not just what we eat. We talk about it, write about it, dream about it, paint pictures of it, and finally become it. In Sandra M. Gilbert’s The Culinary Imagination, the poet and... Read More

In nature, absent humans, you rarely find truly altruistic behavior, and when you do, there’s an explanation available that shows how that behavior arises through what you might call natural causes. So mama bear risks... Read More

For James and Lydia on the occasion of their wedding Someday you might realize that you barely noticed all the midnights that shuttled by, all the midnights you slept through, made love through, through which... Read More

DOCUMENTARY WRITTEN BY ROBERT KENNER AND KIM ROBERTS; DIRECTED BY ROBERT KENNER SONY PICTURES CLASSICS (2014) (USA) 93 MINUTES; PG-13 An outraged man goes to see his doctor. “Doc, you tell me I have a month... Read More

This week’s poem is by Elliot X. Hale, a student in the 8th grade at Cazenovia High School in Cazenovia, New York. This poem was submitted by his grandmother and member of the American Humanist... Read More