Experiments of Living

Throughout recorded history, ethical ideas have usually been traced to authorities. Most of the supposed authorities have been religious people, typically men who have claimed, or who have been credited with, a special mode of... Read More
Speaking Prose All Our Lives

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Oh, really? So when I say: Nicole bring me my slippers and fetch my nightcap,” is that prose? PHILOSOPHY MASTER: Most clearly. MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Well, what do you know about that! These forty... Read More
With Liberty & Justice for All

The world urgently needs more liberty and justice, and therefore more humanism. The ethical system of humanism prioritizes these ideals at a higher level than any belief system that precedes it, since it values the... Read More
Spare a Thought for Philosophy: An Interview with A.C. Grayling

Bertrand Russell said, ‘Most people would rather die than think; most people do,’” quips the British philosopher A.C. Grayling, leaning forward in his chair at a London café as though offering me a truffle of... Read More
Colobus Conundrum

No matter how deep I am in the forest, the sounds of humanity seep through, reminding me that the Abuko Nature Reserve in The Gambia is at once a mosaic of habitats, a home for... Read More
How I Got into This Room

Writer, activist, and feminist Gloria Steinem was named the 2012 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association and was presented with the award at the AHA's 71st annual conference in New Orleans, Louisiana,... Read More
Truth, Deception, and the Myth of the One-Handed Scientist

Ira Flatow, the long-time host of NPR’s Science Friday, wrote his first science story in 1970 while an engineering student at SUNY Buffalo and working at the campus radio station, WBFO, to “twist the dials... Read More