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Every time we learn something it’s a journey.  We think we understand it, then we keep going, then we get confused again.  

Your first philosophers: Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, and one strange new face. Why the first books people read about Stoicism should be by one of these guys. On Stoicism Graduation season […]

Movie ratings in the United States today boil down to a few simple elements—sex bombs, f-bombs, and real (fake) bombs. Too much sex or nudity, too much profanity, or too […]

One article talks about the declining rates of procreation. Another contemplates job mobility. When I pull the fragments together into one tableau I’m left with the question: How it attachment […]

In a charming essay on envy, A.S. Byatt observes that it “works inwardly; concealment is part of its nature.” Envy is a festering kind of sin. It’s also the Deadly […]

Faced with a modernizing society and subsequent falling birthrate, the South Korean government is taking unusual steps to encourage its younger citizens to link up, get married, and have children.

Time magazine covers seem custom-designed to annoy me. The latest example is their “The Childfree Life” cover. Stories of the childfree lifestyle are always illustrated this way. They feature a […]

Perhaps more surprising than the fact that San Francisco-based DJ Cheb i Sabbah passed away last Thursday is that he survived nearly two years longer than his initial one-month assessment […]

This week we mark the loss half a century ago of President John F. Kennedy. For that generation, Kennedy’s death was the “where were you” moment. For our generation, the […]

Girlfriend, boyfriend, partner, lover, significant other. We really don’t have any good way to refer to unmarried romantic partners (see?) in English.

Darwin literally said that many of the social instincts, as he called it, of the animals are represented in our human morality.

Here is a brilliant column by 11-year old Olympia Nelson on provocative selfie shots on social media. It’s valuable to hear this world described from the vantage point of someone […]

Whatever your position on ADHD, the psychological research is clear on one thing: focus and self-control are essential life skills that translate into just about any definition of success you can come up with.

I just got back from counseling at Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times (CRMFGT) in southern California. For those of you who are not familiar with CRMFGT, it’s a camp […]

Without a stable set of fulfilling social relationships, psychologists say we are given to mainlining sugar and fat to stimulate pleasure centers in the brain. Practicing random acts of kindness is one remedy.

It’s interesting but apt that the prostitute, the stripper, and the porn actor—the real professionals!—are sometimes embraced and emulated as role models in this sexual rat race of ours. You’d […]

Why should you only have sex with the person you are in a relationship with?

The supposed rift between the emotions and behavior of men and women is largely a myth, say data analysts and psychologists at the Washington University in St. Louis.

People who believe that blood is thicker than water seem determined to test it by shedding as much blood as possible.

Recent research on what motivates friendship in human and animals societies has challenged theories of evolutionary biology which suggest reciprocal bonds are formed simply to survive. 

In metallurgy, an alloy is a mixture of two different metals that has different properties than either of those metals taken separately. 

What big data means is we are able to learn things about ourselves at the population level, at a huge scale, that we never could in the past.

So anyone who’s ever really thought about love knows that our techno-liberated world is pretty weak on talking about love and death.  We’re either too vulgar or too vague.  It’s not […]

In the early 1850s, Daniel McCallum, the General Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad, had a problem. At the time, the New York and Erie Railway was the […]

We typically focus on the positive aspects of online social networks – but what about their negative aspects? As we’re seeing in the investigation into the Boston Bombers, online social […]

In Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, two friends, Vladimir and Estragon, endlessly wait by a tree in the moonlight for the arrival of someone they both claim to know but […]

When it comes to online security and personal data, that is: A report released this week by security firm McAfee provides some interesting information about what it means to overshare.

Last Sunday, June 23rd, I gave a lecture at the Sanderson Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, titled “Art Made Personal: Chris Sanderson and The Wyeth Family.” Below is a summary […]

Congratulations to all the new graduates who have successfully accomplished this most impressive of endeavors.

BIG THINKER Steven Mazie does well to criticize the complacency of Stephen Asma.  Asma, citing obvious facts of evolutionary psychology, observes that our natural powers of knowing and loving are limited.  […]