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Do schools kill creativity? Should white boys ever rap or breakdance? This week on Think Again we're joined by Maria Konnikova, author of The Confidence Game and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

Well, nothing new happens without some blood being spilled, I suppose. 

If you have to say "never forget," you've probably already forgotten.

There is no sense whatsoever that we are on the same page here, working toward some roughly agreed upon vision of a better future.

Now that New Horizons has flown by the Plutonian system, can it be considered a planet after all? “Words are the source of misunderstandings.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Back in 1930, […]

Feeling blue this week? Chances are you’re a Democrat. I was so addled by the Republican sweep on Tuesday that I could not so much as glance at the front […]

Is there a way to see past the barrier the Universe puts up before it became transparent to light? Image credit: Mark Kamionkowski, of gravitational waves. “From earliest times, humans — explorers […]

These international borders follow mathematically impartial pathways, laid out by so-called Voronoi diagrams named after the Ukrainian mathematician Georgy Voronoy.

Jules Verne used the failed project as inspiration for his last adventure novel

If you run into violinist Joshua Bell at a cocktail party, don’t tell him you find classical music ‘relaxing.’ “Beethoven’s symphonies are not relaxing,” says Bell, who at 45 is […]

Peter Brook's The Suit, in residence at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, is another reminder from the master director that theater is more capable than any other art form of inducing empathy.

Last spring, I wrote about the Secular Coalition for America’s new executive director, Edwina Rogers, a Republican lobbyist whose selection raised more than a few eyebrows. While I had (and […]

On Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday, writer and musician Henry Rollins' reflections on the power – and limitations – of music. 

The “always-on” work culture, says Leslie Perlow, drains morale and initiative, and scatters employees’ mental resources, making it difficult for them to take ownership of projects and prioritize their efforts. But changing it requires collective effort. 

Warren Littlefield, former NBC president, advises young people entering any field to trust in their instincts even when they run counter to common sense in the industry, then to fight passionately for the projects and ideas they believe in.

I started a version of this post a couple weeks ago, but since then the dispute between libertarians about the place of “social justice” in their philosophy has become white-hot, […]

Personal growth is a long and arduous process, made easier when we recognize that fact and approach the task incrementally – with patience, humility, and self-discipline.

That Delphic oracle of style, Simon Doonan, author of the outrageously funny Gay Men Dont Get Fat, says fashion and politics don't mix in a democracy. 

The hilarious swami of style and fashion egalitarian Simon Doonan, author of Gay Men Don't Get Fat, offers some efficient guidelines to personal style for the mad scientist whose mind is on loftier things. 

His statue has stood outside the York Art Gallery for a century now, but most passersby don’t know the name of William Etty or the works that once made him […]

BY JASON SILVA “We are enraptured prose-beings raised to the highest power”. – Walter Benjamin, On Hashish Timothy Leary and Buckminster Fuller called themselves “performing philosophers”, using the power of […]

Since I’ve run out of blog ideas—and have New Year’s Eve parties to get to—today I’m just going to post some of the things that people who are more interesting […]

I still remember seeing the Tribute in Light from the New Jersey side of the Hudson. From a distance, the twin beams of light standing where the World Trade Center […]

One of the most wonderful things about the emerging global superbrain is that information is overflowing on a scale beyond what we can wrap our heads around.

I noted the moment when sales of Amazon’s Kindle outpaced the site’s hardcover sales. Now, only a short time later, two new significant events signal the end of book publishing […]

At a recent press briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took his first question from Twitter. Ecuador’s president declared a state of emergency via Twitter. The first photo of […]

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel does not have a reputation for being a very nice guy. President Obama’s fixer—or “Rahmbo” as he’s known—was of course at the center […]

This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]