Scientific discovery is popularly believed to result from the sheer genius of intellectual stars such as Darwin and Einstein. Their work is often thought to reflect their unique contributions with little or no regard to their own prior experience or to the efforts of their...

This month, hundreds of thousands of people around the world will join gay pride marches in cities big and small. In many cities, pride marches are controversial. In some – like Moscow – they are even banned. But for many people in North America, parts of Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, attending the local pride march has become...

For decades, researchers have studied the benefits of marriage, finding that married people are likely to be healthier, wealthier and wiser than their unmarried peers.

But these studies reflected those who were allowed to marry.

Only recently – when states started passing laws guaranteeing same-sex couples the right to marry – could...

We humans are swamped with text. It’s not just news and other timely information: Regular people are drowning in legal documents. The problem is so bad we mostly ignore it. Every time a person uses a store’s loyalty rewards card or connects to an...

If your perception of higher education is that it’s led by aging white males, you’re right. According to a report released this week by the American Council on Education (ACE), the average college president in 2016 was a 62-year-old married white male with a doctorate.

One recent exception was Drew Faust, who was appointed Harvard...

The latest attacks in London and Manchester – like last year’s attacks in Orlando, Florida and St. Cloud, Minnesota – epitomize what I call the newest form of terrorism.

The newest terrorists aim to kill as many people as possible, as frequently as possible, as horrifically as possible, intimately, suicidally, with the most...

On Tuesday, June 27, it will be 50 years since the first automated cash dispenser – which came to be known as an automated teller machine (ATM) – was inaugurated in London.

Just thinking about it brings a smile to my face. I belong to the generation who stood 45 minutes to...

The Earth is home to millions of species, but you wouldn’t know it from the media’s obsession with only a few dozen animals like tigers and gorillas.

This...

With President Trump’s announcement to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, many other countries around the world – and cities and states within the U.S. – are stepping up their...

Marine Le Pen has gone from potentially being elected the first female president of France to barely keeping her party alive.

In early May, Le Pen was one of two candidates to advance to the second round of the presidential election. Two months later, her party...