American consumers have been enjoying Christmas since July – that is, July 2014, when the average price for all grades of gasoline peaked at US$3.75 per gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration. Since then, prices have declined substantially, as...

As parents, you are constantly walking on a thin line. If you don’t show up at the school enough, it’s assumed you don’t care about your child’s education; show up too much and you’re a “helicopter parent” who suffocates your child and her/his...

From the recent attack on Planned Parenthood to the shooting in San Bernardino, extremists of all stripes are revealing the ugly side of religion. The confluence of these events and election season demagoguery is generating fear and outrage.

In the midst of these national struggles, many families...

On the opening night screening of The Force Awakens, every seat is occupied well before show time. Many in the audience proudly don Star Wars t-shirts (but not the Vader masks, light sabers and blasters, which have been banned due to security concerns). The energy spills over to the previews;...

A choice that football coaches have to make after every touchdown – whether to get the relatively easy point or risk it by going for two – offers helpful insights into why Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen (the economy’s coach) decided to raise interest rates this...

The climate change agreement adopted by 195 countries in Paris last week raised the profile of forests in ways never seen before.

In past multilateral environmental conferences, deforestation proved too thorny for nations to reach agreement. Now, however, some of the most heavily forested...

In every culture that anthropologists have ever studied, people tell stories.

Families most frequently tell stories around the time of vacations, family reunions, (sadly) funerals, Thanksgiving and, of course, the family-oriented winter holidays of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

Stories are told...

It must be a terrible burden knowing that you might have to make a quick decision about whether to yell at someone, shock them, or shoot them dead. That is the weight inherent in...

After witnessing the overwhelming popularity of Star Wars, director Francis Ford Coppola told George Lucas he should start his own religion.

Lucas laughed him off, but Coppola may have been onto something.

Indeed, the Star Wars saga taps into the very...

As highly social animals – like human beings – elephants rely on their bonds to navigate everyday life. Group living helps elephants with the difficult decisions that they make on a regular basis – what to eat, where to go when the water dries up, how to parent....