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There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider the arts. Visual arts - deco...more

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Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance.

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We really are creatures of a violent world, biologically speaking - watching violence and learning about it is one of our cognitive drives.

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The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second World War in Europe. ...more

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Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage ...more

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Academics lack perspective. In a debate on whether the world is round, they would argue, 'No,' because it's an oblate spheroid. They suffer from 'the ...more

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So holding many factors constant, we find that living in a civilization reduces one’s chances of being a victim of violence fivefold.

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In allowing the crucifixion to take place, God did the world an incalculable favor. Though infinitely powerful, compassionate, and wise, he could thin...more

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One of the tragic ironies of the second half of the 20th century is that when colonies in the developing world freed themselves from European rule, th...more

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In the foreign country, we call the past, crucifixion was a common punishment. It was invented by the Persians, carried back to Europe by Alexander th...more

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The collapse of communism and a recognition of its economic and humanitarian catastrophes took the romance out of revolutionary violence and cast doub...more

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Positive legacy of the 1960s was the revolutions in civil rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, and gay rights, which began to consolidate power ...more

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Some biblical scholars believe that the story of the fall from the Garden of Eden was a cultural memory of the transition from foraging to agriculture...more

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During a famine, the father and stepmother of Hansel and Gretel abandon them in a forest so that they will starve to death. The children stumble upon ...more

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Knights do protect ladies, but only to keep them from being abducted by other knights.