Peter Marshall— Imitation of Christ began with becoming a Christian. That was the easy part. It happened within days of being born, when a baby was baptized in the stone font usually found, in symbolic placement, near the entrance of the church. The ceremony involved a ritual cleansing with water,
We’re all part of groups, large or small, but how and why do humans form groups and societies? We look at how cognition influences society and what it means for our understanding of the world. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Spotify
Zeynep Tufekci— Censorship during the internet era does not operate under the same logic it did during the heyday of print or even broadcast television. When Mubarak cut off internet and cell-phone communication in Egypt in January 2011, just as throngs packed Tahrir Square, his move backfired at all levels.
Anders Walker— Fifty years after Memphis, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy remains closely tied to integration, to Brown v. Board of Education, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the creation of a society where, as King himself put it in 1963, “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former
David J. Linden— Scientists are trained to be meticulous when they speak about their work. That’s why I like getting my neuroscience colleagues tipsy. For years, after plying them with spirits or cannabis, I’ve been asking brain researchers the same simple question: “What idea about brain function would you most
Floyd Abrams— American law could hardly be more inconsistent. When a family of religious zealots that formed what it characterized as the Westboro Baptist Church carried signs a thousand feet from a church where the death of an American soldier in Afghanistan was being mourned, saying that his death was deserved
We discuss the Mark Bradford exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC with the curator of that show, Evelyn Hankins. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Spotify Further Reading: YaleUniversity · A conversation with the curator of Mark Bradford's monumental installation Pickett's Charge
Ray Moseley— Lynn Heinzerling of the AP and George Kidd of UP shared the distinction of being the first correspondents to hear the opening shots of World War II. A few hours before the shelling of Danzig began, Heinzerling overheard a German officer in his hotel place an urgent 3:15
Victor Bulmer-Thomas— Sanctions have always played a part in conflicts among states and between states and non-state actors. However, their use by the United States government has accelerated in recent years. There are now nearly twenty countries subject to US sanctions and roughly ten sets of sanctions that are not
Gregory D. Smithers— During the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Cherokee people experienced an unprecedented series of challenges to their established modes of life. The matrilineal and matrilocal social structures that gave Cherokee life its meaning and purpose were increasingly exposed to an overlapping series of imperial political,