popular culture

Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book on the dangers of Positive Thinking recalls Mark Twain’s obsession with the 19th century’s most famous mind-over-matter exponent: Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy. Are critics just jealous?

In this video Rachel Maddow suggests a way to honor the prize while holding the president accountable.

In the great tradition of Socrates and Kierkegaard, Lars von Trier realizes that his role is to enable the audience to ask questions and confront themselves.

Are the Democrats “overreaching on abortion” as some have suggested, or are some religious leaders willing to tank health care for minor gains on pet issues? Depends on whom you ask.

You can either trust Rush Limbaugh or look at past awards for clues.

Having abandoned its roots in art, the dehumanization of the world, and the metaphysical, environmentalism has made common cause with its natural enemies and arrived at a place where its holy grail is reducing carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million.

What the new Conservative Bible Project fails to grasp is that the Bible’s not there to provide timeless certainty but to provoke arguments and unsettle what it is that we think we know.

As a defensive Vatican attempts to reclassify the pedophiles it has never ceased protecting, the centrist former editor of America magazine makes a flawed Polanski analogy.

Catholicism is well known as a determined foe of communism, yet most Americans are unaware that Catholicism has also been highly critical of capitalism.

Despite resorting to demonization and dated paradigms, Max Blumenthal ’s muckraking first book traces the fascinating history of the religious right and its web of gothic and aggressive conspiracy theories—making a convincing case that the Republican Party has been “shattered” by a right-wing religious movement.