popular culture

Like many, I was more than a little excited about the opening of the new Coen Brothers film, Hail, Caesar!, about a day in the life of a 1950s Hollywood studio executive. As the editor of a new book…

Last month, a yoga class at the University of Ottawa that was cancelled amid accusations of cultural appropriation made a quiet return to the class schedule. The controversy initially erupted in…

I don’t like Beyoncé in the way that some people do—I am not a bee in the hive. I do, however, recognize greatness when I see it, and Beyoncé’s “Formation” is just that. Beyonce’s African and “Creole”…

Et tu, Beyoncé? #ReclaimtheBindi wants to challenge cultural appropriation of traditional symbols.

This fall marked the third anniversary of a record-breaking event—and one that serves well as a metaphor for our emerging digital economy. In October 2012, stuntman Felix Baumgartner jumped from a 24…

“Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Timothy Leary’s famous exhortation still influences our view of so-called psychedelic or hallucinogenic substances. We might associate psychedelics with the excesses of…

Masculinity made the news again. We see it in the standoff between a self-described militia and the Federal Government in Rose, Oregon. It is in the raging debate over gun policy and in the candidacy…

Over the weekend, the #realclergybios hashtag spread like Gospel on Twitter, with countless pastors and seminarians shelling out hard truths about everything from doubting one’s vocation to fighting…

Did it strike anyone else as odd that the Vatican announced that women could have their feet washed on Holy Thursday the same week Mattel announced three new Barbie sizes ( and a number of other…

When Bikram Choudhury was first teaching yoga in the 1970s at his yoga studio in the basement of a Beverly Hills bank building, he very much represented the ascetic ideal of the yoga guru, sleeping on…