religious studies

For a decade and a half, Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal has been advocating for the field of religious studies to not only take reports of alien abductions and visits from the dead as seriously as accounts of…

Welcome to “Phoning It In,” a gameshow I made up because I am tired and busy but also like to learn about new books! (I am, in fact, so busy that we have not played this game in two years . Welcome…

The outlines of QAnon conspiracy theories are by now familiar to many. The battle of good-versus-evil personified by Donald Trump and the Deep State, which somehow also embroils bizarre and gruesome…

Independence Day doesn’t tend to cause as much dissonance as Thanksgiving, as much confusion as Juneteenth, and isn’t as widely reviled as Columbus Day (aka Indigenous People’s Day). Yet, while it “is…

Should it gain Senate support, the Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA) just passed by the House will, despite its name, lead to more anti-Jewish violence in the US, not less. Why? Because this bill…

At the April 17 th House Education Committee hearing on Columbia University’s response to antisemitism on campus, Rep. Rick Allen (R-GA) questions Columbia President Minouche Shafik about her…

UFOs are in. The current wave of enthusiasm began in 2017 when major newspapers reported on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which spent $22 million investigating…

Forget ugly sweater parties , this is our new national Christmas tradition: 1) a public venue creates a forum and invites everyone to erect displays; 2) Secular Humanists, Satanists, and other…

Earlier this year, on his Straight White American Jesus podcast, RD’s Bradley Onishi spoke with Dr. Lerone Martin about his latest book. In this edited and condensed version of their conversation…

ChatGPT is all the rage. It even drives some people into a rage. It does some remarkable things, it does some outrageous things, it does some absurd things. Most things it does badly, such as tell you…