Wild Saints and Holy Fools
Early Christian writers valorized the desert life of ascetic monks, but the city also had something to offer would-be “fools for Christ”.
The Annotated Oppenheimer
Celebrated and damned as the “father of the atomic bomb,” theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer lived a complicated scientific and political life.
Come Let Us Argue: Faith and Intellectual Humility
Can belief in the divine endure in an individual who possesses an openness to being wrong? How do doubt and faith co-exist among the religious?
Girls Gone Greek
The most influential character on Showtime’s Yellowjackets is the one who goes unnamed: Dionysus.
Abstinence By Juramentos
Long before Dry January became a thing, Mexicans were using a similar program of temporary abstinence based on a pledge to the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Jewish Law and Abortion
A practicing physician reviews contributions of Jewish ethics and rabbinic thought to the issue of abortion.
The Colonization of the Ayahuasca Experience
“If someone is from the Amazon,” says Evgenia Fotiou, an anthropologist who studies Western ayahuasca usage, “they bring some legitimacy” to an ayahuasca ritual.
A Brief History of Masturbation
In the U.S. and Europe, there's still discomfort around the topic of masturbation. But we’ve come a long way from tying it to mortal sin and insanity.
Grief? There’s an App for That.
Would you want to be able to talk to a loved one after they'd passed away, knowing it wasn't really them? Would it help? Would it hurt?
Let’s Take a Pilgrimage to the Snow Star of Peru
Every year, tens of thousands of pilgrims gather to celebrate the Christ of the Snow Star.