Alex's new book, The Audacity of Hoop ... How basketball shaped Obama, personally and politically ... The significance of Obama's move to golf ... Life lessons from playing pickup ... A beautiful merging of individual and collective goals ... The San Antonio Spurs as a model of global cooperation ...

Revisiting Frank's "End of History" thesis ... Trump, China, and the threat of illiberal democracy ... Frank: The singularity is an "idiotic" idea ... Should we fear homemade eugenics? ... Why Americans need to improve their moral imaginations ... Does religion unite more than it divides? ...

Natural selection doesn’t build brains to see the truth ... How perception is like a graphical computer interface ... Don's theory: It’s consciousness all the way down ... Is there a chicken-and-egg problem with this theory? ... Don describes his consciousness formula, sans math (phew) ... With this theory, life is more interesting—and painful ...

Clergy as front-line therapists for parishioners ... Personal guilt about God's judgment ... Using faith to counter a traumatic religious upbringing ... Neoliberal capitalism and its discontents ... A psychological reading of the Christian Trinity ... Are humans making spiritual progress? ...

An introduction to Universal Sufism ... "A path, not a religion" ... Incorporating worship practices from different faiths ... Wahida's religious community, The Abode of The Message ... How Wahida came to Universal Sufism ... The Universal Sufi teaching the world most needs now ...

Roy explains non-invasive brain stimulation ... Assessing the safety of this technology ... Can brain stimulation make you smarter? ... Does increasing memory decrease creativity? ... The possibility of unlocking savant-like abilities ... An ethical question about cognitive enhancement ...

Meet Ash, a practicing Norse Pagan ... The Norse gods, creation story, afterlife—and trolls! ... Are these beliefs metaphoric or literal? ... Ash's spiritual path from atheism to Paganism ... Ragnarök and accepting chaos as a part of life ... Why Norse Paganism appeals to some white supremacists ...

Why humans are becoming less violent ... The dark side of our moral sense ... Just how deluded are we? ... Bob tries to get Steve to say something nice about religion ... How science gives Steve's life meaning ... The problem with "evil" ...

Dan questions the rationale for a liberal arts education ... Massimo defends the liberal arts ... Does studying the humanities make you a better citizen? ... Campus protesters with a little learning ... Valuing the liberal arts for their own sake ... Massimo: The humanities are dangerous ...

How personal trauma inspired David’s book on trauma and the Bible ... Ancient Israel’s transition from polytheism to "monolatry" ... The Babylonian exile and the birth of Abrahamic monotheism ... The link between trauma and God’s covenant with Israel ... Why the crucifixion of Jesus shocked his followers ... Why have Biblical texts survived? ...