Last week taught us some important lessons about fear. One is that fear is neither good nor bad. What matters is how we let fear affect us, what we do with it. It spurred racism and suspicion and stress and shut down a major American city for a day. But...

What a revealing real-time lesson we are living through right now in how humans respond to risk. More than a million people in Boston and several large surrounding cities have been told by authorities to stay indoors and not open the door to anyone but uniformed police. Businesses are closed....

My career as a reporter spanned a remarkable time in local TV news, of both incredible journalistic creativity and commitment, and a profit-driven abandonment of journalism's civic responsibility to keep the public reasonably well-informed. In the past couple decades, even as the number of news providers has exploded, the content...

Americans have always disagreed, about a lot. Somehow though, we've managed to get along with each other while we do. Why, then, has disagreeing become so nasty, so fierce, not just a battle about ideas but an expression of personal enmity? What are the historic roots of our particularly visceral...

Here's something worrying. People are worried. A Washington Post/ABC News survey taken in December found that increasing numbers of people are pessimistic about the future. 44 percent said they were fearful about what "the new year holds in store" for them personally, and 56 percent were fearful for...

Have you read the 2008 Supreme Court decision that gives all Americans the right to own guns? Probably not. I hadn't, until the other day, when I was stunned to find that the decision is hardly the blanket protection for gun ownership that the National Rifle Association and adamant gun...

You may have missed it, but on the Friday heading into the Christmas holiday, the FDA announced its decision about the safety of salmon genetically engineered to grow faster. After reviewing more than a decade of research, the FDA says the fish are a) safe for human consumption and b)...

In the passionate response to the horror of murdered children, much has been written and said about guns, and the need for gun control. Much of it misses the mark, focusing on the danger of guns as weapons, but not their meaning as symbols. Until we examine what guns represent,...

Oh, the swell of hope. The hope that the bipartisanship so critical to progress might somehow arise from the post-election ashes of a rancorous and divisive national election. The hope that comes from the rejection of loathsome remarks about rape, (Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock both lost), from the blossoming...

Did you watch!? Did your heart pound, your palms get sweaty, your muscles tense? Did you join the millions around the world gripped by fear and tension as Felix Baumgartner rose to more than 24 miles in a balloon-lifted capsule, opened the door (OH MY GOD!) stood out on the...

John Silber just passed away. He accomplished many things -- made Boston University into an internationally recognized academic institution, served as Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education -- but he also taught an important lesson about the real importance of televised political debates. Debates matter not for...

"When I was young and bold and strong, / O, right was right and wrong was wrong! / My plume on high, my flag unfurled, / I rode away to right the world. / Come out you dogs and fight! said I, / And wept there was but once to...

There is much being written about the lies Paul Ryan told in his speech at the Republican Convention. I know, "lies" is a pretty strong word. But a "fabrication," "taking liberties with the truth," "bearing false witness against thy neighbor" (Commandment #8)... call it what you will... when you knowingly...

It's a violent, threatening, scary world out there. Just ask the people in Aurora, Colorado. Or the people in Columbine, Colorado. Or the people of Port Arthur, Australia, where a schizophrenic massacred 35 and wounded 23 in 1996. What do those three mass murders, and so many others,...

Human behavior is controlled by a lot of neural wiring and chemistry, and an incredible range of cognitive shortcuts and instincts, over which we have practically no conscious control. A lot of this behind-the-scenes "thinking", which often leads to decisions and behaviors that seem to fly in the face of...

In the 50 years since Silent Spring was published, the environmental movement it helped create has accomplished a great deal. It may be less popular to suggest, but it is no less true, that this seminal book and the movement it helped spawn have also caused a great...

A paper in this week's Nature Climate Change reinforces a really important insight about the limits of our ability to reason and think rationally. It's another blow to the crumbling ramparts of the belief that the Enlightenment, as Kant put it, was "Mankind's final coming of age, the emancipation of...

When I was a kid, my synagogue was right across the street from a Catholic church. Bellevue Avenue made such a clear dividing line between us -- The Chosen People -- and them... the enemy. No doubt the view from the other side of the street was the same. I...

The Heartland Institute, a fiercely conservative/libertarian think tank that champions denial of climate change, briefly ran a billboard in Chicago last week featuring a photo of notorious criminal Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber) next to the message "I still believe in global warming. Do you?" Heartland allegedly promised...

My father, a journalist, died a few days ago. He taught me that journalism is not just a job but a calling, a high form of public service. I did my best, and still do, to live up to that commitment. This essay is for him, and all my friends...