As a society, we Westerners exalt individualism and self-reliance, and yet our biology moves us in other directions. Humans evolved as social animals, and we posses a number of behaviors that motivate us towards group conformity. The feeling of wanting friends, of desiring a peer group and of needing to...

The gap between atheists and the religious seems at times to be an impossible divide, almost as if believers and non-believers come from different species. What separates the secular from the sacred? An "Ask the Brains" question on the Scientific American site recently inquired as to any differences between...

Who do you think will win the Republican presidential nomination? Obsession with this question possesses the entire United States. Today, a brief search on Google for "GOP primary prediction" returned close to 40 million results. Over the past few months, the news media has been a continuous spin cycle...

Christmas time is here again. Unlike many people, I have no particular aversion to the holiday season. I don't have too many emotional scars from Christmases past. Getting presents was always fun, I liked the lights on our tree, even stringing popcorn, and these days I try to keep awkward...

Once when I was a little kid, a peaceful fall evening at our house was shattered by loud and insistent banging, as if someone was trying to break down our side door. My dad, who was the head coach of the high school football team, opened it to greet a...

How do you react when somebody defriends you on Facebook? Jennifer Christine Harris, a Des Moines, Iowa woman, reacted by sneaking over to a house in the dark of night. Sleeping soundly within were her old friend, Nikki Rasmussen, and Nikki's husband, Jim. Jennifer then set fire to the house,...

It seems right now as if everyone has an opinion on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, which has gone nationwide in America and spread to many cities worldwide. OWS has incited praise, rage, donations, police crackdowns, hilarity and kickstarted...

On October 5, Steve Jobs died. At first I was surprised at how choked up I got about his death -- it's not like I ever met him -- until I realized that I wasn't the only one. From special issues of The New Yorker and Wired magazines, to spontaneous...

Tuesday evening, Facebook made major changes to its newsfeed, and today the Internet is a hornet's nest of complaints, protests and threats. There is a new round of "quit Facebook" memes, and a collective groan of pain from millions of users.

Similar dissent occurred when Netflix recently spun off...

Ten years ago, 19 hijackers changed the course of world history. Using jet airliners as enormous guided missiles, they were able to knock down the twin towers, damage the Pentagon and briefly terrorize the most powerful nation on earth.

As America pauses to reflect on the anniversary of the...

Part of the Concentration Series

Have you ever been so involved in doing something that the rest of the world just kind of disappeared? Or time slowed down and even your sense of self disappeared? The great Brazilian soccer star Pele shared an experience he had in...

This post is part of my Series on Concentration.

You're having complex feelings about the things that happened with your partner yesterday. You feel upset and confused, there's so much going on.

You meet your friend at a coffee shop, hoping to talk about some of this. But...

This post is part 5 of my Concentration Series.

Yesterday I was deep inside a website, working on a project that took my full attention. Just as I was getting really focused, a neighbor busted out his leaf blower and started making a terrible racket. I have pretty...

Recently, I found a meditation retreat center in rural Massachusetts that cost just 10 dollars a day. That super-affordable price included a room of my own, and delicious, organic hippy food. As I was moving to a new city anyway, I let go of my apartment, put my stuff in...