We are watching Big Brother watching us. Whatever one thinks of Edward Snowden, hero or traitor or something in between, his revelations about sweeping NSA surveillance have gotten America's attention. His whistle blowing has raised important questions about the balance of liberty and safety, and will heighten suspicions and scrutiny...

A new Gallup poll shows that Americans' confidence in the Congress is at an all-time low. A measly 10 percent of citizens express confidence in lawmakers, and most say they have little or no confidence. That is the worst rating of any American institution -- including the military, HMOs and...

Suzanne Collins' futuristic trilogy, The Hunger Games, takes place in Panem, a totalitarian nation of obscene wealth and pervasive poverty. Its twelve districts are all impoverished, but District 12, the coal-mining region formerly called Appalachia, is the poorest of the poor. Citizens struggle to eke out a living in the...

In the darkest days of my alcoholism, it became very important to me to think of my disordered life as the consequence of a brain disease. I spent a lot of time gathering evidence that my cravings and lack of discipline were somehow rooted in my faulty neurons, just as...

The world is divided into Munchers and Skippers.

I'm a Skipper, which means that, when living gets stressful, I stop eating. I don't snack. I skip meals.

Munchers, on the other hand, invented comfort food. It doesn't matter whether it's Chunky Monkey or Doritos or cheeseburgers. Calories are taken like...

It's been more than a decade since oxytocin was first heralded as the "hormone of love" -- a distinction that came with optimistic predictions for future drug therapies. It was just a matter of time before an oxytocin nasal spray would be available on pharmacy shelves, with the potential to...

We all know people who are highly intelligent but not very smart. These people get good grades in school, ace a lot of tests, and often succeed professionally. But they nevertheless hold irrational beliefs and do a lot of foolish things. Such people almost certainly have high IQs, but IQ...

America is a rapidly graying society. This demographic trend has been underway for a while -- and anticipated for a long while -- yet some of its implications are just now coming into focus. Most notably, the aging of America will almost certainly trigger a retirement crisis, with elderly boomers...

There's nothing I like more than sharing a good meal with friends and family. I like everything about it -- the shopping for fresh ingredients, the chopping and cooking, and most of all, the mindful savoring and good conversation at the table.

If I have time.

Which I don't many...

Looking back on U.S. history, certain presidents clearly stand out as larger than life. Andrew Jackson, TR, LBJ -- these were flamboyant and domineering men, and also great leaders. Some might quibble about who among these had the biggest personality, but no one would put Calvin Coolidge or Millard Fillmore...

In January 2000, an earthquake shook China's mountainous Yunnan province. It was a moderate earthquake and killed only seven, but it leveled more than 40,000 homes and injured thousands of residents. According to the World Health Organization, as many as 1.8 million were affected by the disaster, and in need...

The Dark Triad. It could well be a cast of villains in an epic tale of fantasy. All three of these dark powers are callous and exploitative, but each is also malignant in its own way. One is charming but remorseless. The second is known for its cynicism and deception....

It's difficult to turn on the TV today without seeing an advertisement for one drug or another. That's not surprising, since drug makers spend billions of dollars each year to promote their treatments for depression, low testosterone, osteoporosis, incontinence, erectile dysfunction, and more. The ad spots are aimed not at...

Imagine that you're an early human, trying to make your way in a perilous world. One very useful talent would be reading and reacting to the faces of other early humans -- rapidly categorizing them into good and safe, on the one hand, or bad and threatening on the other....

Obesity is largely a failure of self-control. I know it's possible to quibble about calories and carbs and dietary fat, but fundamentally, obesity comes down to valuing fattening foods today, in this moment, more than we value a healthy future. We know, rationally, that we should forego the French fries...

Annie Duke was on track for a promising career in psycholinguistics, when she abruptly abandoned the academic life for the high-stakes world of poker. That was two decades ago, and since then she has won a slew of honors, including the prestigious World Series of Poker "bracelet" -- plus lots...

Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.

Physician and medical gadfly Ben Goldacre is well known for his relentless crusade to keep medical researchers and drug makers honest -- and improve healing in...

I had the good fortune to come of age during the richest musical epoch -- well, ever. The Grateful Dead, the Beatles, Dylan, Janis Joplin, Zappa. I could go on and on. The '60s witnessed an unparalleled burst of musical creativity, ranging from Cream to CCR to Hendrix and to...

Holden Caulfield is the archetypal American teenager. Or at least he was, way back in the 20th century. His misadventures, narrated in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, may seem quaint by today's standards, yet the 17-year-old reveals many of the worrisome traits that we still associate with adolescence....

Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's most complex characters, and by far the bard's most obsessive. Immorally ambitious, she prods her husband to murder Scotland's king, and then deludes herself into believing that "a little water will clear us of this deed." But for all of her repeated hand washing,...