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The Fragility of Our Reality: A Conversation with the Brain Behind PBS Miniseries on Neuroscience

By Michael Schulson

…, to a large extent, unmapped: the terra incognita in our skulls. Over the phone, Eagleman spoke with The Cubit about traumatic brain injuries, the idea of possibilianism, and the language we use to describe our brains. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. In The Brain, you do a good job of depicting the fragility of our experience of reality. Am I right to be a little scared by this instability? [Laughs] Well, you know, it’s one…

Gay Black Church: An Interview with Bishop Yvette Flunder

By Lisa Webster

…am one of the religious leaders in this country who has one of the largest numbers of black gay churches in the U.S. gathered together. I don’t know anybody that has a larger number of black gay churches meeting together. Not gay churches—the MCC definitely has the corner on that. Do you work together? Very closely. In fact I have an MCC credential, an ordination. Were there times in your life when you did question your ability to stay in the chu…

Why We Can’t Afford to “Wait And See” How Trump Dismantles LGBT Rights

By Sunnivie Brydum

…making staffing decisions for the administration, means we can’t afford to buy the oft-repeated claim that Trump is actually the most pro-LGBT Republican president in American history. (And to be clear, that’s not a particularly high bar to clear.) Even so, I’ll admit that I don’t believe the president-elect gives much thought to LGBT Americans one way or another. I don’t think he outright disdains us—unlike many of the people advising him—and I k…

Romney Had No Clue as to Obama Ground Game

By Joanna Brooks

…Unless by “data-driven analyst” he means is a guy who knows how to arrange numbers on a page to make a case just plausible enough secure buy-in from a cultivated crew of underwriters and investors who are already inclined to believe him. Which, actually, just may be what “data-driven analyst” means these days. I don’t believe that spreadsheets are a scale model of reality. I do believe that professional political directors should have a grip on r…

Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: 1946-2011

By Lauri Lebo

…excerpt can adequately capture his complete work (I encourage everyone to buy his books) the following piece from Rainbow Pie better sums up his writing better than I ever could: Economic, political, and social culture in America is staggering under the sheer weight of its white underclass, which now numbers some sixty million. Generally unable to read at a functional level, they are easily manipulated by corporate-political interests to vote aga…

Are All Religious Experiences Reducible to 16 Desires?

By Andrew Aghapour

…ddressing of everything. My own take on your book is that you multiply the number of psychological motivations we can associate with religion, and so you’re offering a much better, more useful set of motivations than the previous theorists of religion whom you’ve mentioned. Where I’m hesitant is that you claim you’ve found a set of psychological universals, and here’s my reason: we know that culture affects biology, that there’s a give-and-take be…

Mitt, the Marriotts, and Porn

By Joanna Brooks

…editorial with the unfortunate title “The nasty taint of porn.”) I don’t buy it. Anyone who understands the traction of evangelical anti-Mormon sentiment knows that most evangelical voters will never vote for Mitt Romney, especially if they have a choice in someone like Mike Huckabee. Marriott dropping porn won’t begin to make a dent in Romney’s (or even Huntsman’s) evangelical problem. And everybody should also know that—believe it or not—the…

This Narrative of Death that is So Powerful Among Us

By Daniel Schultz

…zmos that I’m carrying around with me. [pointing to digital recorder, cell phone, iTouch] Walter: That’s right. I think he’s the primary voice who anticipated all of this. It seems to me he is vindicated over and over and over again, that technology is not neutral, but that it brings an ideology with it. Dan: I’m more familiar with that from Niebuhr, who resists the “technic,” he says, and is more oriented to political science and economics, and s…

Escape From Manhattan: Tech, Tragedy and Storytelling in Sandy’s Wake

By Rachel Wagner

…And nobody can deny the convenience of ready access to information, maps, phone numbers, calendars, and social satisfaction that our reliance on technology provides. Technology is a tool, right? It doesn’t change who we are, right? It doesn’t blind us—it reveals reality by connecting us and showing us the world via our screens… right? Look, I know that our new imaginative, mediated work is doing good. I know people can feel a real sense of empowe…

Ask a Muslim: What of Neanderthals and Aliens?

By Haroon Moghul

…ut. But why would they know to be concerned? If you said to me, “I’m gonna buy a house,” and the first thing out of my mouth is, “Will you buy a house with a leaky roof, and a flooded basement,” a reasonable assumption would be that you’d previously bought a house you shouldn’t have. God is in the middle of an important announcement, the creation of the very species for which the Muslim scripture is intended as moral guidance, and the angels all b…