Life Changes
Healing Through Storytelling: Lessons from The Odyssey
The journey of Odysseus in Homer's 'The Odyssey' offers profound insights into healing...
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- Written by: Amy Yee
Like many low-wage restaurant workers, Su Hua Mei and her husband lost their jobs last spring as the pandemic took hold.
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- Written by: Corrie Pikul, Brown University
An aversion to uncertainty only exacerbates how similarly two conservative brains or two liberal brains respond when consuming political content
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- Written by: Mathew Marques, La Trobe University et al
Conspiracies are found to be true on occasion, which renders them no longer “theories”. For example, in the 1960s and 70s, the CIA really did engage in secretive experiments to identify drugs to force confessions. But what is surprising is the degree to which people seem to believe in unfounded conspiracies, especially given the lack of evidence.
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- Written by: Marc Zimmer
I’m a professor of chemistry, have a Ph.D. and conduct my own scientific research, yet when consuming media, even I frequently need to ask myself: “Is this science or is it fiction?”
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- Written by: Chirag Shah
Search engines are one of society’s primary gateways to information and people, but they are also conduits for misinformation.
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- Written by: Tauel Harper
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, TikTok, Redbubble and Twitter have agreed to abide by a code of conduct targeting misinformation. Suspiciously, however, the so-called Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation was developed by, well, these same companies.
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- Written by: Pierre Pradervand
Without the welcome arrival of immigrants, our countries would slowly empty themselves of their population. In Germany, thanks to the massive and very recent increased influx of immigrants and refugees, the birth rate shot up from a low of 1.39 in 2010 (at the time one of the lowest if not the lowest in the world) to 1.5 in 2016.
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- Written by: Laura Counts
Simply telling people not to gather for holiday rituals to avoid spreading COVID-19 won’t work, say researchers who cite the psychology of rituals.
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- Written by: Charles Eisenstein
A dark mirror shows features one would rather not see. You gaze at the repulsive visage in the picture frame, the caricature of everything despicable, only to realize with dawning horror that you are looking not at a portrait but at a mirror.
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- Written by: Robin Dunbar et al
While the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are still unclear, it is certain that they are a profound shock to the systems underpinning contemporary life.
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- Written by: Geoffrey Joyce
The number of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. has jumped to around 50,000 a day, and the virus has killed more than 130,000 Americans.
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- Written by: Jennifer Mercieca
The fundamental difference between leaders who are good demagogues and leaders who are dangerous demagogues is found in the answer to this simple question:
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- Written by: Robin Queen
As a sociolinguist who studies and writes about language and discrimination, I was also struck by the name given to Cooper in several headlines: “Central Park Karen.” On Twitter, the birder’s sister also referred to her as a “Karen.”
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- Written by: Christine Crudo Blackburn and Leslie Ruyle
COVID-19 has put political leaders and health care systems worldwide to the test. Although lockdowns are the common approach, some countries have opted for less stringent measures.
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- Written by: Jonathan D. Fitzgerald
Resilience, communication skills, openness and impulse control top the list of six qualities that presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin says are common to good leaders.
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- Written by: Diana Daly
The “anti-lockdown” and #Reopen protests in the U.S. have powerful and secretive backers, but there are real Americans on the streets expressing their opinions.
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- Written by: Adrian Brettle
In March 1861, as Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as president, the United States faced its greatest crisis: its sudden and unexpected dissolution. Seven of the then 31 states had already voted to secede from the Union.
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- Written by: Marc Ambinder
People are frustrated and depressed, but have complied with what they’ve been asked to endure because they trust that state and local public health officials are telling the truth about the coronavirus pandemic.
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- Written by: Fritz Breithaupt
While the increased isolation and spacing of the new drastic measures come as shock to many people, social distancing is not new if you take the long view – the very long view.
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- Written by: David Jacobson and Zacharias Pieri
The immediate concerns of the coronavirus are clear: an unprecedented health crisis and economic devastation.
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- Written by: Einav Rabinovitch-Fox
As the world grapples with the coronavirus outbreak, “social distancing” has become a buzzword of these strange times.
