Culture Essays

How an Oxford don is helping the tech giant understand the nature of modern identity—and stay out of court.

Despise The Avengers? Loathe the snobs who despise The Avengers? You're not the first.

A hardened corps of volunteer editors is the only force protecting Wikipedia. They might also be killing it.

Placebo buttons in elevators and at crosswalks that don't actually do anything are just the beginning. One computer scientist has collected hundreds of examples of technology designed to trick people, for better and for worse.

Public health wonks have figured out how to influence Hollywood writers: Don't call them, they'll call you.

A neuroscientist in California is dreaming up a new visual vocabulary for cinema that could revolutionize the filmmaking business.

How a culturally conservative effort in the 1940s backfired to create the greatest engine of pop music in the world.

Popular culture has become obsessed with peering into people's bags. Disclosing the things we carry has become a national pastime. But what are we hiding?

Everyone knows computers are good at processing information and humans are good at creativity. What if it's the other way around?

Stanley Milgram's test subjects were not the only ones misled by his famous experiments on obedience.

Psychiatry is under attack for not being scientific enough, but the real problem is its blindness to culture. When it comes to mental illness, we wear the disorders that come off the rack.

If the South is really such a backward place, why is it so in love with Brad Paisley?

In a desperate attempt to engage with younger audiences, arts organizations are scrambling to make their productions more interactive. But who really is more engaged: A live-tweeting audience member, or someone staring silently at the stage?