By Michael Shermer "Michael Shermer says the human tendency to believe strange things -- from alien abductions to dowsing rods -- boils down to two of the brain's most basic, hard-wired survival skills. He explains what they are, and how they get us into trouble." Watch the video . Image...

by David Munger from Seed Magazine "Medical writer Tom Rees devotes his blog Epiphenom to the scientific study of religion. Last week he examined a study on the relationship between intelligence and religious belief. Published in Social Psychology Quarterly , this study by Satoshi Kanazawa replicated...

by Adam Hadhazy from Scientific American "As Olympians go for the gold in Vancouver, even the steeliest are likely to experience that familiar feeling of "butterflies" in the stomach. Underlying this sensation is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive...

by Philip Ball from Nature News "Medieval monarchies might not have had many things to recommend them compared with liberal democracies, but here's one: our rulers have no Fools. How often now will a national leader employ someone to laugh at their folly and remind them of bitter truths? More...

By Richard E. Cytowic in Seed Magazine "From my perspective as a neurologist who studies minds and as a creative writer who imagines characters’ inner lives, Virginia Woolf’s mind is a marvel to behold. No two books are alike. “Not this, not that,” she seems to be saying as she rejects convention...

by Natalie Angier in The New York Times "The theory of relativity showed us that time and space are intertwined. To which our smarty-pants body might well reply: Tell me something I didn’t already know, Einstein. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found that when people were asked to engage...

by Evan Lerner in Seed Magazine "When Max Lugavere and Jason Silva met at the University of Miami, they were two young idealists who found common ground in film, psychology, and philosophy. But when Al Gore announced his plans to start a TV network powered by a worldwide legion of socially minded...

By Aditya Chakrabortty from The Guardian "Of all the virtues, heroism is now the most remote. Heroes are either mythic or historical characters (Achilles or Gandhi) or they are superhuman (Spider-Man, or even 9/11 firefighters). What they are not is one of us. Our age has role models and it has...

by David Roberts from Grist "When it comes to energy, policymakers are often confronted with human behavior that seems irrational, unpredictable, or unmanageable. Advocates for energy efficiency in particular are plagued by the gap between what it would make sense for people to do and what they...

by Ray Tallis from New Scientist "Most neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest...