The plotlines of popular superhero movies may influence us more than any political broadcast ever could.

We all live in a world of corruption, which sounds like unsupportable and irresponsible hyperbole until one realizes its extent.

The mining industry may seem an unlikely place to find practical examples of the Golden Rule in action.

That sports, conventionally seen as promoting health, should be deemed a cause of death raises serious ethical questions.

The world seems no closer to defining truth today than the ancient philosophers were. And yet we cannot do without it.

Politicians often promise change, yet they seldom deliver. Still, we keep hoping that next time will be different. It’s a vain hope, and here’s why.

China’s ambitious urbanization program stands out in today’s world. But a Renaissance painting offers a surprising warning against overreach. Can our cities fail?

Around the world, whole species of amphibians are dying. And it all may have started with a human pregnancy test.

Gun control may seem a uniquely American issue, but at its heart lies a much deeper problem with global implications.

Understanding China’s current place in the world requires looking at the nation through a non-Western lens.

The power of the Internet translates to the power of the people, and many of those people spend a part of each day in what has become a virtual courtroom. Is an everyman mob running amok on social media?

Was Thomas Aquinas a theologian or a philosopher? By most accounts he was both, and his blending of the two disciplines resulted in a new approach to the Bible and its teachings.

Propaganda is about manipulation. But over the past century, the concept itself has been manipulated. Do you still recognize it when you see it?

Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed the 1920s as a time of self-indulgence. That image is reminiscent of today’s world and of the life of King Solomon.

Perhaps no written work has had more influence on the Christian belief that human beings possess an immortal soul than Dante’s monumental poem.

London has changed considerably since Dickens painted cities in general as progenitors of social ill. But are his criticisms still relevant?

Russia’s struggle for national identity sheds light on our own need to know who we are and what’s expected of us.

In Flat Earth News, Guardian journalist Nick Davies shows how a vocation that once prided itself on uncovering the truth is no longer able to do so.

In the post-colonial backlash and in the face of increasing Muslim and other non-Western influence in Europe, a clash of cultures has emerged.

Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine suffers from overstatement, and at times it seems her probing enthusiasm stretches too far to fit examples to her thesis.