You Have a Shorter Attention Span than a Goldfish

A study by Microsoft of 2,000 consumers discovered some interesting things. The first is that the average human attention span has gone down. In 2000 ...

Thrill-Seeking Activities Require Tedium

You might assume that extreme activities—like traveling through space or climbing Mount Everest—provide constant excitement. Not exactly. ...

Two Minutes to Live

What if I told you that walking two minutes could reduce your mortality risk? According to The New York Times, a new study (fascinatingly titled "Light-Intensity ...

Watch Out for That Muddled Background Noise

Have you ever been singing a popular song only to discover that you're belting out the wrong lyrics? Misunderstanding lyrics is a common mistake that ...

Faking Cultural Literacy (and Christianity)

In a New York Times article titled "Faking Cultural Literacy," Karl Greenfield argues that today's social media lets us pretend to know ...

The Need to Fill Our Bicycle Tires (Souls)

Editor's Note: Tell this illustration as a story or as a prop illustration by using an actual bicycle or a bike tire.

On a recent bike trip it wasn't ...

'Esquire' on Skills Men Need

Esquire magazine ran an article titled "25 Skills Every Man Should Know." It focuses on what Esquire calls the 25 skills that will set you apart ...

Reader's Digest Condensed Version of the Bible

In 1982, Reader's Digest published a condensed version of the world's most widely-read book—the Bible. The project, led by John E. Walsh, ...

Striving for Orange

The Golden Gate Bridge is an iconic image, largely due to its bright orange paint job that never seems to rust or tarnish. The reason the Bridge can maintain ...

Musical Magic Ruined by Cell Phone

On a warm late-August Tuesday evening, music critic David Hajdu wandered into a Greenwich Village (New York City) jazz hotspot called the Vanguard. He ...