Michael Schulson
Religion Dispatches
Dania Beach, FL, United States
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Past articles by Michael:
Maybe The Question Is: *Should* Shabbat Be The New Yoga?
In a recent article at Bloomberg Businessweek, Jennifer Miller examines the budding Jewish wellness-and-lifestyle scene—think artisanal matzah companies, campy mountain retreats, and Pinterest photoboards designed to inspire anyone who “curates, organizes and hosts dynamic Shabbat dinner experiences → Read More
You Are What You Eat: New Book on Cannibalism Reimagines What It Means to Be Made of Flesh
Bill Schutt’s new book, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History, is a startling reminder of how strange it is to be flesh. Over the course of 300 pages, Schutt covers everything from cannibalistic spider sex to the siege of Leningrad. The book is an encyclopedia of carnivory. It's worth reading. → Read More
Race, Reparations and the Search for Our Molecular Soul
When scientists first mapped the human genome in 2000, public figures celebrated the milestone in the language of human unity. “In genetic terms, all human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9% the same,” announced President Bill Clinton at a press conference. If the rise of commercial → Read More
Is Sam Harris Really a White Supremacist?, Part Two
Last week, the blogger Hemant Mehta, who writes under the moniker "The Friendly Atheist," told us to remove our heads from our asses and send Sam Harris an apology for an essay we published the previous week. The piece's headline, Is Sam Harris Really a White Supremacist?, was prov → Read More
Is Sam Harris Really a White Supremacist?, Part Two
Last week, the blogger Hemant Mehta, who writes under the moniker "The Friendly Atheist," told us to remove our heads from our asses and send Sam Harris an apology for an essay we published the previous week. The piece's headline, Is Sam Harris Really a White Supremacist?, was prov → Read More
Is Sam Harris Really a White Supremacist?
By profession, Sam Harris is a brawler. The New Atheist writer has ongoing feuds with Salon, AlterNet, The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald, and plenty of religious leaders. Whether Harris is a brawler because he loves to fight, or because conflict is the cost of truth-telling, we will not adjudicate, othe → Read More
TED-Evangelism Harkens Back to a Forgotten 19th-Century Tradition
The top ten most watched TED talks are, in order, about: Creativity Confidence Motivation Vulnerability The Brain Really Cool Technology Orgasm Motivation Motivation Really Cool Science But actually the top ten TED talks are all about you. They’re about the way t → Read More
Touching the Hem of His Garmin? [Infographic]
Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson are co-editors of The Cubit, RD's Religion and Science portal. → Read More
In the Beginning Was NOT the Word: Why Belief in the Primacy of Language Leads to a Misunderstanding of Richard Dawkins, Islamophobia, and Politics
Like marijuana, affect theory seems to pop at parties, where it circulates within small groups that keep to the periphery. While it isn't illegal in any of the 50 states—it’s an intellectual approach to emotions, after all, not a controlled substance—it has the aura, especially at aca → Read More
Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is: A For-Profit Meditation Studio Opens in New York
Ellie Burrows and Lodro Rinzler had their big idea over a cup of tea. Certain details change with the telling (was it a nail salon or a hair salon?), but here’s the official version: during a teatime conversation, Burrows asked Rinzler “why there wasn’t a modern, non-religious, drop-in studio → Read More
The Sex Scandal Following Whole Foods’ Guru
Over the holidays, the New York Times ran a punishing profile of Marc Gafni, an ex-rabbi who reinvented himself as a New Age spiritual leader. A founder of the Center for Integral Wisdom and organizer of the Success 3.0 Summit, Gafni has built a New Age brand around two trademark concepts—Un → Read More
“Paleo” is More Than a Fad Diet: Boyd Eaton’s Plan to Return to Eden
Thirty years ago, S. Boyd Eaton laid out the foundation for the Paleo diet in a brief article for The New England Journal of Medicine, which he co-authored with the anthropologist Melvin Konner. Eaton and Konner's argument was seductively simple: our bodies evolved to eat one diet, while ind → Read More
Fact-Checking Ben Carson’s Pyramid-ism Misses the Point
Archaeologists say that the pyramids were used to store dead pharaohs. Ben Carson thinks that the pyramids were used to store grain. Carson is wrong. But to simply point out that he's wrong is to miss the point. Carson's error isn't an isolated counter-scientific blip in the Sea → Read More
The Problem with Pew’s Science & Religion Poll
Yes, there are bad questions. → Read More
Who Benefits From Standardized Universal Time? And Other Questions to Ask As You Set Your Clocks Back This Weekend
A review of Vanessa Ogle's "Global Transformation of Time" → Read More
The Fragility of Our Reality: A Conversation with the Brain Behind PBS Miniseries on Neuroscience
When you get down to it, neuroscience is just brains studying brains. One upshot of this reflexivity is a funny kind of loop: studying the brain tells you about being a self; being a self offers up questions about the brain. More, perhaps, than participants in any other scientific field, neuroscient → Read More
Lying About Our Religion, And Other Problems With Polling
A review of Robert Wuthnow's "Inventing American Religion: Polls, Surveys, and the Tenuous Quest for a Nation's Faith." → Read More
Why Scientists Should Be Agnostic: Or, Why Lawrence Krauss Is Still a Windbag
A few months ago, one of us (okay, Andrew), referred to the esteemed physicist and public intellectual Lawrence Krauss as “a windbag.” One of us (Michael) can attest that Andrew is among the kindest, most thoughtful people he knows. So what raised Andrew’s ire? Krauss, Arizona State Univers → Read More
Can You Become Un-Autistic?
You could read this as a straightforward narrative of medical recovery. Or you could read it as a fraught parable of modern identity: Doctors diagnose a two-year-old boy, Alex, with autism. Like other toddlers receiving the diagnosis, Alex rarely makes eye contact, finds it difficult to communica → Read More
Is It OK To Use a Cellphone in Church? Pew Surveys the New Etiquette
The Pew Research Center has pubished a new report on cellphone etiquette. If you've ever wondered whether your fellow Americans are judging you for talking on your phone in public, or checking baseball scores during a party, or texting in a movie theater, then this report has the answers yo → Read More