Ahn Ei Sook | The Wolf Tamer

In cell number 8 of the prison in Pyongyang, a few frozen and emaciated prisoners had to endure an additional torture: the pungent smell and wild screams of an untamed creature.

COVID-19: Inequality and the pandemic

When confronted with the pandemic, we are anything but equals.

How to revive a dying church

Trying to describe a dying church like the one he was called to serve, Pastor Chris Lewis uses the image of a car "turned over, in a ditch, covered by weeds and beer cans, with a rusted out engine, and a couple of bodies in the trunk."

Gravitational waves and the inflation of certainty

On 17 March 2014, the science and technology blog of the prestigious newspaper The New Yorker announced, "A scientific breakthrough lets us see to the beginning of time". Lawrence M. Krauss, renowned physicist and author of "A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing", commented in his article on the news that went around the world, heralding a landmark moment...

When all that’s left to do is pray

“All I can do is pray and hope.” With those words, I ended an article on infertility. After years of marriage and not one pregnancy, I did one of the only things I could do to help me process the fact that my wife and I might never have children: I wrote about it. 

Misunderstanding a “memorable misunderstanding”

The spontaneous generation of life on Earth is as likely as a whirlwind putting a Boeing 747 together using scattered spare parts in a junkyard.

Menstruation, a taboo still difficult to break even in 2021

Lack of access to menstrual hygiene is the fifth leading cause of death worldwide among women. In the world, 1 in 3 girls faces the impossibility of ensuring adequate hygiene during menstruation, and many others face sometimes fatal arbitrary limitations imposed by culture.

It wasn’t me! It was Eve, the snake or the genes!

The stakes are high when it comes to homosexuality, promiscuity, alcoholism, violence, and the like. Previously seen as a result of environmental influence and moral choice, they have now become a genetical given.

Appealing to authority: an expensive logical mistake

In everyday life, whether we like it or not, we rely on the information provided by experts or specialists. However, no authority deserves blind trust. When we take someone's word for granted simply because that person is an authority, we make the logical mistake called "appeal to authority."

“Mere Christianity” | Book review

"In the Trinity Term of 1929, I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England," testified C.S. Lewis in his book, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. Today’s article, however, is about another book from the same author, Mere Christianity.

Gold medal for fourth place

The Parable of the Sower appears to be the key to understanding all the other parables told by Jesus. It is neither mysterious nor cryptic; it simply provides a starting point. The apostles and all those who read the parable today are asked by Jesus Christ: "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?" (Mark 4:13). The logical conclusion...

What is a “good death”?

We think we know what a good life is, but what is a "good death", if it exists? When incurable diseases ravage the body and death becomes an imminent reality, the question takes on painful outlines, especially in a society open to arranging the circumstances of death according to the will of its protagonist.

Return to meaning

"To feel that you have meaning is to feel immortal," psychology professor and author Clay Routledge wrote in 2014. Is this the only kind of immortality we will ever have?

Pocket apocalypse: The end of the world in the press

The image of an apocalypse generated by a microscopic coronavirus has been sketched more than once by the press in the past few weeks.

A new theory of evolution—or several complementary theories?

"Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly?" These are the words with which an extensive article published by The Guardian in June 2022 begins.