The human mind is a fool for order, says physicist Leonard Mladinow. We love order, crave order, and will see order even where there is, in fact, mainly chaos.
The random looms huge in world affairs, he says, but we don’t want to hear about it. We’re blind to it. And it leads us to all [...]

Scott McClellan stole the headlines this week. He’s not the first White House spokesman to write a tell-all. But for George Bush’s press secretary to blast a “culture of deception” right in his book title was pretty rich.
“Propaganda,” writes McClellan. “Botched.” “Illusion.” “Humiliation.” Oh my.
In the Democrats’ world, it’s decision time over Florida and Michigan [...]

The saga of the horse in America is a stunner and a heartbreaker.
Here, in the mists of pre-history, millions of years ago. Gone, over the Bering Strait to the rest of the world, and to extinction here in the Ice Age.
Back, terrified and terrifying, on the ships of Columbus and Cortez — then embraced by [...]

Robotic Mars exploration has been no picnic. Half of all Mars missions have ended in failure. But right now, the Mars Phoenix Lander is up there, well-landed, sending back astonishing images, and — it appears — shaking off its problems extending the eight-foot arm that will dig for ice.
The Phoenix is looking for conditions that [...]

Philip Glass has been called America’s most famous living composer of classical music.
He’s brought his entrancing scores to collaborations with David Bowie and Twyla Tharp, Doris Lessing and Yo-Yo Ma. His operas have brought new music to the stories of Einstein, Gandhi and Robert E. Lee.
Now, at 71, Philip Glass has a new love, a [...]

In 2004, author Paul Roberts came out with his book “The End of Oil,” and we’ve all seen oil’s path since then.
Now Roberts is out with a kind of follow-up: “The End of Food.” It could make a person want to hoard tuna.
Not that oil or food are literally vanishing anytime soon. But Roberts argues [...]

On the journey of American assimilation, to have your culture’s ticket punched on Broadway seems almost mandatory. Whether it’s “Fiddler on the Roof” or “Raisin in the Sun,” the Broadway embrace is a milestone.
The hottest ticket on Broadway right now may mark that moment for Latino Americans. The rap-salsa-merengue extravaganza “In the Heights” is up [...]

Joanna Connors was thirty years old and married when she was raped by a stranger on an empty stage in Cleveland in 1984.
She went on to raise a family and build a career as a reporter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Now, almost a quarter century later, Joanna Connors has written the biggest story of [...]

Susan Batson has been called the “Oscar coach.” She takes big Hollywood actors and makes them better. Nicole Kidman thanked her from the winner’s circle as she waved her Oscar. Tom Cruise thanked her as he clutched a Golden Globe. And that’s just a start.
Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Lopez and Juliette Binoche are all on [...]

It’s officially summertime today, and we all want a dip in the pool. But which pool?
In their heyday, at their best, America’s public swimming pools were cool, blue pleasure zones where happy kids and adults of all stripes showered down and splashed in. But just as often, they were cultural battlegrounds — over unwashed immigrants, [...]

Memorial Day is a day for remembering and honoring the sacrifices of American military men and women in war. On this Memorial Day, there is no shortage of sacrifice to consider.
In wars since 9/11, thousands have died. More than 400 in Afghanistan. More than 4,080 now in Iraq.
In March this year, when the U.S. military’s [...]

For most Americans, the sacrifices made by service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan are — after all these years — still out of sight and far away.
For colleagues, for comrades in arms, those sacrifices are as close as a man’s last breath. A woman’s last word.
Memorial Day honors sacrifice across many generations. But [...]

If you want to see into the future, what we just had was a week full of glimpses.
Oil, above all, shattering record after record. Airlines now charging by the bag for luggage, and much more change to come.
On the campaign trail, running-mate talk heating up as McCain, Clinton and Obama race for the White House.
In [...]

Alfred Hitchcock was for years the master of movie suspense. But fifty years ago — May, 1958 — he brought out a film so weird that filmgoers didn’t know what to make of it.
It was called “Vertigo.” It had Jimmy Stewart as a San Francisco detective afraid of heights, on the trail of icy blond [...]

Suddenly, even for people who don’t follow oil futures and Saudi production estimates, the lid seems to have blown off energy prices.
Oil is at double its price of a year ago and still soaring. Some now predict $200 dollars a barrel. Many Americans remember when it was twenty.
Gasoline is heading over the four-dollar-a-gallon mark. Some [...]

The April 3rd raid on the Yearning for Zion ranch in West Texas made big headlines. Texas authorities stormed the polygamist sect ranch, and scooped up more than 460 children after a caller claimed she was a 16-year-old girl being sexually abused there by a 49-year-old “spiritual husband.”
Officials soon announced that 31 of 53 girls [...]

In the New Deal era, the Democrats owned the white working class. In the Civil Rights era, they lost them. Not all, of course, but enough to give Republicans win after big win.
This year, with economic challenges front and center again, the math could change. But in West Virginia and North Carolina, in Kentucky and [...]

Yesterday Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. The brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy has been a Democratic Party torch bearer in the Senate for 46 years.
Guests:
Peter Canellos, Washington bureau chief and columnist for The Boston Globe.

Jill Price has a memory like few others in the world. She’s 42 years old, and she remembers everything.
Every instant of her life, and the life around her, since she was fourteen. Down to the smallest detail. Like a movie that never stops running. Whether she likes it or not. And not just what happened, [...]

For much of the country, it felt like a bolt from the blue. Last week, giant California gave a green light to gay marriage.
California’s high court, in a 4-3 ruling, said civil union rights were not enough. Gay Californians — and those from anywhere else who barrel west to the Golden State — are entitled, [...]