Saint Sebastian wasn't always gay. In his early years he was a Roman soldier and militant Christian in the Pete Hegseth style but, after making himself unpopular converting people, the authorities sho...

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has come and gone and, in keeping with our troubled times, it was successful in part because it banished sex and romance from Homer's story. Why is no one interested in...

The best labyrinth in the world - in my opinion - has to be a messy overgrown subtropical rain forest garden where the goal is to get lost among the mysterious paths and dead ends, and not find the ex...

There is a new-ish genre called "collapse literature" and the best of the bunch is this book by Australian writer and journalist Sarah Wilson. I bought it because reviews suggested that she had arrive...

With right wing White Christian nationalism on the rise in America, I went looking for paintings celebrating it and, to my surprise, I found very few. Do they not like art at all? The most popular pa...

I don't mind Borat, but I think Sacha Baron Cohen unwittingly strays into the very things he criticizes. Whether he likes it or not, his use of Kazakhstan was racist and Kazakhs got upset (as did Roma...

I'm told there are millions of Americans who believe in angels and demons. Many of them are also into witchcraft and the occult, Wicca and Neopaganism. These Americans embrace a genre of (fictional!) ...

The older I get, the more I find embarrassing memories from my past popping up uninvited. Apparently I never will be able to forget some things, especially how I treated women when I was in my Twentie...

I think it's fair to say that when most of us die, no one outside family actually cares very much, because we know that life steamrolls on. I include political figures here, because does anybody reall...

Why did it take Odysseus 19 Years to Get Home from Troy?

In Judeo-Christian Genesis, an apple symbolizes The Fall, even though the original texts said "fruit." The switch is attributed to medieval translators who wanted to pun on malum/malus (apple/evil). A...

I enjoyed the World Cup this year, especially seeing Cabo Verde play - that Sidny Cabral equalizer! - and catching sight of fans and players embracing or in tears always moves me. And now it's over. W...

Historically, Mexico City has always had a series of contested nicknames. In the colonial period it was La Ciudad de los Palacios; nowadays it's just "CDMX" and other nicknames have come and gone. It'...

A good way to find out who you are: what do you think of President Putin and the future of Russia? Try these hopelessly unscientific quizzes: Quiz 1: Putin's Kiss (here) Background: President Putin w...

How on earth did men in ancient Egypt, Greece and early Rome accept the idea that the women in their lives had a wandering womb/uterus? Why did they think it was a convenient explanation for women's h...

Last month, a journalist who exposed President Vladimir Putin’s secret relationship with an Olympic gymnast in 2008, died in Riga, reportedly after eating poisonous "false" honey mushrooms that he had...

Researchers argue that stopping vehicle growth could save lives, space, and billions in energy costs

When México's President Claudia Sheinbaum wears clothing with red roses in the design, what is she saying? This is a seriously contested space in México today and has been ever since Frida Kahlo proud...

Church grounds and graveyards across Ireland are becoming havens for birds, bees and bats as part of a biodiversity project inspired by Pope Francis.

The tale of Phyllis and Aristotle is about how women can dominate intellectual men like Aristotle, physically and emotionally. She even has a leash on him and a whip! Perhaps he likes it? The tale its...

In 2025, a woman writer in the Independent (UK) declared "There is no female equivalent of Casanova" (.). That is true to the degree that no two lives are the same, and Casanova was a rather unusual c...

My, chatbots have become very sophisticated, haven't they? I know this is old news to those of you who have indulged but, if you haven't been propositioned yet, this too can be in your future. Studies...

I have always preferred Taoism over other philosophies and religions because, if I have to choose a philosophy or a religion, this is the one I would choose, because I don't want to choose one at all....

Why Jane Austen Never Married

A Spiritual Fable of Eunuchs and Orgasms

Theodora and the Architecture of the Divine

I don't think for a moment that this world is really "fallen," but I do agree with those who warn that extinction of life on Earth is a real possibility in the Anthropocene Age. To take my mind off th...

Being born in Mumbai, I inherited the syntax of its distinct vocabulary. The undulant range of people as vibrant as the thrum of the Arabian Sea, smells of mogra, gulab, and champa from Dadar market, ...

YouTube video by Global Cycling Network

My Los Angeles neighborhood is overrun by Flock cameras. My neighbors have retreated behind their walls, their security companies, their guns and their gated communities. You might say, architecturall...

There is a giant statue of a Roman courtesan by the harbor in Konstanz, Germany, and it's rather fun. It was erected in 1993 by sculptor Peter Lenk and it rotates every four minutes. How did Imperia C...

When I think of how artists have tried to convey horror, I have come to accept that Picasso got it right with his giant masterpiece Guernica. I do admire the memento mori artists, and Bosch, Goya, and...

In the Bruegel painting above, the two women cannot stop dancing and they are being led to the church nearby because, possibly, they have been possessed by the Devil or cursed by a saint and only Sain...

Given how much time artists, musicians and writers spend in coffee shops, I'm surprised there are so few paintings of the famous ones. I love cafes myself, but I can confidently say that I have never ...

A modern writer I have enjoyed reading is Colette, sometimes dubbed "the most beloved French writer of all time." Maybe it's because of her wit and that she loved cats and gardening and keeping fit. O...

Italian filmmaker Fellini once said "All movies are autobiographical." So, by this logic, it could be argued that Oppenheimer is about Christopher Nolan and his preoccupations, not Oppenheimer's. Is t...

When I travel, I look for ghosts, where I can imagine a past in the present. Today's great cities do not have many ghosts, but a few do: I like to think Lisbon's Bairro Alto and Rome's Trastevere and ...

It is a curious thing: there are giant disembodied heads that pop up in stories. What's the symbolism here? I'm not thinking of giant video screens or holographs (The Wizard of Oz, Nineteen Eighty-Fou...

One of those little known things about Leonardo da Vinci is that at age 40 he was hired as a wedding planner. While it confirms that he was a man of many talents, it also shows a man who enjoyed life ...

I believe young people are almost invariably right about political matters and that older people are almost invariably wrong. I am old but I'm right about this. I like to think I'm a fox who can be a ...

Graphic novels are the best way to teach literature in high schools. For a number of years I taught Romeo and Juliet with a really good one. Why must students have to stagger through "classics" in the...

I once had the pleasure of being a publicist - briefly - for the world's first sex robot (sexbot). Her name was Roxxxy. That was 20 years ago and sex robots have come a long way since then, especially...

The answer is: All of them, beginning with the Greeks and continuing to the present day. Individual candidates for who was the worst? It doesn't really matter, but those usually cited are Immanuel Kan...

Mermaids, fairies, nymphs, sprites, sirens, kelpies, selkies and xanas are consigned to children's entertainment nowadays. This wasn't always the case. In 1917, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was fooled by th...

She needed to walk the Cairo streets at the time she loved them most: early on a Friday morning in October, when the summer’s heat had finally subsided, replaced by a crisp breeze just cool enough to ...

In the hilariously operatic painting above, Assyrian beauty Semiramis seems to have killed herself after the death of her second husband, King Ninus. This didn't happen of course because, in the legen...