I don’t know about you, but ever since I can remember – from my early teens – I have been bemused about the endless rituals we humans perform; and even more so about what can and can’t be said about ...

The everyday meaning of “common knowledge” is knowledge held in common, often as an open secret. For example, it is common knowledge that publishers like books that seek, via quirky examples, to ...

It takes a shockingly long time for the masses of people to pick up on new realities. This is especially true if the new realities reverse very old trends that have burrowed certain false assumptions ...

Source: Scribner / Used with permission. In a New Yorker cartoon about marital relations, a husband tells his wife, “Of course I care about how you imagined I thought you perceived I wanted you to ...

Before boarding a flight to South Africa in 2013, Justine Sacco sent a sardonic joke to her 170 Twitter followers: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding—I’m white!” By the time her ...

On Sept. 29, Harvard Psychology professor Steven A. Pinker sat down at the First Parish Church to discuss his most recent book, “When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…: Common Knowledge and the ...