Culture and Arts

Editor's Note: In case you missed the spotlight on the particular pet of Downton Abbey, Isis, we thought we should provide the Masterpiece Theater feature that, we had not seen. We were glad to see that into the season, she reappeared as the flag-bearer and lead actor, so to speak, when the castle appeared ahead in the frame. Her name is the Greek form of an ancient Egyptian word for 'throne.' more »

Julia Sneden writes: Nowadays, when I have to learn something new, it seems to take forever, and when I take notes, I lose them almost as quickly as I have written them down … which drawer did I put that in? Which drawer in which desk/table/bureau? In which room? What color was the paper I wrote them down on (this is more likely to stick in my brain, and helps if there’s a pile of other bits of paper wherever it was that I put it ...) more »

The 90-minute television presentation tells the epic, inside story of the collapse of the Benedict Papacy — and illuminates the extraordinary challenges facing Pope Francis as he tries to reform the powerful Vatican bureaucracy, root out corruption, and chart a new course for the troubled Catholic Church and its 1.2 billion followers. more »

According to Stanford Professor Joshua Landy, literature plays on our emotions instead of giving us rational reasons to adopt new beliefs, so we can easily be manipulated by it. Getting people to change their beliefs based on emotions is not an unambiguously positive thing: "When I do it, it's called persuasion. When you do it, it's called rhetoric. When they do it, it's called propaganda."  Does reading literature make you more moral? Scholars speaking at a Center for Ethics in Society event say the answer depends on who's reading. By Justin Tackett… more »