In a typical summer, millions of Americans head outdoors to national parks, hiking trails and rivers across the U.S.

Go into any bath and body store and you are sure to find soaps in a huge variety of scents, fragrances, colors, types, sizes, shapes and price ranges. How are these soaps different from the nationally advertised brand name soaps? How are they different from each other? What really makes a soap a "good" soap?

Less obvious are the subtle psychological drivers behind our collective online shopping splurge.

Franchises like The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and The Witcher often lead us to think of fantasy as a pastoral genre: a medieval landscape filled with knights riding on quests, enchanted woodland and isolated castles.

In the United States, churches in at least four states have filed lawsuits about the banning of religious gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Born Richard Wayne Penniman and nicknamed for his smallness as a child, Little Richard was one of 12 children. He developed his charismatic singing, piano and performance styles playing in black and Pentecostal churches.

Mary Shelley’s neglected later book The Last Man (1826) has the most to say to us in our present moment of crisis and global pandemic.

One of the things you get asked most when people find out that you’re a poet is whether you can recommend something that could be read at an upcoming wedding, or if you know something that might be suitable for a funeral.

People are social creatures. While many of us are making the best of social isolation, we’re much better together than apart.

In recent years the orthodoxy that Shakespeare can only be truly appreciated on stage has become widespread.

Humans are innately social creatures. But as we stay home to limit the spread of COVID-19, video calls only go so far to satisfy our need for connection.

In her book How Games Move Us (2016), computer games researcher Katherine Isbister writes that her friends and colleagues believe that gaming might numb people’s emotions. 

Knowing what I know now fires me up with enthusiasm to share this truth: there is a brighter way. What you seek, you will find. I want to impart this to all who approach me about their creative issues and anxieties: there are answers to your suffering and your longing.

The #PlayApartTogether campaign has recently been promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to encourage people to stay socially connected from home.

Fifty years ago, when Paul McCartney announced he had left the Beatles, the news dashed the hopes of millions of fans, while fueling false reunion rumors that persisted well into the new decade.

In 1722, Daniel Defoe pulled off one of the great literary hoaxes of all time. A Journal of the Plague Year, he called his latest book.

He survived the last great plague in London and the city’s Great Fire. He was imprisoned and persecuted for his religious and political views.

Shakespeare lived his life in plague-time. He was born in April 1564, a few months before an outbreak of bubonic plague swept across England and killed a quarter of the people in his hometown.

The evolution of the novel and short story in the 19th century brought us one of the greatest human sources of comfort, besides food and a nice hot bath.

Watching cute cat videos and looking at their online pictures may not be a waste of time. A new study has found doing so could boost energy levels and increase feelings of happiness.

A plague of serious proportions is ravaging the world. But not for the first time. From 1347-51, the Black Death killed anywhere from one-tenth to one-half (or more) of Europe’s population.

A new social music app is pushing the boundaries of music creation by making recording artists out of novices with little to no musical training or traditional talent.

Many musicians are reaching out from isolation on balconies, in condos or the outdoors during the COVID-19 pandemic.