One of my favourite kinds of movie is the American picaresque, in which the characters make their way across the country, learning about life against the gorgeous backdrops of that vast land.

As many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.

Thinking is a physical process, the human brain is not exempt from evolution

Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.

In societies no less than individuals, acknowledging our limitations may ultimately be more humane than denying them.

A word is an arbitrary label - that's the foundation of linguistics. But many people think otherwise. They believe in word magic: that uttering a spell, incantation, curse, or prayer can change the world. Don't snicker: Would you ever say, 'Nothing has gone wrong yet' without looking for wood to knock?

Evolution is an indispensable component of any satisfying explanation of our psychology.