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Derek Beres
Derek Beres is a freelance writer. Based in Portland, Oregon, he has served in senior editorial positions at a number of tech companies and has years of experience in health, science, and music writing. He is the co-host of the Conspirituality podcast and co-author of Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracies Became a Health Threat.
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Dishonesty in one domain doesn’t excuse hucksterism in another. Yet as long as healing remains a lucrative business, it’s going to remain a challenge weeding through the pretty designs and catchy slogans to find medicine that works.
Everyone you pass on the street, each person you drive by every day, has a story as well. To claim their death is not worth noticing is to say that their life was not worth living. And that's too bad, because interdependence is something we all rely on every single day, knowingly or not.
"Much of what we now call ‘religion’ was originally rooted in an acknowledgement of the tragic fact that life depended on the destruction of other creatures," writes Karen Armstrong.
To what degree are you allowed the privacy to grieve the loss of a family member? Christos Catsouras found out in October 2006. His 18-year-old daughter, Nikki, died after slamming […]
It’s hard to imagine empathy being anything but beneficial. It has become one of the most championed mental states in the neuroscience age: the ability to feel what someone else is feeling and, if all goes well, extend a hand altruistically or compassionately.
One day while walking through Rutgers’ Quad Two on the way to the gym, I noticed my friend Shelton across the lawn. As he bounced along the sidewalk—he was in […]
In his 1961 book, Psychotherapy East & West, the philosopher Alan Watts wrote, If there is to be a battle, there must be a field of battle; when the contestants […]
Most of us recognize soma as the ‘ideal pleasure drug’ in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In this context the pleasure was pacifying—it kept people in line without questioning their […]
It has been amusing listening to the religious right’s argument that marriage must be between a man and woman for one simple reason: the institution itself has been crumbling for […]
It may appear quite simple and easy, but the moment one sits down to practice, one quickly realizes that it is a difficult art. It would be hard to think […]
Like all major religions, there exists numerous ideas of what Buddhism is and how to practice it. Perhaps the hardest part about explaining Buddhism is that it’s nowhere near being […]
The Catholic Church has long regarded itself as a bastion of religious ethics. While it is undeniable numerous charitable efforts and organizations have arisen thanks to its emphasis on its […]
The results from my 23andMe test were not overly surprising. My heritage is predominantly Eastern European, something I already knew given my Hungarian surname and grandparental origins. There were a […]
Human beings have long been engaged in dramatic struggles. We want to honor our better angels, yet our demons wait on the corner, smirking. They know we’ll crack. Evolution has […]
A variety of responses rang out last week after Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The SCOTUS’s decision to allow companies to deny employees access to certain forms of birth control was […]
The selfie continues its trajectory as a major form of communication in today’s social media universe. Named the Oxford Dictionary Online Word of the Year in 2013 the selfie has […]
An estimated two million American adults are involved in cults. While the definition of what a cult is ranges—some claim all religions to be one—it usually involves a charismatic leader […]
As Americans Google ‘David Brat’ to find out how this unknown college professor came to unseat one of the most prominent (on the right) and loathed (on the left) members […]
Las Vegas. A young man, about 22, fist pumps an oversized beer mug out of the passenger seat window. Rookie move. A strip cop spots the amateur, flicks on his […]
In 1875 George Routledge, founder of the British publishing house that bore his name, asked Scottish author Samuel Smiles when he would have the honor of publishing one of his […]