You’ve heard the name a thousand times, especially recently. El Niño. With growing concern about what some are calling a “Super El Niño” expected to persist through February 2027 and with the potential to become one of the strongest on record, I realized something. I had never once asked the obvious question... Who is the Niño? Turns out, he has a name. Jesus. I didn’t see that coming! The name goes back centuries to fishermen in Peru who noticed that around Christmastime, th

For nearly 2,000 years, people traveled to Eleusis, drank a mysterious ceremonial brew and experienced something that changed how they viewed life—and even death. What happened there was never adequately explained. Was it secrecy, ineffability… or something else? While writing Roots of Fear, I discovered that ancient mystery might solve a very modern problem of my own.

Why is it that when we were little, a dark bedroom could turn a coat hanging on the door into something enormous? The monster under the bed was real enough that you wouldn't dare let an arm hang over the mattress. And then there are the monsters we deliberately handed down to our children. Jack climbs the beanstalk—and finds a giant. King Kong. Godzilla. Goliath. Fairy tales are filled with enormous beings who eat children, destroy villages, and live just beyond the world we

They dug up a dead pope, dressed him in his robes, propped him on a throne—and put him on trial. Still not finished. Medieval Rome was about to get even more ridiculous.

If I handed you the biography of the most famous person in history... and I had torn out eighteen consecutive years, wouldn't your first question be:

What if some of what we carry didn’t begin with us? A strange story about the pain in my foot led me to epigenetics—and an experiment that made me wonder what our ancestors might leave behind.

In 1907, a respected physician attempted one of history's strangest experiments: to determine whether something leaves the human body at the moment of death—and if it does, whether it has weight.

Artificial intelligence has become the newest object of both fascination and fear. Some believe it will save humanity. Others believe it will destroy it. But perhaps we're asking the wrong question. People often ask whether AI could ever become spiritual. Could a machine possess compassion? Forgiveness? Love? Hope? Maybe. Maybe not. But here's the question that unsettles me more: How often do we perform those things without actually feeling them? We say, "I'm happy for you,"

Why are we so fascinated by secrets? Not gossip. Not spoilers. Not the kind of secret someone tells you while insisting you not tell anyone else, which is usually how twelve people find out before lunch. Close-up view of an ornate key resting on an ancient book I mean the deeper kind of secret—the kind that shapes history, protects power, or keeps ordinary people from asking the one question no one wants answered. Perhaps secrets fascinate us because we instinctively know the