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Only 36% of Americans can pass a multiple choice quiz that includes questions from the U.S. Citizenship Test. That’s according to a survey by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Don’t gloat. In Canada, Forum conducted a similar survey. They asked...

Wikipedia launched 19 years ago today, January 15, 2001. What is its greatest contribution? As someone who is always researching one subject or another, I’m on the site almost daily. Wikipedia has more than 40 million articles, and is the most popular general...

I’m not big on new year’s resolutions. But there’s something to be said about always trying to improve. You know the typical resolutions. Lose weight. Exercise more. Learn a new skill. Be in the moment. Spend less, save more. Enjoy family and friends. In that spirit,...

Anyone who has ever done public speaking understands the importance of breath control. The ability to regulate your inhales and exhales can help with your delivery. It always helps to take a deep breath before you speak. That’s a great tip for speeches, but too...

As Hurricane Sandy was bearing down on the eastern U.S. coast in 2012, the author Jonathan Safran Foer was in Detroit. He was worried about his wife and kids back home in New York, but all the flights were cancelled. So Safran Foer found the last available rental car...

Does yelling ever work? Plenty of people must think so. Because there’s no shortage of parents, spouses and bosses who feel their message will be better understood when the volume is high. That includes sports coaches. After a few recent hockey firings, a debate has...

The leap from deciphering primitive line carvings to scrolling through Twitter is a long one. Both involve the evolution of the human brain. The human lineage goes back 5-7 million years ago, Homo sapiens arrived roughly 200,000 years ago, and cave paintings began...

Many of the publications I read have never existed anywhere but online. They can be terrific. Others have a physical equivalent. And still others used to be available in paper but are now exclusively digital. How does the way we consume media affect our reading...

November 13 is World Kindness Day. The annual event was launched in 1998 by a coalition of NGOs, and is observed in more than 25 countries, including Canada. The goal is to celebrate good deeds by individuals or organizations. There are websites devoted to...

If I asked you to memorize a set of 26 items, you’d probably find it quite a challenge. And if you had to repeat them all in a specific order, with zero errors, it would be even more difficult. Yet children master that skill when they’re just a few years old. It’s...