Tag: #Culture
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Why Does Dracula Still Seduce Us?
The Vampire Who Raised Me on Late Night TV Most people remember the first monster that scared them. I remember the first one that didn’t. I was around eight or nine. I was allowed to stay up late on Friday night and watch The Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show. Bela Lugosi as Dracula was in…
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The Strange Freedom of Spooky Season
For One Month, Nobody Thinks You’re Weird I’d like to say something weird happened the other morning when I visited my bank. But I can’t. You see, it’s October now, and spooky season has officially arrived like a spiced pumpkin latte. The truth is, I don’t really change much in October. Everyone else does. I…
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A Squirrel, 3,000 Nuts, and a Question I Can’t Answer
What If We Aren’t the Only Ones Connected? I was sitting on my porch watching a squirrel burying hickory nuts in my yard. I have watched squirrels do this countless times and never really thought much about it. This time, for whatever reason, I started paying attention to where the squirrel was taking them. One…
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Is This Bigfoot or Just a Person in a Pond?
How an Ambiguous Photograph Turns Into Evidence Take a good look at the photograph before you read anything about it. Don’t look for someone else’s explanation. Just look at the figure standing in the water and decide what you think you’re seeing. Is that a person or Bigfoot? Are you sure? I’ll tell you what…
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Who Is the Grim Reaper?
How a Medieval Image Still Scares Modern Brains Just picture this for a second. You’re sick enough to need the ER, not dying, just sick enough that toughing it out at home stopped feeling smart. You park, you walk toward the doors, half thinking about your symptoms, half thinking about the wait. Then you look…
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What High School Biology Owes to Frankenstein
Frankenstein Wasn’t a Nightmare, It Was a Lab Report In 1803, a crowd in London paid to watch a dead man’s face move. His name was George Forster, hanged that morning for murder. A scientist named Giovanni Aldini wired electricity into his corpse, and the jaw clenched, one eye opened, and a hand curled into…
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Judas Iscariot Didn’t Betray Jesus. He Obeyed Him.
The Lost Gospel That Turns History’s Worst Villain Into Its Most Loyal Disciple Almost everyone has betrayed someone else at some point, whether they’d call it that or not. Sometimes it’s telling a friend a truth they didn’t want to hear. Sometimes it’s ending a relationship someone else wasn’t ready to let go of. Sometimes…
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The Sound of Thunder
I don’t spend much time looking backward, but one story about rain brought my grandmother back to me. When Kateryna Fedotova tagged me in her rain-writing challenge, I expected to enjoy reading her story and then move on with my day. Instead, I found myself thinking about someone I haven’t thought about in a very…
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Did a Pope Just Hate Cats?
What One Papal Bull Reveals About Where Our Superstitions Actually Come From You knock on wood without thinking about it. You toss salt over your shoulder if you spill it, or you know someone who does. You’ve watched a friend refuse to walk under a ladder, not because they believe in curses exactly, but because,…
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Did AI Just Launch a Missile?
No. But it raised a far more important question. I don’t usually write about artificial intelligence. It’s not something that is really in my wheelhouse. But a recent article in The Debrief discussing the U.S. military’s use of Grok changed that. Not because of the politics or the company behind it, but because it made…