Hours of research by our editors, distilled into minutes of clarity.
There’s a divide among Christian Scientists as to whether encouraging children to believe in Santa Claus is harmless fun or a potentially damaging lie. However, most American parents apparently encourage their children to believe in Santa.
It’s hard to find actual data regarding ghosts, but a survey conducted by Pew Research Group in 2023, revealed that around half of the US adult population believes ghosts can interact with the living, with most thinking that spirits can help rather than harm us.
The ancient Egyptians held many beliefs about eternal life, fueling entire industries tasked with building tombs for the dead. Their leader, the pharaoh, was believed to be divine, and the lives of ordinary people were punctuated with ritual and myth. Learn more about their religion here.
The 1647 Old Deluder Satan law reflects Puritan belief that illiteracy allowed Satan’s influence. The law—the first of its kind in the colonies—mandated towns of over 50 households hire a teacher and over 100 support a grammar school.
In 1905, a Unitarian church in Frank Lloyd Wright’s town was struck by lightning and destroyed. Wright, a Unitarian himself, was commissioned to build the replacement and constructed a simple yet radical concrete sanctuary known as Unity Temple.
There's sometimes a divide set up between secular philosophical texts and religious texts like the Bible, Torah, or Quran. Philosopher Meghan Sullivan argues that scriptures are deeply philosophical texts that form the basis for many profound debates that impact both secular and religious debates.
Every 12 years in Uttar Pradesh province in India, millions of Hindu pilgrims flock to the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers to honor the Maha Kumbh Mela, where participants bathe in the rivers to wash away sin. In 2025, over 600 million people came to the site over 45 days, and were served by hundreds of doctors, firefighters, police, and more.
An 18-mile wire known as an "eruv" encircles most of Manhattan, allowing observant Jews to carry things within its boundaries. This wire is one of many Sabbath workarounds rooted in the ancient rules for resting on the Sabbath day. Every week, a worker inspects the eruv line, and its maintenance costs $100K a year.
Runner Connie Allen was raised in an ultra-orthodox sect of Hasidic Judaism known as Satmar in South Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. This long read details the rigid life of a contemporary Jewish community in New York, and how one young woman opted to leave it.
The iconoclast controversy, which tore Byzantium apart in the eighth and ninth centuries, centered on the use of sacred images (or icons) in Christian worship. The Iconoclasts (literally, “icon smashers”) regarded sacred images as sacrilegious; their opponents, the Iconophiles (“icon lovers”), defended icons as aids to personal devotion. After decades of struggle, the Iconophiles prevailed; their victory ensured that icons, and the brilliant mosaics inspired by them, remained a feature of Byzantine churches.