Editor’s note: This article is part of our collaboration with Point Taken, a new program from WGBH that will next air on Tuesday, April 19 on PBS and online at pbs.org. The show features fact-based debate on major issues of the day, without the shouting.

The Syrian civil war has entered its fifth year with few signs of ending.

The fighting has...

Tax Day is finally here. If you’re getting a refund, lucky you. But if you owe the government money, you may be worried that you have to pay the amount due by the filing deadline of April 18 – even if you asked for an extension.

Owing the IRS – especially when...

In the hours since I first sat down to write this piece, my laptop tells me the National Basketball Association has had to deny that it threatened to cancel its 2017 All-Star Game over a new anti-LGBT law in North Carolina – a story repeated by many news...

Any adult who has attempted to learn a foreign language can attest to how difficult and confusing it can be. So when a three-year-old growing up in a bilingual household inserts Spanish words into his English sentences, conventional wisdom assumes that he is confusing the two languages.

Research...

The author F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that the “rich are different than you and me.”

Fitzgerald’s observation rings especially true today. The growing divide between the wealthy and everyone else is one of the preeminent issues of the 2016 presidential election. A tidal wave of public anger over income inequality and the...

In order to report on a motel-owning voyeur who, for years, secretly spied on guests having sex, writer Gay Talese agreed to not identify the motelier, Gerald Foos. Talese even signed a confidentiality agreement that Foos had prepared.

With this...

What would it take to hide an entire planet? It sounds more like a question posed in an episode of “Star Trek” than in academic discourse, but sometimes the bleeding edge of science blurs with themes found in science fiction.

Of course...

Free trade has become the Republican elephant in the room, thanks to Donald Trump.

The GOP front-runner has helped make trade one of the hot-button issues of the 2016 presidential race. And it’s tearing the Republican Party apart – just like it did in the wake of the U.S....

Russia is not what you think. Most discussion about its energy influence has focused on oil and gas, particularly gas. Russia can be described, and is routinely described, as a petro-state. This is only partly accurate.

In truth, Russia has been building an altogether new...

The teenagers who were hooked on Pac-Man in the arcades and amusement parks of the early 1970s are getting ready for retirement, but many of them have never stopped playing video games. In fact, it doesn’t look like they are going to stop gaming...