Keeping up appearances: What "likeability" really costs women in Hollywood

The secret history of "Y'all": The murky origins of a legendary Southern slang word

Transformed by loss: Batman and the real-life heroic journey that inspired his creation

Getting the story meant risking sexual assault -- I did it anyway

An X-rated education: Where male escorts learn their trade

Rise of the imperial plutocracy: New research is exposing the stunning domination of global super-elites

Franzen's "pretty" women: The women of "Purity" are beautiful and invisible, even to themselves

Donald Trump & white America's anxiety: The political throes of a forgotten country

5 worst right-wing moments of the week -- Peggy Noonan makes a Dominican friend

"New Orleans was primed for all-out combat": Remembering the media's deadly Hurricane Katrina racism

America's true P.C. villains: The maddening "censorship" doublespeak of right-wing culture warriors

Paul Krugman: There's a reason the 23 "Katrinas" the GOP's tried to pin on Obama haven't stuck

This incoherent Donald Trump interview proves one thing: Sarah Palin's descent into obscurity is complete

Miley Cyrus, mechanical MTV party machine: Even by low VMA standards, her manic eroticism and boring stunts failed to connect

Kanye West announces presidential bid -- no really, we're not kidding

John Oliver improves history by peppering it with incredibly elaborate and totally ridiculous lies

Conservatives on Twitter go apoplectic at Obama's "re-naming" of Mt. McKinley

Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and the un-"PC": What the rise of "politically incorrect" candidates says about conservatism

Chrissie Hynde is wrong: Blaming rape victims for their own assault isn't "just common sense"

Donald Trump's Nixonian populism: Making sense of his grab bag of nativism & welfare statism

Watch the VMAs' most heartwarming moment: Brought to you by Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift's publicists

Fox News declares #BlackLivesMatter a "murder movement"

The most awkward moments of the 2015 VMAs

Oliver Sacks' brilliant & essential lesson: What the legendary science writer taught us about politics & the human mind

6 ways climate change is already screwing over Alaska

America's next top nativist: GOP long-shots try to trump The Donald on immigration insanity

Black Lives Matter activists are furious about Rebel Wilson's tonedeaf VMA bit on police brutality

Watch Nicki Minaj call Miley Cyrus a b*tch onstage at the VMAs

Bigoted Kentucky county clerk who refuses to perform same-sex marriages accidentally married transgender man in February

Kanye's vulnerable, contradictory VMA speech is already a classic Generation X TV moment

Watch the 2016 presidential candidates fumble around the issue of gun control: "The heart of the matter is not guns, the heart of the matter is the heart"

To Oliver Sacks, patients were people first: Resilient and adaptive, with a diagnosis that told only part of the story

The insipid hell of the VMAs: Why pop culture's obsession with "Big Moments" is cynical, stupid & deeply boring

Climate change is putting cities at risk of bigger, badder tropical storms

A predictable warmonger: Dick Cheney name-checks Hitler & launches credibility-free attack on Iran deal

Justin Bieber's VMA comeback: With a bravo performance (and a few tears), pop's wild child is ready for his next act

Rebel Wilson's VMA fail: Her "f*ck tha stripper police" joke was a cheap shot

Bill Murray reveals why he finally decided to join the "Ghostbusters" reboot: "It kept eating at me"