Another great episode from Shankar Vedantam and the folks at NPR’s Hidden Brain:

“If you’ve taken part in a religious service, have you ever stopped to think about how it all came to be? How did people become believers? Where did the rituals come from? And most of all, what purpose does it all serve? This week, we explore these questions with psychologist Azim Shariff, who argues that we can think of religion from a Darwinian perspective, as an innovation that helped human societies to survive and flourish: Creating God”

Listen to the episode here…

Source: The Joy of Tech comic… Salesmen on the doorstep.

The rapid evolution of a wordless tongue. Consider the tilde. There it is, that little squiggle, hanging out on the far-upper-left-hand side of your ­computer keyboard: Smile, You’re Speaking Emoji: The Rapid Evolution of a Wordless Tongue – Daily Intelligencer – Pocket

“Once upon a time in America,” says professor Sajay Samuel, “going to college did not mean graduating with debt.” Today, higher education has become a consumer product — costs have skyrocketed, saddling students with a combined debt of over $1 trillion, while universities and loan companies make massive profits. Samuel proposes a radical solution: link tuition costs to a degree’s expected earnings, so that students can make informed decisions about their future, restore their love of learning and contribute to the world in a meaningful way.