Sunday morning services have long been the “most segregated hour” in America, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declared, calling churches’ racial segregation “one of the shameful tragedies” of the nation. While many congregations look different now, experts say the most powerful divider may be that Americans organize their religious lives around their politics. (Boorstein, The Washington Post)
Read MoreOperated by Falun Gong, the persecuted Chinese religious movement, Shen Yun’s success flows in part from its ability to pack venues worldwide — while exploiting young, low-paid performers with little regard for their health or well-being. (Rothfeld & Hong, The New York Times)
Read MoreThe report attributed the historically high number to several factors, including a multiyear surge in home prices and fast-rising rent costs, a reduction in covid-era assistance, stagnating wages and overburdened homeless service systems — the latter at times exacerbated by influxes of migrants. (Kornfield, Paquette & Hennessey-Fiske, The Washington Post)
Read MoreThe 0.9% increase in 2024 was a slight slowdown from 2023, when the world population grew by 75 million people. In January 2025, 4.2 births and 2.0 deaths were expected worldwide every second, according to the estimates. (Schneider, AP News)
Read MoreProf Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and atheist, stepped down from the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) on Saturday after it censored an article supporting the belief that gender is biological. Prof Dawkins accused the group of caving to the “hysterical squeals” of cancel culture after it deleted the article from its website, saying it was a “mistake” to have published it. (Henderson, The Telegraph)
Read MoreDepending on how the Supreme Court rules, we may be in the final days of TikTok in the U.S. But it continues to be a powerful platform for creators and communities the world over, "particularly with young people in the Global South," says Payal Arora, a digital anthropologist at Utrecht University. (Daniel, NPR)
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