As I exited the new Salinger biopic, The Rebel in the Rye, which explores Jerry Salinger’s rise from struggling student-writer to world-famous author of Catcher in the Rye, and had its world premier at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, I overheard more than one viewer question Salinger’s sanity.

Our world – including, perhaps especially, the United States – appears to have taken a dark and chaotic turn. This has been building for some time and is now bursting into full view. This is not a political statement. I know many fine people (and not so fine) of every political stripe. Good, sincere, and spiritually advanced humans exist across the mainstream socio-religious-political spectrum.

A fascinating social media feud wages between Sinead O'Connor and Miley Cyrus. It began with an open letter that Sinead wrote to Miley, the gist of which was that Sinead was warning Miley not to sexualize herself as she has been doing lately (just two examples being her MTV VMA performance and her topless magazine spread). It further assumed that Miley was doing this at the behest of the white men who control the record industry and are merely doing so to boost their own profits, not because they care about Miley's long-term career or her as a person.

As an author and passionate reader (I looked it up for this post and saw that I've bought about 180 books over the past 12 months) it's wonderful to see that a newly release scientific study confirms something that many of us already knew to be true: reading literary fiction improves our empathy. 

 It's not uncommon to think that buying something shiny and new will boost our positive feelings; we've all tried out that theory at one time or another. The bad news is that not only can't we purchase our way to happiness, it turns out that the more we try, the less likely we are to have appropriate levels of self-esteem and the more prone we are to anxiety, stress, and the negative psychic impacts of traumatic events.

The World Happiness Report for 2013 has just been released. Americans may be shocked to discover that Mexico came in one spot higher on the happiness scale than the United States. Also outperforming the US are countries as disparate as Panama, Israel, Canada, most of Northern Europe, Costa Rica, and even the United Arab Emirates. How can this be?

 Question from a reader:

I have a question about the section in your book on forgiveness. I really like, no love, that part but want to know how to apply it right. After we forgive someone, do we have to resume a relationship with that person again? Also, how do we know if we've really forgiven that person?

Here is my latest article, written for Huffington Post, concerning the almost-school shooting outside Atlanta, Georgia and how unconditional love saved countless people from being killed.

The latest political scandal, courtesy of New York city mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner presents an opportunity to re-think what matters most in our elected politicians and how best to engender a better society for all now and in the future.

A startling new scientific theory has ramifications for how we see our daily lives. For decades, the conventional scientific wisdom about the formation of our Universe has been that it all started with a Big Bang and has been expanding ever since. A new article published in the journal Nature reveals that one cosmologist is proposing a radically different interpretation of the same known facts about our Universe, concluding that perhaps the cosmos isn't expanding at all.

I visited the EMP museum, designed by Frank Gehry and dedicated to music and pop culture. One of the exhibits is about Jimi Hendrix's time in London (1966-67), when he formed his band, cut his first album, and exploded onto the rock music scene.

A newly released study reaffirms one of the key tenets of The Bliss Experiment: what we believe about ourselves changes our body and mind. 

Sometimes it's hard to see the larger trends when we're inundated with life's daily battles. A newly released scientific study on American's growing religious tolerance exemplifies this. 

The July issue of GQ features an interview with the rapper Drake in which he mentions having lunch with box office mega-star Will Smith, whom Drake apparently sees as somewhat of a mentor. The most important thing he learned from Smith?

Yesterday, while I was buying something at the store, I noticed the woman ringing me up had a giant Aum symbol tattooed onto the top of her right hand and wrist. It was an unusual placement. I asked her if I was correct that was an Aum symbol. She smiled, confirmed it was so, and added,

No, this isn't the post where I confess a shameful personal secret. In the current issue of The Atlantic, there's an interesting article on alcohol, drinking, and intoxication that hints at some deeper truths. The article looks at a series of studies demonstrating that the environment and context within which we drink greatly impacts our thoughts, experiences, and even our physical responses to the alcohol.

Not long ago, I was speaking with someone very wealthy. She was telling me how much happier she and her husband were once they sold off a few of their mansions around the globe, got rid of half their staff, and downsized their possessions across the board. Having all that stuff -- even when they could hire staff to help them deal with it -- was making their lives more stressful, not better.

Recently, a controversial new study was released in which the authors claimed they found evidence that wealthier people are indeed happier than poorer people. If so, this would overturn dozens (if not hundreds) of prior studies that found either no correlation between wealth and happiness or even a negative correlation (that is, richer people are less happy than poorer ones). Given that I dedicated an entire chapter on this topic to The Bliss Experiment including analyzing many of the most interesting studies, it's essential to take a close look at this new claim.

Recently I got into a disagreement with another that quickly degenerated into a heated exchange -- primarily on his end. It began over a trivial but untrue statement that he made. Unwisely, I responded bluntly with the proven (and verifiably accurate) facts. Instead of conceding his error, he became enraged and the dialogue migrated into a personal attack on me which left me feeling a bit shaken, not because I internalized or believed any of the attack but because I was stunned just how quickly things turned ugly.

I'd delighted to be informed that The Bliss Experiment: 28 Days to Personal Transformation has won the Nautilus Silver Award for Best Personal Growth / Self-Help / Psychology book for the 2013 award year. Thank you to everyone for you support and appreciation.