The season has morphed into a weeks-long festival of consumption, its own liturgical calendar’s worth of shopping holidays: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Boxing Day. The advent calendar began as a form of religious expression. It still is—it’s just a different religion. (Cushing, The Atlantic)
Read MoreRecent Barna research reveals that only one in four single moms attends church weekly, the steepest drop among women in recent years. The finding raises an uncomfortable question: Are churches truly heeding the biblical command to care for the vulnerable in their midst? (Andersen, Christianity Today)
Read MoreTens of thousands of kids who take prescription ADHD medication also wind up on other powerful psychotropic drugs—including antipsychotics and antidepressants, studies show. For some of them, the ADHD drugs themselves can be a trigger. (Ramachandran et al., The Wall Street Journal)
Read MoreArtificial intelligence can miss critical warning signs and fail to detect psychiatric emergencies, yet because the chatbots show competence in some areas, teens might assume they are reliable for mental-health support, the study found. (Wells, The Wall Street Journal)
Read MoreThe longtime leader on Spotify ranks as the top show in the U.S. on Apple Podcasts, based on 2025 listenership, with his interview with Elon Musk also charting highly. He took over the spot from The Daily, which is now the second most popular podcast on Apple, and, in turn, saw their episode “Trump, Again” also rank highly. (Huston, The Hollywood Reporter)
Read MoreFeel connected to a celebrity you’ve never met in person? "Parasocial" has been crowned Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year, highlighting the rise in “unhealthy” and “one-sided” relationships with celebrities, influencers and even AI chatbots. (Mouriquand, Euronews)
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