Rick Paulas
Niche Dating Sites Are Making People Dumber
The problem with matching two people who believe that lizard people control the world's currency from the sewers of L.A. is that they could have kids who will carry on their batshit ideas.
I've Spent More Than 300 Hours in the Deep-Sea Twilight Zone
When you're in the Twilight Zone, it's incredible because everything you see is something that has never been seen before. But you have to be careful, because it's very easy to die at that depth.
The Weird and Fraudulent World of Catholic Relics
For centuries, some Christians have venerated the bodies and possessions of saints, but more often than not, there's no way to tell whether something is St. Peter's skull or a really old potato.
You Should Watch the Seven-Hour Hungarian Film 'Sátántangó' Right Now
Bala Tarr's black-and-white opus is looooong, but it's also a masterpiece that unfolds like a series of perfectly composed paintings.
The Power Team Was the Bloody, Evangelical Freakshow That Ruled the 80s
They bent steel and smashed concrete with their skulls while preaching the word of Christ to massive audiences. Two decades later, the group was bankrupt.
Do Mormons Care About Joseph Smith's 40 Wives?
This year the LDS church released a series of essays that quietly acknowledged some of the more sordid bits of Mormon history, including the religion's founder's polygamy.
A Tour of the Long-Lost Internet Churches of the Web 1.0 Days
I revisited the sacred relics of the days when GeoCities pages roamed the land.
This Dude Started His Own Cult
"It's a group performance where everyone's a player," says Christopher Allman, the creator and leader of the People of Ieya.
This Guy Thinks Danny DeVito Is the Antichrist
William Tapley, self-proclaimed "Third Eagle of the Apocalypse" and "Co-Prophet of the End Times," thinks the guy who played the Penguin is going to bring about the Apocalypse.
Catholics Are Going to Freak When We Find Aliens
What would happen to the world's religions if we made contact with alien life? I asked Dr. David A. Weintraub, an astronomer at Vanderbilt University who's been trying to get to the bottom of that question.
Can an Open-Source Religion Work?
The internet is democratizing everything. CNN is being swapped out for Twitter. Pirate Bay is being used in place of cable. Now, it's finally impacting religion with Syntheism, the first “open-source” faith.