Brad Mathews, Author

Thoughts on society and culture

  • Surfing the Title Wave

    Motivational posters may be filled with flowery fluff and cheesy slogans, and they have become a meme in their own right. Every office has at least one. When I started work at the company I have loyally served since 2006, I marveled and chuckled at a few of these posters, which still adorn our walls…

  • Manufacturing Fear

    On the NASA Voyager mission in 1977, Carl Sagan curated content for a golden record that was affixed to the space probe, which would eventually reach interstellar space. Hoping to share some details about our celestial neighborhood and the human experience, Sagan chose the material for the record should any spacefaring alien species intercept the…

  • Thanks For Giving Me Your Attention

    Last weekend while searching for new programs to watch on Disney’s streaming platform, I happened on an animated short that centers on a boy in canoe camp who is forced to row with a non-vocal autistic girl. The struggle to communicate served as the ultimate theme for the feature.  In order for them to reach…

  • Learn Like an Egyptian

    Science has given humanity many gifts over the centuries. Denying that fundamental truth is like cutting out a piece of our souls and banishing it to oblivion to suffer a tragic death, yet many continue to criticize it. I like to say that science isn’t what you know—it’s what you don’t. To put a finer…

  • Myopia of Faith

    What I am about to write today has been marinating for many months, but the impetus behind today’s post comes from a single word that stood out to me while listening to the LDS Church President’s General Conference talk, “Let God Prevail.” President Russel M. Nelson related a story about a single word of advice…

  • A Flock Through the Eye of a Needle

    I am not a television enthusiast. I believe that the television may be one of the worst inventions in the history of mankind, though it may have been conceived with good intentions. I find that TV in general rots the brain and contributes to poor development of critical thinking skills. Truly, there is no substitute…

  • It Doesn’t Matter if You’re Zeroes or Ones

    Former football coach Chris Petersen, who coached for Boise State University and later, the University of Washington, became well known for analytical thinking when it came to studying footage of his and opposing players. It’s never as good as you think, Petersen claimed, nor is it ever as bad as you think. Petersen used this…

  • A Balm for Violence

    A nation besieged by violence is not an easy one in which to live. Syria has been struggling with civil war as millions flee the in hopes of a new start where they can feel safe. By nature, our species tends to seek comfort and safety wherever and by whatever means necessary in order to…

  • The Winter of Relativity

    In the early 20th Century, a physicist named Albert Einstein posited that space-time becomes warped around massive celestial objects. By building from Newtonian laws, Einstein crafted his famous theory of relativity and suggested that an object’s energy is directly proportional to its mass. Thus the equation E=MC² was born. Many scientists over the decades challenged…

  • Fiction is Truth

    In 1868, American Civil War novelist John William De Forest penned an essay titled Great American Novel, a term that has been used for various purposes ever since. De Forest referred to fictional works by American authors that reflect American traditions, values, and culture. While tradition, value, and culture can reflect a diverse range of…

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