Alanna Mitchell

1 month ago | broadview.org | Alanna Mitchell

Religious leaders have been arguing for centuries about the correct date of Easter. Complexities revolve, in part, around how humans tell time. Historically, we measured the passage of months according to the phases of the moon. But we measure daylight hours and the movement from summer to winter according to Earth’s orbit around the sun. The calculation of Easter’s date relies on a combination of lunar and solar methods of telling time.

1 month ago | broadview.org | Alanna Mitchell

Religious leaders have been arguing for centuries about the correct date of Easter. Complexities revolve, in part, around how humans tell time. Historically, we measured the passage of months according to the phases of the moon. But we measure daylight hours and the movement from summer to winter according to Earth’s orbit around the sun. The calculation of Easter’s date relies on a combination of lunar and solar methods of telling time.

2 months ago | broadview.org | Alanna Mitchell

We start our pilgrimage in the ruins of Melrose Abbey in the Scottish borderlands, a medieval monument to the enduring bond between religion and politics. It’s a cloudy, cool day. I can taste the remains of a sweet heritage apple on my lips, bought for a few pence at the walled orchard in the abbey’s Priorwood Garden a few minutes ago.

Nov 21, 2024 | broadview.org | Alanna Mitchell

At first,  I wasn’t sure I could make it to the end of the dark stone passageway. The dozen of us in my group were among the few allowed that day last February to penetrate the heart of Newgrange, an ancient temple north of Dublin rumoured to be a portal to the afterlife. The Irish built it from great stone slabs more than 5,000 years ago and then hid it within a hill they painstakingly built over top. It is older than Stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza.

Mar 6, 2024 | broadview.org | Alanna Mitchell

The biblical story of how the female body was fashioned from Adam’s rib isn’t taken literally in scientific circles anymore, but it still shapes medical research in fundamental ways. Medicine has long seen the female body as just a male body with a few extra bits. But that’s a fatal misreading, argues Cat Bohannon in her new book, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.