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History & Society
Trace how culture, power, and ideas shape societies across time.
A survey of more than 6,000 of the world's richest, most influential people shows that 9% of them attended Harvard University.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
When three wise men gifted baby Jesus with gold, frankincense, and myrrh, they had no idea one was made from colliding neutron stars.
Carl Sagan was far from the first to declare we are the children of ancient stars.
Grab a sword, a small plate, and a young child. We've got a demon to summon.
In post-Soviet nations where ministers have a relatively high BMI, corruption tends to be high, too.
Playing the long game in Japan is about creating something so enduring that it becomes timeless.
Self-help often distills philosophical ideas for the modern ear. Sometimes, its better to go back to the source.
The Firefly Sparkle galaxy was only spotted because of gravitational lensing's effects. Yet galaxies like these brought us a visible cosmos.
The tech world’s fixation on artificial intelligence has spawned beliefs and rituals that resemble religion — complete with digital deities, moral codes, and threats of damnation.
10mins
“If we're to be happy at all, it has to be found outside of this notion of pleasure. We have to step beyond hedonia. But the problem is that we risk going too far.”
For a substantial part of human history, people thought smoking tobacco was perfectly healthy. Native American tribes, who introduced the tobacco plant to Europeans and — by extension, the rest […]
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Sixty years ago, the Soviet Union was way ahead of the USA in the space race. Then one critical event changed everything.
What if the barrier to a fulfilled life isn’t technology but culture?
“Could you create a god?” Nietzsche's titular character asks in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."
From tulips to Bitcoin, bubbles have been given a bad rap as destroyers of dreams — but they’re essential for our brightest future. Here’s why.
From a hot, dense, uniform state in its earliest moments, our entire known Universe arose. These unavoidable steps made it all possible.
With no reliable way to discern the author of an artwork, we may eventually abandon the question of whether something was made by humans or not.
It was barely a century ago that we thought the Milky Way encompassed the entirety of the Universe. Now? We're not even a special galaxy.