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History & Society
Trace how culture, power, and ideas shape societies across time.
The problem of the electroweak horizon haunts the standard model of cosmology and beckons us to ask how deep a rethink the model may need.
If a person stands little chance of ever being wealthy, perhaps playing the lottery is a rational decision.
"The Man in the High Castle" may be the most beloved alternate history book, but it is not the most historically accurate.
The chances that a newborn survives childhood have increased from 50% to 96% globally.
Contrary to common experience, not everything needs a medium to travel through. Overcoming that assumption removes the need for an aether.
Recasting the iconic Carrington Event as just one of many superstorms in Earth’s past, scientists reveal the potential for even more massive eruptions from the sun.
We have become the greatest threat to ourselves and to life on this planet. We need a set of agreed-upon safeguards to preserve our future.
In "The History of Western Philosophy," Bertrand Russell made it clear whose thinking he admired — and whose thinking he didn't.
The pandemic and the Great Resignation fed into a perfect storm of inflation — and some restaurateurs cleaned up.
His greatest speeches were loaded with empathy.
1hr 25mins
Richard Reeves explains the big problems facing men today — and why no one is talking about them.
Glimpse into the ancient Maya empire through the writing of its own inhabitants.
4mins
Forget AI. Gene editing is still our most powerful — and dangerous — technology.
These composers channeled the horror of the Holocaust and Hiroshima while honoring those who lived through it.
They're the most common type of exoplanet known today, and many astronomers have called them "super-habitable." None of that is true.
As a physician, John Pringle helped reinvent hygiene; as a husband, he destroyed a woman’s life with his abuse.
Rapamycin is potentially the most powerful anti-aging drug ever discovered. However, due to its unlucky history, few know of it.
Billy was a local celebrity in the early 1900s. And he might have been a murderer.
Before there were planets, stars, and galaxies, before even neutral atoms or stable protons, there was the Big Bang. How did we prove it?
Einstein's relativity overthrew the notion of absolute space and time, replacing them with a spacetime fabric. But is spacetime truly real?