History & Society

History & Society

Trace how culture, power, and ideas shape societies across time.

A physical map of the Earth showing Alaska, Siberia, and the Bering Strait.
Ancient humans crossed the Bering Strait land bridge from Asia into North America. But some of them went back.
Cézanne still life with bread and eggs
To answer that question, we may have to figure out when the famed painter started to go bald.
Hand-drawn treasure map, complete with a red X that "marks the spot."
X marks the spot. The Dutch town of Ommeren has been swamped by detectorists armed with shovels looking for $20-million treasure.
Mauna Kea with Gemini North
A history of injustice and the greatest natural location for ground-based telescopes have long been at odds. Here's how the healing begins.
Humans are good visual thinkers, too, but we tend to privilege verbal thinking.
Far from practicing witchcraft, the experimentation of medieval alchemists helped bring about the Scientific Revolution.
Innovative thinking has done away with problems that long dogged the electric devices — and both scientists and environmentalists are excited about the possibilities.
Adopting a healthy scepticism towards inherited ideas means “emptying the container of the Self.”
New blood types are regularly discovered by an unusual absence or an unusual presence — both of which can result in tragedy.
7mins
Humans are musical animals four million years in the making, explained by music expert Michael Spitzer.
Entrenched business wisdom says that community-led economic systems are pure fantasy. Douglas Rushkoff disagrees.
7mins
How the Big Bang gave us time, explained by theoretical physicist.
einstein quantum
When you bring two fingers together, you can feel them "touch" each other. But are your atoms really touching, and if so, how?
What we've learning from the world’s coldest, most forbidding, and most peaceful continent.
europe digital divide
Some Europeans really don't want to use the internet.
Warm relationships protect your mind and body from the slings and arrows of life.
travel straight line
In Einstein's relativity and the Standard Model, we only have three spatial dimensions. But there could be more, and many think there are.