History & Society

History & Society

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

Tesla in a suit sitting in a chair.
"She understood me and I understood her. I loved that pigeon.”
Two pictures of a drone flying in the sky with a laser.
The futuristic weapon could be ready for the battlefield in 5 years.
wormhole nasa illustration
Without wormholes, warp drive, or some type of new matter, energy, or physics, everyone is limited by the speed of light. Or are they?
A graph showing the death rate on everest.
The world’s highest mountain is also the world’s highest cemetery, with some bodies serving as creepy landmarks for today’s climbers.
The golden Buddha statue at McDonald's towering beside the iconic McDonald's sign.
Adrie Kusserow, an anthropologist and scholar of Buddhism, shares how her study of the religion and its history has reshaped her view of the world — and herself.
A banknote with a portrait of a man in a hat.
New DNA analyses raise questions over the theory that Christopher Columbus and his men brought syphilis to Europe.
A beach along the Great Lakes with waves crashing over rocks and sand.
Skilled hunters adapted to the changing landscape and left tantalizing clues to who they were.
A map showing the location of the arctic sea.
No shots fired. No flags raised. And no dry land gained. Still, the U.S. effectively grew by the size of about two Californias in December.
An image of the surface of Mars, showcasing its captivating and unique geological formations resembling a grand canyon.
Valles Marineris is the Solar System's grandest canyon, many times longer, wider, and deeper than the Grand Canyon. What scarred Mars so?
The Milky Way, a galaxy in space filled with stars, grew up.
Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is both completely normal and absolutely remarkable in a number of ways. Here's the story of our cosmic home.
An image of a red light shining on a dark background.
Millennia ago, philosophers like Anaximander grasped that nature is the ultimate recycler.
A digitally generated image of a glowing, elongated object framed by a translucent rectangle against a dark background with cosmic web-like structures.
On the largest cosmic scales, galaxies line up along filaments, with great clusters forming at their intersection. Here's how it took shape.
Charles bridge in prague, czech republic.
Uncovering the story of Milan Hausner, the Sadská clinic, and LSD psychotherapy behind the Iron Curtain.
An illustration of an undergraduate man sitting at a desk.
College students once stood out from the pack on IQ tests. Today, they're about average.
A map of a cluster of stars illustrating star birth.
Here in our Solar System, we only have one star: a singlet. For many systems, including the highest-mass ones, that's anything but the norm.
A group of people holding signs that say we demand voting rights now.
There is a cross-country correlation between democracy and health. Is there good evidence to suggest it is causal?
An image of a spiral galaxy with stars in the background, showcasing the mesmerizing beauty of cosmic formations.
The pattern 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc., is the Fibonacci sequence. It shows up all over nature. But what's the full explanation behind it?
A map of europe with many orange dots.
London’s busiest airport seems to be rebounding well from the pandemic — but Istanbul has better prospects in the long run.