History & Society

History & Society

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

The honest power of placebos.
Placebo treatments don't always need to be given deceptively to have positive effects.
An image of a planet with a moon, highlighting one of the first living worlds discovered.
Life became a possibility in the Universe as soon as the raw ingredients were present. But living, inhabited worlds required a bit more.
A man in a blue shirt is holding his neck in front of a laptop, possibly experiencing inflammation.
Western societies seem to be getting inflammation achingly wrong.
A model of the Colossus depicting the grandeur of ancient Rome.
Archaeologist Bernard Frischer spent decades uploading the ruins of the Eternal City to the cloud. Here’s what it looks like.
A black and white photo of albert einstein laughing.
The most celebrated genius in human history didn't just revolutionize physics, but taught many valuable lessons about living a better life.
An artist's rendering of two **changed** planets in space.
Our cosmic home, planet Earth, has been through a lot over the past 4.5 billion years. Here are some of its most spectacular changes
Aphantasia limits the ability to visualize a statue of a man in the mind's eye.
I also can’t conjure sounds, smells, or any other kind of sensory stimulation inside my head. This is called “aphantasia.”
supernova remnant star formation spitzer
One newly discovered, ancient star has a composition unlike any other. Explaining its existence is already blowing astronomers' minds.
A person sits in an armchair at a table engaged in digital reading. The person's face is scribbled over with green lines.
From Hogwarts to hashtags, kids' reading habits have changed drastically in recent decades — but data suggests cause for hope.
A woman holding a baby's hand, symbolizing the bond between families.
Smaller family networks, more great-grandparents, and fewer cousins.
The Medea affect is brilliantly captured in this painting of a powerful woman brandishing a sword.
Parents will sometimes use children as weapons in their relationship battles — and the fallout can be devastating.
The cover of the book envisions a sustainable future.
Environmental progress is happening quickly but we must keep pushing for change.
An image of a colorful object resembling a dark primordial galaxy in the sky.
Finding it at all was a happy accident. Examining it further may help unlock the secrets hiding within the earliest galaxies of all.
A diagram showing the earth and tpaper folding to the moon.
Each time you fold a piece of paper, you double the paper's thickness. It doesn't take all that long to even reach the Moon.
The head of a man and a woman are shown side by side in a research study focused on ketamine and depression.
Ketamine’s remarkable effect bolsters a new theory of mental illness.
A group of people look at a display of Neanderthal artifacts.
They have held our fascination ever since we first identified their remains.
A man in a military uniform wearing a hat resembling Napoleon.
Napoleon Bonaparte was a man of many faces. European historian Michael Broers explains which are featured on the silver screen and why.
Sunlit pebbles on a black background.
The cosmic scales governing the Universe are almost unbelievably large. What if we shrunk the Sun down to be just a grain of sand?