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History & Society
Trace how culture, power, and ideas shape societies across time.
Ideas often taken for granted in the United States and Europe about what it means to be a person are, quite simply, not shared with other cultures.
Even though the leftover glow from the Big Bang creates a bath of radiation at only 2.725 K, some places in the Universe get even colder.
We live in a four-dimensional Universe, where matter and energy curve the fabric of spacetime. But time sure is different from space!
The costs of such an endeavor would be extremely high, while the potential payoffs would be uncertain.
The length of a day oscillates slightly every six years. This was a surprising discovery made last decade. We might now know why.
Livestock now outweighs wild mammals and birds ten-fold.
Deep learning AI has accurately created color images from night vision images.
The psychology of alien contact largely revolves around the concept of "otherness." We need to learn to be comfortable around strange things.
In the philosophy of Star Wars, the Sith are evil because they surrender to passion. But is a life of total rationality a “good” life?
Is "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch a condemnation of sin or a celebration of hedonism? Art historians still aren’t sure.
Mammals have a history stretching back 325 million years. To study that ancient history is to know our own origins.
"Politics is weird. It’s the only business in the world in which you take a really, really important position, and you give it to someone with no qualifications." —Tony Blair
Like humans, stars die. The James Webb Space Telescope's early images already give us a lot of information about how this happens.
Gradualism rejects the idea of a "bright line" in the abortion debate.
The fictitious 31st-century world portrayed by the series is actually quite a bit like our own in the 21st century.
Astronomy's roots rest in the very origins of humanity. We have always looked to the skies for answers. We are starting to get them.
In the early 1900s, some Americans feared that teddy bears would not instill maternal instincts in girls, thereby causing "race suicide."
In the wake of the pandemic, the crystal industry boomed, with customers hoping the stones might relieve a little anxiety.
Predatory dinosaurs with big skulls tend to have tiny arms. Researchers propose there might be a direct link between those traits.