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History & Society
Trace how culture, power, and ideas shape societies across time.
Find it easier to sort out your friends' problems than your own? This paradox is for you.
Most popular songs are about love and heartache. But some great songs — albeit underrated and perhaps a bit weird — are about the cities we love.
Studying the display of personal wealth across time can help us better understand the history of socioeconomic inequality.
In many city-states, it was perfectly acceptable for older men to have sexual relationships with young boys.
On Earth, microbial growth is common in lava tubes no matter the location and climate, whether it’s ice-volcano interactions in Iceland or hot, sand-floored lava tubes in Saudi Arabia.
Although it’s often described as the Amazon of China, Alibaba has a radically different business model that does not rely on inventory management.
Hinduism emphasizes the journey, whichever path that takes. And it holds us responsible for our own self-improvement.
Quantum superposition challenges our notions of what is real.
The “money taboo” is not a single taboo, but rather an amalgamation of several smaller taboos tied to gender and socioeconomic class.
Million Stories
When maps meet stamps, you get a love child called "cartophilately."
If comedies do get made today, they usually bypass the big screen and go straight to streaming platforms.
Why would the Earth suddenly start vomiting forth huge quantities of mud?
Wealth concentration among elites was common in ancient nations, but the scale on which it took place in Egypt’s 18th Dynasty was unprecedented.
5mins
“There’s a sense of crisis today that we did not have in the 1980’s or 90’s” — economist Tyler Cowen on progress in America.
John Templeton Foundation
Most of us have heard that the Sun is an ordinary, typical, unremarkable star. But science shows we're actually anything but average.
5mins
How to defeat debaters who deal in distractions, according to a two-time world debate champion.
The new documentary “Make People Better” leans toward a different narrative about gene-editing than we've heard before.
7mins
Is it better to be rational or optimistic? Steven Pinker explains.
The Athenian rich paid their taxes because they craved the social success of being perceived as "useful."