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History and Society
From landscaped gardens to road systems, the Persians were among the first to create many things we still enjoy today.
A growing movement is trying to turn energy directly into food — reviving an old dream of escaping the violence and inefficiency of eating.
The famous framework ranks civilizations by energy use — but ignores a critical factor that can halt their progress.
As the global economy moves beyond oil, the strategic importance of the world’s most critical hydrocarbon chokepoint is likely to decline rapidly.
A firsthand look at China’s material progress and clean-tech revolution -- and what could happen if we let an authoritarian state steer AI's future.
Long before today's debates, immigration was already transforming the American accent into something distinctively its own.
Jan Morris's biographer confronts the limits of storytelling while trying to capture a life defined by contradiction and reinvention.
Globalization did not fail — it improved the lives of billions of people. The next phase of human development could push us to a new level of global abundance.
The top priority was to maintain the agenda.
Germany built aggressive systems to combat hate speech, but the line between defending democracy and undermining it may be beginning to blur.
Human beings have now traveled farther from Earth than ever before with Artemis II's flyby of the lunar far side. Here's how it happened.
The ideology, economics, and psychology behind the modern world's draining of color from homes, cars, and everyday objects.
Howard Gardner joins us to reflect on the theory of multiple intelligences and why the question of who owns intelligence is more important than ever.
Even though no human has stepped foot on the Moon's surface in 50 years, the evidence of our presence there remains unambiguous.
This 1524 map of the Aztec capital was a window into an exotic otherworld — and largely a fiction.
Is dark energy evolving with at least 99.99% confidence? Despite the quality of recent data, scientists have every reason to be skeptical.
The ozone hole was going to destroy life as we know it, but an unprecedented global effort fixed the problem.
What a fragile flower can teach us about resilience, death, and becoming someone new.
A day in the Sierra Nevada with Tommy Caldwell reveals how pain, trauma, and “elective hardship” became the foundation of his fortitude.
When can a kid play outside alone? Two parents, one stranger, and the state collide.
Long-debunked conspiracies don’t disappear—they evolve and thrive in the age of algorithms.
When America lost access to German dyes, the crisis revealed a startling truth: color was chemical, tactical, and essential to warfare.
In a 13.8 billion year old Universe, a few seconds hardly seems like it matters. But these minuscule changes sure do add up over time.
Most massive galaxies are spiral or elliptical shaped. But peculiar galaxies showcase the beautiful violence that helps explain our cosmos.
First rising in the 15th century, these forts sought to counter a deadly innovation in military technology.
Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman contends that our modern sense of altruism can be traced back to the radical shift in ethical thinking sparked by Jesus' teachings.
The image you're seeing isn't a hole in the Universe, and the cosmic voids that do exist aren't hole-like at all.
By better understanding how the brain constructs pain, we may transform how we treat chronic suffering.
Looking up at the night sky gives us a glimpse of the Universe beyond our terrestrial concerns. Here's the science of what's out there.
Cities and organizations alike risk becoming highly efficient — but indistinguishable — unless leaders actively preserve space for imagination and deviation.