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History and Society
Laser-guided lightning systems could someday offer much greater protection than lightning rods.
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.
Most of us have heard that the Sun is an ordinary, typical, unremarkable star. But science shows we're actually anything but average.
The new documentary “Make People Better” leans toward a different narrative about gene-editing than we've heard before.
The Athenian rich paid their taxes because they craved the social success of being perceived as "useful."
While Costco warehouses may remind shoppers of Walmart, this membership-only retailer has a business model that more closely resembles Amazon or Netflix.
Million Stories
Concluding that Damar Hamlin's cardiac arrest was caused by the COVID vaccine requires accepting highly improbable leaps of logic.
The amazing life of “Gudrid the Far-Traveled” was unjustly overshadowed by her in-laws, Erik the Red and Leif Erikson.
Boredom isn’t the enemy; it’s a catalyst for changing your relationship to work.
In 1920, astronomers debated the nature of the Universe. The results were meaningless until years later, when the key evidence arrived.
If you want to sleep more, try working less, eating better, and exercising more. Alternatively, you could emigrate to Albania.
As time goes on, dark energy makes distant galaxies recede from us ever faster in our expanding Universe. But nothing truly disappears.
Passing chunks of ice can fertilize ocean waters and play a role in the planet’s carbon cycle.
In the grand scheme of the cosmic story, a single year isn't all that significant. But over time, the annual changes really add up!
Evolution repeatedly hit upon this solution simply because it works.
The shift from steam to electricity was inevitable — but some foresaw it earlier than others.
Seneca thought the use of ice was a "true fever of the most malignant kind."