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History and Society
The Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas are the last surviving fragments of a body of water that stretched from Austria to Turkmenistan.
Democratic freedom, rapturous religion, and newspapers created a hotbed for social experimentation in 19th-century America.
The typical car is parked 95% of the time.
Would you want to live in any of these places?
The Fermi paradox (along with the subsequent Drake equation) is so difficult that even brilliant thinkers can make little dent in it.
Intellectual humility demands that we examine our motivations for holding certain beliefs.
John Templeton Foundation
Dark energy is one of the biggest mysteries in all the Universe. Is there some way to avoid "having to live with it?"
Though ultimately incorrect, the ancient Greek philosophers blazed a conceptual trail for humankind to understand the nature of reality.
How to separate the reality from the conspiracy theory.
Telegrams were the “Twitter of the 1850s and 1860s” — and they elicited the exact same overblown fears as Twitter does today.
An incredible composite image of Pandora's Cluster, Abell 2744, simultaneously showcases both our impressive knowledge and vast ignorance.
We may have discovered alien life already but rejected the evidence too quickly because it seemed false at first glance.
Can ChatGPT help you power through writer's block?
From the Palace of the Soviets to The Illinois, these unmade buildings would have taken the art of architecture to whole new heights.
If you lost your religion, it might be because the internet and social media are having a secularizing effect on American society.
Researchers found that the average penis increased in size from 4.8 inches in 1992 to 6 inches in 2021. But in some regions, they shrank.
The glorious sights that JWST keeps revealing are less than a millionth of the whole Universe. Just imagine what else is out there.
In 1934, American Communists translated a Stalinist book about revolution into a children’s game. Curiously, it didn't catch on.
"I am an anthropologist, and for years, I have spoken to people who have had these experiences."
John Templeton Foundation
Since its observation discovery in the 1990s, dark energy has been one of science's biggest mysteries. Could black holes be the cause?
The danger posed by conversational AI isn't that it can say weird or dark things; it's personalized manipulation for nefarious purposes.
Godfrey Hounsfield’s early life did not suggest that he would accomplish much at all.
When you combine the Uncertainty Principle with Einstein's famous equation, you get a mind-blowing result: Particles can come from nothing.
Art criticism is inherently subjective. Still, many critics have tried to make a case for why some of the world’s most celebrated books are in fact terribly written.
Even if a balloon flies directly overhead, attempting to shoot it down with a conventional firearm is stupid, ineffective, and dangerous.
Spying is not usually done these days with balloons because they're an easy target and are not completely controllable.
In the West, discussions of 20th-century painting are dominated by Warhol and Picasso, but trendsetting artists are found everywhere.
If you get married in South Africa, don't be surprised if someone shows up to the ceremony dragging along a smelly goat.
The secret ingredient is violence, and it just might indicate that "moonmoons" aren't as uncommon as most astronomers think.
3mins
Washington University professor John Inazu tells us how we can make peace inside a raging culture war.