Well-researched stories from Quanta Magazine, Atlas Obscura, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Earl Stewart and Michael Veal explore African American music from the Civil War and the evolving sounds of the Black Atlantic.

Cyclones, droughts, and other severe climate events produce a variety of ecological responses, some of them irreversible.

No matter how many words in a language, it seems that we always need just one more to explain ourselves.

Salvador Allende’s attempt to network the national economy mirrored his government’s struggle to balance centralization and decentralization.

The heated debates over Burton’s explicit translation of the beloved tales exposed Victorian England’s preoccupation with sex.

At the heart of recent US Supreme Court decisions, the Fourteenth Amendment was framed to require free speech and free elections in the South.

The gritty dramas of the 1950s and 1960s revealed the bitterness and disillusionment of Britain's working class youth.

Donning costumes in imitation and celebration of fictional characters has a long history that crosses genres, genders, and international boundaries.

Is birdsong music, speech, or something else altogether? The question has raged for millennia, drawing in everyone from St. Augustine to Virginia Woolf.