Metropolitan Community Church of Washington DC

The Origins of LGBTQ-Affirming Churches

As far back as the 1940s, religious LGBTQ people organized groups and congregations that welcomed them.
Illustration: UFO

Source: Getty

Alien Evolution, Texting while Walking, and a Maya Life

Well-researched stories from Quanta, Wired, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Suicides_of_Meleager_and_Althea_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Why Suicide Was a Sin in Medieval Europe

Although there were historical and scriptural precedents for honorable suicide, Christian theology saw it much differently.
Sofia, a skeleton from the Durankulak Necropolis

How the Gender Binary Limits Archaeological Study

One case study demonstrates how contemporary assumptions about gender in ancient societies risk obscuring the larger picture.
This 1964 poster featured what at that time, was CDC’s national symbol of public health, the “Wellbee”, who here was reminding the public to get a booster vaccination.

How Three Women Led the Fight against Pertussis

As whooping cough killed thousands of kids annually, a trio of public health workers were deeply involved in the production and distribution of a vaccine.
Matilda Joslyn Gage

Erasing Women from Science? There’s a Name for That

Countless women scientists have have been shunted to the footnotes, with credit for their work going to male colleagues. This is called the Matilda Effect.
Venus photographed in ultraviolet light by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (Pioneer 12) spacecraft, Feb. 26, 1979.

Could Venus’s Hell Climate Predict Earth’s Future?

The answer will require a probe that can withstand the planet's heat and atmospheric pressure to send back good data.
Mary Fields c. 1895

How Mary Fields Became “Stagecoach Mary”

Born enslaved, she made her way to Montana and eventually became the first Black woman to deliver mail on a "star route."
Handstone with model mine

The Princes of Saxony Collected These Kitschy Miniature Mountains

Struck with “Berggeschrey,” or “mountain clamour,” early modern nobles of Saxony dolled up the dirty and dangerous work of the mines with gold and glitter.
Sans Dessus Dessous by Jules Verne

How Early Sci-Fi Authors Imagined Climate Change

A century before the modern “cli-fi” genre, many authors envisioned unsettling worlds shaped by man-made climate chaos.