Buster Keaton, Margaret Leahy and Wallace Beery in a scene from The Three Ages, 1923

The Truth about “Caveman Courtship”

Cartoon stories about early humans bear a striking resemblance to many popular uses of evolutionary psychology today.
Three reindeer running through snow

The Reindeer Games

In 1907, the U.S. Reindeer Service was organized as part of an effort to domesticate the animals...and Inupiat Eskimos.
A person's hands wrapping Christmas gifts

Only You Can Prevent Useless Gifts

Is it time for a revival of the Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving (SPUG)?
An overhead view of a book store

Why We Love Local Businesses

The explanation may have to do with the gift economy.
Molecular model of Penicillin by Dorothy Hodgkin, c.1945

We’re Living in a Post-Antibiotic World

A new CDC report warns: “Stop referring to a coming post-antibiotic era—it’s already here.” Contrast that to a 1944 article on the promise of penicillin.
Several lab mice in a container

An Epidemic of Retractions

Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis's new book, Fraud in the Lab, offers some tough love for the scientific community.
from The Battle of San Pietro

The War Documentary That Never Was

John Huston's 1945 movie The Battle of San Pietro presents itself as a war documentary, but contains staged scenes. What should we make of it?
Larry Lessig

Lawrence Lessig: How to Repair Our Democracy

Law professor and one-time presidential hopeful Lawrence Lessig on campaign finance, gerrymandering, and the electoral college.
Travels through Virginia. [From Theodor de Bry's 'America', Vol. I, 1590, after a drawing of John White].

The Construction of America, in the Eyes of the English

In Theodor de Bry’s illustrations for Thomas Harriot’s Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, the Algonquin are made to look like the Irish. Surprise.
Vintage Portrait of two Babies in an Old Fashioned Antique Baby Carriage Buggy

This Isn’t the First Baby Bust

And it's unlikely to be the last. One scholar looks at the factors that contributed to the increase in childlessness at the turn of the twentieth century.