Facebook on smartphone

Why Facebook Can Be Good For Your Health

Is Facebook bad for your mental health? Researchers have been studying the profound impact social bonds can have on health since the 1970s.
Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

How Anti-Catholicism Created an American Saint

Elizabeth Ann Seton is known today as the first American Roman Catholic saint. Her road to canonization was no easy path.
Sika stag deer staring at camera

The Surprising Frequency of Interspecies Mating

Sometimes different but related species can reproduce. When two different species successfully mate, the resulting offspring is called a hybrid.
Jan van Der Heyden painting

Jan van der Heyden and the Dawn of Efficient Street Lights

17th-century Amsterdam was the first city in Europe to have an efficient system of street lighting—thanks to a Golden Age painter called Jan van der Heyden.
NOAA researcher prepares to release an ozone sonde

Do We Still Need to Worry About the Hole in the Ozone Layer?

The world tends to forget about the annual ozone hole that appears over Antarctica, though we're facing huge and complex environmental concerns.
Young Ronald Reagan

How Ronald Reagan Was Affected by his Father’s Alcoholism

Robert E. Gilbert argues that the key to understanding Ronald Reagan is knowing that he was the child of an alcoholic.
picture books

Why Picture Books Were Once Considered Dangerous for Children

For Puritan New England, picture books were dangerous. But the Enlightenment, by way of John Locke, made illustrations more acceptable in the classroom.
Censorship bubble

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Words?

Censorship isn't just redacted text and banned words. What happens when censorship is furtive, flying under the radar as much as possible?
supermarket illustration

Sex and the Supermarket

Supermarkets represented a major innovation in food distribution—a gendered innovation that encouraged women to find sexual pleasure in subordination.
data mining

Testing Americans’ Tolerance for Surveillance

What would have been considered a dystopian level of surveillance a mere twenty years ago has now become the norm. Why don't internet users care?