Few things provoke quite the same amount of anxiety as the effect AI could have on warfare.

Spanish colonists in the Americas were terrified that their essential humors would change if they ate local food.

He just wanted to live an honest life.

The biggest nuclear blast in history came courtesy of Tsar Bomba. We could make something at least 100 times more powerful.

With the arrival of the automobile, governments had to scramble to find ways to protect and control pedestrian use of the road.

Marian Engel's 1976 novel Bear is famous for its embrace of bestiality, but it also offers a commentary on humans' relationship with the natural world.

Sophia McClennen, author of Trump Was a Joke, discusses how political satire decoded the chaos of the forty-fifth presidency.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sailors gained a knowledge of the world and access to exotic goods unlike anything other non-elites could imagine.

Ice harvesters once made a living from frozen lakes and ponds, and the international ice industry was a booming business. Then refrigeration came along.

Well-researched stories from Smithsonian Magazine, Public Books, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.