What the “Man vs. Bear” TikToks Meant (Nursing Clio)
by Kera Lovell
When one TikTok creator asked women about the relative dangers posed by human and nonhuman predators, the response paralleled the consciousness-raising groups of the twentieth century.

Drinking Beer in Mesopotamia (Aeon)
by Tate Paulette
In ancient Mesopotamia, beer brewing was intertwined with everything from religious scripture to administrative records. That means archaeologists can tell us a lot about what the beverage meant. But the limits of records also demonstrate the need for imagination in picturing daily life 4,000 years ago.

Nothing in the Brain (Quanta Magazine)
by Yasemin Saplakoglu
The concept of zero arrived late in many mathematical systems, and it remains an outlier in the ways we process numbers. New evidence from brain scans suggests that even individual neurons view zero differently.

When Do You Have No Choice? (Nautilus)
by Corey Cusimano & Tania Lombrozo
What kind of a choice is “your money or your life”? How about “a bad job or no job”? The way people think about scenarios like these reveals how our understanding of free will is connected to our ideas about rational thinking.

What are Fables For? (Literary Hub)
by Robin Waterfield
We may think of Aesop’s fables as moralizing stories for children. But kids were definitely not their original audience, and many of the stories have messages we might not be able to get behind today.

Got a hot tip about a well-researched story that belongs on this list? Email us here.