Yes, Helsinki was historically bad (Vox)
by Christopher Shea
Just how bad was the Helsinki summit for U.S. interests? A historian puts it in the context of decades of summits since World War II and considers what a really healthy diplomacy would look like.
The particularly Western context of psychedelic mysticism (Aeon)
by Jules Evans
In recent years, psychedelics have become a big topic of conversation in the U.S. But the experience a tourist has with Ayahuasca may be radically different from how Amazonian people use it, raising questions about the claims of mystical evangelicals.
Did an editor invent a biblical ban on gay sex? (The New York Times)
by Idan Dershowitz
The book of Leviticus famously outlaws sex between two men. But a biblical scholar finds textual evidence that a previous version implicitly permitted it.
A language for the wilderness (Atlas Obscura)
by Angela Chen
In Papua New Guinea, gathering nuts from the pandanus tree demands a trek into the wild, where many subjects are taboo to speak of and harvesters must use different words than they do in civilization.
What hormones are for (Nursing Clio)
by Lara Freidenfelds
Feeling sad, or hungry, or angry? Maybe you’re just hormonal. A doctor looks at how we’ve understood hormones, and medical interventions to help them work better, over the past century.
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