The history of the royal wedding (Washington Post)
by Emilie M. Brinkman
The lavish royal wedding is a tradition born in the seventeenth century. Before that, royal marriages were often treated as purely matters of state. Sometimes, the brides and grooms weren’t even in the same room when the marriage was officially celebrated.

Charting ancient Rome through its pollution (Science Magazine)
by Katie Langin
Levels of lead found in Greenland’s ice cap provide a remarkably precise record of economic activity in ancient Rome, where lead pollution was a side effect of the production of silver money.

The dangers of hippo poop (The Atlantic)
by Ed Yong
Hippos are outsized creatures, much like the other huge mammals that wandered the world before humans killed them, and they have outsized effects on their ecosystems. Those effects can include killing whole populations of fish with their feces.

Learning about technology from the Amish (Quartz)
by Michael J. Coren
New technologies can seem like things that just happens to us, rather than things we choose to adopt. The Amish do things differently—not by rejecting the new out of hand but by thinking carefully about its effects on societies.

How psychedelics heal (NPR)
by Terry Gross
Therapy incorporating the use of psychedelic drugs increasingly looks like a promising treatment for problems like addiction and depression. Just how does it create long-lasting change in people’s mental states?

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