The Gendering of Holiday Labor
Women in heterosexual relationships still do most of the domestic work. During the holiday season, the tasks multiply.
How 19th Century Scientists Predicted Global Warming
Today’s headlines make climate change seem like a recent discovery. But Eunice Newton Foote and others have been piecing it together for centuries.
Is It Ethical to Grow a Brain in a Petri Dish?
Brain organoids could be the key to understanding brain diseases, which is why we should think carefully about how far we are prepared to take them.
Can Crops’ Wild Relatives Save Troubled Agriculture?
Cultivating a limited number of crops reduced the genetic diversity of plants, endangering harvests. Seed collectors hope to fix it by finding the plants’ wild cousins.
The Truth about “Caveman Courtship”
Cartoon stories about early humans bear a striking resemblance to many popular uses of evolutionary psychology today.
Lawrence Lessig: How to Repair Our Democracy
Law professor and one-time presidential hopeful Lawrence Lessig on campaign finance, gerrymandering, and the electoral college.
![Travels through Virginia. [From Theodor de Bry's 'America', Vol. I, 1590, after a drawing of John White].](https://daily.jstor.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/the_construction_of_america_in_the_eyes_of_the_english_1050x700-600x400.jpg)
The Construction of America, in the Eyes of the English
In Theodor de Bry’s illustrations for Thomas Harriot’s Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, the Algonquin are made to look like the Irish. Surprise.
Can Zapping Your Brain Really Make You Smarter?
Early scientific results on transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) show promise, but are they enough to support a multi-billion-dollar industry?
Who Really Discovered How the Heart Works?
For centuries, the voice of the Greek doctor Galen, who held that blood is produced in the liver and filtered through tiny pores in the heart, went unchallenged.
A History of Human Waste as Fertilizer
In eighteenth century Japan, human excrement played a vital role in agriculture. Can similar solutions help manage waste today?