Plant of the Month: Tree of Life
Indigenous people in North America used the conifer as an effective cure for scurvy during cold winters.
When the Push Button Was New, People Were Freaked
The mundane interface between human and machine caused social anxiety in the late nineteenth century.
Wait, There’s Noise Pollution at the Bottom of the Ocean?
Anthropogenic sounds have made it all the way down into the deepest place on Earth—Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench.
Which Flowers Bloom First and Why?
A massive collection of dried flower specimens demonstrates that climate change disrupts the timing of spring blooms.
RV144: The Largest HIV Vaccine Trial in History
One of the biggest advances in AIDS vaccine research was a controversial, landmark treatment that tested a new vaccine on 16,000 Thai volunteers.
What Is Jazz Poetry?
The form flourished in the 1950s, as poets and musicians inspired each other to new heights.
The Origins of the Mug Shot
US police departments began taking photographs of people they arrested in the 1850s.
Can Thucydides Teach Us Why We Go to War?
A contemporary scholar uses the ancient Greek historian to explain the 1968 Pueblo Crisis in North Korea.
The Myth of Manifest Destiny
Not everyone in the nineteenth century was on board with expanding the territory of the US from coast to coast.
Policing Intersex Americans’ Sex and Gender
Assigning one sex to people with ambiguous genitalia has a long history in medicine and law.