Your Brain Evolved to Hoard Supplies and Shame Others for Doing the Same
Have people gone mad? How can one individual be overfilling their own cart, while shaming others who are doing the same?
How Body Positivity Coexists with Fat Shaming
Retail workers at a plus-size clothing store had to promote the contradictory messages that every body is beautiful and that being fat is bad.
Disease Theory in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man
Shelley's third novel, about the sole survivor of a global plague, draws on the now-outdated miasma theory of disease.
Why Ulysses S. Grant Was More Important Than You Think
Grant’s presidency is often overlooked, but his accomplishments around civil rights are getting more consideration from historians.
Plant of the Month: Mint
From the fields of ancient Egypt to the present-day American Pacific Northwest, the history of mint goes beyond the search for fresh breath.
What If a Shrinking Economy Wasn’t a Disaster?
The degrowth movement is building a vision of a society where economies would get smaller by design—and people would be better off for it.
“The Public Health” in 1840
A pamphlet published in 1840 advocates a four-pronged approach to public healthcare that sounds remarkably like our own.
Ancient Monks Got That Quarantine Feeling, Too
Listlessness, boredom, torpor, that "noonday demon" that tempts you away from spiritual connections—that's what was called acedia.