The Accidental Invention of Terrariums
Victorian London became obsessed with Ward's cases, which protected plants from the city's toxic pollution -- and piqued peoples' imaginations.
Feasting Tips From Ancient Greece
Many of us strive to avoid talking politics at a big holiday feasts. But in Homer's Greece, feasting was all about politics.
An Ancient Egyptian Funerary Vessel Heads to Outer Space
Tavares Strachan's “Enoch” was launched into space on December 3rd, 2018. It's the latest in a long line of artworks inspired by Egyptian canopic jars.
The Environmental Cost of Cigarettes
Cigarette butts account for a huge amount of human-generated plastic pollution.
Civil Rights and New Deal America, Bruno Latour, and Bad Environmentalism
New books and scholarship from University of North Carolina, Harvard University Press, and University of Minnesota Press.
What Monks Can Teach us about Managing our Work Lives
Medieval monks used labor-saving innovations like the mill not to increase productivity, but to free up more time for what they wanted to do.
How Forest Fires Work in Finland
Finland's forest fires aren't as destructive as California's. That has more to do with climate and population than with forest management.
Bees’ Thoughts, Disappearing Bugs, and Giant Snails
Well-researched stories from The Boston Globe, Pacific Standard, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Questions for the Age of Automation
Back in the 1960s, scholars were making predictions about what the Age of Automation would look like. Where they right?
What The War of the Worlds Had to Do with Tasmania
H. G. Wells's famous science fiction novel imagines what would happen if Martians did to Great Britain what Europeans did to Tasmania.