People Who Can’t Feel Pain
While exceptionally rare, congenital analgesia, or a total insensitivity to pain, is a real condition that can be quite dangerous.
Light Bulbs for Beauty
When electric lighting was first introduced to U.S. households, marketing departments tried to convince women that better lighting would be flattering.
Ai Weiwei’s Readymade: Politics
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been making political waves for decades, but his current shows are especially relevant to the United States.
How Business Got Risky
The word “risk” took on new meaning in the 19th century, when it became a way of understanding the interactions between individuals and economic markets.
William Goldman and the Mystery of Screenwriting
Authorship of Hollywood screenplays is often a complicated matter. But William Goldman was truly a writer in Hollywood.
Why Do Americans Eat Three Meals a Day?
A Curious Reader asks: What’s the origin of the familiar breakfast-lunch-dinner triad?
Digestion, Hangovers, and Sinister Magic
Well-researched stories from Slate, Public Books, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Why Ancient Egyptians Loved Cats So Much
Ancient Egyptians' love of cats developed from an appreciation of their rodent-catching skills to revering them as sacred creatures.
Victor Hugo: Surrealist Artist
Victor Hugo created visual art that was intuitive, experimental, and inspired by Spiritualism. In other words, nothing like his novel Les Misérables.
The Women Who Made Male Astronomers’ Ambitions Possible
In the late 19th century, Elizabeth Campbell helped her astronomer husband run the Lick Observatory and lead scientific eclipse-viewing expeditions.