“Mad About Geology”: Charles Darwin’s Origin Story
At university and in the field, Darwin trained his scientific thinking as would a geologist, seeking causal explanations for observed natural phenomena.
The Long Quest to Uncover a Sea Star Killing Bacteria
Scientists say they’ve found the cause of a marine epidemic more than ten years after it started. What took so long?
The Macronutrients of the Three Sisters System
If the intercropping of beans, squash, and corn produces smaller yields, why did the the Haudenosaunee prefer the Three Sisters system?
Should Yoga Be More Than Exercise?
How should Westerners studying modern postural yoga think about the religious and medical systems in which it developed?
A Practical Machine: The Wright Brothers in Dayton
Orville and Wilbur Wright wanted to create a practical machine—not a novelty or a gimmick—and they accomplished that at Ohio’s Huffman Prairie on October 5, 1905.
Jane Goodall
An intellectual powerhouse and dedicated conservationist, Goodall showed generations of humans how to engage with—and take care of—the natural world.
The Bee Dance Debate
Can insects communicate? In the middle of the twentieth century, scientists disagreed on whether bees could possess a “language” expressed through motion.
The Politics of Our AI Overlords
Fears of AI often focus on domination by algorithm-powered capitalism, but science fiction once used societies ruled by computers as analogs for communism.
Green Sickness, the Disease of Virgins
In the mid-seventeenth century, John Graunt, the “father of English statistics,” claimed dozens of young women in London died of green sickness every year.