Science

The Year 2000 computer problem continues to nag at us 25 years later.

Between 40% and 50% of children didn’t live past 5 in the US during the 19th century. Authors documented the common but no less gutting grief of losing a child.

Susie Orbach’s 1978 book is a fascinating snapshot of diet and physical culture in a very different era.

The 1900 Galveston hurricane changed the way we deal with severe weather. But as Hurricane Helene showed, there are still lessons to be learned.

How politicians used the story of one young patient to neglect the AIDS crisis.

The “Indian peach” survived a genocide—but can it withstand climate change?

The 20th-century movement to fix slouching questions the moral and political dimensions of addressing bad backs over wider public health concerns.

How geology shaped American culture.

On the rise of the narcotic farm model, a radical reimagining of the nation’s approach to addiction.

The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in US history. However, incomplete records have made it difficult to estimate the exact death toll.

How fifty years of barcode magic came to be.

Cicely Saunders realized that preparing for a good death is the first step in providing one.

Hervey Cleckley wanted to treat the most overlooked psychiatric patients. Instead his work was used to demonize them.

“Spectropia” demystified the techniques used by mediums who claimed they could speak to the dead, revealing the “absurd follies of Spiritualism.”

Apple experts divide time into “before Honeycrisp” and “after Honeycrisp,” and apples have never tasted so good.

Today’s contentious immigration debate is the construct of one man’s effort to halt overpopulation.

The Civil War's vast death toll joined Earth's deep time story, magnifying its meaning as part of God's creative acts across eons.

Journalists helped to pioneer what would eventually result in our mobile world.

Forest fires of 1910 sparked a media-driven fire exclusion policy, which has arguably worsened today's "fire problem."

Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What happened?

Longevity enthusiasts are microdosing a 19th-century cure-all. Are they onto something?

“Postpartum depression” encompasses various debilitating changes in mood that can occur after giving birth. How did that language come to be?

The same legal and cultural struggles will await the next critical infrastructural technology, and the next.

Seaweed and its connection to faith and abolitionism.

In two new books, the rise of recycling is a story of illusory promises, often entwined with disturbing political agendas.

The controversial career of John E. Mack, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Harvard psychiatrist who wrote best-selling books on UFO abduction.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s tacit support for a program that jailed sex workers suggests the limits of the elite-led reform efforts she championed.

A community health center in Los Angeles that sought to get patients back into the community.

Before AC, office workers relied on building design to adapt to high temperatures. The promise of boosted productivity created a different kind of workplace.

A researcher challenged the idea that women did not – and should not – experience sexual desire.