Science

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.

The abusive experiments on mentally disabled children at Willowbrook State School were only one part of a much larger unethical research program.

“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."

In which John B. Calhoun begins to study the lifestyles of rodents, and the public listens.

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?

It radically shifted the way the world looked at the environment, but created a wave of misinformation we’re still dealing with today.

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.

On the native prairies of North America, green is the problem.

How research helps us understand the past to create a better future.

First discovered in 1938, Teflon has been used for everything from helping to create the first atomic bomb to keeping your eggs from sticking to the pan.

Scientists and lawmakers in the 70s knew more than we think they did about climate change and the impacts of fossil fuel regulations.