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An illustration of a UFO

Far Out: Why Don’t We Believe in UFOs?

Is it scientific impossibility or simply human ego that stops us from entertaining the idea of extraterrestrial visitation?

Archive Adventures

Graffiti Limbo

A University of Virginia professor enlisted students to document the messages—profane, hopeful, despairing—left on library carrels by previous generations.

Ask a Professor

Caitlin D. Wylie

Caitlin D. Wylie on the Hidden Labor of STEM Research

An interview with Caitlin D. Wylie, a social scientist who analyzes “behind-the-science work” to understand how knowledge is produced and who produces it.

Unearthing Justice

a concept of diverse races and crowd cooperation symbol as hands holding together the planet earth in a 3D illustration style.

Survival Strategies: The Next Chapter of Environmental Justice

The environmental justice movement may look to the past to determine how to move forward during times of austerity.

Suggested Readings

The Seventh Angel of the Apocalypse Proclaiming the Reign of the Lord, c. 1180

Angels, Gardens, and El Salvador’s Prisons

Well-researched stories from Aeon, The Conversation, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Most Recent

Pedestrian Charles Rowell, 1879

The Popularity and Politics of Pedestrianism

The sport of competitive walking touched on social concerns such as debt and poverty, fitness and fame, but it also found support in the temperance movement.
American politician Joseph McCarthy (1908 ? 1957), Republican senator from Wisconsin, testifies against the US Army during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Washington, DC, June 9, 1954. McCarthy stands before a map which charts Communist activity in the United States.

Joseph McCarthy in Wheeling, West Virginia: Annotated

Senator Joseph McCarthy built his reputation on fear-mongering, smear campaigns, and falsehoods about government employees and their associates.

More Stories

Archive Adventures

Graffiti Limbo

A University of Virginia professor enlisted students to document the messages—profane, hopeful, despairing—left on library carrels by previous generations.

Ask a Professor

Caitlin D. Wylie

Caitlin D. Wylie on the Hidden Labor of STEM Research

An interview with Caitlin D. Wylie, a social scientist who analyzes “behind-the-science work” to understand how knowledge is produced and who produces it.

Unearthing Justice

a concept of diverse races and crowd cooperation symbol as hands holding together the planet earth in a 3D illustration style.

Survival Strategies: The Next Chapter of Environmental Justice

The environmental justice movement may look to the past to determine how to move forward during times of austerity.

Suggested Readings

The Seventh Angel of the Apocalypse Proclaiming the Reign of the Lord, c. 1180

Angels, Gardens, and El Salvador’s Prisons

Well-researched stories from Aeon, The Conversation, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Long Reads

Joseph Russell Smith

He Spoke for the Trees (and Also the Soil)

A champion of agroforestry, J. Russell Smith argued for the restoration of forests as key to sustainable agriculture in his seminal work Tree Crops.
Precious Newberry, a United States Postal Service mail handler, works to unload her mail truck at the Processing and Distribution Center after collecting mail on the busiest mailing day of the year for the U.S. Postal Service on December 14, 2015 in Miami, Florida.

How Mail Delivery Has Shaped America

The United States Postal Service is under federal scrutiny. It’s not the first time.
An illustration from Aleksandr Volkov’s Wizard of the Emerald City

Twin Curtains: Oz and the USSR

Aleksandr Volkov’s The Wizard of the Emerald City reimagined L. Frank Baum’s classic, imbuing the story with a love of labor for readers in the Eastern bloc.
Close-up of wild cereal grass (Poa annua) blooming over dark background

A Most Opportunistic Colonizer

Poa annua is a unique grass species now thriving on every continent—including Antarctica. Wherefore its wanderlust?

Doing Math with Intellectual Humility

Math class is an opportunity to teach students both how to use conjecture to arrive at knowledge and how to learn from the logic of peers.
Photo taken in the Bourbaki Congress of 1938 in Dieulefit

The Mathematical Pranksters behind Nicolas Bourbaki

Bourbaki was gnomic and mythical, impossible to pin down; his mathematics just the opposite: unified, unambiguous, free of human idiosyncrasy.
Karate chop

The Physics of Karate

A human hand has the power to split wooden planks and demolish concrete blocks. A trio of physicists investigated why this feat doesn't shatter our bones.