The formality of clothing might not only influence the way others perceive a person, and how people perceive themselves, but could influence decision making in important ways through…

World building is the best part of writing,” Andy Weir tells me. The software engineer turned writer is getting his practice in. In his 2011 novel The Martian, he built a Mars base,…

Byzantine military inventors perfected Greek Fire, a combustible liquid like napalm that could be hurled at enemy ships (or lobbed against land armies as hand grenades).Madrid Skylitzes…

Former correction officer Gary Klivans doesn’t want to be photographed more clearly for fear of gang retaliation.Gary KlivansAs a corrections officer at a Westchester County,…

 It’s heartening to see a scientist be so admired cross-culturally. Maybe humanity—for all its tribalism and sectarianism—is united, at least, in its respect for a commitment…

The cat as the witch’s familiar in the 17th century, woodcut.Mary Evans Picture LibraryFrom the 12th century onward there were two distinct attitudes to cats. For many people the…

Every emotion has a purpose—an evolutionary benefit,” says Sandi Mann, a psychologist and the author of The Upside of Downtime: Why Boredom Is Good. “I wanted to know why we…

The most effective monsters of horror fiction mirror ancestral dangers to exploit evolved human fears. Some fears are universal, some are near-universal, and some are local. The local…

fStop Images - Caspar Benson / Getty Images Some art makes a lot of sense. If we look at a painting or a photograph of a gorgeous view, its beauty feels natural. The reason for this…

 Jialiang Gao / Wikimedia Commons The so-called “year without a summer,” 1816, was bleak, if not strangely gothic. Mount Tambora in Indonesia had erupted the year before,…