Happy Holidays. This week we are reprinting our top stories of 2020. This article first appeared online in our Facts So Romantic blog in July, 2020.Stuart Ritchie is a lecturer in…

Some evolutionary biologists say that after we pass reproductive age, nature, like a cat who’s been fed, is done with us. The bodily systems that thrived and repaired themselves…

The Chinese artist Xu Bing has long experimented to stunning effect with the limits of the written form. Last year I visited the Centre del Carme in Valencia, Spain, to see a retrospective…

Safe, effective, and available vaccines are the best long-term solution to the coronavirus pandemic.1 So it’s welcome news that two vaccines are poised for distribution and others…

When people entertain transporting to the past, 19th-century Berlin, say, they don’t often imagine a dramatic shift in smellscape. The inhabitants talk differently. Their fashion…

The Man Who Loved PhysicsBy Alan Lightman Several years ago, I attended a Buddhist retreat in which I was introduced to the idea of the “retinue,” a constellation of influential…

Arguably the best prescription to improve the situation facing women in science is for there to be more women in science.Oleg Golovnev / ShutterstockThe increasing visibility of women…

Scientists have now produced apparently effective vaccines at sufficient scale to vaccinate most vulnerable populations in the United States in the next few months, and the U.S. population…

Chess offers a unique opportunity. It could perhaps be the ultimate window through which we might see how our mental powers shift during our lives.Screengrab via YouTube / NetflixIn…

On May 29, 1810, Katherine Fritsch, a sister in the Moravian Church, boarded a coach in Lititz, Pennsylvania, along with a group of her friends and began the 75-mile trek to Philadelphia.…