Listen in: Slouch August 02, 2024 In 1995, a scandal erupted when the New York Times revealed that the Smithsonian possessed a century’s worth of nude “posture” photos of college students. Read More
Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America May 23, 2024 A compelling history that mixes seriousness and humor, Slouch is a unique and provocative account of the unexpected origins of our largely unquestioned ideas about bad posture. Read More
David N. Livingstone on The Empire of Climate May 20, 2024 Scientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet and may even bring about the extinction of our species. Read More
The power of creating archival silences May 13, 2024 We know, scientifically speaking, far less about the effects of poor posture on health then we think we do. Read More
What can we learn from Einstein today? January 03, 2024 Einstein has left his mark not only on physics of the twentieth century but also on the public image of science and scientists and on the cultural and political history of the twentieth century, far beyond his area of expertise. Read More
The guardian tree: The birthplace of Carl Linnaeus July 26, 2023 In ancient times, Nordic people believed that the World Tree was an ash and the protective guardian tree a linden—a Tilia. The biography of Linnaeus should surely begin with a linden. Read More
Meaning and the hard problem of life February 21, 2023 In the middle of the twentieth century something happened to the meaning of “meaning.” Until then meaning had been associated with concepts, definitions, and language—and so associated strongly with the human animals who hold concepts, define things, and speak. But now it came to be connected to a term, information, that was sponsoring revolutions in areas from computation to biology. Read More
A look inside Bedeviled September 06, 2022 The glass of science is half empty. Researchers across the globe are fixated on all that we do not know yet. It was the same one hundred years ago, and more than one hundred years before then too. Read More
Grave consequences: How banning execution by lethal injection may result in the return of the electric chair July 20, 2022 In Florida this week, a criminal court selected people to serve on a very unusual jury. The defendant had been charged with mass murder, but the jury’s task is not to determine his guilt—he has already pled guilty. Read More
Book Club Pick: The Slow Moon Climbs July 05, 2022 Are the ways we look at menopause all wrong? Susan Mattern says yes and, in The Slow Moon Climbs, reveals just how wrong we have been. Read More
Listen in: The Joy of Science May 05, 2022 The Joy of Science, narrated by acclaimed quantum physicist Jim Al-Khalili, presents 8 short lessons on how to unlock the clarity, empowerment, and joy of thinking and living a little more scientifically. Read More
A spacetime interval March 14, 2022 Albert Einstein is dead. Bohemia, too, no longer exists. They have ascended to the realm of myths and legends, become words to conjure with—yet they are not, in general, invoked together. Read More
Why Trust Science? December 14, 2021 Are doctors right when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when so many of our political leaders don’t? Read More
Happy 40th, Einstein! March 13, 2021 On March 14th, 1919 Albert Einstein celebrated his 40th birthday. Typically for him the big milestone passed off quietly. Read More
Democracy counts: On sacred and debased numbers October 22, 2020 Democracy depends on numbers. This was recognized from the founding of the American republic. The US Constitution defined terms for periodic elections and for the reapportionment of representatives among the states as their populations grew. Read More
