Latest Ideas headlines

Test your parenting instincts against tips from Vanderbilt’s 1952 masterwork.

For Barislav Momcilovic, the third time definitely was not the charm.

This study investigates whether people actually have a fictional childhood memory.

Men are doing more of the grocery shopping, but the experience doesn’t seem tailored to this increasingly important demographic.

This week in Uncommon Knowledge: gender bias, upward mobility, and teasing trivia.

Working nights can really throw off your digestion.

Oxford researchers found out how robot usage can influence how humans vote.

Our president dismisses certain groups as “animals,” but most of us learn from a young age to identify with our fellow creatures.

The history of pets and the law has been contentious.

As the territorial boundaries between humans and animals begin to overlap in cities, both sides are devising strategies for coexistence.

Captivity is hard on exotic species, but what about dogs and cats? They’ve been bred for life with humans. But they also need to be themselves.

Is Western democracy failing? The march of right-wing populism has spawned a cottage industry of pessimism. But the real problem is that liberalism has been a rousing success.

Once, women were taught to bake; men, to skin moose and fell trees. Now, as gender-specific survival skills give way to gender-neutral “adulting,” how will society react?

Forget about shooting a bow and arrow or sailing a boat. Modern humans, men and women alike, need a different set of skills to get by.

Even the realm of Hades deserves to make it onto Instagram.

Scientists claim this blood test can assess whether a child is on the autism spectrum.

NASA is launching two missions to Jupiter’s moon Europa. Could more useful data be hidden on a different moon?

Despite global progress, a team of psychologists observed that “the majority of people believe that the world is getting worse.”

You’re entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But what kind of happiness? This scholar has documented nearly 1,000 ways of describing it.

Water-sampling robots, placed at strategic points in a sewer system, are capable of delivering ever-more precise information about a community’s health.

The history of the nation’s favorite frozen dessert is also the history of the nation itself: a triumph of ingenuity, technology, and mass marketing.

A reporter learned about homemade ice cream from local civil rights leader Mel King, and incorporated his enthusiasm into her own recipe.

Weeks after the furor around the comedian’s canceled show, this cartoon catches up with Roseanne.

From a favorite son to a finding of scientific misconduct, Jasti Rao fell far.

How accurately do the two political parties understand each other?

This Rite Aid came up with a solution to discourage loitering.

Unusual insights from the social sciences in this week’s Uncommon Knowledge.

A 2017 Supreme Court ruling has unleashed a flood of trademarks using ethnic slurs and other bad words. Who knew there was so much demand for branded vulgarity?

In the years after Repeal, true believers in banning alcohol waged an ever-lonelier crusade.

Fashion communicates. It makes claims, it signals authority, and it invites engagement.

The mix of risks that teens take changes over time.

As the World Cup comes to Russia, there’s a new focus on hospitality.

This week in Uncommon Knowledge: coffee, context, and helicopter parents.

American citizens and border-crossing migrants may inhabit one country, but the realities they live are worlds apart.

Why would this researcher submit their findings under a false name?

This week in Uncommon Knowledge: tweet analysis, racial awareness, and “doers” vs. “thinkers.”

Everything started off so well . . .

Labs long ago worked out how to keep research data private. Tech companies should adopt their strategies.

Never in the history of the world has a single company had so much control over what people know and think.

Never in the history of the world has a single company had so much control over what people know and think.

A Boston Globe editorial asserts that “Google accounts for about 90 percent of all Internet searches; by any honest assessment, it holds a monopoly at the very gateway to information in the modern world.” The best way to deal with the company, the editorial asserts, is to break it up.

Users’ clicks and posts built Facebook and Google’s online empires. Isn’t it time they got paid for their labor?

Sooner or later, every Goliath is displaced by a David. That goes for Google, too. And it won’t require government intercession to make it happen.

Republicans, in both Congress and the White House, led the way to finding an effective regulatory system for big businesses.

Jonathan Taplin, author of “Move Fast and Break Things,” explains how tech giants could be regulated.

The US government used to break up monopolies. Now it lets them flourish. A new movement, alarmed by today’s tech giants, wants to bring antitrust law back to life.