Latest Ideas headlines

The overwhelming scale of climate change sometimes needs a friendlier approach to understand it.

This astronomer aimed to report on a particular star’s brightness, but the brightness itself was in question.

This assessment aimed to understand how much salt is healthy.

Paris took an unusual step to prevent public urination.

Unusual insights from the social sciences, from transplants to Christianity to secrecy.

Cartoonist Beth Wolfensberger Singer envisions school-supply solutions to a thorny problem.

This computer scientist got rejected from a journal — and then things got worse.

Researchers found that monitoring children who may have been exposed is key to potential early intervention.

Researchers at UC Berkeley investigated a possible way to slow down global warming.

A collection of unusual insights from the social sciences.

The identity of the parents of adopted children have long been kept secret. Genetic testing has made that impossible to maintain.

After a tense summer, wouldn’t it be nice to take a politics-free vacation?

This week in Uncommon Knowledge: presidential history, developing countries, and local newspapers.

As Pizzagate demonstrated, Internet conspiracies have consequences offline.

This Harvard study reported on professors’ use of trigger warnings.

The #MeToo movement has shown not only how rampant sexual abuse is, but also how often third parties disregard it — or even enable it.

The movement represents the antithesis of the chintzy glamor of President Trump’s personal aesthetic.

Putting a price on natural resources has encouraged decision-makers to recognize that natural capital is finite.

How not to suck at virtue signaling.

A collection of unusual insights from the social sciences.

This Tinder user came up with an unusual way to try and get matches on the app.

Google search results spiked after the president took this assessment.

The Shroud of Turin’s authenticity has been in question for centuries.

We need to deal with the deeper issue: the politicization of the highest court in the land.

The story of the duck boat disaster in Missouri began long ago off the coast of Cape Cod. Maritime tradition, rather than modern safety needs, explains the way we regulate passenger boats.

Criminal justice looks at the severity of the crime. But the scales are often tipped by random chance.

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.

Online outrage may be altering our thinking in worrisome ways and interfering with our ability to be effective, well-adjusted people.

The real threat to European democracy and unity comes not from Russia but from within the West itself.

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.

Humans are just one of many animals sharing the fate of a finite Earth, and what we do — and have done — to animals has broad implications for our future.

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.

It took years for society to accept the importance of humans’ mental health. Are we ready to make the same leap for animals in zoos?

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.