There’s something almost touching about humanity’s obsession with permanence. We stack stones, pour concrete, and weld steel as if the sheer weight of our buildings might keep time itself from slipping away. Each civilization, in its turn, has left its calling card - a pyramid, a wall, a canal - saying, we were here , in case the future should forget. Of course, the future always does. Yet we keep at it. We drag rivers from their beds, slice mountains in half, and pave desert

Sociologists are telling us that Americans are drinking less, partying less, and generally turning into beige furniture. A recent Gallup...

There are certain mysteries of human history we no longer question. Why did we build pyramids? Why did we invent mayonnaise? Why did we...

There’s something almost touching about the human obsession with order. We alphabetize spices we haven’t used in years, color-code sock...

There’s a particular comfort in believing that history happens elsewhere . In distant empires, over flickering black-and-white film,...

The Greeks, for all their philosophy and democracy, had a peculiar knack for storytelling - one that leaned heavily on divine egos, petty...

There’s a fine line between genius and idiocy, and some people dance back and forth across it with wild enthusiasm. The world has never...

History, for all its posturing as the noble record of humanity's triumphs and tragedies, has always had a peculiar knack for being...

The Earth is a fascinating and infuriating enigma, a patchwork of peculiarities stitched together with a combination of cartographic...

The dinner party: a social institution where the promise of companionship often gives way to the grim reality of under seasoned...

Imagine this: It’s New Year’s Eve. You’re crammed into a room, clutching a flute of champagne that tastes like optimism watered down with...

The Christmas card, that flimsy token of obligatory cheer we now dutifully shuffle through each December, was born not as a wholesome...

Late Tuesday evening, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol took a page from the "How Not to Lead" playbook, scribbling his name on a...

Once upon a time - around 600 BC in Lydia, where today you’d find Turkey - someone struck a chunk of electrum, a natural alloy of gold...

There’s a funny thing about history. It seems almost like a ghost, doesn’t it? Always lingering in the background, rattling its chains to...

There’s something oddly ceremonial about the act of opening a bag of potato chips. A rip, a puff of air, and suddenly you’re holding a...

War. Noun : a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state.   Verb : to...

One of our regular readers (we do very much appreciate all of them!) recently sent us a note that they’d been having discussions with...

Windows. No, not the operating system that frustrates so many of us daily, but the real windows - those glassy apertures that have shaped...

We recently attended the grand opening of a good friend’s dental clinic. And this got us to thinking about, well, teeth. Not just the...