Why a Universal Society Is Unattainable
On Jan. 1, 2021, five long years after the vote for what’s become known as Brexit, and numerous marches before and after that national decision, some of which attracted more than 100,000 impassioned...
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What Industrial Societies Get Wrong About Childhood
Each year across the world, kids of roughly the same age are packed into classrooms and confined to desks with the intent of learning from an adult teacher.But is this how children were adapted to...
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The Beloved Mesolithic Girl
Ten thousand years ago, a mother clutched her growing belly. A month earlier, the pregnancy had become difficult—something was wrong. The mother’s stress was the baby’s stress too, and the baby was due...
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Love Is Biological Bribery
In an episode of the satirical comedy The Great, the reign of the reason-and-science-loving Russian empress Catherine nearly collapses when her husband Peter, the deposed emperor, storms into her...
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A Viral Twitter Thread Reawakens the Dark History of Anthropology
In March, a diet coach named Anthony Gustin, founder of an online food store called Perfect Keto (“Empowering your health journey in a food system that doesn’t care”), went viral on social media. The...
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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Once upon a time, in a thatched spirit hut in the Nigerien village of Tillaberi, the Songhay master sorcerer Adamu Jenitongo told the American anthropologist Paul Stoller that the bush was angry....
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The Real Magic of Rituals
Tennis star Rafael Nadal performs an elaborate repertoire of rituals before and during every match. When he arrives at the stadium, he enters the court holding a racket in his hand, taking great care...
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What captured Dimitris Xygalatas’ imagination, as a boy growing up in Greece, were documentaries about science and the natural world. He admired people like David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, and...
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What Spider Games Say About Arachnophobia
A fear of spiders, or arachnophobia, seems quite common around the world. Last year, a team of researchers published a global database showing the pervasiveness of arachnophobic sentiments in media...
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A New Look at One of the Oldest Weapons
Not long ago, Alexander Langlands started whittling sticks. The archaeologist felt a subliminal longing toward the pastime. “It’s addictive,” he writes in his 2017 book Cræft: An Inquiry Into the...
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