culture

As Russia’s youth welcomed a new era of capitalism in the 1990s, their parents and grandparents clung to fleeting memories of Soviet life.

Due to deteriorating health, all Beethoven left behind for his final symphony were some musical sketches.

An unexpected finding shows us how little we know about the early human story in our region.

In the perilous mountains of Tibet, archaeologists unearthed ancient hand and footprints that seem to be the creative work of children.

A future kitchen appliance could make it possible to 3D-print entirely new recipes and cook them with lasers.

This is a time for family and friends to gather, watch the full moon and eat mooncakes and other delicacies.

Journey to the West is rightly considered one of the most influential novels ever written, but the real reason for its success may be its charismatic poster-boy: The Monkey King.

What started as a viral case of public shaming has morphed into a dark story involving internet sleuths, a criminal network, and the suspicious death of a 62-year-old man in St. Louis.

Do right and wrong depend on culture, or does morality transcend place and time?

Our chart shows new additions since 1984 that have stuck around.

For the ancients, hospitality was an inviolable law enforced by gods and priests and anyone else with the power to make you pay dearly for mistreating a stranger.

Australian parrots have worked out how to open trash bins, and the trick is spreading across Sydney.

All the latest titles from the experts at MIT.

For decades, researchers have proposed that climate change and human-caused environmental destruction led to demographic collapse on Easter Island. That’s probably false, according to new research.

We eat 50 billion chickens every year. Is there a better way?

Most schools use a semester system, but a new study suggests that they should switch to quarters.

The Black Death wasn’t the only plague in the 1300s.

The number of PhDs has been exceeding the available academic positions since as early as the mid-1990s.

Being an intellectual is not really how it is depicted in popular culture.

Many workers moved home on the promise or hope that they’d be able to keep working remotely at least some of the time after the pandemic ended.

Curious about the most used emoji on social media?

Humans may have evolved to be tribalistic. Is that a bad thing?

Once a book is published, who gets to interpret it? Us or the author?

The pandemic has many people questioning whether they ever want to go back to the office.

Ultimately, this is a fight between a giant reptile and a giant primate.

Fifty years of research on children’s toy preferences shows that kids generally prefer toys oriented toward their own gender.

Hunter-gatherers probably had more spare time than you.

A curated list of must-watch films from Big Think readers.

A 50-year study reveals changing values children learned from pop culture.

Labeling thinkers like Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs as “other” may be stifling humanity’s creative potential.