Society & Culture
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Read more: Milton Cooper to QAnon: How Behold a Pale Horse Shaped Modern Conspiracy Culture
On a November night in 2001, in the high desert of Arizona, a peculiar chapter of American conspiracy lore came to a violent end. Milton William “Bill” Cooper—an ex-Navy radio broadcaster turned author—died in a shootout with sheriff’s deputies on his own property, guns blazing. Cooper had often declared he would never be taken alive,…
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Read more: The History of Miniature Mt. Fuji Shrines
In a quiet corner of a Tokyo neighborhood, tucked behind the gates of a Shinto shrine stands a small mound of rocks and earth shaped unmistakably like the cone of Mount Fuji. These are miniature Mt. Fuji mounds, known as fujizuka, and they are far more than just playgrounds. They represent a link across centuries…
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Read more: How Beer Domesticated Humans
Imagine a time in prehistory when humans stumbled upon a happy accident: a mash of wild grains left in a pot that turned into a fizzy, mildly intoxicating brew. The standard story of civilization suggests that our ancestors first domesticated grains to fill their bellies with bread, and only later discovered the pleasant side effect…
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Read more: Blue Zones: Places Where We Live Longer & Why
High in the mountains of Sardinia, Italy, a 95-year-old shepherd sets out at dawn, trekking up and down rocky hills with his goats. Half a world away on the Japanese island of Okinawa, a 100-year-old woman begins her day tending a small vegetable garden, later meeting her lifelong friends for a chat and green tea.…
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Read more: A New Dawn for Psychedelics – Microdosing and the Road to Legalization
In the mid-20th century, psychedelic substances like LSD and psilocybin mushrooms went from scientific curiosities to symbols of the counterculture. In the 1950s and 60s, researchers explored LSD’s potential to treat mental illness, and some psychiatrists reported promising results. But by the late 1960s, these hallucinogens escaped the lab and exploded into popular use, sparking…
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Read more: Universe 25: Is This Failed Science Experiment Humanity’s Future?
1972: researcher John B. Calhoun peered into a sprawling mouse habitat that had fallen eerily silent. This enclosure, once brimming with the scurrying activity of thousands of mice, was now a wasteland. Only a few dozen rodents remained alive, and even those survivors seemed listless and on the brink of death. It was as if…
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Read more: Weapons: America’s Dark Obsession with Witch Hunts
Weapons is one of biggest horror films of the year and the Junji Ito-esque picture opens up a conversation about the nature of witch hunts. The film takes place in a quiet Pennsylvania town where 17 children vanish into the cold darkness without a trace. Panic grips the community. Neighbors cast suspicious eyes at those…
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Read more: The Gaia Hypothesis – Is Earth a Super Organism?
Picture Earth not as a rock with life scattered across its surface, but as a single, self-regulating organism. Its oceans act as blood, circulating nutrients. Its forests are lungs, exhaling oxygen and drawing in carbon. Its atmosphere is a thin skin, holding in warmth and filtering cosmic rays. This was the vision crystallized in the…
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Read more: How Did Escape Artists, Strongmen and Acrobats Become Superheroes?
A crowd gathers under the bright stripes of the circus tent, hearts pounding as a man wrapped in chains struggles inside a water tank. Minutes feel like hours… submerged… entombed in impossible knots of metal. Just when it seems no human could survive even a second longer, he bursts free, arms raised in triumph as…
