culture
Bilingualism confers various mental health and social benefits. Perhaps knowing a second alphabet confers even more.
These ten maps provide a fascinating insight into the impact that soccer (sorry, football) has had worldwide.
The word “turkey” can refer to everything from the bird itself to a populous Eurasian country to movie flops.
You want your baby's name to be unique, but so does everyone else.
They believe in meritocracy, yet leave their kids massive wealth.
Late-night shows, developed during the "golden age" of TV, are no longer as relevant in the age of streaming services and Donald Trump.
"Oosouji" or "big cleaning" is much more than a chance to tidy up.
Using physics, Ross Chastain floored it during the final turn, scraping the wall and passing 5 cars to advance to the NASCAR championship.
Today’s scary clowns are not a divergence from tradition, but a return to it.
The value of art does not lie in the artwork itself but is instead determined by curators, collectors, critics, and other participants in the modern-day art market.
Nothing meaningful is done quickly.
Because Dylan “samples and digests” songs from the past, he has been accused of plagiarism. But imitatio isn't the same.
Like his "Mona Lisa," Leonardo da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine" depicts a woman in a way that flouted the conventions of its time.
Forget about Tinkerbell.
Urban legends help personify the anxieties that arise from living in a modern city.
How many tins of beans make a stockpile, and when does a basement become a bunker?
You can buy over 400,000 products tagged “witch” on Etsy, from candles to spell bottles to pentagram necklaces.
Between 30% and 50% of the US population says they believe in ghosts.
When the great American tradition of the road trip meets the great Jewish tradition of the deli, we get the Great American Deli Schlep.
All nations have founding myths, but none are quite like Russia's.
After 10,000 years of civilization, have we figured out what virtue is?
More than 1,000 years ago, Mesoamerican societies conducted one of history's most interesting experiments in commodity money.
Japan just opened to tourists for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began, echoing the island country’s isolationist policies during the feudal era.
Reading between the lines of Dorothy’s adventure to the Emerald City.
Modernism has lasted longer than any art movement since the Renaissance.
Scallop shells have accompanied pilgrims to and from Santiago de Compostela for centuries, for more than one reason
The artifacts were often made from found objects – an Ivory dish-soap bottle transformed into an earthenware figure.
How drugs, demons, and the search for immortality gave us words we use everyday.
We asked 11 experts about the future of progress for humanity.