Hiking is considered one of the most popular outdoor activities worldwide, offering numerous mental and physical health benefits, and allowing us to connect with nature. Walking long distances, often through diverse biomes and habitats, was originally a necessary means of survival since nomadic...

Rigid thinking has been linked to social and professional problems, difficulty in adapting to societal change, and mental health issues that can lead to suicide and mass shootings. ...

Five times a day, approximately one-fourth of the world’s population turns toward Mecca to bow their heads in prayer. The Kaaba at the center of this global genuflection has a cornerstone that some speculate is a meteor. ...

On February 4, 2025, Chicago’s business community pushed back against Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposal to raise real estate transfer taxes, adding to the city’s ongoing economic struggles. ...

Amid the military posturing, economic sanctions, and political power struggles shaping the U.S.-China rivalry, intellectual property (IP) disputes remain a major battleground. In January 2025, Chinese company DeepSeek’s latest AI model helped wipe $1 trillion off the U.S. stock market by demonstrating how...

Over more than a thousand years, Venice transformed from a modest refuge into a dominant Mediterranean power. Despite various crises and encircling empires, the Venetian Republic avoided foreign rule, revolution, and collapse. ...

A free-flowing river supports abundant fish and wildlife, provides drinking water, and other intangible recreational benefits. But humans have sought to block rivers with dams for millennia. While dams have provided benefits like hydroelectricity and water storage, they have also been ecologically disastrous. Besides...

Spanish officials reassuringly heralded a “new era” for the country after May 2024 elections. Catalonian pro-independence parties had lost the parliamentary majority that had enabled them to govern their region since 2015, and for the first time in decades, had failed to secure a...

A glance at recorded history shows us that humans have “always” felt a need to explain phenomena perceived to exist beyond our comprehension. Today, we turn to science to seek answers to our questions about the universe. But in the past, preliterate people developed spirituality...

Empires historically possessed a unique ability to organize diversity and successfully rule over people quite different from one another. The national states that succeeded them in Europe were organized on the basis of nationality (real or imagined) where diversity in language, ethnicity, or religion was...