Patrick O'Brian invented his Irish childhood, his years at sea, his very name. His readers forgave him 

Microfossils Help Crack Mystery More Than 100 Million Years in the Making

How Art Invented Humanity

There Are 150 Completely Uncompetitive House Races in This Year's Midterms

How art invented humanity

Where Was Your Backyard 145 Million Years Ago?

How Celebrities Became America’s Unregulated Drug Pushers

Dinosaurs May Have Been Literally Charbroiled After the Asteroid Impact

Pentagon Contractor's Libel Claim Over Hidden Date Recording by O'Keefe Media Group Can Go Forward

New York City’s Hate Crime Problem Needs a Law-and-Order Solution

Fossil skull flattening suggests ancient origins of infant helplessness

Is Mathematics Discovered or Invented?

Are dolphins the only animals that call each other by name?

“I’m not a provocateur,” insists Alex Byrne, the MIT philosopher who helped author a report for the Trump administration on youth gender medicine

Xanadu, the "Home of Tomorrow" that promised automation as liberation, was run on a "house brain," another word for mother

Open Thread

'AI Kill Switch Act' Won't Stop Rogue AI, but It Will Slow Down Innovation

Nolan’s Odyssey v. Homer’s Odyssey

Open Thread

When Stupid Was a Diagnosis

Antidotes to Fear of Death: Astronomer and Poet Rebecca Elson’s Stunning Cosmic Salve for Existential Tremors