A brain scientist argues that we exist only at the level of consciousness. In dreamless sleep, a faint or under anesthesia, he says, you are simply not there.
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Four thousand years ago a Mesopotamian temple stored the city's grain and lent it out at interest. When debts piled up, the city could not raise an army.
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Your hunger is old, but your route to the canteen is new. Konstantin Anokhin on how the brain grows a personal tree of systems, one failed plan at a time.
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Neurobiologist Olga Ivashkina on why one breakfast in Japan stays sharp while a month of ordinary mornings melts into a single "typical breakfast".
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Early iron was softer than bronze and rusted. It won the Bronze Age collapse anyway: one bronze swordsman cost as much as ten with iron swords.
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A man who forgot his nurse within minutes could still learn a hard new skill. Neurobiologist Olga Ivashkina on why skills and life events live in separate networks.
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Dwarfs with pickaxes, forges and plenty of meat may be a memory of real Bronze Age miners, who dug kilometres of tunnels and paid for their dinner in metal.
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A 2022 volcanic blast sent an air wave across the Pacific at tsunami speed. It pushed the ocean as it went, and the seabed felt more pressure than the sky.
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Webb and Hubble have fields of view 10,000 times smaller than a wide-field robotic telescope. Vladimir Lipunov on why explosions get caught by networks.
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