ToK Essays Nov 2024

As one of the most experienced archaeologists studying California's Native Americans, Lynn Gamble knew the Chumash Indians had been using shell beads as money for at least 800 years.

COVID-19 and the history of the panspermia hypothesis.

The science supports that face coverings are saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, and yet the debate trundles on. How much evidence is enough?

Cornell University researchers analyzing 38 million English-language articles about the pandemic found that President Trump was the largest driver of the “infodemic.”

Is there an omnipotent all-knowing entity, otherwise known as "God", ruling our daily affairs and caring enough to judge our behaviors on an individual basis? Or is our life ruled by an invisible supercomputer that pre-ordains most of our actions, ensuring an impenetrable veil between us an

Marking Human Rights Day with the first concert broadcast of Max Richter’s moving new work

I’ve spent many years referencing Wikipedia’s list of cognitive biases whenever I have a hunch that a certain type of thinking is an official bias but I can’t recall the name or details. It’s been an…

Can your zip code predict when you will die? Will testosterone supplements boost your libido? Should you space out childhood vaccines? Does talcum powder cause cancer? Why do some doctors recommend e-cigarettes while other doctors recommend you stay away from them? Health information―and misinf

For the warriors and wanderers who became the Aztec people, truth was not singular and history was braided from many voices

In every generation, some religious believers imagine their time to be the end time. Why is this so? What makes the end time so compelling, even intoxicating? What characterizes the end time? How about in our generation? What, in a religious nutshell, is the end time? And what can we learn about religion, and religious organizations, from end times?

As leaders grapple with how to prevent destructive wildfires, scientists and advocates are pushing a centuries-old method: fighting fire with fire.

Kardecism - an off-shoot of spiritualism - found fertile ground in Brazil, and grew to wholly undermine trust in science and medicine.

A machine mapped the most frequently used emotional trajectories in fiction, and compared them with the ones readers like best.

The aggressive promotion of alternative therapies to prevent and treat animal diseases has become widespread, and is causing our pets harm.

On many critical coronavirus questions, like when schools should reopen, and how worried parents should be about Kawasaki disease, we don’t have enough data to have good answers. And we’re going to have to make decisions anyway.

Hayley Stevens explains how the recent ghost captured on a Birmingham CCTV camera may have a far more mundane explanation.

Star calls for live music to challenge social distancing rules, but faces fan backlash

The researchers wrote that they were astonished by their findings. By Christian Jarrett

Weighing the universe is a tricky task, but a team of astronomers have used a clever technique to measure how many galaxy clusters are in the cosmos, and from there come up with a total amount of matter. The answer: 31.5±1.3% of all the energy in the universe. Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally-bound objects … Continue reading "Matter makes up exactly 31.5±1.3% of the Universe"

The consequences of rape, maltreatment, disease and racism are revealed by the findings.