On April 17, Pennsylvania became the latest state to pass medical marijuana legislation, which will take effect this month. And recently Ohio’s House of Representatives has passed a plan to permit medical marijuana in the state.

Research suggests that marijuana – or more specifially compounds in marjuana – may have potential as a...

So-called “nudge units” are popping up in governments all around the world.

The best-known examples include the U.K.’s Behavioural Insights Team, created in 2010, and the White House-based Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, introduced by the Obama administration in 2014. Their mission is to leverage findings from behavioral...

The amount of water vapor in the air – humidity – profoundly alters our experience of the environment around us. A hot, dry morning in the desert of California feels miles apart from a hot, sticky one in the Cambodian jungle.

People generally dislike hot and humid...

“Brazil’s young democracy is being subjected to a coup,” said Dilma Rousseff after the Senate on May 12 voted 55 to 22 to remove her as president and move forward with impeachment.

Is this really a coup, as Rousseff and her supporters believe? Coups usually entail the violent overthrow of a government or a trampling of...

President Barack Obama spared almost no one in his last performance at this year’s White House correspondents' dinner. He laughed along with the crowd as he skewered a host of celebrities and politicians.

But long after that lighthearted evening is forgotten, I believe the president and other progressives will continue to share bemused...

Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, is about to go on trial. She is temporarily suspended from office while Brazilian politicians debate whether she broke the country’s laws.

Her crime is she allegedly borrowed about US$11 billion from Brazil’s state banks – about one percent of GDP – to fund long-running...

For close to a century, the dominant method of conserving wildlife in the United States has been to protect and manage the areas where animals live. Millions of acres of public and private land across the United States are managed at...

Depending where you live, maybe you follow your local transportation department on Twitter for construction updates. Or maybe you watch Periscope videos of city council sessions, or read live blogs of public school board meetings.

Around the world, governments and citizens are engaging on social media. For instance, the town government in Jun,...

Editor’s note: This article is part of our collaboration with Point Taken, a new program from WGBH that will next air on Tuesday, May 17 on PBS and online at pbs.org. The show features fact-based debate on major issues of the day, without the shouting.

With fresh reports that the Islamic State (IS) group has bombed Baghdad to produce the...

Growing up in China, I started playing piano when I was nine years old and learning English when I was 12. Later, when I was a college student, it struck me how similar language and music are to each other.

Language and music both require rhythm; otherwise they don’t make any sense....