The Conversation

Americans spend millions of dollars on Valentine’s Day roses. I calculated exactly how much

Written by Jay L. Zagorsky, Associate Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law, Boston University

Feb. 14 is Valentine’s Day – an occasion that traditionally combines romance with big business. One of the biggest businesses is selling roses, which Americans increasingly love. Back in 1989, about 1 billion cut roses were sold annually in the U.S. By 2023, that had risen to roughly 2.8 billion – enough to give every adult in...

Breastfeeding benefits mothers as much as babies, but public health messaging often only tells half of the story

Written by Tisha Felder, Associate Professor of Behavioral Sciences, University of South Carolina

Breastfeeding lowers the risk of diabetes as well as breast and ovarian cancers for mothers.Goodboy Picture Company/E+ via Getty Images

Four babies are born every second in the world, and there are only two options for their first food at birth: human milk or formula.

Global and U.S. health authorities agree, however, that human milk provides the...

Russia’s fanning of anti-Israeli sentiment takes dark detour into Holocaust denialism

Written by Peter Rutland, Professor of Government, Wesleyan University

People wave Russian, Palestinian and Hamas flags.Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty Images)

The war in Gaza isn’t only challenging the geopolitics of the Middle East: It is also complicating matters in Ukraine, as Russia seeks to capitalize on growing anti-Israeli sentiment in the Global South.

Russia was slow to condemn the Oct. 7 attack in Israel and...

What’s sociology? A sociologist explains why Florida’s college students should get the chance to learn how social forces affect everyone’s lives

Written by Joya Misra, Provost Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, UMass Amherst

Studying this discipline helps you understand how society works.FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images

In January 2024, Florida officially voted to reduce the number of students enrolled in sociology courses.

That might sound baffling if you haven’t tuned into this cultural skirmish. But for me – I’m the American Sociological...

DOJ funding pipeline subsidizes questionable big data surveillance technologies

Written by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Professor of Law, American University

Predictive policing aimed to identify crime hot spots and 'chronic' offenders but missed the mark.Patrick T. Fallon for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Predictive policing has been shown to be an ineffective and biased policing tool. Yet, the Department of Justice has been funding the crime surveillance and analysis technology for years and...

Could flag football one day leapfrog tackle football in popularity?

Written by Josh Woods, Professor of Sociology, West Virginia University

Youth flag football players run drills with their coach before a game in Dayton, Ohio, on Oct. 8, 2023.Megan Jelinger/The Washington Post via Getty Images

One hundred years into the future, what if millions of people gathered every February, not to watch the Super Bowl, but to instead watch the annual world flag football championship?

Once a casual...

George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ is a story of jazz, race and the fraught notion of America’s melting pot

Written by Ryan Raul Bañagale, Associate Professor and Chair of Music, Colorado College

It took George Gershwin just 10 days to pen the American classic.GAB Archive/Redferns via Getty Images

February 12, 1924, was a frigid day in New York City. But that didn’t stop an intrepid group of concertgoers from gathering in midtown Manhattan’s Aeolian Hall for “An Experiment in Modern Music.” The organizer, bandleader P...

About a third of employees have faced bullying at work – here’s how to recognize and deal with it

Written by Jason Walker, Program Director & Associate Professor of Industrial-Organizational and Applied Psychology, Adler University

Bullying at work often includes a power imbalance.Vladimir Vladimirov/E+ via Getty Images

The phenomenon of bullying, harassment and sexual abuse in workplaces throughout North America is widespread and harmful to both individuals and organizations. In fact, bullying at work affects up to 30% of workers over time.

As practitioners and researchers who...

Power outages leave poor communities in the dark longer: Evidence from 15M outages raises questions about recovery times

Written by Chuanyi Ji, Associate Professor of Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Low-income communities often have a longer wait for electricity to come back after outages.AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

Electricity is essential to just about everyone – rich and poor, old and young. Yet, when severe storms strike, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities often wait longest to recover.

That isn’t just a perception.

We...

The divine matchmaker in Chinese mythology − Old Man Under the Moon − who helps couples find love

Written by Megan Bryson, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee

Looking for love − a store in Huaian, in China's eastern Jiangsu province, selling flowers on Valentine's Day.STR/AFP via Getty Images

In China, people celebrate Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14, but there are at least three holidays and cultural traditions centered on romantic love. A figure that ties together these other holidays is the...