The Conversation

Trump administration is on track to cut 1 in 3 EPA staffers by the end of 2025, slashing agency’s ability to keep pollution out of air and water

Written by Elizabeth Blum, Professor of Environmental History, Troy University

Environmental Protection Agency staff and contractors are often involved in large cleanups of toxic waste, such as after the Los Angeles fires of early 2025.Mario Tama/Getty Images

As Congress faces a Sept. 30, 2025, deadline to fund the federal government, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has put the EPA on the chopping...

How Dorothea Tanning’s ‘Birthday’ painting challenged male-dominated surrealism

Written by Sally Jane Brown, Curator, West Virginia University

Do the seemingly endless doorways represent a woman trapped in domesticity or infinite ways out?Philadelphia Museum of Art

When American artist Dorothea Tanning painted “Birthday” in 1942, she announced her arrival – an artistic birth, as she later described it – into the surrealist movement.

Surrealism is an avant-garde art...

Ending taxes on home sales would benefit the wealthiest households most – part of a larger pattern in Trump tax plans

Written by Beverly Moran, Professor Emerita of Law, Vanderbilt University

Not long after U.S. housing prices reached a record high this summer – the median existing home went for US$435,000 in June – President Donald Trump said that he was considering a plan to make home sales tax-free.

Supporters of the idea, introduced by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as the No Tax on Home Sales Act in July, say it would...

Who invented the light bulb?

Written by Ernest Freeberg, Professor of History, University of Tennessee

Eureka, what an idea!TU IS/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

Who invented the light bulb? – Preben, age 5, New York City

When people name the most important inventions in history, light bulbs are...

A billion-dollar drug was found in Easter Island soil – what scientists and companies owe the Indigenous people they studied

Written by Ted Powers, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, Davis

The Rapa Nui people are mostly invisible in the origin story of rapamycin.Posnov/Moment via Getty Images

An antibiotic discovered on Easter Island in 1964 sparked a billion-dollar pharmaceutical success story. Yet the history told about this “miracle drug” has completely left out the people and politics that made its discovery possible.

N...

How to identify animal tracks, burrows and other signs of wildlife in your neighborhood

Written by Steven Sullivan, Director of the Hefner Museum of Natural History, Miami University

A paw print in baked mud at Joshua Tree National Park, likely from a coyote.Brad Sutton/National Park Service

Your neighborhood is home to all sorts of amazing animals, from racoons, squirrels and skunks to birds, bugs and snails. Even if you don’t see them, most of these creatures are leaving evidence of their activities all around you.

Paw...

A staircase in a small, decorative arts museum tells a harrowing story of terror, abuse and enslavement

Written by Susanna Ashton, Professor of English, Clemson University

A monument to survival and perseverance has survived, by happenstance, to share its stories today. Courtesy of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) at Old Salem

From the ages of 12 to about 22, Harriet Jacobs lived under the watch of her enslaver, a wealthy physician named James Norcom Sr. During that decade, as Jacobs grew from a...

Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić clings to power – but protests highlight the danger of stubborn leadership

Written by Keith Brown, Professor of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University

In Serbia, there is a word for a form of stubbornness that sees someone act out of spite or defiance rather than yield to the will of others: “inat.”

It’s something Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić is showing remarkable levels of right now.

For almost a year, anti-government protests have roiled the Balkan nation. They...

Why a study claiming vaccines cause chronic illness is severely flawed – a biostatistician explains the biases and unsupported conclusions

Written by Jeffrey Morris, Professor of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Biases in designing a study can weaken how well the evidence supports the conclusion.FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images

At a Senate hearing on Sept. 9, 2025, on the corruption of science, witnesses presented an unpublished study that made a big assertion.

They claimed that the study, soon to be featured in a highly publicized film called “An...

Tibetan Buddhist nuns are getting advanced degrees − and the Dalai Lama played a major role in that shift

Written by Darcie Price-Wallace, Visiting Scholar in Religious Studies, Northwestern University

Tibetan nuns study during the winter examination period at the Dolma Ling Nunnery in Dharamshala, India, in 2022.Rebecca Conway/Getty Images

In August 2025, 161 Tibetan Buddhist nuns from religious institutions across India and Nepal – a record number – gathered at the Dolma Ling Nunnery in northern India to take various levels of the...