Popular Culture News

November 14, 2025

Top Headlines

This 14th Century Story Fooled the World About the Black Death

Nov. 11, 2025 Historians have traced myths about the Black Death’s rapid journey across Asia to one 14th-century poem by Ibn al-Wardi. His imaginative maqāma, never meant as fact, became the foundation for centuries of misinformation about how the plague ...

When Men Drink, Women and Children Pay the Price

Oct. 11, 2025 Men’s heavy drinking is fueling a hidden crisis affecting millions of women and children worldwide. The harms, from violence to financial instability, are especially severe where gender inequality is high. Experts warn that alcohol policies must ...

Ancient DNA Finally Solves the Mystery of the World’s First Pandemic

Aug. 30, 2025 Scientists have finally uncovered direct genetic evidence of Yersinia pestis — the bacterium behind the Plague of Justinian — in a mass grave in Jerash, Jordan. This long-sought discovery resolves a centuries-old debate, confirming that the ...

Why Most Whale Sharks in Indonesia Are Scarred by Humans

Aug. 28, 2025 Whale sharks in Indonesia are suffering widespread injuries, with a majority scarred by human activity. Researchers found bagans and boats to be the biggest threats, especially as shark tourism grows. Protecting these gentle giants may be as simple ...

The Surprising Reason X-rays Can Push Arthritis Patients Toward Surgery

Aug. 26, 2025 Knee osteoarthritis is a major cause of pain and disability, but routine X-rays often do more harm than good. New research shows that being shown an X-ray can increase anxiety, make people fear exercise, and lead them to believe surgery is the only ...

Scientists Discover the Pancake Secret That Makes Vegan Eggs Irresistible

Aug. 12, 2025 A study finds that people are more open to plant-based eggs when they’re part of familiar foods, like pancakes, rather than served plain. While taste and appearance still favor regular eggs, vegan eggs score higher on environmental and ethical ...

Deadly Disguise: How Candy-like Nicotine Pouches Caused a 763% Spike in Child Poisonings

July 14, 2025 A massive spike in young children accidentally ingesting nicotine pouches has alarmed poison control researchers, with a 763% rise reported between 2020 and 2023. Unlike other nicotine products, ...

Multisensory VR Forest Reboots Your Brain and Lifts Mood—study Confirms

July 6, 2025 Immersing stressed volunteers in a 360° virtual Douglas-fir forest complete with sights, sounds and scents boosted their mood, sharpened short-term memory and deepened their feeling of nature-connectedness—especially when all three senses were ...

Cluck Once, and the River Shakes: Inside the Amazon’s Giant Snake Saga

June 16, 2025 A lifelong fascination with nature and fieldwork led this researcher to the world of ethnobiology a field where ecology, culture, and community come together. Investigating how local people relate to species like the anaconda, their work blends ...

Clean Energy, Dirty Secrets: Inside the Corruption Plaguing California’s Solar Market

June 11, 2025 California s solar energy boom is often hailed as a green success story but a new study reveals a murkier reality beneath the sunlit panels. Researchers uncover seven distinct forms of corruption ...

How to Use AI to Listen to the 'Heartbeat' of a City

May 21, 2025 AI-driven “sentiment maps” built from geotagged Instagram posts reveal how city dwellers actually feel in specific locations. By pairing emotional signals with Google Street View imagery, researchers at Mizzou can pinpoint which physical ...

Landmark Report Reveals Key Challenges Facing Adolescents

May 20, 2025 Poor mental health, rising obesity rates, exposure to violence and climate change are among the key challenges facing our adolescents today, according to a global ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:23pm EST

Science Finally Solves a 700-Year-Old Royal Murder

Nov. 14, 2025 Genetic, isotopic, and forensic evidence has conclusively identified the remains of Duke Béla of Macsó and uncovered remarkable details about his life, ancestry, and violent death. The study ...

AI Revives Lost 3,000-Year-Old Babylonian Hymn

Nov. 11, 2025 Researchers have rediscovered a long-lost Babylonian hymn from 1000 BCE, using artificial intelligence to piece together fragments scattered across the world. The hymn glorifies ancient Babylon’s ...

Archaeologists May Have Finally Solved Peru’s Strange “Band of Holes” Mystery

Nov. 10, 2025 In Peru’s mysterious Pisco Valley, thousands of perfectly aligned holes known as Monte Sierpe have long puzzled scientists. New drone mapping and ...

Most Americans Don’t Know Alcohol Can Cause Cancer

Nov. 5, 2025 Most U.S. adults don’t realize alcohol raises cancer risk, and drinkers themselves are the least aware. Scientists say targeting these misbeliefs could significantly reduce alcohol-related cancer ...

Scientists Just Solved the Mystery of Perfect Spaghetti

Oct. 28, 2025 Scientists found that gluten is key to spaghetti’s strength, acting like a microscopic safety net that prevents disintegration. Advanced imaging revealed how gluten-free pasta collapses more easily ...

Ancient Tides May Have Sparked Humanity’s First Urban Civilization

Oct. 27, 2025 New research shows that the rise of Sumer was deeply tied to the tidal and sedimentary dynamics of ancient Mesopotamia. Early communities harnessed predictable tides for irrigation, but when deltas ...

12,000-Year-Old Rock Art Found in Arabia Reveals a Lost Civilization

Oct. 11, 2025 Archaeologists in Saudi Arabia discovered over 170 ancient rock engravings that may be among the earliest monumental artworks in the region. Created between 12,800 and 11,400 years ago, the massive ...

Would You Eat Yogurt Made With Ants? Scientists Did

Oct. 6, 2025 In a remarkable blend of science and tradition, researchers have revived an old Balkan and Turkish yogurt-making technique that uses ants as natural fermenters. The ants’ bacteria, acids, and ...

Why Gen X Women Can’t Stop Eating Ultra-Processed Foods

Sep. 29, 2025 Researchers found that middle-aged adults, especially women, are far more likely to be addicted to ultra-processed foods than older generations. Marketing of diet-focused processed foods in the 1980s ...

Scientists Win Ig Nobel Prize for Cracking the Code to Perfect Cacio E Pepe

Sep. 19, 2025 What started as a frustrating kitchen challenge turned into award-winning science: Fabrizio Olmeda and his colleagues scientifically decoded the secret of creamy cacio e pepe and earned the Ig Nobel ...

The Surprising Brain Chemistry Behind Instant Friendships

Aug. 13, 2025 UC Berkeley scientists found oxytocin is key for quickly forming strong friendships, but less critical for mate bonds. In prairie voles, a lack of oxytocin receptors delayed bonding and reduced ...

4,000-Year-Old Teeth Reveal the Earliest Human High — Hidden in Plaque

Aug. 1, 2025 Scientists have discovered the oldest direct evidence of betel nut chewing in Southeast Asia by analyzing 4,000-year-old dental plaque from a burial in Thailand. This breakthrough method reveals ...

Google's Deepfake Hunter Sees What You Can’t—even in Videos Without Faces

July 24, 2025 AI-generated videos are becoming dangerously convincing and UC Riverside researchers have teamed up with Google to fight back. Their new system, UNITE, can detect deepfakes even when faces ...

Ancient Recipes or Rituals? Neanderthal Bones Reveal a Prehistoric Culinary Mystery

July 18, 2025 Neanderthals living just 70 kilometers apart in Israel may have had different food prep customs, according to new research on butchered animal bones. These subtle variations — like how meat was cut ...

Butchery Clues Reveal Neanderthals May Have Had “family Recipes”

July 17, 2025 Neanderthals living in two nearby caves in ancient Israel prepared their food in surprisingly different ways, according to new archaeological evidence. Despite using the same tools and hunting the ...

11,000-Year-Old Feast Uncovered: Why Hunters Hauled Wild Boars Across Mountains

July 19, 2025 Ancient Iranians hosted epic feasts with wild boars that had been hunted and transported from distant regions. These animals weren’t just dinner—they were symbolic gifts. Tooth enamel analysis ...

Why Monkeys—and Humans—can’t Look Away from Social Conflict

July 9, 2025 Long-tailed macaques given short videos were glued to scenes of fighting—especially when the combatants were monkeys they knew—mirroring the human draw to drama and familiar faces. Low-ranking ...

Are Lefties Really More Creative? 100 Years of Data Say No

July 1, 2025 A sweeping review of more than a century’s research upends the popular notion that left-handers are naturally more creative. Cornell psychologist Daniel Casasanto’s team sifted nearly a thousand ...

This Team Tried to Cross 140 Miles of Treacherous Ocean Like Stone-Age Humans—and It Worked

June 26, 2025 Experiments and simulations show Paleolithic paddlers could outwit the powerful Kuroshio Current by launching dugout canoes from northern Taiwan and steering southeast toward Okinawa. A modern crew ...

Scientists Reprogram Ant Behavior Using Brain Molecules

June 25, 2025 Leafcutter ants live in highly organized colonies where every ant has a job, and now researchers can flip those jobs like a switch. By manipulating just two neuropeptides, scientists can turn ...

Stars or Numbers? How Rating Formats Change Consumer Behavior

May 19, 2025 Researchers found that consumers tend to overestimate fractional star ratings and underestimate fractional numerals. In either case, the ratings can be misleading, potentially causing a company to ...

Is AI Truly Creative? Turns out Creativity Is in the Eye of the Beholder

May 8, 2025 What makes people think an AI system is creative? New research shows that it depends on how much they see of the creative act. The findings have implications for how we research and design creative ...

Social Media Platform Tailoring Could Support More Fulfilling Use, Study Finds

May 7, 2025 Redesigning social media to suit different needs of users could make their time online more focused, according to new ...

Is Virtual-Only Couture the New Clothing Craze?

May 7, 2025 As fast fashion continues to fill wardrobes and landfills at a staggering pace, new research suggests that the future of fashion might lie not in fabric, but in ...

Cannabis Study: Legalization Reduces Problematic Consumption, Particularly Among Certain Individuals

May 7, 2025 Researchers are investigating how the legal supply of cannabis affects consumption and mental health among participants. In a first academic publication, the study team has now reported on the direct ...

Spanking and Other Physical Discipline Lead to Exclusively Negative Outcomes for Children in Low And Middle-Income Countries

May 5, 2025 Physically punishing children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has exclusively negative outcomes -- including poor health, lower academic performance, and impaired social-emotional ...

Good Karma for Me, Bad Karma for You

May 1, 2025 Many people around the world believe in karma -- that idea that divine justice will punish people who do bad deeds and reward those who good. But that belief plays out differently for oneself versus ...

Study Suggests Dance and Lullabies Aren't Universal Human Behaviors

Apr. 29, 2025 Social singing and dance are often assumed to be hard-wired into the human condition; studies have supported the conclusion that these are common across cultures. But new research from an ...

Awkward. Humans Are Still Better Than AI at Reading the Room

Apr. 24, 2025 Humans are better than current AI models at interpreting social interactions and understanding social dynamics in moving scenes. Researchers believe this is because AI neural networks were inspired ...

Skeletal Evidence of Roman Gladiator Bitten by Lion in Combat

Apr. 23, 2025 Bite marks found on a skeleton discovered in a Roman cemetery in York have revealed the first archaeological evidence of gladiatorial combat between a human and a ...