Culture

    Lehua Kamalu had only a few minutes to talk. She was perched atop a two-hulled canoe called Hōkūle’a in the Pacific Ocean, not far from the Big Island of Hawaii where her crew had just set sail. The wind whipped into the phone as she spoke. An expert sail...

    The divisive battle over abortion has flared up once more with the leak of a U.S. Supreme Court draft majority opinion by Associate Justice Samuel Alito that would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision affirming the right to abortion nationwide. In his d...

    From her apartment’s rooftop just as the sun sets, Rosa Marín curves her left index and thumb to form a circle in the air. Her two fingertips meet and create a little tunnel that seems to erase the rest of the landscape before her. With the improvised pee...

    The divine procession ls led by Hadad, Mesopotamian god of storms (far right, clutching a trio of lightning bolts); the moon god Sîn; the sun god Šamaš; and Atargatis, the region’s goddess of fertility, all identified using local Aramaic inscriptions.Phot...

    Editor's note: This is story will continue to be updated.In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the landmark case of Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113 (1973)), in which seven of the nine sitting justices agreed that the Constitution protects the right to a...

    Observed every year on May 5, the holiday Cinco de Mayo has its origins in a famous Mexican military victory. However, over the years the event has grown into a celebration of Latino heritage and culture, and is now celebrated across much of North America...

    Deep in the dark recesses of a limestone cave in Alabama soar life-sized figures that span earthly and spiritual realms. Traced into the mud of the cave ceiling by torchlight more than a thousand years ago, the sprawling scene is so enormous and faint it ...

    Iwas ordering a burger in Cincinnati the first time I began to sense that the Midwest was somehow familiar to me, which is to say that the Midwest was somehow Latin American.It was a Saturday afternoon, pre-COVID, and people crowded the tables at Zip’s Ca...

    United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon regularly spoke to international leaders and powerful diplomats. But in 2014, he faced a very different audience: a stadium filled with 30,000 anguished Rwandans who, two decades earlier, had seen more than 800,000 of...

    Valentines Day is celebrated around the world as a day of romance, but its origins were anything but romantic. The day was named after the Roman priest Valentine, who was sentenced to death on February 14, 269 A.D. for his stance of protecting the sa...

    As the days brighten and spring kicks into full swing, Jews all over the world prepare for Passover, a weeklong holiday that is one of Judaism’s most widely celebrated and most important observances. Also known by its Hebrew name Pesach, Passover co...

    Chocolate bunnies. Bouquets of lilies and daffodils. Hunting for dyed eggs. For many, Easter functions as the unofficial kickoff of spring—but for Christians around the world, the holiday is the most important celebration of the year.Rooted in more...

    A 1.5 million-year-old vertebra from an extinct human species unearthed in Israel suggests that ancient humans may have migrated from Africa in multiple waves, a new study finds.Although modern humans, Homo sapiens, are now the only surviving members...

    Race and ethnicity are terms that are sometimes used sloppily, almost interchangeably. But race and ethnicity are not the same thing.Both terms are used to describe human identity, but in differentif relatedways. Identity might bring to mind question...

    In the weeks leading up to Easter Sunday, Guatemala transforms.From the heart of the dense capital city to remote Indigenous towns in the rural highlands, people flock to the streets, and the country is splashed with a medley of colors: plazas are ad...

    People are constantly generating ideasfrom thoughts as mundane as how to better organize your closet to concepts as complex as the theory of relativity. Given this wide breadth of lightbulb moments, from trifling to significant, can humanity ever run...

    Indian culture is among the world's oldest as the people of India can track their civilization back as far as 4,500 years ago. Many sources describe it as "Sa Prathama Sanskrati Vishvavara"the first and the supreme culture in the world, acc...

    For many people, breakfastoften called the most important meal of the dayis also the day's least-exciting meal. Breakfast choices frequently reflect utilitarian needs; foods at breakfast are typically simple, quick and easy to prepare and eat, and va...

    Mexican culture has undergone a tremendous transformation in its recent history with varying impacts in different regions. Many Mexicans live in cities, but smaller rural communities still play a strong role in defining the country's collective vibra...

    You may have many questions about how to get pregnant, particularly if you have an underlying condition. Taking care of your body is a good first step to optimize your fertility. But what else can you do to improve your odds of having a baby?The most...