The Second World War left the United Kingdom in ruins and in debt, yet just three years later in 1948 every household received a leaflet telling them that they were entitled to free health care. This marked the birth of the National Health Service, funded from general taxation and available to all according to their clinical needs, regardless of...

Before his death on Nov. 25 at the age of 90, Fidel Castro had made no secret about his reservations about the normalization of relations with the United States and had insisted that the ideals of the Cuban Revolution would never be abandoned.

So following his death it is natural to wonder if the economic reforms initiated by his brother,...

College students spend a tremendous amount of time with their friends. One estimate suggests that the average college student spends only 15 hours a week in class but 86 hours a week with his or her friends.

But how much do we understand about the role friendships play and how they influence students...

Truth seems to be an increasingly flexible concept in politics. At least that’s the impression the Oxford English Dictionary gave recently, as it declared “post-truth” the 2016 Word of the Year. What happens when decisions are based on misleading...

Can President-elect Donald Trump adopt policies that respond to the realities of today’s Middle East, despite his lack of regional knowledge, absence of deep engagement in global issues and use of inflammatory language toward Muslims?

It’s still too early to answer this question definitively, but Trump’s pick of oil executive Rex...

The white working class surprised many pundits and social scientists by supporting Donald Trump, leading some to describe the election results as a “whitelash.”

The fact that the president-elect successfully mobilized this population was far from inevitable. After all, a fair number of Trump supporters once voted for Obama. A good many...

For a long time, friendships between gay men and straight men – what some now call “bromosexual” friendships – were uncommon. Homophobia was likely one reason; another was that straight men probably assumed...

Environmental issues had a marginal impact on this year’s elections. This hard truth, and the strong pro-fossil-fuel tilt of President-elect Trump’s cabinet, are a wake-up call for the U.S. environmental movement.

Ba...

News of the death of John Glenn – “the last genuine American hero” – ricocheted across the internet on Dec. 8, 2016, in less time than it had taken the famed astronaut to complete his first...

Cyberattackers pose many threats to a wide range of targets. Russia, for example, was accused of hacking Democratic Party computers throughout the year, interfering with the U.S. presidential election. Then there was the unknown attacker who, on a single October...