Lipstick stencil, 1920s

The History of the Flapper, Part 2: Makeup Makes a Bold Entrance

It’s the birth of the modern cosmetics business as young women look for beauty enhancers in a tube or jar

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The Privacy Wars: Goggles That Block Facial Recognition Technology

For designers, the battle over what it means to be private in a very public world is a new frontier to be conquered

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The Year’s Most Outstanding Science Visualizations

A juried competition honors photographs, illustrations, videos, posters, games and apps that marry art and science in an evocative way

Delphine Atger, 1920s

The History of the Flapper, Part 1: A Call for Freedom

The young, fashionable women of the 1920s define the dress and style of their peers in their own words

Made from vinyls and plastics, these fake foods on display in Japan aren’t the only fakes around.

Don’t Get Duped: Six Foods That Might Not Be The Real Deal

Colored sawdust instead of saffron? Corn syrup instead of honey? It’s all in the newly updated USP Food Fraud Database

A leaf grasshopper (Phyllophorina kotoshoensis).

Honey, I Blew Up the Bugs

Italian artist Lorenzo Possenti created 16 enormous sculptures of giant insects, all scientifically accurate, now on display at an Oklahoma museum

A traditional Punch and Judy puppet show.

Are Punch and Judy Shows Finally Outdated?

For a wife-beating, baby-squashing scofflaw, Mr. Punch has done pretty well for himself

The chicken wing, now a ubiquitous bar food, was often thrown out or cooked into stock as recently as the 1960s

A Brief History of the Buffalo Chicken Wing

How the wing went from a throwaway to a delicacy in 50 years

The Stealth Wear hoodie in thermal IR

Drone Couture: Designing Invisibility

While scientists work toward perfecting the invisibility cloak, one designer has already developed a line of clothing that makes people invisible to robots

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“Evolution of the Host”—A New Poem by Robert Pinsky

“Evolution of the Host”—A New Poem by Robert Pinsky

The watercolor above is an East African myth: Juok the Creator (shown twice) molding Egyptians from reddish brown clay and Southern Sudanese from the black earth. MacMillan says this image came faster than any of the others, "I literally did the entire thing in an hour and a half, just at home with no prior planning or sketching."

An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Creation Myths

Each culture has its own version of how the universe began. Artist Noah MacMillan brings this “visual vocabulary” to life

Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley: The Original Folkways Recordings, 1960-1962

Listen to Doc Watson Picking Away at his Banjo

A new release from Smithsonian Folkways highlights the talent of a bluegrass master

Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures

New Books, Reviewed: Animal Emotions, Deconstructing Detroit and the Science of Winning

Taking a closer look at some of the newest releases in non-fiction

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A Nike Shoe, Now a Part of the Smithsonian

The Flyknit racer is currently in the collections of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

Banksy melds street-fighting passion and pacifist ardor in his image of a protester whose Molotov cocktail morphs into a bouquet.

The Story Behind Banksy

On his way to becoming an international icon, the subversive and secretive street artist turned the art world upside-down

Going back to the roots of English grammar to uncover its many myths

Most of What You Think You Know About Grammar Is Wrong

And ending sentences with a preposition is nothing worth worrying about

Superhero origin stories help us cope with adversity.

The Psychology Behind Superhero Origin Stories

How does following the adventures of Spider-Man and Batman inspire us to cope with adversity?

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How to Tour Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans

Jazz is synonymous with the Big Easy, and there’s no bigger name in the history of the genre than Satchmo

Doug E. Fresh (shown above, performing at the Legends of Hip Hop Tour in February 2011) was a beatboxing pioneer in the 1980s.

Beatboxing, as Seen Through Scientific Images

To see how certain sound effects are humanly possible, a team of University of Southern California researchers took MRI scans of a beatboxer in action

Making guacamole

How Did Avocados Become the Official Super Bowl Food?

Did you know this off-season penchant for guacamole is an industry creation?

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