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Princesses Behaving Badly

So, every little girl wants to be a princess? Maybe after reading the stories of these real life princesses, she'll think again.

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How Did Clowns Get to Be So Scary?

There’s a word— albeit one not recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary or any psychology manual— for the excessive fear of clowns: Coulrophobia.

Read more at Smithsonian.com

An American Beat

in Paris

Bunking in a bookstore, where countless literary hopefuls have slept and dreamed before. Why Paris's famous Shakespeare & Co. can still inspire.

Read more at

American Way

 

 

The History of Boredom

Why do we get bored? And have we always been doing it?

Read more at Smithsonian.com

How Junk Science And Anti-Lesbian Prejudice Got Four Women Sent to Prison for a Decade

 

Four Texas women were sent to prison for more than 15 years for a horrible crime they didn't commit. Why was a jury so convinced they could rape two little girls? They're lesbians.

Read more at Slate.com

Total Recall: The people who never forget

The story of the discovery of Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory, an extremely rare condition of memory that cause some rare people to remember every day as well as most people remember yesterday.

Read more at The Guardian, in The Long Read

Should we stop keeping pets?

For some bioethicists, the answer is yes. A look at the argument against the institution of pet ownership. Notably, this article caused... a bit of controversy and was one of the paper's most popular and most commented.

Read more at The Guardian, G2

When babies didn't feel pain

Up until the 1980s, infants routinely underwent major surgery without anaesthetic. Why that happened, as well as modern neuroscience, has crucial implications for how we understand, how we see the pain of others.

 

Read more at Boston Globe Ideas 

Hawk and the City

 

Using hawks to control pigeon populations in large cities has a moral neatness - and novelty - that we humans appreciate.

Read more at Boston Globe Ideas 

In Texas, New Law Lets Defendants Fight Bad Science

Scientific evidence can be the most convincing element of a criminal trial. But sometimes it's wrong—and for the first time, a state's justice system has recognized that and adjusted accordingly.

 

Read more at The Atlantic

The Great Fire of London Was Blamed on Religious Terrorism

When the first sparks of the most devastating fire in the city's history started, Londoners didn't think it was an accident. How rumour created a Catholic conspiracy and decades of religious resentment

 

Read more at Smithsonian.com 

The Strange History of the Ouija Board

Harmless fun, tool of the devil – or fascinating link to the non-conscious mind? And if it's not spirits, how does the Ouija Board really  work?

Read more at Smithsonian.com

The Open-Sorcerers

How some magicians are embracing the open-source ethos – should the Alliance of Magicians care?

Read more at Slate.com

Linda Rodriguez McRobbie is an American writer and journalist living in London, England. She covers the stranger things, from surprising and unique conditions of memory to stories of alien abduction, DIY DNA labs to junk science laws, the ethics of pet ownership to whether invasive species are really so bad after all. Her work regularly appears in the Boston Globe Ideas section, The Guardian, Atlas Obscura, Smithsonian Magazine, and more. 

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