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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
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.