After a security robot drowned in a fountain in Washington, D.C., NPR's Scott Simon muses on robot suicide, and how long it will be until a robot has the capacity to question its own existence.

We schedule our work and leisure dates, why not the birth dates of our babies? Anthropologist Barbara J. King looks at this trend in evolutionary perspective.

It was an all-American scene to be sure, but not your typical 4th of July family sporting event.

The Affordable Care Act penalizes hospitals if patients are discharged and then readmitted with the same problems too often. That effort has improved care for patients, two researchers say.

NPR's Scott Simon remembers Liu Xiaobo and the principles he stood for in China, and wonders how Americans and American institutions will respond to his death.

An update on NPR's use of a loaded word.

The idea of a conscious universe seems to fly in the face of our deep-seated materialist worldview, whereby all existence is due to material particles and their interactions, says Marcelo Gleiser.

John Coltrane's Giant Steps is a great piece of American music, says blogger Adam Frank. In this video, musician and artist Michal Levy uses spatial metaphors to represent the song's symmetries.

She was ashamed to be seen buying condoms. She didn't dare ask her mother for advice. So how can Uganda bring down its high rate of teen pregnancy?

A new paper suggests that to declare something a mystery isn't just a confession of ignorance: Some of the time, you can learn something important from it, says psychologist Tania Lombrozo.

Can anthropology help us think skeptically about DNA ancestry-testing? Barbara J. King interviews anthropologist and author Jonathan Marks on racism in science.

There's anxiety in Hong Kong over things appearing from mainland China. But the continued presence of things not found on the mainland shows there's still a gap between this and other Chinese cities.