Society & Culture

For Saudi royal servants life isn’t as glamorous as that of their employers: writer and actress Jayne Amelia Larson, author of Driving the Saudis, examines the inequalities of working behind gilded bars.

Ancient Greeks worshiped Helios, the “Sun God.” It’s not hard to see why they worshiped the personification of the great ball of fire in the sky. The sun provides warmth, heat, and now—energy. Here, science writer Kristen Pope provides 15 facts about solar energy you likely didn’t know.

Has the luxury of boundless possibilities paradoxically made timeless human endeavors like getting a job, raising children, and living in a house-with-a-white-picket-fence impossibly difficult? From the cynical rhetoric of economists, environmentalists, politicians, and most remarkably from millennials—the generation defining the #yolo present—it seems that expecting to have a decent, well-paying job and not hate your children might be too much to ask, as highlighted in this curation of 3QD picks.

Media portrayals of Ebola paint a stark picture—hazmat suits, mass graves, evacuations. But what do past worldwide epidemics have to teach us? Medical student Mark Wien examines epidemiology’s history lessons.

A philosopher examines Brian Leiter’s reaction to Eugene Park’s essay for Hippo Reads, arguing that Western philosophers implicitly consider their own work cosmopolitan and universal, while treating non-Western philosophy as limited and local: “If philosophy departments teach only Western philosophy, in what sense can they be, as Brian Leiter says they are, ‘guardians’ of the cosmopolitan ideal?”

How are green technologies being used in construction and architecture? Is there a way to make our homes not only energy efficient and cost-effective but also aesthetically pleasing? Architect and academic Dan Spiegel provides deeper insights on what it means to construct lived environments with a sustainable focus.