How to Evade Taxes in Ancient Rome: A 1,900-Year-Old Papyrus Reveals an Ancient Tax Evasion Scheme

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It was sure­ly not a coin­ci­dence that the New York Times pub­lished its sto­ry on the tri­al of a cer­tain Gadalias and Sau­los this past Mon­day, April 14th. The defen­dants, as their names sug­gest, did not live in moder­ni­ty: the papyrus doc­u­ment­ing their legal trou­bles dates to the reign of Hadri­an, around…

How to Enter a ‘Flow State’ on Command: Peak Performance Mind Hack Explained in 7 Minutes

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You can be for­giv­en for think­ing the con­cept of “flow” was cooked up and pop­u­lar­ized by yoga teach­ers. That word gets a lot of play when one is mov­ing from Down­ward-Fac­ing Dog on through War­rior One and Two.

Actu­al­ly, flow — the state of  “effort­less effort” — was coined by Goethe,…

A Forgotten 16th-Century Manuscript Reveals the First Designs for Modern Rockets

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The Aus­tri­an mil­i­tary engi­neer Con­rad Haas was a man ahead of his time — indeed, about 400 years ahead, con­sid­er­ing that he was work­ing on rock­ets aimed for out­er space back in the mid-six­teenth cen­tu­ry. Need­less to say, he nev­er actu­al­ly man­aged to launch any­thing into the upper atmos­phere. But you have…

Why Most Ancient Civilizations Had No Word for the Color Blue

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In an old Zen sto­ry, two monks argue over whether a flag is wav­ing or whether it’s the wind that waves. Their teacher strikes them both dumb, say­ing, “It is your mind that moves.” The cen­turies-old koan illus­trates a point Zen mas­ters — and lat­er philoso­phers, psy­chol­o­gists, and neu­ro­sci­en­tists — have all empha­sized at…

The Ark Before Noah: Discover the Ancient Flood Myths That Came Before the Bible

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The Lord said to Noah, there’s going to be a floody, floody; then to get those chil­dren out of the mud­dy, mud­dy; then to build him an arky, arky. This much we heard while toast­ing marsh­mal­lows around the camp­fire, at least if we grew up in a cer­tain mod­ern Protes­tant tra­di­tion. As adults, we may…