Cafe Society

On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln legally changed the status of over 3 million people from "slave" to "free." But his emancipation proclamation wasn't a law - it was an executive order. The framers of the American Constitution made this power available to the executive branch. But what exactly is this tool, how does it work, and what's the extent of its power? Christina Greer explains.

When you leave middle school and high school behind, you expect that bullying, fear and intimidation are in the past. When you get to college, you expect that people will be open-minded, compassionate and mature. Unfortunately this in not always the case. It certainly wasn't for Omar.

These schools are much better than Harvard, Yale, or Princeton at making poor kids rich.

When a real-life firefighter, surgeon, and fighter pilot drop in on a classroom, these kids have their assumptions about gender roles turned around.

There are over 170,000 words currently in use in the English language. Yet every year, about a thousand new words are added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Where do they come from, and how do they make it into our everyday lives? Marcel Danesi explains how new words enter a language.

Why do all-white paintings sell for millions of dollars and end up in museums?

The modern world firmly equates how much we earn with how good, noble, wise and worthy of honour we are. This is a brutal misunderstanding of how salaries are determined. We need to operate with a far more nuanced view of what the money we earn says about us.

The top ten countries on the World Giving Index, determined by a worldwide poll of three factors: helping a stranger, donating money, and volunteering.

How you take selfies is all to do with evolution, according to a study by an evolutionary psychologist.

When most people think of fishing, we imagine relaxing in a boat and patiently reeling in the day's catch. But modern industrial fishing -- the kind that stocks our grocery shelves -- looks more like warfare. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Jennifer Jacquet explain overfishing and its effects on ecosystems, food security, jobs, economies, and coastal cultures.

For most jobs, it's understood that you can be fired - whether for crime, incompetence, or just poor performance. But what if your job happens to be the most powerful position in the country - or the world? That's where impeachment comes in. But how does it work? Alex Gendler details the process of impeachment.

On August 13, 1961, construction workers began tearing up streets and erecting barriers in Berlin. This night marked the beginning of one of history's most infamous dividing lines: the Berlin Wall. Construction continued for a decade as the wall cut through neighborhoods, separated families, and divided not just Germany, but the world. Konrad H. Jarausch details the history of the Berlin Wall.

A 31-year-old woman has turned her back on expensive rents and property prices - by living full time in a van. With an interior measuring just 13ft 2in long, 5ft 8in wide and 6ft 2in high, Eileah Ohning's home is her Freightliner Sprinter High Top van. The photographic producer from Columbus, Ohio, has lived in her compact four-wheel home since May 2017. Complete with a memory foam mattress, storage compartments, a desk and a camping stove, she even has plans to add in a shower, toilet and fridge. Eileah parks her van close enough to her workplace that she never needs to worry about the morning commute and showers at her local gym.

Dhaka, Bangladesh - the capital of the most densely populated major country in the world - is also the planet's fastest growing city.

Water is refreshing, hydrating, and invaluable to your survival. But clean water remains a precious and often scarce commodity - there are nearly 800 million people who still don't have regular access to it. Why is that? And how can you tell whether the water you have access to - whether from a tap or otherwise - is drinkable? Mia Nacamulli examines water contamination and treatment.

"It can be so hard to forgive because - so often - we simply are in the right and the scale of the folly, thoughtlessness and meanness of others seems utterly beyond our own measure. But there are two inviolable ideas which should nevertheless, in the face of the grossest behaviour, be kept in mind to increase our chances of cutting others a little slack..."

"We hear a lot about genius. We are taught to admire the minds of those infinite, baffling but astonishing geniuses like Einstein, Tolstoy or Picasso. Quite what genius might actually be is left a little vague. It's a codeword for 'brilliant but perhaps too other-worldly ever really to fathom.' We are invited to stand in awe at the achievements of geniuses but also to feel that their thought processes might be quasi-magical and that it is ultimately simply mysterious how they were ever able to come up with the ideas they have had..."

Among the top prestigious awards in the world, the Nobel Peace Prize has honored some of the most celebrated and revered international figures and organizations in history. But how does the nomination process work? And who exactly is eligible? Adeline Cuvelier and Toril Rokseth detail the specifics of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ash and his team of clowns, musicians and dancers are 'play specialists' who work with children in refugee camps across Europe. The aim is to allow the kids "to feel good, feel daft, and feel playful".

Political correctness aims for some very nice results, but its means have a habit of upsetting a lot of people. Might there be an alternative to it? We think there is, and it's called Politeness.

Partners who break up frequently think that the nicest thing to do is to try to remain good friends. But this nice-sounding gesture frequently brings with it unexpected consequences. It may be better to plot a different course.