Why are poll watchers at my polling place?

Quincy Jones mastered the art of arrangement, transforming simple tunes into epic soundscapes

Jose Valentino Ruiz, University of Florida

The visionary arranger thought of himself as a storyteller, not just a sound engineer.

The 27 Club isn’t true, but it is real − a sociologist explains why myths endure and how they shape reality

Zackary Okun Dunivin, University of California, Davis

Famous musicians and artists aren’t necessarily more likely to die at 27. But the story that they do shapes how we perceive history and reality.

How Native Americans guarded their societies against tyranny

Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Native American communities were elaborate consensus democracies, many of which had survived for generations because of careful attention to checking and balancing power.

Beefing up Border Patrol is a bipartisan goal, but the agency has a troubled history of violence and impunity

Ragini Shah, Suffolk University

Created in 1924 to enforce draconian new immigration quotas, Border Patrol recruited its first agents from the Texas Rangers militia, giving it a kind of rogue, cowboy culture that persists today.

Slow vote-counting, flip-flopping leads, careful certification and the weirdness of the Electoral College – people who research elections look at what to expect on election night

Jeff Inglis, The Conversation

Take a deep breath: Having to wait for election results means the system is working as it should, with safeguards and double-checks.

Is the US election making you feel adrift and wobbly? That’s ‘zozobra’ – and Mexican philosophers have some advice

Carlos Alberto Sánchez, San José State University; Francisco Gallegos, Wake Forest University

Mexican philosophers have a word for the peculiar anxiety you may be feeling: ‘zozobra,’ a dizziness that arises from social disintegration.

Kristallnacht’s legacy still haunts Hamburg − even as the city rebuilds a former synagogue burned in the Nazi pogrom

Yaniv Feller, University of Florida

Questions about how to represent German Jews, past and present, have complicated plans to rebuild the destroyed temple.

Will the lights go out on Cuba’s communist leaders? With fewer options to prop up economy, their future looks dimmer

Joseph J. Gonzalez, Appalachian State University

Blackouts on the Caribbean island are shining a light on a crumbling economy that the nation’s communist leaders may struggle to emerge from.

Only 5.3% of welders in the US are women. After years as a writing professor, I became one − here’s what I learned

Jo Mackiewicz, Iowa State University

Being a woman in a welding and fabrication shop means finding workarounds for getting tasks done.

Cells have more mini ‘organs’ than researchers thought − unbound by membranes, these rogue organelles challenge biology’s fundamentals

Allan Albig, Boise State University

Membraneless organelles, also called biomolecular condensates, are changing how scientists think about protein chemistry, various diseases and even the origin of life.

Carl Sagan’s scientific legacy extends far beyond ‘Cosmos’

Jean-Luc Margot, University of California, Los Angeles

On what would’ve been the astronomer’s 90th trip around the Sun, here’s a look at his legacy as a scientist, advocate and communicator.

Who formally declares the winner of the US presidential election?

The racist ‘one-drop rule’ lives on in how Trump talks about Black politicians and whiteness in America

Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s records on abortion policy couldn’t be more different – here’s what actions they both have taken while in office