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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

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Genomic insights into the past and future of the black rhinoceros

The iconic African black rhinoceros faces an uncertain future after intense poaching caused a 98% decline in wild populations from 1960 to 1995. The species’ survival within its fragmented natural habitat now relies on dedicated conservation efforts. A study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution reshapes our understanding of the evolutionary and natural history of the black rhinoceros, opening a window into the species’ genetic past while urging us to forge a path toward its conservation.

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Five unexpected things about medical debt

100 million Americans hold medical debt which causes people to forgo or be denied necessary medical care. Luke Messac, a historian and physician, looks at five unexpected things about medical debt.

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Title cover for "Empires of the Dead: Inca Mummies and the Peruvian Acestors of American Anthropology" by Christopher Heaney, published by Oxford University Press

Why global museums amassed the ancestral dead, starting in Peru

It is a time of worldwide reckoning for museums that display or contain ancestral dead. But the specific story of the collection of Andean ancestors charts a different origin for this global process, and it asks us to think with more nuance regarding what to do with the museums it created.

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Making Sense of the Molly Maguires 25th anniversary edition by Kevin Kenny, published by Oxford University Press

Making sense of the Molly Maguires today

Twenty Irish mine workers were hanged in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania in the 1870s, convicted of a series of murders organized under the cover of a secret society called the Molly Maguires. Here Professor Kenny discusses 10 things that helped him answer the questions at the heart of his book, “Making Sense of the Molly Maguires.”

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The Oxford Comment podcast

The revelation of the Book of Mormon at 200 [podcast]

On today’s episode, we’re joined by two preeminent scholars on the history and theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to discuss with us the legacy of Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates as well as the state of academic scholarship surrounding The Book of Mormon.

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The Oxford Comment podcast

Revisiting toxic masculinity and #MeToo [podcast]

On this episode of The Oxford Comment, we explore two recognizable components in contemporary conversations on gender and gendered violence: that of “toxic masculinity” and of the #MeToo movement with scholars Robert Lawson and Iqra Shagufta Cheema.

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