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Nimrod and His Companions Venerating Fire, by Rudolf von Ems, c. 1400.

Enjoy My Flames

On heavy metal’s fascination with Roman emperors.
Iron fence featuring mickey mouse shaped ornaments.
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Movie Studios Are Abandoning Russia, A Far Cry From How They Handled Nazi Germany

During World War II, movie studios went to pains not to alienate the Nazis.
James Brown on stage singing, with people standing in shadow behind him.

Hanif Abdurraqib Breaks Down History’s Famous Beefs

On who gets caught in the crosshairs when it comes to “beef."
Neil Young, on left, and UFC announcer and podcaster Joe Rogan.
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What The Neil Young-Joe Rogan Dust-Up Tells Us About The Music Industry

The music industry is thriving — but it’s not always trickling down to artists.
Exhibit

Moving Pictures

Tracing the history of Americans' relationships with the silver screen, from film's earliest days to the cinematic creations of our own times.

Comic of a boy inside an atom structure while a man looks on.

The Surprising History of the Comic Book

Since their initial popularity during World War II, comic books have always been a medium for American counterculture and for nativism and empire. 
Screen capture of a Black man standing in an urban residential neighborhood, speaking in the documentary "Who Killed the Fourth Ward?"

How “Who Killed Fourth Ward?” Challenged the Nature of Documentary Filmmaking

James Blue’s film investigated the destruction of a Black neighborhood in Houston, but it is also a powerful self-interrogation.
Still of three characters from Young Frankenstein, parodying horror tropes.

Dun, Dun Duuun! Where Did Pop Culture’s Most Dramatic Sound Come From?

Did the iconic three-note sequence come from Stravinsky, the Muppets or somewhere else? Our writer set out to – dun, dun duuuun! – reveal the mystery.
Dancers in West Side Story jumping on stage

Why West Side Story Leaves Out African Americans

The new film is set in a now-bulldozed Black neighborhood, so why is it all about whites and Puerto Ricans? Because it really takes place in Los Angeles.
Frame from the film Being the Ricardos, features Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz at a screen reading for the "I Love Lucy" show.

The True History Behind 'Being the Ricardos'

Aaron Sorkin's new film dramatizes three pivotal moments in the lives of comedy legends Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
A photo of Fontella Bass repeated as if it's a frame in a filmstrip.

Can't You See That I'm Lonely?

“Rescue Me,” on repeat.
Jewish actress and filmmaker Ellen Richter, striking a pose on screen while two men give her suspicious looks.

The Silences of the Silent Era

We can’t allow the impression of a historical lack of diversity in the art form to limit access to the industry today.
The Titanic sinking.

How The Titanic Haunts Us

We have good reason to remember the story of what happened to hubristic rich people, and the imprisoned poor, in an enormous opulent floating palace.
The Mean Girls Game for DS

Meet the YouTubers Determined to Find Lost Media

New media meets old.
Book cover of "Kathy Fiscus: A Tragedy That Transfixed the Nation"

Wellspring

The classic story of the child down the well played out in Southern California at the dawn of television.
Cover of amateur photography handbook

Say Cheese! How Bad Photography Has Changed Our Definition of Good Pictures

The changes in popular photography.
A mannequin family in a house at Operation Doorstep in Nevada, 7,500 feet from the blast.

Blackness and the Bomb

Seventy years after the civil preparedness film Duck and Cover, it's long past time to reckon with the way white supremacy shaped U.S. nuclear defense efforts.
Old cars piled up under a bridge overpass.

New York: The Invention of an Imaginary City

How nostalgic fantasies about the “authentic” New York City obscure the real-world place.
John F. Kennedy at his graduation from Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1940

Ending the Kennedy Romance

The first volume of Frederik Logevall’s biography of JFK reveals the scope of his ambition and the weakness of his political commitments.
Nuclear explosion
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Why the Cold War Race for Nuclear Weapons Is Still a Threat

The Cold War may be over, but an arms race continues, even as safeguards once in place have fallen away.
A pile of trash at a landfill behind a member of the Army Corps of Engineers.

The History of New York, Told Through Its Trash

In 1948, the landfill at Fresh Kills was marketed to Staten Island as a stopgap measure. No one guessed that it would remain open for more than half a century.
A graphic featuring art and archival storage.

NFTs and AI Are Unsettling the Very Concept of History

Non-fungible tokens and artificial intelligence make tracing the origins of a digital object more fragile. What are the world’s archivists to do?
A collage of significant people from the time like the Beatles and Elvis.

How Americans Re-Learned to Think After World War II

In ‘The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War,’ Louis Menand explores the poetry, music, painting, dance and film that emerged during the Cold War.
"Neighborhood of Fear" book cover

Abolishing the Suburbs

On Kyle Riismandel’s “Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975–2001.”
Pocahontas characters overlaid onto a landscape.

Deconstructing Disney: Queer Coding and Masculinity in Pocahontas

Disney gets inventive when they need to circumvent white people’s historical responsibility for genocidal atrocities — and queerness is a useful scapegoat.
Thaddeus Stevens

The Radicalism of Thaddeus Stevens

Thaddeus Stevens understood far better than most that fully uprooting slavery meant overthrowing the South’s economic system and challenging property rights.
Lawd, Mah Man's Leavin' by Archibald Motley Jr.

How Should We Understand the Shocking Use of Stereotypes in the Work of Black Artists?

It's about the satirical tradition of 'going there.'
A still from "Judas and the Black Messiah."

The Unsettling Message of ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’

The new crime thriller about a magnetic leader of the Black Panther Party is a sharp criticism of the FBI’s surveillance of social movements past and present.
A walk-up customer at the door of a minister's marriage license booth in Elkton, Md. during the 1920-30s.

How Elkton Became the Marriage Capital of the East Coast

The story of one small Maryland town that became the Marriage Capital of the East Coast in the 20th century.
An illustration of a skeleton apparition.

A History of Presence

The aesthetics of virtual reality, and its promise of “magical” embodied experience, can be found in older experiments with immersive media.
Artwork that says "Bury me fiercely" and features imagery of a face mask and cross

You Are Witness to a Crime

In ACT UP, belonging was not conferred by blood. Care was offered when you joined others on the street with the intent to bring the AIDS crisis to an end.

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