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Soldiers erecting a barbed wire fence at the U.S.-Mexico border.

That Beautiful Barbed Wire

The concertina wire Trump loves at the border has a long, troubling legacy in the West.
Athleisure clothing items including a windbreaker, cap, sweatpants, and running shoe.

How Athleisure Conquered Modern Fashion

The sudden ubiquity of sportswear might seem a little odd. But almost every feature of modern fashion was once adapted from athletics.
Photograph of murder victim by Weegee.

The Lost World of Weegee

Depression-era Americans viewed urban life in America through the lens of Weegee’s camera.
Map of world happiness.

Are Things Getting Better or Worse?

Why assessing the state of the world is harder than it sounds.
Tillie Anderson on her bicycle.

This Seamstress Conquered Bike Racing in the 1890s

Cyclist Tillie Anderson shattered records, dominated her competition, and earned the world champion title.

How Superheroes Made Movie Stars Expendable

The Hollywood overhauls that got us from Bogart to Batman.

How the C-Section Went From Last Resort to Overused

Today, 1 in 3 American babies are delivered via the procedure, twice what the World Health Organization recommends.
Farmers haying.

Remembering the ‘Spooky Wisdom’ of Our Agrarian Past

For millennia, humans have followed specific patterns passed down by their forbears without always knowing why.

How a Soviet A-Bomb Test Led the U.S. Into Climate Science

The untold story of a failed Russian geoengineering scheme, panic in the Pentagon, and a Nixon-era effort to study global cooling.
Vintage print of the Guggenheim Museum

Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern American Architecture

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
Victorian couple courting with a church steeple in the background

Victorian Era

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.

Can the World’s Biggest Dictionary Survive the Internet?

The costs of achieving the centuries-old lexicographical dream of capturing the entire English language.
Funeral flower arrangement with a ribbon reading "R.I.P. Internet."
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Why Ajit Pai is Wrong About Net Neutrality

FCC regulations have long promoted innovation that benefits consumers, not stifled it.

The Last of the Iron Lungs

A visit with three of the last polio survivors in the U.S. who still depend on iron lungs.

One Person's History of Twitter, From Beginning to End

Twitter, valuing expansion over principles, achieved its goal of changing the world. But not in the way that it planned.

The Fake-News Fallacy

Old fights about radio have lessons for new fights about the Internet.
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The Executive Abroad

An interactive depiction of more than a century's worth of foreign travel by U.S. presidents and secretaries of state.
Franklin Roosevelt in front of news microphones.

The Rise and Fall of the Word 'Monopoly' in American Life

For several decades, the term was a fixture of newspaper headlines and campaign speeches. Then something changed.
Daniel Ellsberg.

From the Pentagon Papers to Trump: How the Government Gained the Upper Hand Against Leakers

We may be entering a post-Pentagon Papers era that shifts the power back to political elites, who are ever more emboldened to go after leakers.
A t-shirt that reads "Wanted: Notorious Disgrace to America," with a gun crosshair on Colin Kaepernick.

Spiders, Stars, and Death

It is worth taking a moment to recover the genealogy for the "crosshairs," the universal modern index of imminent violent killing.
Detail from the Russian poster for the 1957 Polish film Kanal, directed by Andrzej Wajda and set during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Photo by Getty

The Strange Political History of The ‘Underground’

Subterranean metaphors have been a powerful tool of political resistance. Today, is there anywhere left to hide?
Graph depicting deaths from cholera in New York City in 1849

Infographics in the Time of Cholera

To inform its readers of a cholera epidemic, The New York Tribune published an ancestor to our current infographics.

A Brief History of the Holiday Card

Americans purchase approximately 1.6 billion holiday cards a year. Why is this tradition so popular?
Pixelated image of ancient ruins with columns

Raiders of the Lost Web

If a Pulitzer-nominated 34-part series of investigative journalism can vanish from the web, anything can.

The Best Intentions

The Manhattan Project scientists tried to advocate for nuclear de-escalation-instead, they unwittingly abetted the Vietnam War.
Picture of William B. Shockley (1910-1989)

Indigenous Circuits

While researching the history of racism in Silicon Valley, Lisa Nakamura is surprised to discover the Navajo Nation's role in the creation of the tech industry.
Title card for animated film "Destination Earth".

Destination Earth (1956)

A Cold War-era cartoon celebrates the wonders of oil and free-market capitalism, and the overthrow of the Stalin-like leader of Mars.

A Visit to the Secret Town in Tennessee That Gave Birth to the Atomic Bomb

A journalist seeks to capture the "spirit" of Oak Ridge.

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