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Etching of friends playing a game of chess, dated to the nineteenth century.

Get Capitalists’ Grubby Hands Off Our Hobbies

Christian moralists long promoted hobbies as a way to occupy idle hands, bringing the work ethic into free time. Today hobbies risk turning into side hustles.
A collage of red beans and rice with a "Welcome to Louisiana" sign, celebrities from New Orleans, and a Haitian flag.

Red Beans and Rice: A Journey from Africa to Haiti to New Orleans

“It was an affirmation of our city,” says New Orleanian food historian Lolis Eric Elie.
A photograph of a tree's rings.

The Fellowship of the Tree Rings: A ClioVis Project

The disparate and intriguing connections found in environmental history, one tree ring at a time.
The Confederate States Almanac

On Harvests and Histories

Almanacs from the Civil War era reveal how two sides of an embattled nation used data from the natural world to legitimize their claims to statehood.
The cult-like aesthetic of technocracy, 1942.

Margaret Mead, Technocracy, and the Origins of AI's Ideological Divide

The anthropologist helped popularize both techno-optimism and the concept of existential risk.
A woman standing with arms outstretched

The Last Lighthouse Keeper in America

In a technological age, impassioned devotees renew an ancient maritime tradition.

Why Generational Thinking Isn't Bull

Reflections on Pavement, Nirvana, the very meaning of history, and the end of neoliberalism.
Pete Rose and Bud Harrelson fighting during a baseball game.

Pete Rose Remembers the Biggest Postseason Brawl in Baseball History

“You know how many second basemen or shortstops I knocked on their ass in my career?”
House Speaker Thomas O'Neill Jr. talking to President Ronald Reagan

Which President Had The Most Shutdowns? Reagan, With An Asterisk

There were more government shutdowns under Ronald Reagan than under every president since, combined. But some were as short as a few hours.
Greek philosopher sitting at a desk and looking at a laptop.

History, Fast and Slow

Two new books model radically different ways of studying the past.
President Obama wipes the sweat from his forehead at a press conference.

We Now Know the Full Extent of Obama’s Disastrous Apathy Toward the Climate Crisis

Obama’s official oral history contains new evidence of his indifference and foot-dragging on the most important issue of our time.
Founding Fathers sitting around a table

80 Is Different in 2023 Than in 1776 – But Even Back Then, a Grizzled Franklin Led

Americans have long nurtured mixed feelings about age and aged leaders. Yet during the country’s founding, a young America admired venerable old sages.
Photograph of glass factory, on glass, with man blowing glass behind it.

Unbreakable: Glass in the Rust Belt

Domestic glass manufacturing in the U.S. remains concentrated in the Rust Belt. But studio glassblowing is adding relevance to a long forgotten material.
A "political funeral" during the height of the HIV/AIDs epidemic.

The Right to Grieve

To demand the freedom to mourn—not on the employer’s schedule, but in our own time—is to reject the cruel rhythms of the capitalist status quo.
Panting of a woman lounging with a book, titled “Dolce far niente” (The Sweetness of Doing Nothing), by Auguste Toulmouche, 1877.

We’re Distracted. That’s Nothing New.

Ever since Thoreau headed to Walden, our attention has been wandering.
Roland Rhythm Composer

What Drum Machines Can Teach Us About Artificial Intelligence

As AI drum machines embrace humanising imperfections, what does this mean for ‘real’ drummers and the soul of music?
Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia outside the U.S. Capitol in 1965.

The U.S. Senate Has Three Buildings. Why Is One Still Named for a White Supremacist?

Georgia’s Richard Russell was an unrepentant racist. You’d think a name change would be a no-brainer. And yet...
Guy Lombardo with a conductor's baton and a New Year's party hat.

Do Americans Sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ Because of a Frat Party?

Or maybe it was the cigars that gave us this New Year's Eve staple.
John Von Neumann and computer charts.

The World John von Neumann Built

Game theory, computers, the atom bomb—these are just a few of things von Neumann played a role in developing, changing the 20th century for better and worse.

The Country That Could Not Mourn

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown just how hard it is for Americans to grieve.
Newspaper lithograph of people fleeing the yellow fever epidemic on a boat in Mississippi.

The Sick Society

The story of a regional ruling class that struck a devil’s bargain with disease, going beyond negligence to cultivate semi-annual yellow fever epidemics.
Mammoth bones in the dirt

Bones of Mammoths Seemingly Butchered by Humans Found in New Mexico

A pile of mammoth bones offers evidence that people were living in the region as early as 37,000 years ago.
Artwork of Congress on July 4, 1776

Eighteenth Century Track Changes: Uncovering Revisions in Founding Fathers’ Documents

Let’s consider the significance and responsibility of outlining, drafting, and shaping our nation as the Founding Fathers put pen to paper.
Invisible Man book cover with Ralph Ellison on the back

Broke and Blowing Deadlines

How Ralph Ellison got Invisible Man into the canon.
Robert Adams, “Tract House, Longmont, Colorado,” 1973.

Robert Adams Looked Past Despair and Found the Truth of America

"To render the world more beautiful than it really is, as so many landscape photographers before Adams routinely did, is dishonest."
Hitchhikers sitting on a road, thumbs extended.

That Ol’ Thumb: Hitchhiking

A review of "Driving With Strangers: What Hitchhiking Tells Us About Humanity."
Minnehaha County Courthouse

Seeking the Last Remnants of South Dakota’s ‘Divorce Colony’

How Sioux Falls became a controversial Gilded Age “Mecca for the mismated.”
Black and white image of Arlington radio towers

When Arlington Set the Nation's Clocks: The Arlington Radio Towers

A century ago, Arlington was home to one of the most powerful radio stations in history, which helped to usher in an era of wireless communications.
Animals in pairs in the rain board a rocket ship, evoking Noah's ark. Fantastic October 1961, Mike Christie, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

What If… Historians Were Honest About Counterfactuals?

A single choice can branch out to infinite realities.
U.S. Supreme Court building, Washington, D.C.

"A Man of His Time": From Patrick Henry to Samuel Alito in U.S. History

The struggle for progress is always two steps forward and at least one step back.

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