Central High School Annual Yearbook, Cleveland, Ohio,1920. Langston Hughes’s senior portrait is on the far right.

Class Production

A collection of high school yearbooks from Cleveland captures the rise, fall, and uncertain future of the American middle class.
Dried meat in Bhutan

In Bhutan, Real Citizens Don’t Eat Meat

The fusion of Buddhism and politics in Bhutan has forced “good citizens” to reconsider their relationship with the procurement and consumption of meat.
An animation of a cat that shifts between the cat being alive and the cat being dead

Why Do We Love Thinking About Schrödinger’s Cat?

In physics, the whole point of the thought experiment is that it’s absurd. But in literature, it’s been used to explore all sorts of ideas and possibilities.
AI generates images, text and videos, cute robot reaching out computer screen, holding file icons, artificial intelligence creates visual content provides it to user, vector illustration isolated

Artificial Intelligence: An AI-Generated Reading List

ChatGPT generated this annotated bibliography for us. Don't worry, we'll ask (and pay) a human to write one too.
Bob Gutowski, 1957

Pole Vaulting Over the Iron Curtain

When it became clear that the United States and its allies couldn’t “liberate” Eastern Europe through psychological war and covert ops, they turned to sports.
Vintage engraving of hunting moose in Alaska, 1886

Why Animals “Give Themselves” to Hunters

Many northern Indigenous cultures think about hunting in terms of literal “gifts” from animal to human, yet outsiders often dismiss the concept as a metaphor.
Still-life of a Pioneer brand laserdisc player

From DiscoVision to SelectaVision

While these videodisc formats ultimately failed, they signaled that consumers were hungry for control of their home viewing.
Mod dancers

Owner of a Lonely Heart

Personal ads changed dating, but they also provided source material for sociologists and psychologists to understand how people choose mates.
Connie Converse

Connie Converse Wasn’t Just a Folk Singer. She Was a Scholar, Too.

The disappeared—but recently rediscovered—folk musician edited and published in academic journals under the name Elizabeth Converse.
Edward Jenner vaccinating a young child

Moving the Needle

Anti-vaxxers have been around as long as there have been vaccines.