Well-researched stories from Slate, Sapiens, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

In the precolonial Igbo states of West Africa, power was often wielded by male chiefs or elders, but women had their own forms of authority as well. 

Dragons began life as snakes, but natural historians gradually began describing them in more fantastical ways.

British history is witness to a long struggle to curtail the power of monarchs and redefine the regulations governing succession to the throne.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark was arguably the most popular book ever written by Mary Wollstonecraft.

The first lesbian rights organization in the United States originated as “a social club for gay girls.”

Skeptics in Sweden voiced concerns from the get-go. Even automotive industry journalists wondered why anybody needed an SUV to go to the opera.

A commitment to internationalism helped build multi-ethnic campaigns within the more radical and anti-authoritarian side of the US labor movement.

Dopesick author Beth Macy takes a deeper look at the opioid crisis in Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the people of Rhode Island were drained by a mysterious force that caused them to slowly waste away.