Illustration: Anatomical drawing of abdomen, circa 1900

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anatomical_drawing_of_abdomen,_circa_1900_(5551615776).jpg

Drinking Women, Scientific Art, and Torturing Trees

Well-researched stories from The London Review of Books, Atlas Obscura, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Astronaut Loren J. Shriver, Mission Commander of STS-46, attempts to eat floating sweets on the flight deck of the shuttle Atlantis during its orbit of the earth, August 1992.

Food…in…Space!

A brief history of astronaut food, from nutrition cubes to space salads.
An illustration of Incan ceremonies

How an Incan Nobleman Contested Spanish History

Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala left behind a one-of-a-kind object that undermines the crónicas de Indias.
Lazarillo de Tormes and His Blind Master

How Social Upheaval Gave Rise to the Picaresque Novel

How did the arcadian shepherd and chivalric knight-errant, centuries-old fixtures of European literature, give way to this witty rascal, the pícaro?
The cast of the new Gossip GirlThe cast of the new Gossip Girl

Gossip Girls (and Boys)

Researchers found that male and female adolescents may respond differently to gossip or other forms of social aggression.
A rice farmer with a handcart in Pingtung County, Taiwan, circa 1965.

Reclaiming Rice in Taiwan

After World War II, the US ramped up international food aid, both as a Cold War strategy and as a way to distribute surplus products.
Frank P. Zeidler

Race-baiting the Last Big City Socialist

When business interests tried to use red-baiting to take down a socialist mayor of Milwaukee in the Fifties, it didn't work, so they used race-baiting instead.
A Happy Christmastide

Share These Victorian Holiday Cards

It's all birds and flowers and kittens in these greeting cards. May they, as one of the cards says, keep winter from your heart.
An illustration depicting a face made out of circuits that dissolves into a cloud filled with screenshots of streaming television and movie title images

Are You Still Watching?

The work of cinema in the age of streaming services.
Painting of a woman's hand holding a pomegranate

The Paradoxical Pomegranate

Aphrodisiac and contraceptive, enflaming and cooling, the pomegranate was a balancing act, mediating between opposing states.