An image of Sonya Pritzker beside the cover of her book, Learning to Love

Inside China’s Psychoboom

In Learning to Love, linguistic and medical anthropologist Sonya Pritzker examines the efficacy of group therapy in contemporary China.
A magazine stand on a subway platform in New York City, 1974

The Numbers vs. the Lottery

Between the 1960s and 1980s, state governments created lotteries to supplant illegal gambling operations that brought revenue to marginalized communities.
A plate with mashed potatoes, tomato, asparagus, and a blue steak

How Do You Like Your Steak? Rare, Medium, or Bright Blue?

In 1973, an experiment with dyed food and colorful lights had participants vomiting up their half-finished meals. But did it really happen?
Wing detail of the East African sunset moth

Animal Physics, Storm-Chasing, and Big Meat

Well-researched stories from The Conversation, Mongabay, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Citizens breaking down the door of the parish prison to lynch Italians held for the murder of police chief David Hennessy, 1891

Attacking Italians in Louisiana

Italian immigrants had no qualms about working and living alongside Black Americans, which made them targets for violence by white vigilantes in Louisiana.
Recruiting poster for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps

Battery X: A Secret Test of Women at War during WWII

Although their contributions have been largely forgotten, women played an active role in Washington DC’s air defense system during World War II.
A young woman stands in the glow of a multicolored Juke box in the late 1960's.

Juke in the Box

The jukebox turned listening to music into a performative act. With a single coin, listeners could share their musical taste with everyone in the place.
A silhouette of a spy overlaying a communist flag

Lai Teck, International Man of Mystery

A Vietnamese double agent who infiltrated and led the Communist Party of Malaya in the 1930s, Lai Teck also spied for the British and the Japanese.
A bag of freshly picked potatoes in the field.

Potato Power!

How the potato changed the course of world history…twice.
Mahakala

Buddhist Pacifists at War

In the early centuries of Vajrayāna Buddhism in India, practitioners worked to reconcile the religion’s teaching of nonviolence with the realities of warfare.