Desegregating the Girl Scouts
The Girl Scouts had always professed that they were open to all girls. But how did that play out in segregated cities?
Verbatim: Jonas Salk
Virologist Jonas Salk led the team that developed the breakthrough vaccine for polio. He was also a social critic.
When Mambo Was King, Its Creators Were Stereotyped
As a style of Afro-Cuban music and dance, mambo was considered "primitive." And not just by white North Americans.
Why Does the Bible Forbid Tattoos?
And have we been misinterpreting Leviticus?
How Women Lost Status in Saloons
During World War I, anti-vice crusaders marked women who liked the nightlife as shady. You can tell by the way men started talking about them.
What We’re Reading in 2020
Funk music, floating cities, poetic prose, and a return to the classics.
Most Popular Stories of 2020
Crocodiles in Egypt, latrines in Rome, two timely syllabi, plus interviews with an epidemiologist and a theoretical physicist, were readers' favorites this year.
These Good News Medical Stories Got Us through 2020
The science of COVID-19 vaccines, the 1957 flu vaccine that controlled that outbreak, eradicating polio in India with oral vaccines, and more.
Best of Suggested Readings from 2020
Well-researched stories about the upside of public shaming, the octopus's sense of taste, and more from publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
You Don’t Get Colds from Being Cold
On the persistence of a folk belief.