Noam Chomsky in Toronto, 2011

Noam Chomsky: There’s Reason for Hope

The celebrated linguist and scholar on his new book on global climate change, the mediated reality of Fox News, and the economics of the Green New Deal.
A person taking a photograph of a mushroom on their phone.

iNaturalist and Crowdsourcing Natural History

The citizen-science app iNaturalist lets you record observations of plants and animals. The data can be used to study biodiversity.
A U.S. postage stamp depicting Hispanic Americans

Where Did the Term “Hispanic” Come From?

"Hispanic" as the name of an ethnicity is contested today. But the category arose from a political need for unity.
Mushrooms in a forest

Fungi, Red Skies, and Simplistic Thinking

Well-researched stories from Catapult, Slate, and more great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
An advertisement for an American Kitchen Plan-a-Kit

The Midcentury Women Who Played With Dollhouses

How to sell white, middle-class women on suburban domesticity after World War II? Tantalize them with dollhouse-like models of new cabinets.
Photographs of criminals, with mask in the centre, from Cesare Lombroso's l'Uomo Delinquente, 1889

Criminal Minds? Try Criminal Bodies

Cesare Lombroso wanted to use science to understand who criminals were. But his ideas about biological "atavism" easily transferred to eugenics and nativism.
Collage of freshwater fish from Virginia

Freshwater Fish of Virginia

Roanoke College's Ichthyological Collection of over 800 freshwater fish documents the biodiversity we're losing at an alarming rate.
A young protester marches during the All Black Lives Matter Solidarity March on June 14, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.

A Century of Black Youth Activism

The history of the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights Movement is widely studied, but young Black Americans have been organizing for justice for much longer.
A forest fire reflected in Okanagan Lake, British Columbia, Canada

Wildfires and Climate Change

Scholarly research offers insight into the ways climate change and other factors are contributing to the wildfire crisis.
Women’s Day March poster from the Womens Liberation Workshop in London, 1975

What Was Women’s Liberation?

The short-lived radical movement within feminism has gotten a bad reputation for centering white women's experiences. Is that deserved?