Woodstock, 1969

Woodstock: Sex, Drugs, and Zoning

It's the 50th anniversary of the famous Woodstock festival, which was fraught with controversy before it even happened.
Fifteen redacted pages of the Mueller Report

Are We Being Framed?

How the linguistic trick of framing shapes meaning--and can lead to deception.
A social security card on a plain surface.

When Big Business Backed Social Security

Contemporary conservatives call for the U.S. government to ditch Social Security in favor of private savings. But it wasn't always this way.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in The Great Gatsby, 2013

What The Great Gatsby Reveals About The Jazz Age

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel embraced jazz, while also falling prey to the racist caricatures associated with it.
Untitled by Ann McCoy and Untitled by Larry Bell

The Rise and Fall of Hologram Art

Major artists like Roy Lichtenstein and Louise Bourgeois have experimented with holography, but it has yet to be taken seriously as an art form.
A giant panda eating bamboo

Pandas, Potlucks, and Planetary Cooling

Well-researched stories from The New Yorker, Quartz, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, “The Black Swan”

Born into slavery, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield broke barriers with every note she sang.
A person's hand drawing a Big Mac hamburger on a sheet of lined paper

Are Students Just Telling Us What We Want to Hear?

Students tend to fill out end-of-year evaluations so as to describe a “narrative of progress.” For teachers, this is fast food of the mind.
Yttrium crystal

The Downside to Renewable Energy

Rare earth elements are used in virtually all electronics, and mining them is a messy business.
Dwayne Hickman and Bob Denver as Dobie Gillis and Maynard G. Krebs in "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

How the Beat Generation Became “Beatniks”

The rebellious culture of the Beat Generation was coopted into fodder for a marketable lifestyle.