Asia Poppers, who portrays colonist Tryphosa Tracy, prepares fritters in her one-room house November 25, 2003 at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The Countercultural History of Living Museums

In the 1960s and ’70s, guides began wearing period costumes and farming with historical techniques, a change that coincided with the back-to-the-land movement.
Timorebestia

Monster Worms, Modern Sufis, and the Origins of Life

Well-researched stories from Vox, The Conversation, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Barbican Towers in London

Why We Love/Hate Brutalist Architecture

Developed in response to the post-World War II housing crisis, the once celebrated Brutalism quickly became an aesthetic only an architect could love.
Giacomo Casanova by Francesco Narici

Casanova was Famous for Being Famous

Giacomo Casanova achieved celebrity not through any particular achievement but by mingling with famous people and making himself the subject of gossip.
Japan Airlines Air Hostesses, 1951

The Ban on Japanese Aircraft Pilots, 1945–1952

The defeated Japanese weren’t allowed to pilot, own, build, or even research airplanes during the post-World War II occupation by the United States.
Prince of Wales, Edward VII with Sir Jung Bahadoor shooting a tiger during a hunting expedition in India,1876

Resisting British Hunters in India

In nineteenth-century India, many locals stood up against British hunting—sometimes at the cost of their own lives—as a means of cultural conservation.
The interior view of the North Pneumatic Tube Station of the Merchandise Building of the Sears Roebuck and Company Mail Order Plant, Chicago, IL

Something Old, Something Pneu

Pneumatic tubes offered a leap forward in business and communications, in the office and across the city.
Christina of Denmark

Picturing Christina of Denmark

Christina of Milan, Duchess of Milan, used an unusual tool to avoid becoming one of Henry VIII's unfortunate wives—the royal portrait.
Father talking to son at a workbench in the home

How Hobbies Changed the Home

Basements, sheds, and workshops found their way into American homes because leisure activities pursued by men and boys were often loud and smelly.
An illustration of seven Earth-size planets orbiting the TRAPPIST-1 star

Why TRAPPIST-1 Is Our Favorite Alien Planetary System

The TRAPPIST-1 system is a treasure trove of possibilities and questions. Observations by JWST have just begun.