Gold Records

How Have Music Charts Stayed Relevant?

Music charts conferred status on performers and became an arbiter of popularity and a signifier of success.
Twilight Zone the Hitchhiker

This Creepy Radio Broadcast Played With the Power of the Medium

Radio dramas became a way for broadcasters to get into the minds of listeners…and to comment on the very influence of radio itself.
JSTOR Daily Friday Reads

Paul Beatty, Man Booker Prize Winner

Paul Beatty has become the first American author ever to win the Man Booker Prize. Beatty won the award for his sharp satirical novel The Sellout.
Smithsonian Institution Building

Why America Went Medieval

In the middle of the nineteenth century, upper-class America went gaga over a vision of the medieval. Carpenter’s Gothic ...
Serengeti

Plants Know When They Are Being Eaten. (And They Fight Back.)

Plants have long employed a variety of defensive strategies against herbivores, but the scope and sophistication of these defenses is still being understood.
Sylvia Plath

Ten Poems By Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932, and became in her short life one of the most influential poets of the era.
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

How A Gambling Duchess Changed British Politics

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, won and lost fortunes, giving into a compulsion that pitted her against some of society’s most notorious ne’er-do-wells.
Fresh vegetables salad on wooden table

The Nitty-Gritty on Reduplication: So Good, You Have to Say it Twice.

Reduplication is a widespread linguistic process in which a part or an exact copy of a word is repeated, often for morphological or syntactic reasons (but not always).
scared kid

How Scary is Too Scary?

Halloween poses questions for parents, like how scary is too scary for their kids? The answer depends on when we ask the question.
Albert Anker, Fortune Teller

The Surprising Historical Significance of Fortune-Telling

The possible futures predicted by fortune-telling happen just often enough to tantalize, preying on our deepest aspirations of catching a "big break."