Guarana Fruit

Guaraná: Stimulation from the Amazon to the World

Long cherished by Indigenous peoples for its medicinal and stimulating properties, guaraná remains a key element of Brazilian identity.
Laura Kieler

Laura Kieler: A Life Exploited

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen mined Kieler's life for the plot of his most famous play, The Doll's House.
A group of women sit in the waiting room of the American Birth Control League Clinic, New York, 1921

Pro-Sex Feminists of the 1920s

In the early decades of the twentieth century, political and social activists saw separating sex from marriage and reproduction as an issue of freedom.
Aerial view of Barringer crater in Arizona

The Eight Best Hidden Impact Craters on Earth

Many impact craters on Earth have been erased thanks to wind, water, and plate tectonics. But scientists have clever ways to find them.
Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher’s “Musical Ark”

The first algorithmically generated music came to us in the seventeenth century, courtesy of Kircher and his Arca musarithmica.
Boy genius Robert Strom is interviewed by host Hal March from the television series 'The $64,000 Question', 1955.

The Invention of the Gifted Child

The National Defense Education Act of 1958 meshed with white anxiety about the desegregation of schools.
Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran: Godfather of the “New Age”

Published in 1923, The Prophet became a perpetual best-seller, birthed a genre, and marked the poet as retrograde, sentimental, and florid.
Loie Fuller

The Serpentine Career of Loïe Fuller

Rising from the ranks of touring comedies and Wild West shows, the American dancer dreamed of a future of light, movement, and metamorphosis.
Enigma machine

Teaching AI, AKA Artificial Intelligence

AI is everywhere. So naturally, we pulled together a syllabus of stories on the subject. Use these to inspire classroom discussion or educate your grandpa.
A green iguana

Wild Florida, Neanderthals, and Rubens’s Models

Well-researched stories from The Art Newspaper, Nursing Clio, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.