Lunchroom in Chicago, 1896

How Gender Got on the Menu

As women began to be welcomed into restaurants, some started catering to what they perceived as “female tastes,” largely meaning the sugary stuff
The interior of the crater of Pico de Teide, Tenerife

The Canary Islands: First Stop of Imperialism

Before the New World, Europeans arrived in the Canary Islands and set the model for the enslavements, genocides, and radical ecological transformations to come.
Hospital emergency room entrance sign

Medicalizing Domestic Violence

What happens when experts position domestic violence inside a biomedical model of care?
Map illustrating legal erasure of roads in Fort Reno Park in 1943, following the clearance of Reno, a neighborhood.

Segregation by Eminent Domain

The Fifth Amendment allows the government to buy private property for the public good. That public good was long considered the expansion of white neighborhoods.
Toxic chemicals float on the surface of Leslie Run creek on February 25, 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio.

Vinyl Chloride, Revisited

In the wake of the derailment of a train in Ohio come renewed concerns about vinyl chloride and its use in industrial products.
Self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

Why We Connect with Vincent van Gogh’s Paintings

Van Gogh was a troubled soul and master painter who relied on his emotions and color to create art that continues to attract millions of viewers.
A uniformed member of the Nazi SA and a student of the Academy of Physical Exercise examine materials plundered from the library of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, director of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin on May 6, 1933.

90 Years On: The Destruction of the Institute of Sexual Science

In May 1933, Nazi-led student groups organized public burnings of "un-German" books, including those held in the library of the Institute for Sexual Science.
A false colored scanning electron micrograph of a flour beetle

Bugging Out

The complicated, ever-changing, millennia-long relationship between insects and humans.
Antique illustration: Sleeping at sea

The Women Who Preached in Their Sleep

Was sleep-preaching an ingenious way for oppressed women to subvert the social order through somniloquy?
Potato Pancakes "Latke's" with Sour Cream and Apple Sauce

Jewish Food, Brain Tech, and Mourning a Forest

Well-researched stories from Public Books, Perspectives on History, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.