Home Pregnancy Tests
Before the arrival of home pregnancy tests, women had to seek answers at the doctor’s office, which was costly, inconvenient, and potentially embarrassing.
The Sonic Triumph of American Graffiti
In 1973, George Lucas joined forces with sound designer Walter Murch to celebrate a bygone era. They ended up revolutionizing the role music plays in film.
Brown v. Board of Education: Annotated
The 1954 Supreme Court decision, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, declared that “separate but equal” has no place in education.
What Was It like to Be an Inuit in London in 1772?
London had long been described as wearying and unreadable, so it's not surprising that Inuit visitors considered it unfathomable and irrational as well.
Diving Horses, Turing Machines, and Life with Germs
Well-researched stories from Atlas Obscura, Quanta Magazine, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Class Production
A collection of high school yearbooks from Cleveland captures the rise, fall, and uncertain future of the American middle class.
In Bhutan, Real Citizens Don’t Eat Meat
The fusion of Buddhism and politics in Bhutan has forced “good citizens” to reconsider their relationship with the procurement and consumption of meat.
Why Do We Love Thinking About Schrödinger’s Cat?
In physics, the whole point of the thought experiment is that it’s absurd. But in literature, it’s been used to explore all sorts of ideas and possibilities.
Artificial Intelligence: An AI-Generated Reading List
ChatGPT generated this annotated bibliography for us. Don't worry, we'll ask (and pay) a human to write one too.
Pole Vaulting Over the Iron Curtain
When it became clear that the United States and its allies couldn’t “liberate” Eastern Europe through psychological war and covert ops, they turned to sports.