The Meaning of a Mustache
To shave or not to shave? At the start of the twentieth century, a trend away from facial hair reflected dramatic social and economic shifts.
When Ward Cleaver Caused Social Anxiety
In the early 1960s, an Illinois Children and Family Services worker tried to figure out how TV dads were impacting contemporary American fathers.
The Antikythera Shipwreck Keeps Revealing Wonders
In the first century B.C.E., a Roman ship sank near the Greek Island of Antikythera. In 1900 some off-course sponge divers discovered the wreckage.
The Caves in Which Moonshine Was Made
White County, TN, averaged more than a million and a half gallons of moonshine a year at late as the 1950s.
Bog Butter Barrels and Ireland’s 3000-Year-Old Refrigerators
Wooden Bog Butter Barrels are possibly the most beautiful things you can find in a bog. But why did people throw their butter into bogs?
Eroticism and Religion in Utopia
Some 19th-century utopian idealists took up deeply unconventional sexual arrangements based specifically on their religious beliefs.
Character-Building With Uncomfortable Chairs
Chairs were a subject of much debate as far back as the nineteenth century, pitting health and technology against propriety and aesthetics.
Bonnie Nardi
Welcome to Ask a Professor, our series that offers an insider’s view of life in academia. This month we interviewed Bonnie Nardi.
Is a Fair Trial Possible in the Age of Social Media?
Is it possible to have a fair trial or an impartial jury in an age when anyone is just a viral tweet or a Facebook search away?
How Ancient Peoples Fed the Dead
4,000 years ago in what is now Jerusalem, someone was buried with a jar of headless toads. In fact, many ancient graves included food for the afterlife.