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Black and white headshot of author Erin Blakemore

Erin Blakemore

Erin Blakemore is a Boulder, Colorado-based journalist Her debut book, The Heroine’s Bookshelf (Harper), won a Colorado Book Award for Nonfiction and has been translated into Italian, Korean and Portuguese. Erin has written about history and culture and other topics for Smithsonian.com, The Washington Post, TIME, mental_floss, NPR’s This I Believe, The Onion, Popular Science, Modern Farmer and other journals. You can find more of her work at erinblakemore.com.

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Two champagne glasses.
Arts & Culture

Seeing Class in Every Glass: How Champagne United Behind Their Famous Sparkling Wine

The rise of champagne as a distinctly French invention helped sow class differences in the region.
Fish Stick
Business

The Ocean’s Hot Dog: The Strange History of Fish Sticks

Fish sticks fulfilled the need to repackage an abundance of frozen fillets. But did they become a consumer staple?
Devo onstage in their trademark bright yellow costumes.
Arts & Culture

Devo’s Brilliant Use of Irony

The New Wave band Devo mocked the music industry from within.
Starbucks Red Holiday Cup
Arts & Culture

The First “War on Christmas”

The controversy over Jesus’s birthday has gone on for centuries.
Black Friday Crowd
Arts & Culture

Why Black? A Look Behind the Biggest Shopping Day of the Year

On either side of the aisle, Black Friday surfaces systemic issues facing low-income communities of color.
Wooden Spoons
Arts & Culture

Why We Keep Our Utensils

They're more than just cooking tools.
The iconic clock scene from Safety Last! (1923)
Arts & Culture

When People Talked at the Movies

Being silent in a movie theater is a learned habit.
Vintage Tea Set
Arts & Culture

What Two Tea Parties From the Past Can Tell Us About 19th-Century Domesticity

How domesticity varies by class.
Movie poster for The Big Lebowski
Arts & Culture

Aggression, Ethics, and War in ‘The Big Lebowski’

It's more than just entertainment. It reflects the feelings of an era.
The many faces of James Bond. From the top left: Sean Connery, George Lazenby, David Niven, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. Sean Connery - By Mieremet, Rob / Anefo [CC BY-SA 3.0 nl], via <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a> George Lazenby - via jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/James_Bond_(George_Lazenby) David Niven - "David Niven 4 Allan Warren" by Allan warren - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David_Niven_4_Allan_Warren.jpg#/media/File:David_Niven_4_Allan_Warren.jpg" target="_blank">Commons</a> Roger Moore - By Allan warren (Own work) [<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0" target="_blank">CC</a> BY-SA 3.0 or <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html" target="_blank">GFDL</a>], via Wikimedia Commons Timothy Dalton - By Molendijk, Bart / Anefo [<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en" target="_blank">CC</a> BY-SA 3.0 nl], via Wikimedia Commons Pierce Brosnan - Georges Biard [<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0" target="_blank">CC</a> BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons Daniel Craig - Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daniel_Craig_-_Film_Premiere_%22Spectre%22_007_-_on_the_Red_Carpet_in_Berlin_(22387409720)_(cropped).jpg#/media/File:Daniel_Craig_-_Film_Premiere_%22Spectre%22_007_-_on_the_Red_Carpet_in_Berlin_(22387409720)_(cropped).jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>
Arts & Culture

Did James Bond Invent Globalization?

Ian Fleming may have understood international relations better than academics.
Left: Pinball. Right: Game Controllers
Arts & Culture

From Pinball to Video Games: How Sex Shaped the Gamer Revolution

From the start, sex played a strong role in marketing games to teenagers.
Latchkey
Education & Society

The Latchkey Generation: How Bad Was It?

The latchkey generation--also known as Generation X--was raised by working parents who left them alone after school. We consider the implications.
King James Bible
Arts & Culture

How the King James Bible Influenced American Literature

The King James Bible, the most popular version read worldwide, had a lasting influence on the American literary canon.
Leonardo da Vinci
Arts & Culture

What Beards Said About Renaissance Masculinity

The role beards played in defining masculinity during the Renaissance.
Halloween pumpkins
Arts & Culture

Trick or Treat Sadists: A Halloween Urban Legend

Are there a group of trick or treat sadists poisoning the candy they distribute on Halloween?
Shoplifting
Business

Kleptomania: The History of Shoplifting

Shoplifting was defined as kleptomania and understood as a psychological condition, but only a some members of society..
Mary Poppins
Arts & Culture

How Mary Poppins Softened the Image of the Suffragette

We examine the portrayal of the British suffragettes in the iconic film, Mary Poppins.
Public relations planning and strategy
Business

The PR Question: How Public Relations Found Itself

Public Relations or PR wasn't always so fundamental to business. There was a time when we didn't really know what it meant.
Collage of cosplay
Arts & Culture

Unpacking the World of Cosplay

We go into the world of cosplay, where men and women dress up and role-play as their favorite fictional characters.
By *christopher* (Flickr: dalailama1_20121014_4639) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Arts & Culture

Remembering the Dalai Lama’s First U.S. Tour

The Dalai Lama has been admitted to a hospital and has cancelled his schedule U.S. tour. We look back to 1979, the first year His Holiness came to America.
Portrait of American Author, Poet, and Naturalist Henry David Thoreau
Arts & Culture

The Myth of Henry David Thoreau’s Isolation

The famous writer-observer of nature, Henry David Thoreau, fills the popular imagination. But have we mythologized the image of him as a recluse?
Disco ball with blurred purple lights in the background
Arts & Culture

Do the Hustle: How Disco Was Marketed

Disco changed the way the music industry marketed music to the public. The genre innovated an industry and changed our interaction with popular music.
Francesco Hayez [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Arts & Culture

Wordsworth and the Invention of Childhood

Prior to the 18th century, children were considered little adults. It was only during the Romantic Era that the concept of childhood emerged.
This is a general view of the main gate to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where scientists developed and tested the first atomic weapon, in Los Alamos, N.M. (AP Photo)
Education

Los Alamos Had a Secret Library

The Manhattan Project needed an instant library in Los Alamos built from scratch and in secrecy--this is how it was done.
A man in mismatched plaids with a handlebar mustache
Education

When Academics Become Uncool

A sociologist wonders about the state of being uncool in the discipline and academia in general.

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