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Black and white headshot of author Matthew Wills

Matthew Wills

Matthew Wills has advanced degrees in library science and film studies and is lapsed in both fields. He has published in Poetry, Huffington Post, and Nature Conservancy Magazine, among other places, and blogs regularly about urban natural history at matthewwills.com.

Damien Hooper of Australia listens to advice from his corner during the bout with Juan Carlos Carrillo of Colombia in the Boxing Men's Middle 75kg division on day 11 of the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympics at the International Convention Centre on August 25, 2010 in Singapore
Politics & History

How Do Indigenous Athletes Fit into the Olympics?

Olympic athletes are divided into teams of nations. To Indigenous competitors, though, that can mean representing oppressive settler-colonial states.
Blind men working on boxes for Elizabeth Arden cosmetics at the Lighthouse, an institution for the blind in New York
Politics & History

How Blind Activists Fought for Blind Workers

The National Federation of the Blind was the first major group of its kind to be led by visually impaired people.
Bob Moses at Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964
Politics & History

How the Freedom Vote Mobilized Black Mississippians

When civil rights activists needed new tactics, they came up with a strategy that would get national and international attention.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mumler%27s_photographs_in_Harpers_Weekly.jpg
Arts & Culture

The Dressy Ghosts of Victorian Literature

Realism was exceptionally well suited (heh) for elaborate descriptions of spectral clothing.
An anti-vaccination pamphlet from 1911, a rally of the Anti-Vaccination League of Canada, 1919, and an Anti-Vaccination Society of America advertisement from 1902
Health

Vaccine Hesitancy in the 1920s

As Progressive Era reforms increased the power of government, organized opposition to vaccination campaigns took on a new life.
Shucking Oysters, Biloxi, Miss.
Politics & History

How Oysters Became a Food Fad Way out West

Oysters in Wyoming and Arizona? In the nineteenth century? Yes, and mighty tasty too!
Leading Kentucky hemp farmer Joe "Daddy Burt" Burton with a harvested hemp plant.
Politics & History

The Return of Hemp

Even though it's made from cannabis plants, you can't get high on hemp. But it was classified as an illicit drug for nearly 50 years.
The sun in an orange sky
Natural Science

How Do Scientists Define a Heat Wave?

It seems that every summer brings record temperatures. But there's more to a heat wave than daytime highs.
Maurice Papon, 1958
Politics & History

The “Stone Face” of Racism

On October 17, 1961, Parisian police attacked a group of Algerians. The event would be lost to French history until a Nazi collaborator was exposed.
Psilocybe Cubensis
Politics & History

The Nice Married Couple Who Inspired People to ’Shroom

In the 1950s, Gordon and Valentina Wasson encountered magic mushrooms. Then they wouldn't stop talking about them.
An advertisement for Burdock Blood Bitters
Health

The Bitter Truth About Bitters

A bottle of bitters from about 1918 had significant amounts of alcohol and lead—and not a trace of the supposed active ingredient.
From THEM!, 1954
Arts & Culture

Fear of an Insect Planet

"Big bug movies" of the 1950s have been interpreted as projections of nuclear anxieties. But what if they were about...actual fear of bugs?
Ascaris worms, a group of parasitic nematode worms, also known as small intestinal roundworms.
Health

How Archaeologists Use Parasites to Track Urbanization

Historical patterns of parasitic infection show up differently depending on the class status of a neighborhood.
Martin and Osa Johnson
Arts & Culture

How Two Kansans Invented the Safari Documentary

Martin and Osa Johnson were celebrities in their day, but their vision of Africa was way out of touch with reality.
Group portrait of European refugees saved by the Emergency Rescue Committee on board the Paul-Lemerle, a converted cargo ship sailing from Marseilles to Martinique
Politics & History

The World War II Escape Route from France to Martinique

After the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940, some refugees tried to make it out through the Caribbean.
A road sign at a wildlife refuge that warns the drivers of turtles crossing the road.
Plants & Animals

Road Density Threatens Turtle Populations

Roadkill may be inevitable, but turtles are especially vulnerable—particularly females, putting species survival at risk.
Image from a poster for safe sex awareness
Politics & History

Gay Bars and Gay Rights

One of the flash points in the LGBTQ+ movement was liquor licenses, which were the subject of important legal cases.
The cover of the July, 1964 issue of ONE Magazine
Politics & History

Patriotism and the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement

Charged with being "un-American" during the Cold War, activists appealed to American ideals in their quest for full citizenship.
The Killing of Sister George
Arts & Culture

Hollywood Goes to Its First Lesbian Bar and Can’t Stop Staring

The Killing of Sister George was the first Hollywood movie to depict a lesbian bar. Director Robert Aldrich was obsessed with its authenticity.
Boxes of tamale pie, tostadas and taco casserole with figurine
Politics & History

Who Invented the “Mexican” Food of the United States?

The debate over what counts as authentic Mexican food may be moot when there are 7,000 Taco Bells around the world.
A British soldier training in 1941
Politics & History

The Bayonet: What’s the Point?

According to one scholar, the military sees training in this obsolete weapon as helpful on the modern battlefield.
Nomadic ethnic Tibetan women stand amongst their Yak herd at a camp on July 27, 2015 on the Tibetan Plateau in Yushu County, Qinghai, China.
Plants & Animals

Yaks in Tibet

As China tried to expand into Tibet in the late 1930s, it looked to the yak as a way to "modernize" Tibetan culture.
Sophia Thoreau
Politics & History

Sophia Thoreau to the Rescue!

Who made sure Henry David Thoreau's works came out after his death? His sister.
The House of Tomorrow, artist rendering exterior view
Science & Technology

Solar Housing Is Actually Kind of Retro!

The domestic fuel scarcity of World War II led to innovation in home heating—especially passive solar technology.
Leonard Woolf
Arts & Culture

How Leonard Woolf Critiqued Bloomsbury from Within

A literary scholar argues that Leonard Woolf has been unfairly neglected—perhaps because his anti-imperialism implicated his friends.

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