You’ll Never Believe Who Invented Curbside Recycling
Far from ushering in a zero-waste world, the switch from returnables to recycling provided cover for the creation of ever more packaging trash.
How Toothpaste Got Scientific Cred
Would you brush with a toothpaste for the sweet taste alone or because of its touted health benefits? The answer wasn't always so obvious.
The East India Company Invented Corporate Lobbying
The historian William Dalyrmple's new book, The Anarchy, indicts the East India Company for "the supreme act of corporate violence in world history."
The French Perfume Boom
The marketing of scents through clever branding, rather than real differences in what’s being sold, originated in nineteenth-century France.
Synthetic Fabrics Inspired a Cultural Revolution
The advent of synthetic fabrics played a surprising role in bringing women into the workforce, as Mercury 13 trainee Geraldine Sloan’s story illustrates.
The Evolution of Convenience Food in America
Meal kits signal a change in the way we cook, but this is nothing compared with how frozen food disrupted the American kitchen in the mid-20th century.
Can Advertising Be a Science?
Advertisers have been trying to develop a precise science of advertising for more than a century.
The Businesswomen of Early Twentieth Century America
Women's roles in the business world partly depended on their status as consumers in the early twentieth century.
Pulp Nonfiction: The Unlikely Origin of American Mass Media
How wood pulp paper created the American mass media.
The Ku Klux Klan Used to Be Big Business
At the height of its business operations, in 1923, the Klu Klux Klan was worth roughly $12 million dollars.