How to Gather the Oral Histories of COVID-19
The Federal Writers’ Project offers vital lessons for capturing the oral histories of ordinary Americans living through the coronavirus pandemic.
The Colonization of the Ayahuasca Experience
“If someone is from the Amazon,” says Evgenia Fotiou, an anthropologist who studies Western ayahuasca usage, “they bring some legitimacy” to an ayahuasca ritual.
The Offensive Joke Trap
The audience for a joke has options. They can “support” a joke—for example by laughing at it—or they can respond with “unlaughter."
The Dubious Art of the Dad Joke
Is it really only dads who can tell dad jokes? And is this corny humor universal? Our linguist takes a deep dive.
Stockholm Syndrome
What really happened that summer day in 1973? And what does it reveal about our cultural attitudes toward violence?
When Dancing Plagues Struck Medieval Europe
The tarantella is named for a peasant woman from southern Italy whose tarantula bite started a contagious dancing fever!
There’s Someone Buried under the Floor!
The story of a building that will not stand until a living human being is imprisoned in its foundations is so common as to form it own genre.
“Telling the Bees”
In nineteenth-century New England, it was held to be essential to whisper to beehives of a loved one’s death.