Ron Jaffe/AMC

Mad Men and Its Obsession with Frenchness

The AMC series Mad Men ended ten years ago, but a scene from season 5, episode 1 still remains viral (and a meme) to this day. It features Megan Draper...
Mammal bones protrude from pit 91 at the La Brea Tar Pits on August 17, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.

La Brea and Beyond

...modern cities. This so-called Pitch Lake has a long and storied history, summarized in Megan Gannon’s 2018 piece in Archaeology Magazine. In 1595, English colonist and captain Sir Walter Raleigh...
Precious Newberry, a United States Postal Service mail handler, works to unload her mail truck at the Processing and Distribution Center after collecting mail on the busiest mailing day of the year for the U.S. Postal Service on December 14, 2015 in Miami, Florida.

How Mail Delivery Has Shaped America

...a high-ranking federal position, showing the postal service’s important influence on the country’s operations. Only one postmaster general—the 74th—has not been a white man: Megan Brennan was the first woman...
An illustration of a thanksgiving table

Thanksgiving Stories

...2018 Startups worldwide convert refuse into energy, biomaterials, and more food. Meat and Potatoes: The Reminiscences of Alonzo Davis Megan Kate Nelson December 5, 2014 In April 1863, the men...
A rickshaw driver rests at the end of the day in Chandni Chowk market in the streets of Old Delhi on October 2, 2010 in Delhi, India

Rickshaw Men, Optical Computing, and Telegraph Flirting

...the Nineteenth Century (Slate) by Megan Ward Long before the invention of flirty AI assistants, Americans developed intense relationships with disembodied people who might or might not be real, thanks...
A cartoon illustration of Brigid in Puck, 1883

From Saint to Stereotype: A Story of Brigid

...in a racist and unsettling history. Like past Bridgets, McCarthy’s characters often flirt with or pine after men in positions of authority: Molly’s Mike is a cop; Megan’s love interest...

Intellectual Humility: Foundations and Key Concepts

...Megan C. Haggard, Jordan P. LaBouff, and Wade C. Rowatt, “Links between Intellectual Humility and Acquiring Knowledge,” The Journal of Positive Psychology 15, no. 2 (March 2020):155–70. Another area that...
Threat of excommunication to thieves of books in the library of the University of Salamanca

Book Thieves Take the Story and Run with It

...special collections librarian Travis McDade reports to Megan Cottrell for American Libraries magazine that “[i]t’s a crime about one day less old than libraries themselves.” Today, libraries of all sizes...
A drawing of three chairs by Thomas Chippendale

The Shakespeare of English Furniture?

...V&A apotheosis in stone is fitting, since Chippendale, the “Shakespeare of English Furniture,” is still one of he most recognizable names in the history of furniture-making. As scholar Megan Aldrich...
An illustration of a bedroom with a prison guard tower through the window

Controversy and Conjugal Visits

...visitors. Writing about San Quentin State Prison in California in the early 2000s, the ethnographer Megan L. Comfort described a common hierarchy of visits, each with its own allowable “degree...