An illustration of a forest consumed by fire as animals flee.

The Fires This Time

To understand current mass burning events better, scientists are turning to the phenomenon known as the Medieval Climate Anomaly.
William Butler Yeats with his wife Georgie Hyde Lees, 1923

Yeats and the Occult Imagination

Beneath his poems lay a lifelong devotion to magic, divination, and a visionary system that shaped his most prophetic work.
Lucy Stone

Marriage and the Maiden Name

While many women trade surnames they had at birth for their husbands’, some hold on tightly to the former, a tradition famously established by Lucy Stone.
Amanda Gorman, Walt Whitman, and Joy Harjo

Poetry’s Vital Role in Politics

Like Walt Whitman before them, Joy Harjo and Amanda Gorman are reimagining what it means to be a poet in this democratic republic.
A City of Fantasy, mid 19th century

The First Futurists and the World They Built

From Saint-Simon to Silicon Valley, the urge to forecast the future has always masked a struggle over who gets to define it.
The Musical Games by Anne Young

The Hidden History of Women Game Designers

Nineteenth-century women turned music lessons into interactive entertainment, complete with spinning wheels and ivory counters.
Workers for the Insular Lumber company felling a small Almon (Thorea species) in Northern Negros, 1910.

The Mythical Mahogany that Helped Build the American Empire

How “Philippine mahogany” became America’s tropical timber of choice, thanks to a rebrand from a colonial logging company that drove deforestation.
An illustrated reconstruction of the dire wolf

“Playing God” with De-Extinction

As tech companies tout successes in bringing back the likes of the long-gone dire wolf, they must grapple with accusations such innovation is immoral. Why isn’t it?
Theodore Roosevelt speaking with reporters

The President and the Press Corps

Theodore Roosevelt was the first White House occupant to seek control over how newspapers covered him.
An illustration from the cover of Amrita Pritam's Pinjar

Caught in Partition’s Violent Fray

Published seventy-five year ago, Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar explores the devastation suffered by the women of India and Pakistan after political rupture.