Who Was Sesame Street’s First Black Muppet?
Since the beginning, the children's show has tried to represent the diversity of the nation. But Roosevelt Franklin was controversial.
What’s the Deal with Crypto Art?
Thirty years after the invention of blockchain, an artist sold a JPG using that technology for nearly $70 million. Huh?
Inside a Home for Unwed Mothers
Young, unmarried pregnant women sometimes gave birth in secret at maternity homes. A historian uncovered some of their stories.
Spectra: The Poetry Movement That Was All a Hoax
In the experimental world of modernist poetry, literary journals were vulnerable to fake submissions.
Animal Navigation, Mystery Bacteria, and Lies
Well-researched stories from The New Yorker, Scientific American, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Puerto Rican Domestic Workers and Citizenship in the 1940s
Recruited to work on the US mainland for long hours at less than the prevailing rate, women migrants fought for dignity and recognition.
How Commonly Was Smallpox Used as a Biological Weapon?
Once introduced into the Americas, smallpox spread everywhere. Is it possible to know how often that was done intentionally to kill people?
How the Black Labor Movement Envisioned Liberty
To Reconstruction-era Black republicans, the key to preserving the country’s character was stopping the rise of a wage economy.
Celebrating National Poetry Month
Our best stories about poetry and poems offer free links to poems from contemporary and classic American poets.