A man wearing a medical mask

Virus Paradox, Men at Work, and Electronic Chores

Well-researched stories from The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Inside the Rothko Chapel

How the Rothko Chapel Creates Spiritual Space

Fourteen colossal black paintings by the modern artist Mark Rothko are installed in an octagonal room in Texas. Visitors say the chapel brings them peace.
Women line up to vote in a municipal election, Boston, Massachusetts, December 11, 1888.

New Jersey Let (Some) Women Vote from 1776 to 1807

Historians Judith Apter Klinghoffer and Lois Elkis argue that this wasn't oversight. New Jersey legislators knew exactly what they were doing.
A 100 dollar banknote with medical mask.

The True Costs of Managing Pandemics

The fear of the next global virus isn't just media indulging in catastrophizing; it's a collective concern for global economic and political health.
Quaker tobacco farmers in Barbados

The Invention of the “Healthy” Caribbean

Europeans used to believe that "bad air" caused diseases, so they distrusted the Caribbean's air quality and land features like swamps.
A Reading from Homer by Lawrence Alma Tadema, 1885

How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?

Scholars once doubted that pre-literate peoples could ever have composed and recited poems as long as the Odyssey. Milman Parry changed that.
Anthony Benezet

The Undercover Abolitionists of the 18th Century

Since many people considered them an off-putting radical sect, some Quaker abolitionists worked behind the scenes to eradicate slavery.
Alice Ball

The Chemist Whose Work Was Stolen from Her

The Black scientist Alice Ball helped develop a treatment for leprosy in the early twentieth century. But someone else took the credit.
George Washington's teeth

Were George Washington’s Teeth Taken from Enslaved People?

We know a surprising amount about the dental history of the nation’s first president.
A chrysanthemum overlaid with the chemical formula for pyrethrins

What Do Pesticides and Chrysanthemums Have in Common?

They both contain insecticides called pyrethrins, used in ancient Persia. Today we use them in lice-killing shampoos.