Dissident Memoirs Across Rust-Iron Curtains
Soviet dissident memoirs, like their authors, had to cross the Iron Curtain—an iron curtain of meaning and interpretation.
Jane Goodall
An intellectual powerhouse and dedicated conservationist, Goodall showed generations of humans how to engage with—and take care of—the natural world.
Waste Pickers Unite!
As one family’s story reveals, labor organizing and the development of a co-op for waste collection has improved conditions for precariously employed workers in India.
Two Seventh-Century People Found With West African Ancestry
A story of diversity and integration in early Anglo-Saxon society.
The Bee Dance Debate
Can insects communicate? In the middle of the twentieth century, scientists disagreed on whether bees could possess a “language” expressed through motion.
What Was Behind Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal?
Swift’s savage animosity towards the Irish Protestant elites is front and center in his biting (perhaps literally) critique of the landlord class.
The Politics of Our AI Overlords
Fears of AI often focus on domination by algorithm-powered capitalism, but science fiction once used societies ruled by computers as analogs for communism.
The Surprising Imperial History of the Pekingese Dog
Upper-class British women in the early 1900s participated in a craze for Pekingese dogs, signalling the role of empire in their social identities.
Green Sickness, the Disease of Virgins
In the mid-seventeenth century, John Graunt, the “father of English statistics,” claimed dozens of young women in London died of green sickness every year.
Arthur C. Clarke’s Scuba Adventures and Ocean Frontiers
Clarke’s interest in oceanic exploration in the 1950s was, like his undersea fiction, often neglected by an audience focused on the race for outer space.