Dialect versus language — what’s the big deal?
There are many rubrics that people cite as indicators of a dialect versus a language. Take mutual intelligibility. If two varieties of speech are mutually intelligible, surely they must be…
Private Mohammed Kahn: Civil War Soldier
It is rare to find records of Muslim Civil War soldiers in our holdings. So far, Jesse has only encountered two pensions, and historians know of only about 250 Muslim…
Why solving ‘hidden’ suburban poverty is trickier than helping cities
Suburbs weren’t created to be inclusive places
Kurt Vonnegut and the Rainmakers
In the mid 1940s, no one would publish Kurt Vonnegut’s stories. But when he gets hired as a press writer at General Electric, the company’s fantastical science inspires some of…
Underwater Cloud: Inside the Cables Carrying 99% of Transoceanic Data Traffic – 99% Invisible
Local wireless internet helps promote the feeling that data moves through thin air, but in reality: the vast majority of international data transfers are made possible by underwater cables. These…
‘Too Fat, Too Slutty’ Challenges Cultural Expectations Of Women
In the seventh century B.C., the poet Semonides of Amorgos wrote a catalog of unmanageable women. First, there are the women who resemble pigs, "resting in filth and growing fat."…
Audiobook Anxiety and What Constitutes ‘Real’ Reading
Our cultural anxiety about audiobooks may have deeper roots in media and educational history, dating as far back as the beginning of the Enlightenment period, when the West made a…
What, Prithee, Is a Poetess?
…Although studies reliably find that women read more than men, when a book is written for and consumed by women, or made popular by women, it is seen again as…
Six Degrees
Finding the right six people to make a difference. What does it mean to be connected to every person on earth? {listen}
From beyond the grave
trying to hold onto someone after they are dead