The War on Drugs is a Failure. Time to Let it Die.
It’s a racist policy, founded on lies. But the Trump administration wants it resuscitated. {read}
Independent Cinema: Crash Course Film History #12
Hollywood was riding high until their formula got to be stale. In places like Italy and France (as well as other places in the world we'll talk about soon) filmmakers…
Collier’s articles on the conquest of space (1952-1954) – Space Stuff
From March 22, 1952, to April 30, 1954, Collier’s magazine published a series of articles that predicted some aspects of the future with uncanny accuracy. The articles came out in…
Are witches the ultimate feminists?
Sollee’s book positions itself as a whirlwind history of the witch in America and her shared history with sexually liberated women and radical liberationary politics. It’s a bite-sized grimoire than…
Born This Gay
At the turn of the 20th century, a German doctor sets out to prove that homosexuality is rooted in biology—but his research has consequences he never intended. In pre-Nazi Germany,…
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…
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…
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…