How British Scientists' Self-Experiments on Underwater Rebreathing Created D-Day Submarine Tech (And Nearly Killed Them in the Process)
In August 1942, over 7,000 Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, in a largely forgotten landing, with only a small fraction surviving unscathed. The raid failed due to poor planning a...
18 Sep 202553min
Over 200,000 Allied Troops Tried and Failed to Crush the Soviet Revolution After World War One
The Allied Intervention into the Russian Civil War remains one of the most ambitious yet least talked about military ventures of the 20th century. Coinciding with the end of the first World War, some ...
16 Sep 202541min
How the U.S. Occupation of Japan After WW2 Forged the Most Durable Peace of the 20th Century
During World War II, the U.S. and Japan were locked in bitter hatred, fueled by propaganda portraying each other as ruthless enemies, exemplified by dehumanizing "Tokyo Woe" posters in the U.S. and Ja...
11 Sep 20251h
Homer Couldn't Have Written the Iliad, But He Probably Dictated it Word for Word
The Iliad is the world’s greatest epic poem—heroic battle and divine fate set against the Trojan War. Its beauty and profound bleakness are intensely moving, but great questions remain: Where, how, an...
9 Sep 202552min
Depression-Era Planners Thought They’d End Poverty with Public Housing. Instead, They Created the Projects
In the 1930s, New Deal-era technocrats devised a solution to homelessness and poverty itself. They believed that providing free or low-cost urban housing projects could completely eliminate housing sc...
4 Sep 202541min
The Alabaman Jacksonians Who Rejected the Confederacy and Marched with Sherman to the Sea
As the popular narrative goes, the Civil War was won when courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But an aspect of the war that has remained little-known for 160 years is the Alabamian Union sold...
2 Sep 202549min
Frederick Douglass’s Private Writings on Abraham Lincoln, His Strong Critiques and Stronger Praise
Frederick Douglass made the strongest arguments for abolition in antebellum America because he made the case that abolition was not a mutation of the Founding Father’s vision of America, but a fulfill...
28 Aug 202549min
The Industrial Revolution Was Supposed to Lead to Unlimited Free Time But Only Gave Us Smartphones and Endless Dopamine
Free time, one of life’s most important commodities, often feels unfulfilling. But why? And how did leisure activities transition from strolling in the park for hours to “doomscrolling” on social medi...
26 Aug 202531min
