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
James Cook Mapped the Globe Before Dying At the Hands of Hawaiians Who Once Worshipped Him
Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan are known for discoveries, but it was Captain James Cook who made global travel truly possible. Cook was an 18th-century British explorer who mapped vast re...
21 Aug 202556min
American Anarchists: The Original Domestic Extremists
In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or private property. Militant and sometimes violent, ana...
19 Aug 202539min
100 Years Before Ford v. Ferrari, a Horse Breeder Revolutionized Thoroughbred Racing Through a Similar Obsession With Progress
Horse racing was the most popular sport in early America, drawing massive crowds and fueling a cultural obsession with horses’ speed and pedigree. In the early 1800s, every town in America with a few ...
14 Aug 20251h 14min
