pplpod

There's a Senate Special Committee on Aging, and its very existence raises a provocative question: what does a government reveal about its priorities when it formally institutionalizes its response to...

5 Mar 15min

A name struck fear into the hearts of professional football players. Mean Joe Greene. But here's the twist that unravels the entire legend: Charles Edward Green hated being called that. While his publ...

5 Mar 20min

Nine years old. That was the age of Grafton Hanson, the very first Senate page, when Daniel Webster appointed him in 1829. A third grader walking the floor of the Capitol. Since then, the United State...

5 Mar 20min

In the corridors of power, buried in congressional procedure and barely mentioned on Sunday morning news shows, there exists a piece of jargon that insiders use to gatekeep influence: the blue slip. I...

5 Mar 15min

A few sentences on a Wikipedia stub might seem inconsequential. But look closer at the citations backing up Mary Van Ess and her career in American curling, and you're looking at dense historical arch...

5 Mar 16min

For the first century of American history, you had no say in who represented you in the United States Senate. The names simply weren't on your ballot. Instead, your state legislature chose them. Befor...

5 Mar 21min

What if the difference between freedom and a two-year prison sentence came down to something as simple as counting to three? In South African history, this wasn't hypothetical—it was law. pplpod dives...

5 Mar 19min

Behind the ornate halls and procedural debates of Washington, D.C., power operates according to rules most people never see. pplpod pulls back the curtain on one of the most essential but underexamine...

5 Mar 18min