Told

A brief history of the textfile, and the production of conspiracy theories on the internet.

A new PBS documentary whitewashes the conservative founder of National Review.

For half a century, viewers scorned the laugh track while adoring shows that used it. Now it has all but disappeared.

What's in a name? According to the "Dictionary of American Family Names," it depends.

How lesbian teenagers forged community bonds and found connection through magazines.

One of the country’s greatest rhetorical traditions still has the power to remind us of our founding principles.

"Late Night with the Devil," a “found footage” horror film, perfectly captures the mood and style that surrounded media depictions of the occult in the 1970s.

Romano’s book is a vital, comprehensive piece of media scholarship about one of the most influential outlets of the last century. It’s also fun as hell to read.

The feminist history of the crossword puzzle: some of the form's early champions were women working for little to no pay.

On the suppression of sign language.

On the Irish writer’s grand tour of the Gilded Age United States.

The story of the Los Angeles Municipal News, and the hope — and limitations — of publicly owned newsrooms.

As the fear of communist subversion spread throughout America, McCarthy launched hearings that were based on scant evidence and overblown charges.

Over a weekend in 1995, a small group gathered in Ohio to unleash the power of the internet by making it navigable.

A front-row seat to a slow-moving catastrophe. How tech both helps and hurts our world.

Dan Sinykin’s history of corporate fiction.

On the early origins of a very American kind of writing.

Exploring Deaf history, language and education as the hearing child of a Deaf adult.

When speech offends, who decides where boundaries should be drawn?

Attribution can make visible the vast infrastructure of research and display how much hard-won knowledge, including creative endeavor, it has faciliated.

Bruce Kuklick traces the meaning of the term “fascist” from its origins to the present day and how it has, over the years, gradually lost its coherence.

Migration patterns, cultural ties, geographic regions and class differences all shape speaking patterns.

She was an actress. He was a shortstop. What we can learn from the press parade around this 19th-century power couple.

Right-wing radio stations are tied to an increase in conservatism among listeners.

Cecil Brown wants to digitally revive the enslaved antebellum poet George Moses Horton. Can digital technology help reconnect us to the tradition he embodied?

A new history of the ‘New York Times.’

Tom Wolfe was no radical.

Almanacs from the Civil War era reveal how two sides of an embattled nation used data from the natural world to legitimize their claims to statehood.

A descendant of concentration camp survivors argues that using the right vocabulary can help clarify the stakes when confronting wartime trauma

For more than 50 years, we've been worrying about "grade inflation" at elite American universities. It's time to move on.