A person holds up a "Don't Tread on Florida" poster at an August rally in Tampa featuring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio.
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The ‘Florida Man’ is Notorious. Here’s Where the Meme Came From

The practice of seeing Florida’s people, culture and history in caricature form is deeply rooted in the state’s colonial past.
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Democrats Can Counter GOP Warnings About ‘Armies’ of Tax Collectors

An alternative tradition in our politics has long helped convince Americans that tax enforcement is good.
Map of Phillips Radio by Walter Eckhard (1935).

The Spirit of Radio

Explore some new and old radio maps in our collection, and learn a bit about the history of radio communications.
Repeated newspaper photograph of Stokely Carmichael.

How Stokely Carmichael Helped Inspire the Creation of C-SPAN

A Black Power radical, a Navy veteran, and the story behind the most boring channel on television.
Panel of medieval-era paintings depicting humans and animals.

When Did Racism Begin?

The history of race has animated a highly contentious, sometimes fractious debate among scholars.
Weird Al Yankovic, Lizzo, and Beyonce with their mouths covered by black bars indicating censorship.

The Surprising History of the Slur Beyoncé and Lizzo Both Cut From Their New Albums

How did the controversial term go from middle-school slang to verboten? The answer lies on the other side of the Atlantic.
Profile outlines of four people standing in line.

Every New Disease Triggers a Search for Someone to Blame

Focusing on a virus’s origins encourages individualized shame while ignoring the broader societal factors that contribute to a disease’s transmission.
A page of the census documenting the enslaved people of John Hopkins, 1850.

Owner? Yes. Enslaver? Certainly.

Another chance to examine the terms we use and why they matter.

The Atlantic Writers Project: Harriet Beecher Stowe

A contemporary Atlantic writer reflects on one of the voices from the magazine's archives who helped shape the publication—and the nation.
Donald Duck with a U.S. military hat

How Disney Propaganda Shaped Life on the Home Front During WWII

A traveling exhibition traces how the animation studio mobilized to support the Allied war effort.
Muscular men in underwear doing competitive sport fighting while others watch.

Dangerous as the Plague

The rhetoric that the Nazis used to denounce gay men mirrors that coming from the right in the United States today. Both view queerness as a contagion.

TV's Rural Craze & The Civil Rights Movement

At the same time that MLK was using TV to brand Southern sheriffs as obstacles to progress, a Southern sheriff was one of the medium's most beloved characters.
Political cartoon with Nixon and his inner circle tied up with wires, each pointing the finger at another.

8 Cartoons That Shaped Our View of Watergate — And Still Resonate Today

Herblock, Garry Trudeau, and others created memorable cartoons that skewered Nixon and Watergate, making the era a boom time for political satire.
Former attorney general John N. Mitchell appears before the Senate Watergate Committee in Washington, D.C., on July 11, 1973.
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Primetime Watergate Hearings Helped Make PBS a National Network

Mired in a funding crisis — and the target of politicians — the hearings transformed public broadcasting.
A picture of switchboard operators.

Intimacy at a Distance

Hannah Zeavin’s history of remote and distance psychotherapy asks us whether the medium matters more than the message.
John F. Kennedy standing at a microphone, holding notes.

The Warning About Trump That JFK Never Got to Deliver

In his undelivered final speech, Kennedy warned the world against ‘voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality.’
Picture of people outside of an abandoned movie theater.

BIPOC? ¡Basta!

Time to blow the final whistle on the oppression Olympics.
1973 Time magazine article entitled "The Watergate Three" with a photo of Woodward, Bernstein, and Sussman.

All the Newsroom’s Men

How one-third of “The Watergate Three” got written out of journalism history.
Drawing of John Stuart Mill

Haiti, Slavery and John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill was an unusual man who lived an extraordinary life devoted to a set of problems that once again dominate political thought in the 21st century.
"Napalm Girl" Photo from Vietnam War

Myths Distort the Reality Behind a Horrific Photo of the Vietnam War and Exaggerate Its Impact

The ‘Napalm Girl’ photo is much more than powerful evidence of war’s indiscriminate effects on civilians.
Speakers address a crowd from a truck with a "WDIA March of Dimes" sign.

How Black Radio Changed the Dial

Black-appeal stations were instrumental in propelling R&B into the mainstream while broadcasting news of the ever-growing civil rights movement.
Actors on stage in "One-Third of a Nation." Library of Congress.

The Living Newspaper Speaks

Scripted from front-page news, the Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspaper plays were part entertainment, part protest, and entirely educational.
Black and white image of Arlington radio towers

When Arlington Set the Nation's Clocks: The Arlington Radio Towers

A century ago, Arlington was home to one of the most powerful radio stations in history, which helped to usher in an era of wireless communications.
Hillary Clinton addresses her supporters in Philadelphia the night before the 2016 presidential election.

Would These Undelivered Speeches Really Have Changed History?

At a time of upheaval, we want to believe that better leaders have the power to change the course of history. But counterfactuals are never simple.

Could Internet Culture Be Different?

Kevin Driscoll’s study of early Internet communities contains a vision for a less hostile and homogenous future of social networking.
People looking down at words written in chalk on the street as a makeshift memorial of the Buffalo shooting.

The Terrifying Familiarity of the Buffalo Shooting Suspect’s Extremist Screed

The new fascists don’t wear uniforms; they make memes.
Painting of an ocean by the British painter J. M. W. Turner, 1840-1845. Pictured is a stormy sea, its waves breaking on a shore.

The Sea According to Rachel Carson

Her first three books were odes to the world’s bodies of water and their creative power over all life forms.
A Ukranian peasant family poses with sacks of grain.

'The New York Times' Can't Shake the Cloud Over a 90-Year-Old Pulitzer Prize

In 1932, Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer for stories defending Soviet policies that led to the deaths of millions of Ukrainians.
Justice William O. Douglas. Photography from Bachrach / Getty

Scooping the Supreme Court

The first Roe v. Wade leaks happened fifty years ago.
Anti-abortion protestors and police in front of Supreme Court
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The Anti-Abortion Movement’s Powerful Use of Language Paid Off

Nearing an antiabortion victory five decades in the making.