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John Henry swinging a hammer, with the steam drill behind him.

John Henry and the Divinity of Labor

Variations in the legend of a steel-driving man tell us about differing American views of the value and purpose of work.
Illustration of men around an old printing press

Benjamin Franklin's Fight Against a Deadly Virus

Colonial America was divided over smallpox inoculation, but he championed science to skeptic.
ACT UP protesters take part in an act of civil disobedience near the West Steps of the U.S. Capitol in 2004.
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AIDS Disappeared From Public View Without Ending. Will Covid-19 Do the Same?

By thinking of diseases just as medical problems, we allow them to fester in poor communities.
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Special Education: The 50-Year Fight for the Right to Learn

Today’s special education system was shaped five decades ago, when parents fought for disabled children’s right to learn.
Exhibit

COVID-19 in History

Living through a momentus time has prompted many reflections on what the past has to teach us about why the pandemic took the shape that it did – and how we can better respond to it.

Cover page of the August 1957 issue of Nation's Business, featuring a clamp tightening in on dollar signs.

Preferred Shares

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said America faces an economic crisis fifty years in the making. But how can we name the long crisis, much less explain it?
Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe’s Other Obsession

Known as a master of horror, he also understood the power—and the limits—of science.
A COVID-19 burial in India

This Pandemic Isn’t Over

The smallpox epidemic of the 1860s offers us a valuable, if disconcerting, clue about how epidemics actually end.
John Haygarth.
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Paying People to Get Vaccines is an Old Idea Whose Time Has Come Again

While smallpox was ravaging late 18th century Britain, John Haygarth thought up of a plan to pay people for public health compliance.
Undocumented students in support of DACA
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Biden Will Allow Undocumented Students To Access Pandemic Relief

For decades, policymakers have debated who may access public education and the social safety net.
Colorful vaccination graphic

Long, Strange TRIPS: The Grubby History of How Vaccines Became Intellectual Property

Not long ago, life-saving medical know-how was viewed as belonging to everyone. What happened?

The Black Panther Party Has Never Been More Popular. But Actual Black Panthers Have Been Forgotten.

While the Panthers have become a staple of pop culture, veteran members of the group remain invisible.
Volunteer registered nurses from New Mexico give people coronavirus vaccines at a rural vaccination site in Columbus, N.M.
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Volunteering and Generosity Are No Substitutes for Government Programs

Conservatives have weaponized Americans’ desire to help to attack the social safety net.
A group of librarians wearing masks during the 1918 Flu Pandemic.

Libraries and Pandemics: Past and Present

The 1918 influenza pandemic had a profound impact on how librarians do their work, transforming libraries into centers of community care.
A teenage boy is vaccinated against smallpox by a school doctor and a county health nurse, 1938.

The U.S. Has Had 'Vaccine Passports' Before—And They Worked

History shows that the benefits of such a system can extend far beyond the venues into which such a passport would grant admission .
A screencap from a news show reading "Outrage after video taken inside Florida supermarket goes viral" from MSNBC.

Misinformation, Vaccination, and “Medical Liberty” in the Age of COVID-19

Vaccination is of critical importance right now. History shows us that our problems are nothing new.
Peanuts, bagged and ready for transport, are stacked in pyramids at Kano, Northern Region, Nigeria, 1955.

After Slavery: How the End of Atlantic Slavery Paved a Path to Colonialism

Abolition in Africa brought longed-for freedoms, but also political turmoil, economic collapse and rising enslavement.
Lightning bolt above a city at night.

The Human Nature of Disaster

A storm is never just wind or rain. Our natural problems are social problems. The solutions to them must be social, too.

Stop Blaming Tuskegee, Critics Say. It's Not An 'Excuse' for Current Medical Racism

It's the health inequities of today, not the infamous "Tuskegee Study," that explain many Black people's distrust of the American health system.

Paper Products. Powder Rooms. What Past Pandemics Left Behind Forever.

Disease reshapes our lives in surprising ways.
A shoe stepping on money.

Islands in the Stream

Musicians are in peril, at the mercy of giant monopolies that profit off their work.
Photo of Jane Grant.

Confession of a Feminist I

A serialized biography of Jane Grant (1892-1972), first woman reporter at The New York Times and co-founder of The New Yorker.
Equal Rights Amendment supporters cheer for the passage of the House ERA Resolution at the Capitol in Richmond, VA
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2021 Could Finally Be the Moment for the Equal Rights Amendment

The turmoil of the coronavirus pandemic could push the amendment across the finish line after a century of work.
A collage of Black and Asian people with an upside down American flag in the background

How Racism and White Supremacy Fueled a Black-Asian Divide in America

After a recent surge in anti-Asian attacks, the narrative quickly turned to hostilities between Black and Asian American communities.
African-American child with polio
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Racial Health Disparities Didn’t Start With Covid: The Overlooked History of Polio

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted racial disparities with roots in the past.
Joe Biden.
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The History of Using Computers to Distribute Benefits Like Biden’s Relief Checks

Technology can break down, but just as often with government tech, glitches are rooted in policy failures.
Roundabout at the George Floyd memorial, at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.

George Floyd and a Community of Care

At E. 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, a self-organizing network explores what it means to construct and maintain a public memorial.
Illustrated 18th century man with hands on him

The Fever That Struck New York

The front lines of a terrible epidemic, through the eyes of a young doctor profoundly touched by tragedy.
A couple eating dinner by candlelight in Texas

Experiments in Self-Reliance

Thoreau’s life is a lesson not in self-reliance, but in discerning whom and what to rely on, whether you’re one person or a state of 29 million.
Syringes with the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine on a table
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Having Vaccines Alone Isn’t Enough to Defeat Covid-19

Distributing them equally is key to defeating the coronavirus.
Illustration of a Lancasterian school building

A History of Technological Hype

When it comes to education technology, school leaders have often leaped before they looked.

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