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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks during a news conference in Austin
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Though Often Mythologized, the Texas Rangers Have an Ugly History of Brutality

Teaching accurate history about white supremacy may be painful, but it's essential.
Jimmy Carter waving from the stage of a rock and roll concert.

Rock & Roll President: How Musicians Helped Jimmy Carter to the White House

On a documentary in which stars from Bob Dylan to Nile Rodgers discuss how music played a vital role in the unknown politician’s rise to power.
Film depiction of airmail pilot from the 1940s; modern postal worker.

It’s Time to Make Postal Workers Heroes Again

Delivering the mail used to be sexy and thrilling. It can be once more.

The Mod Squad, Kojak, Real-Life Cops, and Me

What I relearned (about well-meaning liberalism, race, my late father, and my young gay self) rewatching the TV cop shows of my 1970s youth.

Charles Averill’s The Cholera-Fiend: Fiction for a Pandemic

The 1850 novel reveals disturbing continuities between the 19th century cholera pandemics and global health crises today.
Great white shark

Sharks Before and After "Jaws"

The blockbuster "Jaws" (1975) provoked fear by portraying sharks as "mindless eating machines." But what did people think of sharks before then?

The Long Reinvention of the South Bronx

Peter L'Official on the Mythologies Behind Urban Renewal.

The Complex Origins of Little Orphan Annie

"No one story can completely explain Annie."

Dylan, Unencumbered

"How long can it go on?"
A printed advertisement for "The Bookman" depicting a fish reacting to "The Bookman" on a hook.

The Power of Flawed Lists

How "The Bookman" invented the best seller.

Where Were You in ‘73?

In the turbulent 1970s, the balm of pop cultural nostalgia set the tone for today's political reaction.
Carl Reiner on stage holding a microphone.

Carl Reiner’s Life Should Remind Us: If You Like Laughing, Thank FDR and the New Deal

Reiner, Stephen Colbert, Jordan Peele, Steve Carrell, Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus: Their comedy descends directly from the Works Progress Administration.

Why We’ll Never Stop Arguing About Hamilton

Hamilton is an impossibly slippery text. The arguments over the show are part of what make it great.
A grilled cheese sandwich.

A Brief History of Comfort Food

Our newest culinary trend is also our oldest.
Lou Gehrig holding a baseball bat

How Baseball Players Became Celebrities

Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth transformed America’s pastime by becoming a new kind of star.
Dr. Dre.

The Complicated Truths of Dr. Dre’s ‘The Chronic’

No rap album has quite the mythology attached to it—as a game changer, a king maker, a genre expander. But legends aren’t exactly fact.
Graffito picture of Richard Nixon superimposed on lines an German text.

Richard Nixon, Modular Man

Even knowing every awful thing Richard Nixon would go on to do, you had to respect, as the phrase goes, his hustle.

The My Generation: An Oral History Of Myspace Music

Myspace changed the way we discovered music and fell apart after conquering the world.
Stan and Mardi Timm show off Johnson Smith novelties they’ve collected. Stan wears X-Ray Spex and holds a Tark Electric Razor. Mardi wears a sailor’s hat that says “Kiss Me Honey I Won’t Bite” and holds a Little Gem Lung Tester and Bust Developer.

Fun Delivered: World’s Foremost Experts on Whoopee Cushions and Silly Putty Tell All

The Timms provide the history behind their collection of 20th century mail-order novelty items.
Drawing of earth encircled with celestial rings

The Protestant Astrology of Early American Almanacs

The wildly popular books helped people understand farming and health through the movement of the planets, in a way compatible with Protestantism.

How Film Noir Tried to Scare Women out of Working

In the period immediately following World War II, the femme fatale embodied a host of male anxieties about gender roles.

An Oral History of the Members Only Jacket

On the fixture of white yuppiedom and icon of post-ironic millennial hipsterdom.
Choose your own adventure book covers with arrows pointing in opposite directions.

“Oh My God, It’s Milton Friedman for Kids”

How "Choose Your Own Adventure" books indoctrinated ‘80s children with the idea that success is simply the result of individual “good choices.”

Why Artist Hank Willis Thomas Smashed Up 'The Dukes of Hazzard's' General Lee

Thomas crunches history and Hollywood tropes in his first solo show in L.A.

‘Impeachment Polka’: How a Composer in 1868 Sought to Capitalize on America’s Political Obsession

A pianist performs a piece of music forgotten for 150 years.

The Decade Comic Book Nerds Became Our Cultural Overlords

Why do they have to be such sore winners?

‘Baby, It's Cold Outside' Was Controversial From the Beginning

Here’s what to know about consent in the 1940s, when the song was written.

Fandom: A Star Wars Story

This is about much more than Star Wars—it is about media bias and "information disorder" in the twenty-first century.

Mikhail Gorbachev’s Pizza Hut Thanksgiving Miracle

In 1997, the former Soviet leader needed money, and Pizza Hut needed a spokesman. Greatness ensued.

The Hipster

It happens every year.

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