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Illustration of Woodrow Wilson with Sigmund Freud peeking at him over his shoulder.

Pathologies of a President

A new book revisits Freud’s analysis of Woodrow Wilson to ask: how much do leaders’ psychologies shape our politics?
Unabomber escorted by courthouse security.

Before He Was the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski was a Mind-Control Test Subject

As a Harvard student, Kaczynski was part of an experiment backed by the Central Intelligence Agency that one author argued shaped his worldviews.
Illustration of Freud emerging from Woodrow Wilson's head.

Should We Psychoanalyze Our Presidents?

Sigmund Freud once applied his Oedipal theory to the leader of the free world.
Mother in bed holding baby.

Facts Don’t Change Minds: A Case For The Virtues of Propaganda

A better understanding of propaganda and how to use it as an educational tool could advance the world in a positive way.
A 1938 poster from the Women’s Field Army of the American Society for the Control of Cancer.

Should We Abandon the Idea That Cancer Is Something To ‘Fight’?

Is the century-old battle metaphor doing more harm than good to doctors and patients alike?
The sixty-four hexagrams from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching.

The I Ching in America

Europeans translated the "Chinese Book of Changes" in the nineteenth century, but the philosophy really took off in the West after 1924.
Illustration by Cristina Spano, picturing rulers and colorful shapes and designs coming out of the neck of a collared shirt

The Origins of Creativity

The concept was devised in postwar America, in response to the cultural and commercial demands of the era. Now we’re stuck with it.

The Forgotten Drug Trips of the Nineteenth Century

Long before the hippies, a group of thinkers used substances like cocaine, hashish, and nitrous oxide to uncover the secrets of the mind.
French pharmacist and self-help guru Émile Coué waves from the deck of a ship, circa 1923. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

America Was Obsessed with This Self-Help Craze 100 Years Ago

Émile Coué, a French apothecary, started an “autosuggestion” craze that was the biggest thing in America in the early 1920s, practiced by millions every day.
Book cover of Malcolm Harris's "Palo Alto."

The "Here" of Magical Thinking

A new book offers a critical history of Silicon Valley's blend of California idealism and exploitation.
Abandoned and burned-out buildings in the East Village in 1986.

Edifice Complex

Restoring the term “burnout” to its roots in landlord arson puts the dispossession of poor city dwellers at its center.
Opened standardized test booklet with pencil on top.

Can Standardized Testing Escape Its Racist Past?

High-stakes testing has struggled with overt and implicit biases. Should it still have a place in modern education?
Display of banned books in a bookstore.
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Today’s Book Bans Echo a Panic Against Comic Books in the 1950s

When a climate of fear exists, people don’t scrutinize the evidence behind claims about children’s reading material.
Painting of Venetian Glass Workers, by John Singer Sargent, c. 1880.

Work the Lazy Way

On Annie Payson Call’s advice to tired nineteenth-century workers.
Colorful rainbow image of a brain.

Mental Illness Is Not in Your Head

Decades of biological research haven't improved diagnosis or treatment. We should look to society, not to the brain.
Illustration of a mid-life crisis by Ruth Basagoitia. A man looking into the mirror imagining a cooler version of himself.

Climacteric!

Taking seriously the midlife crisis.
Undated photograph by “Miss Carter” of William James in a séance with the medium Mrs. Walden.

“Pajamas from Spirit Land”: Searching for William James

After the passing of William James, mediums across the US began receiving messages from the late Harvard professor.
Spectrum of color from red to blue.

A Little Spectrum-y

What the autism diagnosis says about you.
Photograph of prison warden T. M. Osborne and two other men in a penitentiary hallway.

Were Early American Prisons Similar to Today's?

A correctional officer’s history of 19th century prisons and modern-day parallels. From Sing Sing to suicide watch, torture treads a fine line.
Cover of an early Superman comic book.

The Vigilante World of Comic Books

A sweeping new history traces the rise of characters caught in a Manichaean struggle between good and evil.
What history tells us about the dangers of media ownership | Psyche Ideas

What History Tells us About the Dangers of Media Ownership

Is media bias attributable to corporate power or personal psychology? Upton Sinclair and Walter Lippmann disagreed.
Artists and people sitting on and around a hotel at Woodstock in 1967

The Dropout, a History: From Postwar Paranoia to a Summer of Love

The dropout was not just a hippy-trippy hedonist but a paranoid soul, who feared brainwashing and societal control.
Photo of a young Dorothy Day in front of a bookshelf.

How the Great Dorothy Day’s Anger Was an Expression of Her Faith

"What the Catholic church wanted us to understand about women and anger—that we simply didn’t experience it—backfired spectacularly."
Guardrails and a left turn on a two-lane road.

The Insidious Idea About “Safety” That Keeps Putting Us in Danger

A concept that took hold in the ’70s has haunted everything from seat belts to masks—and experts won't let it die.
Muhammad Ali

The Religious Conversions That Changed American Politics

It’s never just about religion, says the author of a book about celebrities discovering new religious identities.
Illustration of Frankenstein's monster and a terrified woman

The Horror Century

From the first morbid films a hundred years ago, scary movies always been a dark mirror on Americans’ deepest fears and anxieties.
QAnon proponent and Trump supporters

Bad Information

Conspiracy theories like QAnon are ultimately a social problem rather than a cognitive one. We should blame politics, not the faulty reasoning of individuals.
The author’s cat, Kali, helping review page proofs.

Helping Humans Cope: The Popularity of Pandemic Pets and Civil War Companion Animals

Marcy Sacks compares the increased desire for animal companions during the Civil War and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Illustration from Percival Lowell's Mars as the Abode of Life, 1908.

Alien Aqueducts: The Maps of Martian Canals

Observing the visible features of Martian landscapes, Giovanni Schiaparelli began seeing things almost immediately.
Stephen Kinzer

The Untold Story of the CIA’s MK Ultra: A Conversation with Stephen Kinzer

Stephen Kinzer discusses his new biography, “Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control.”

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