The fossil fuel industry is a factory of fairy tales, says activist and School Strike for Climate organizer Luisa Neubauer. Tracing the industry's five-decade trickle of lies about climate science, she busts the myth that economic growth...

Sure, sports are about athleticism -- but what actually keeps fans invested? Journalist Kate Fagan takes a fascinating deep-dive into lesser-known moments in women's sports history and its media coverage, revealing why stakes and...

At the end of the Civil War, though slavery was technically illegal in all states, it still persisted in the last bastions of the Confederacy. This was the case when Union General Gordon Granger marched his troops into Galveston, Texas...

Thomas Jefferson, founding father of the United States and primary author of the Declaration of Independence, was part of America's fight for freedom and equality. But in his personal life, he held over 600 people in slavery. Are his...

Names like Bayard Rustin, Frances Thompson and William Dorsey Swann have been largely erased from US history, but they and other Black queer leaders played central roles in monumental movements like emancipation, civil rights and LGBTQ+...

Imagine that your life began as one of the planet's first humans. After dying, you're reincarnated as the second human ever to live. You then return as the third person, the fourth, the fifth, and so on – living the lives of every human...

Actor and activist Fehinti Balogun pieces together multiple complex issues -- climate change, colonialism, systemic racism -- in a talk that's part spoken-word poem, part diagnosis of entrenched global problems. Seeing the connections is...

Medieval Europe. Where unbathed, sword-wielding knights ate rotten meat, thought the Earth was flat, defended chastity-belt wearing maidens, and tortured their foes with grisly gadgets. Except... this is more fiction than fact. So, where...

By 1917, Albert Einstein had explained the relationship between space and time. But, that year, he designed a flawed airplane wing. His attempt was based on an incomplete theory of how flight works. Indeed, insufficient and inaccurate...

In the early 20th century, Alfred Wegener's theory of Continental Drift laid the foundation for our modern theory of plate tectonics. And today we know something even more exciting: Pangea was only the latest in a long lineage of...

It's 791 CE. As the morning sun shines on the Golden Gate Palace, brother and sister Hisham and Asma prepare for the journey of a lifetime: the hajj, a holy pilgrimage to Mecca. They intend to travel with the big hajj caravan— but a...

People have been captivated by horses for a long time. They appear more than any other animal in cave paintings dating back 30,000 years. But how did horses make the journey from wild animals to ones humans could hitch themselves to and...

In August 1968, factory workers overheard news of a mandatory meeting. Whispered rumors described shipments of a gift from the country's Communist leader, Chairman Mao Zedong. And sure enough, managers soon distributed a gift to every...

In 1830, David Walker sewed a pamphlet into the lining of a coat. The volume was thin enough to be hidden, but its content was far from insubstantial. At the time, many members of the US government considered this pamphlet to be one of...

The phrase "One person's trash is another's treasure," certainly applies to author Lara Maiklem. She is what's known as a "mudlarker" and spends her spare time scouring the shores of London’s River Thames for artifacts. Maiklem wrote a...

Philadelphia protests over the killing of Walter Wallace Jr. represent only

the latest in a year of nationwide demonstrations against racism and po
lice
violence. The ongoing movement has captured attention and
provided...

As a writer, editor and archivist, Kevin Young is a poet actively engaged with the world. In his new collection, Brown, Young draws heavily on his boyhood in Topeka, Kansas, tying it in large and small ways to the wider world. Jeffrey...

Protests in South Africa over a statue of a 19th century diamond magnate

and colonial conqueror set off a national debate two years ago about
the
remnants of apartheid. As part of his ongoing series, Culture
at Risk,...

Book: Nuremberg: The Reckoning

History of Debt

Journalist Haynes Johnson, historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss, and retired Army Lt. Gen. Julius Becton discuss the 50th anniversary of President Harry S. Truman's executive order that formally integrated the armed forces.

In observance of Martin Luther King Day in 2010, Ray Suarez speaks with historian Peniel Joseph about his book "Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama."

"A Long Petal of the Sea," a new historical novel by renowned writer Isabel Allende, draws upon events spanning from the Spanish civil war to the 1973 coup in her native Chile -- and with resonance for the experience of refugees today....

A tour guide at George Washington's Mt. Vernon, who is also a distant relation of a person who was enslaved at the Virginia estate, offers his perspective about American history, slavery and the founding fathers. This story was produced...