Imagine being accused of theft in 15th-century Denmark and forced to eat a piece of enchanted cheese to prove your innocence. Would you succeed—or would the bitter taste betray you? Such peculiar rituals weren’t uncommon in the Middle Ages, where […]
Meilan Solly Senior Associate Digital Editor, History To mark the opening of the Colosseum in 80 C.E., the Roman emperor Titus staged a staggering spectacle, flooding the arena with water and bringing in “horses and bulls and some other domesticated
Episode 120 (The Prairie Chicken in Wisconsin: Highlights of a Study of Counts, Behavior, Turnover, Movement, and Habitat) The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows. Music We move between three
SHOW NOTES: Sources: “Madonna — Finally, a Real Feminist” by Camille Paglia, NYTimes, Dec. 14, 1990 Madonna Video Will Steam Up Stores by Patrick Goldstein, LA Times, Dec. 2, 1990 “Madonna Set to Push Limits Once More With NC-17 Movie”
What does it mean to do the greatest good for the greatest number? When the Los Angeles Aqueduct opened in 1913, it rerouted the Owens River from its natural path through an Eastern California valley hundreds of miles south to
The Candidates The candidates were a reform-minded Democrat and a Reconstructionist Republican. Rutherford B. Hayes was the governor of Ohio and was the Republican candidate. His campaign focused on reform and a commitment to civil rights, particularly for African Americans
My immigrant parents—my father especially—are ardent Christians. As such, my childhood seemed to differ dramatically from the glimpses of American life I witnessed at school or on television. My parents often spoke of their regimented, cloistered upbringings in Nigeria, and
Download a transcript. Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You Listen Sign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. In her new FX docuseries “Social Studies,” the artist and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield delves into the post-pandemic lives—and phones—of
One side of the coin is stamped with a simple “NE” to represent New England, while the other side features Roman numerals to denote its value. Stack’s Bowers Galleries In 1652, British settlers in America defied their royal overlords by
Players of “Pokémon Go” — an augmented reality (AR) mobile game released in 2016 that took the world by storm — have been unwittingly training an artificial intelligence (AI) model to map the planet at street level. Niantic, the company
