Politics and History

kente cloth landscape

2019 marked the "year of return" to Ghana. Now, scores of African-Americans are moving to Ghana permanently – giving up on the country of their birth.

An abstract image of a man at a desk

Daniel Ziblatt has watched authoritarian leaders elected in country after country – Putin in Russia, Erdogan in Turkey, Orban in Hungary, Bolsinaro in Brazil. He says there’s a playbook for how demagogues destroy their countries' democracies.

an abstract image of an angry mob carrying flags

Around the world, authoritarian leaders are on the rise – from Russia and Hungary to the U.S. We examine the return of the Strongman — and how to save democracy.

women walking

After a health scare, Annabel Abbs promised herself she'd make a real effort to walk every day. She fell in love with walking, even began taking multi-week walking vacations. And then she discovered she wasn't the only one — there's a hidden history of great women walkers from the past. So she decided to tell their stories.

a drawing of human foot bones

Six million years ago – give or take – the first early humans stood upright and started walking. Thanks to a new look at the fossil record, paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva has some new theories about how and why humans took those first steps.

Bernadine Evaristo

Bernardine Evaristo became the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel “Girl, Woman, Other.” Evaristo talked with Shannon Henry Kleiber about how her childhood and her writing energize her advocacy supporting artists and writers of color.

Kipling with illustrations from his home.

If you want to cancel a famous writer because of his retrograde politics, Rudyard Kipling — author of "The White Man's Burden" — is an obvious choice. So should we still read Kipling? We ask novelist Salman Rushdie and literary scholar Chris Benfey.

A typewriter in Ukrainian light

We talk with poets and novelists about how they deeply notice the historical time we live in — through their words and voice.

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