Society

Cars beneath the ground

The explosion of automobiles shaped cities and lives. But an enduring problem remains: where to put them when they’re parked

Alfie Robinson

Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches

13 minutes

Shame and revolution

Vietnam’s potent and storied anticolonialism is founded upon a unique sense of national shame

Kevin D Pham

‘To my old master’ – a freed slave answers the request to return to his old plantation

7 minutes

‘Astonished and somewhat terrified’ – Victorians’ reactions to the phonograph

36 minutes

From Afghanistan to Virginia – the Muslims who fought in the American Civil War

22 minutes

Why history is always political

In his work on republicanism as a living idea, J G A Pocock showed that contesting history is part of a robust civic life

Rosario López

Petty squabbles and bloody battles – the life of an ancient Roman soldier

18 minutes

There are fragments of Romani Gypsy history all over the UK – if one knows where to look

3 minutes

An unarmed Indigenous group aims to protect their native lands in this stirring portrait

15 minutes

The paradoxes of Mikha’il Mishaqa

He was a Catholic, then a rationalist, then a Protestant. Most of all, he exemplified the rise of Arab-Ottoman modernity

Peter Hill

Archeological discoveries animate the life of the warrior queen who took on Rome

6 minutes

What would Thucydides say?

In constantly reaching for past parallels to explain our peculiar times we miss the real lessons of the master historian

Mark Fisher

The southern gap

In the American South, an oligarchy of planters enriched itself through slavery. Pervasive underdevelopment is their legacy

Keri Leigh Merritt

Legacy of the Scythians

How the ancient warrior people of the steppes have found themselves on the cultural frontlines of Russia’s war against Ukraine

Peter Mumford

There was no Jesus

How could a cult leader draw crowds, inspire devotion and die by crucifixion, yet leave no mark in contemporary records?

Gavin Evans

The mythos of leadership

How the biblical King David and Machiavelli’s Prince can help us understand the dominant view of leaders as individualists

Moshik Temkin