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Tennis is set for a ‘Battle of the Sexes’ sequel – with no movement behind it

Jaime Schultz, Penn State; Kyle R. King, Penn State; Molly McCreedy, Penn State, and Sydney Johnson-Aguirre, Penn State

A colorful winter scene depicting three women working inside a snow-covered shelter.

Medieval peasants probably enjoyed their holiday festivities more than you do

Bobbi Sutherland, University of Dayton

2025’s words of the year reflect a year of digital disillusionment

Roger J. Kreuz, University of Memphis

A distorted, glitchy image of a weary-looking eye framed by a hand.
The dystopian Pottersville in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ is starting to feel less like fiction

Nora Gilbert, University of North Texas

Black-and-white close-up of the face of a distraught young man.
Why are some Black conservatives drawn to Nick Fuentes?

George Michael, Westfield State University

Young man wearing sunglasses shouting into a microphone surrounded by other young men.
Large trunks discovered in a basement offer a window into the lives and struggles of early Filipino migrants

Sam Vong, Smithsonian Institution

A young Filipino man poses next to his car in a vintage black and white photograph.
Read our latest Arts and Culture articles

Housing: Visions

A rendering of small homes surrounded by trees.

America’s teachers are being priced out of their communities − these cities are building subsidized housing to lure them back

Jeff Kruth, Miami University and Tammy Schwartz, Miami University

What if universal rental assistance were implemented to deal with the housing crisis?

Alex Schwartz, The New School and Kirk McClure, University of Kansas

Silhouettes of a young woman and her daughter on a bed piled with bags of personal belongings.
To spur the construction of affordable, resilient homes, the future is concrete

Pablo Moyano Fernández, Washington University in St. Louis

Eight computer-generated, concrete home prototypes.
Believe it or not, there was a time when the US government built beautiful homes for working-class Americans to deal with a housing shortage

Eran Ben-Joseph, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

A row of newly built homes.
What the world can learn from Uruguay as the global housing crisis deepens

Jennifer Duyne Barenstein, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and Daniela Sanjinés, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

A brick, two-story apartment complex with sidewalks and greenery in front of it.

Sports

From FIFA to the LA Clippers, carbon offset scandals are exposing the gap between sports teams’ green promises and reality

Brian P. McCullough, University of Michigan and Edward Carrington, University of Michigan

A man in the front row at a basketball game looks concerned watching two players battle for the ball.
George Plimpton’s 1966 nonfiction classic ‘Paper Lion’ revealed the bruising truths of Detroit Lions training camp

Stephen Siff, Miami University

A player in a green and gold uniform falls backward while trying to catch a football.
How the explosion of prop betting threatens the integrity of pro sports

John Affleck, Penn State

Basketball player in a red and black jersey dribbles while being guarded by a player in a white jersey.
Baseball returns to a Japanese American detention camp after a historic ball field was restored

Susan H. Kamei, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Two teams of Japanese American baseball players wearing vintage uniforms line up along the foul lines of a dusty diamond.
Read more about sports

Movies

Colorful drawing of an aerial view of a sprawling movie studio, with lush hills in the background.

Whether Netflix or Paramount buys Warner Bros., entertainment oligopolies are back – bigger and more anticompetitive than ever

Matthew Jordan, Penn State

The law meets its limits – what ‘Nuremberg’ reveals about guilt, evil and the quest for global justice

B.B. Blaber, Grinnell College

A courtroom with military police standing against a back wall behind two rows of seated defendants.
4 films that show how humans can fortify – or botch – their relationship with AI

Murugan Anandarajan, Drexel University and Claire A. Simmers, St. Joseph's University

Movie still of young girl colored with a red hue.
40 years ago, the first AIDS movies forced Americans to confront a disease they didn’t want to see

Scott Malia, College of the Holy Cross

Sickly young man resting his head on a pillow looking forlorn.
‘Jaws’ and the two musical notes that changed Hollywood forever

Jared Bahir Browsh, University of Colorado Boulder

A long line of people stand outside of a movie theater.
Read more about movies

Visual art

Why two tiny mountain peaks became one of the internet’s most famous images

Christopher Schaberg, Washington University in St. Louis

A grid featuring various iterations of a simple graphic of two mountain peaks and a sun.
You’ve just stolen a priceless artifact – what happens next?

Leila Amineddoleh, New York University

Museum display featuring a silver tiara and a crown.
Surrealism is better known for its strangeness than the radical politics and revolutionary ambitions of its creators

Tom McDonough, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Person shown from behind standing in front of large colorful painting on gallery wall
How Dorothea Tanning’s ‘Birthday’ painting challenged male-dominated surrealism

Sally Jane Brown, West Virginia University

Vertical oil painting of woman with fantastical creature at her feet in the foreground and a series of open doors in the background
Read more about visual art

Music

A young woman performs on a stage with a purple backdrop behind her in front a large crowd.

The marketing genius of Spotify Wrapped

Ishani Banerji, Clemson University

Tired of the same old Christmas songs? So were these countercultural carolers

Florian Walch, West Virginia University

A young man dressed in a Santa suit smokes a cigarette and makes devil horn signs with his hands at a music festival.
The real reason conservatives are furious about Bad Bunny’s forthcoming Super Bowl performance

Ediberto Román, Florida International University and Ernesto Sagás, Colorado State University

Man with dreadlocks raps into a microphone from a stage with an LED blue bunny head flashing in the background.
Sabrina Carpenter’s and Chappell Roan’s sexy pop hits have roots in the bedroom ballads of Teddy Pendergrass and Philly soul

Jared Bahir Browsh, University of Colorado Boulder

Black-and-white photo of couple singing while seated at a round dining table with a rose in a vase in the center
How Philly anarcho-punks blended music, noise and social justice in the 1990s and 2000s

Edward Avery-Natale, Mercer County Community College

Large crowd of mostly young men crowdsurfing and smashing cardboard robots
Read more about music

Literature and writing

A silhouette of a man standing before two large, bright letters: 'A' and 'I.'

More than half of new articles on the internet are being written by AI – is human writing headed for extinction?

Francesco Agnellini, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Writing builds resilience by changing your brain, helping you face everyday challenges

Emily Ronay Johnston, University of California, Merced

Close-up of hand writing in notebook with pen
Signatures meant more in Mesopotamia than they do now − what cylinder seals say about ancient and modern life

Serdar Yalçin, Macalester College

Cylinder seal of figures fighting with creatures, with a scan of the figures inscribed on its surface on the right
What’s the difference between ghosts and demons? Books, folklore and history reflect society’s supernatural beliefs

Penelope Geng, Macalester College

Etching of two creatures approaching two women from behind.
Too many em dashes? Weird words like ‘delves’? Spotting text written by ChatGPT is still more art than science

Roger J. Kreuz, University of Memphis

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Read more about books

Media

Netflix-Warner deal would drive streaming market further down the road of ‘Big 3’ domination

David R. King, Florida State University

A square building with 'Netflix' written on the side.
Watchdog journalism’s future may lie in the work of independent reporters like Pablo Torre

Alex Volonte, University of Florida

An illustration of a hand holding a magnifying glass.
Charlie Kirk and the making of an AI-generated martyr

Art Jipson, University of Dayton

A collection of flowers, American flags and an image of a young man touching foreheads with Jesus Christ.
Even as Jimmy Kimmel returns to the airwaves, TV networks remain more vulnerable to political pressure than ever before

Sage Meredith Goodwin, Purdue University and Oscar Winberg, University of Turku

Portrait of bearded, middle-aged man wearing a tuxedo standing in front of a blue and black backdrop.
Read more about media

History

Rolling fields with flowers and grave markers. Three boys ride bikes in the distance.

A white poet and a Sioux doctor fell in love after Wounded Knee – racism and sexism would drive them apart

Julie Dobrow, Tufts University

Pharaohs in Dixieland – how 19th-century America reimagined Egypt to justify racism and slavery

Charles Vanthournout, Université de Lorraine

A colorful engraving of African tribespeople bring their tributes before the Pharaoh.
The Erie Canal: How a ‘big ditch’ transformed America’s economy, culture and even religion

Matthew Smith, Miami University

An outdoor scene of a calm river surrounded by banks with leafy trees, and a rust-colored bridge in the distance.
A staircase in a small, decorative arts museum tells a harrowing story of terror, abuse and enslavement

Susanna Ashton, Clemson University and Mollie Barnes, University of South Carolina Beaufort

A wooden stairwell installed in a museum.
Censorship campaigns can have a way of backfiring – look no further than the fate of America’s most prolific censor

Amy Werbel, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)

A group of protesters hold signs – with one reading 'Hands Off! Free Speech' – with an American flag in the foreground.
Read more about language

Gender and sexuality

‘My gender is like an empty lot’ − the people who reject man, woman and any other gender label

Canton Winer, Northern Illinois University

Blurred silhouettes of people walking across a backdrop of overlapping blue and pink lights, one silhouette standing slightly apart in the foreground
Why are women’s shoes so pointy? A fashion expert on impractical but stylish footwear

Michael Watson, University of South Carolina

Close-up of feet wearing pointy black shoes
We’ve been tracking the number of Americans who identify as transgender – soon, there will be no reliable way to measure them

Jody L. Herman, University of California, Los Angeles and Andrew Ryan Flores, American University

A graphic of a large fingerprint, colored light blue and pink.
As Mexico’s LGBTQ+ community battles for inclusion, two drag performers have become internet stars – with more than 2 million TikTok followers

Francisco Tijerina, Washington University in St. Louis

Two drag mascots -- one wearing a donkey costume -- appear on stage in front of a pink backdrop.
Read more about gender and sexuality

Cities

Federal agents in tactical gear and camouflage converse with local police officers wearing black vests.

Are sanctuary policing policies no more than a public relations facade?

Nick Lehr, The Conversation

Silhouette of a man walking buy a collage of posters featuring the face of a young, bearded man and the text 'Zohran for Mayor.'

New York’s wealthy warn of a tax exodus after Mamdani’s win – but the data says otherwise

Cristobal Young, Cornell University

Read more about cities

Television

A young blonde woman wearing headphones sits in a narrow hallway surrounded by stacks of shelved files.

The rise of the autistic detective – why neurodivergent minds are at the heart of modern mysteries

Soohyun Cho, Michigan State University

How mobsters’ own words brought down Philly’s mafia − a veteran crime reporter has the story behind the end of the ‘Mob War’

George Anastasia, Rowan University

Black and white photo of men escorting handcuffed man with mustache and beard and wearing a leather jacket
How ‘South Park’ could help Democrats win back the young voters the party lost to Trump

Nick Marx, Colorado State University

Two middle-aged men sit in chairs on a stage holding microphones.
Jimmy Swaggart’s rise and fall shaped the landscape of American televangelism

Diane Winston, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

A man in a gray suit and tie gestures with his hand as he speaks into the microphone.
In pardoning reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, Trump taps into a sense of persecution felt by his conservative Christian base

Diane Winston, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

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Read more about television

Lifestyle

A woman writes in a notebook with a purple pencil in a dark room.

It’s always been hard to make it as an artist in America – and it’s becoming only harder

Joanna Woronkowicz, Indiana University

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, the US might seem hopelessly divided – is there any way forward?

Lee Bebout, Arizona State University

Graphic of two faces confronting one another.
Astrology’s appeal in uncertain times

Shiri Noy, Denison University; Christopher P. Scheitle, West Virginia University, and Katie E. Corcoran, West Virginia University

Young Black woman with short air with her arms outstretched surrounded by colorful planets.

Food

A culinary educator and local dining expert breaks down Michelin’s debut Philly list − and gives zero stars to the inspectors

Jonathan Deutsch, Drexel University

Person wearing black suit holds a white chef's jacket draped over their left arm
How Hershey’s chocolate survived an attack from Mars − and adopted a business strategy alien to its founder

John Haddad, Penn State

Colorful statues of iconic candy brands on roof of building
Would you eat a grasshopper? In Oaxaca, it’s been a tasty tradition for thousands of years

Jeffrey H. Cohen, The Ohio State University

Arms of a woman wearing a blue blouse and holding a large batch of tiny brown bugs.
Green gruel? Pea soup? What Westerners thought of matcha when they tried it for the first time

Rebecca Corbett, University of Southern California

Two plastic cups of milk and ice with bright green liquid being poured into them.
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