An excellent look at how Democrats lose working class voters.

How demographics influence voter turnout and elections

This article breaks down demographic data to show what it means for American elections. According to the latest US Census, the US is growing increasingly diverse. As the population becomes more diverse, so does the electorate. Analyzing the...

Young voters are ditching political parties

While the silent generation and baby boomers have become less likely to identify as political independents as they have aged, generation X and millennials are maintaining high levels of independent identification.

A podcast on America’s coming demographic crisis

This podcast explores how America’s coming demographic crisis is bad for employers. According to Bloomberg, businesses still need humans to make the economy work. However, too few workers in the US are actually working, and too few people are...

There were fewer competitive districts in 2022 than at any point since 1970

Analysts reported that the 2022 midterms featured the lowest share of competitive congressional districts since 1970, reflecting how modern redistricting has increasingly produced safe seats and reduced voter choice.

Unpacking the controversy surrounding race and the Oscars

In 2015, #OscarSoWhite went viral on social media, highlighting the disproportionately low number of nominees of color compared to their white colleagues. Data also shows divisions when it comes to age, gender, and nationality.

The worst election polling fails in US history

Presidential pollsters in the US have had some embarrassing failures. Here’s a catalog of those miscalls, from the scholar who literally wrote the book on them.

Black women offer a solution to racial health disparities

Black women in the US face higher rates of obesity, heart disease and more diseases. This article explores the historical and systemic racism underpinning the disparity, and the solutions Black women are creating.

Sharp partisan divides shape how Americans view immigration enforcement

A January 2026 survey shows large party gaps: Both sides broadly support recording arrests, but Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to support sharing officer locations and to oppose profiling, masked officers, and neighborhood-based enforcement.

A story of upward mobility

What role did the neighborhood you grew up in have in shaping your economic opportunities? Author Aaron Williams tells a data story about migration, community, and returning to your roots.

How failures at Versailles Conference led to more racial inequality

Suffering a pandemic and the aftermath of a war that killed 50 million, the world in 1920 faced a turning point as it negotiated a new political order. As today, the key issue was racial inequality.

How house colors can indicate gentrification

Reporters from the Washington Post share an analysis that indicates gray and neutrally toned houses are signs of gentrification in a neighborhood. Visuals of different paint swatches help illustrate which colors are chosen for newly built homes in certain DC districts.

Many politicians join private equity firms after leaving Washington

Both Democrats and Republicans have a history of leaving politics to work in private equity, raising concerns about the government's protection of private equity firms.

Hear an oral history of the Electoral College and why it still exists

This podcast episode traces how the Electoral College emerged from rushed compromises, slavery-era power politics, and party maneuvering—showing why the system looks the way it does today and why efforts to change it have repeatedly stalled.

The Black Lives Matter movement coincided with the fall of the girlboss

It’s no coincidence that the white women who were seen as the faces of the girlboss movement (founders such as Audrey Gelman of The Wing and Christene Barberich of Refinery29, for instance) stepped away from their companies around the same time that America stepped into its era of racial reckoning with Black Lives Matter.

Integration of Latino players in MLB

The Senators’ spectacular losing record obscures one of the most important stories in baseball history: the club’s role in integrating Latino players into the major leagues

Catholic education has grown smaller in the 21st Century

Declining numbers of priests and nuns, who often worked in the schools for free, led schools to increase tuition, which inadvertently turned away the schools’ primary demographic: working-class immigrant families. At the same time, the sexual abuse scandals of the early 2000s left many others feeling like Catholic schools were dangerous.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Exploring why the PGA Tour's rivalry with LIV seems to have cooled

This analysis by Dan Wetzel suggests that LIV's initial threat to the PGA Tour's dominance in golf has faded, with several golfers leaving LIV to return to the PGA Tour.

Women work harder for Pulitzers

While the Pulitzers have never been segregated by gender, a 2012 study by the University of Missouri found female winners required significantly more elite credentials—Ivy League degrees, experience at top newspapers, and the like—than their male counterparts. Similar credentials are also overrepresented in the category of international reporting, suggesting the award favors those with more privileged upbringings.

Understanding the Disney adult phenomenon

Disney isn’t just for kids, at least according to Disney adults, who dress up as their favorite characters and make pilgrimages to the company’s parks. They’re often considered immature, unrefined, or worse, but the members of this subculture don’t see anything wrong with their passionate devotion to Disney. This article explores the phenomenon through interviews with actual Disney adults, offering a more nuanced take on the reasons behind the much-maligned trend.

Caucasians are at the greatest risk of developing macular degeneration

A 2016 analysis across ethnic groups found, among other things, that white participants had the highest incidence of the disease, followed by Chinese, Hispanic, and Black participants. This study did not answer why that may be the case.

Rockwell left the Saturday Evening Post and began creating more politically charged work

Rockwell left the magazine in 1963 and joined Look magazine, where he began depicting a more complex America than he had at the Post. His work at Look dealt with racial segregation and violence, and often made unambiguous statements about real events.

GoBankingRates evaluated whether the middle class can afford the American Dream

To do so, they looked at two studies: One that shows middle-class income ranges in each state, and another that determined the cost of the American dream in each state.

Whitman's antislavery writing often focused on white Americans

The poet was openly opposed to slavery, though some of his writing focuses on abolition’s benefits for white people rather than for the lives of the enslaved.

Dystopian narratives have influenced real-life extremists

J.M. Berger, a senior research fellow at Middlebury’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, traced how terrorist organizations have latched on to dystopian narratives, with some groups even embracing the texts’ lexicons and iconographies.

John Oliver explains the student debt problem

From serious policy approaches to novelty giveaways from fast food chains, paying down student loans has become a central issue in public consciousness. John Oliver takes an entertaining look at the problem, how it became a political hot potato, why it’s difficult to solve, and more (warning—strong language).

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

Cultural norms about how to handle the bodies of loved ones in communities in West Africa have hampered Ebola responses.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.