'These Are My Children' was TV's first soap

Irna Phillips is the ‘the queen of the soaps’

She was responsible for “Painted Dreams,” the first radio soap, as well as “These Are My Children,” the first to appear on television. Later, she launched the shows “Guiding Light,” “As the World Turns,” and “Another World.”

Soap operas are long-form, serialized melodramas

The genre was historically aimed at housewives, and its storylines often involve romantic entanglements and family dynamics that transpired over many years. Media scholar Robert J. Thompson called the soap opera “arguably the most unique contribution that broadcasting has made to the art of storytelling.”

The first nationally broadcast soap opera was 'Clara, Lu, 'n Em'

The show first aired in Chicago in 1930, but was then picked up by NBC and broadcast across the country in 1931. The show followed three women who lived in the same duplex. Listen to a 1934 episode below, including the preshow's soap-centric advertising.

Some say soaps have been replaced by reality TV

Reality shows have much in common with soaps: massive melodrama, sweeping music cues, neverending plotlines, and a seemingly endless number of episodes. Some communications scholars suggest that’s why younger viewers are no longer interested in soap operas; reality programs provide the same content with the added appeal of being “real.”

The adoption of modern appliances led to the soap opera's rise

Soaps grew more popular as they transitioned to television in the 1950s. At the same time, the adoption of modern appliances like the automatic dishwasher and the clothes dryer offered housewives more free time, which soaps could now occupy. By 1970, CBS, NBC, and ABC were airing 18 daytime soaps.

Soaps launched the careers of countless Hollywood A-listers

Soap operas may not be considered high culture, but many actors who would go on to win television and film’s highest honors got their start with soaps. That includes Julianne Moore (“As the World Turns”), Morgan Freeman (“Another World”), Leonardo DiCaprio (“Santa Barbara”), and Michael B. Jordan (“All My Children”).

‘Twin Peaks’ was David Lynch’s ode to the soap opera

In the 1980s, David Lynch was primarily known as the director of art films like “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet.” But “Twin Peaks,” his primetime ABC show with writer Mark Frost, was a take on the soap opera, leaning into the genre’s tropes: stilted dialogue, affairs, missing person, and melodrama.

Desi Arnaz devised the three-camera method for sitcoms

Early television shows were filmed with a single camera capturing multiple takes from numerous angles, making for an arduous filming process that sucked the energy from comedies filmed in front of live studio audiences. Arnaz proposed a three-camera setup that allowed the show to be filmed like a play, which soon become an industry standard.

'The Wire' was written by TV outsiders

The landmark HBO crime drama was created and written largely by former Baltimore police reporter David Simon and his creative partner, Ed Burns, a Baltimore police officer and school teacher. Those experiences—and the writers’ relative inexperience with television—led to a show uniquely informed by reality.

The first cast members were relatively unknown 'enlightened amateurs'

“SNL” producers aimed to cast relative newcomers for the show’s first season, convinced that amateurs would infuse the show with the countercultural spirit Lorne Michaels envisioned.

Watch every 'Simpsons' short from 'The Tracey Ullman Show'

Before it was a standalone sitcom, "The Simpsons" began in 1987 as a series of interstitials on "The Tracey Ullman Show," a short-lived sketch comedy show. You'll notice some slight differences—off-kilter voices, oddly drawn characters—but the series' premise was there, leading Fox to spin it off into its own show in 1989.

One murder and two siblings' betrayal

Sophia Johnson was convicted and later acquitted of murder in the 2002 slaying of her mother-in-law. More than 20 years later, she continues to deny the allegations first voiced by one of her younger brothers who said he saw Johnson commit the crime. This is the first episode in a 10-part series covering a three-year journalistic investigation into the cold case.

'Sesame Street' scrapped an episode about divorce because tests showed it deeply upset children

The 1992 episode, entitled "Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce," left test audiences concerned rather than comforted, with many children left in tears. The show canned the episode before it aired and didn't address divorce until 20 years later, with a 13-minute online-only segment.

The best cult TV shows

Before the streaming era, television shows lived and died by their weekly ratings. That led to early cancellations for several well-regarded shows, like "Freaks and Geeks," "Party Down," and "Veronica Mars." Thanks to DVD boxsets and streaming, the shows often became cult classics long after they were taken off the air.

Although not known for horror, a young Tennessee Williams wrote a gothic radio play

The "Streetcar Named Desire" author wrote "The Strangers," a short script, while a student at the University of Iowa in the 1930s. Andrew Gulli, managing editor for the literary magazine that published the unearthed piece, said that it blends classic '30s radio horror with themes Williams would revisit in later, more famous work.

Dickens wrote his books as they were serialized in newspapers

Dickens, like many Victorian writers, published his novels as serials that were released piecemeal, over an extended period. Unlike most of his contemporaries, though, Dickens wrote the story as it was released, allowing him to respond to public reactions.

Minnelli's acting career began as a toddler

Her first film appearance was at age three in 1949's "In the Good Old Summertime," which starred her mother, Judy Garland. Minnelli's stage debut came not long after, at the age of 10. At age 19, she'd made her Broadway debut in "Flora, the Red Menace," and landed a Tony Award for the performance.

In 1957, the BBC conducted one of the first televised April fool pranks

The reputable broadcaster reported a story about a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from a "spaghetti tree." Some viewers didn't appreciate the joke and felt angry about being misled.

The story of Marion Stokes, a woman who taped 30 years of TV

Marion Stokes was an activist archivist frustrated at the lack of a record or access to what was broadcast on TV. So in 1975, Stokes began taping the broadcasts, day and night, 24 hours a day, and continued to do so for 30 years, racking up over 70,000 tapes that span the Iran Contra crisis to the evolution of cable news. Read about her fascinating story here.

The concept of 'screen time' was invented in 1991

Mother Jones magazine coined the term in an essay called "Primal Screen" about children's television habits. Writer David Engelhardt wrote that they were watching “screens within screens within screens,” and that even babies were averaging an “hour and a half of screen time a day...the typical older child, about four hours."

'Bluey' actors didn't meet for four years, and the kids' identities are secret

The hit cartoon show from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation first debuted in 2018 and later became a global hit after being licensed to Disney. Main voice actors Melanie Zanetti and David McCormack recorded their voices for four years before meeting in person ahead of an appearance on Jimmy Fallon. Learn more tidbits about the show here.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

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.

Parton was one of 12 children

The family lived in a one-room cabin in the Tennessee mountains, held together by her sharecropper father, who sometimes struggled to make ends meet, though Parton speaks favorably about her modest roots. She’d later detail her early life in her 1973 song, “My Tennessee Mountain Home.”

'A Modest Proposal' is one of history's most notorious satires

Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay suggested that the starving Irish could stave off poverty by selling their children as food. Although it’s funny—albeit rather dark in form—it’s a classic example of Juvenalian satire, as it so pointedly criticizes the indifference of English elites.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles

Although the quartet was already a sensation in Great Britain, Capitol Records turned down the opportunity to release "Please Please Me" and "From Me to You," licensing them instead to a smaller independent label in Chicago.

'Show Boat' redefined the American musical

The 1927 musical—penned by Oscar Hammerstein II, who would go on to create, with Richard Rodgers, other titanic shows like "Oklahoma!" and "Carousel"—used its songs to advance the plot and build character rather than simply entertain.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

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.'

In its famous catalog, Sears sold $600 DIY house kits from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in an estimated 100,000 'Sears and Roebuck homes.'

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

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

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Urushiol, the oily toxin in poison ivy, can remain allergenic on clothing for years.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

Corals are themselves not coral reefs—the term refers to the tiny marine invertebrates that build the rigid reef.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.