This Is What a Nuclear Strike Would Feel Like: The New York Times Creates a Precise Simulation

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Though cer­tain gen­er­a­tions may have grown up trained to take cov­er under their class­room desks in the case of a nuclear show­down between the Unit­ed States and the Sovi­et Union, few of us today can believe that we’d stand much chance if we found our­selves any­where near a det­o­nat­ed mis­sile. Still, the prob­a­ble effects of…

Superman vs. the KKK: Hear the 1946 Superman Radio Show That Weakened the Klan

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Years ago, back in 2016, we fea­tured a 1950 Super­man poster that urged stu­dents to defend the Amer­i­can way and fight dis­crim­i­na­tion every­where. Today, we present anoth­er chap­ter from Super­man’s lit­tle-known his­to­ry as a Civ­il Rights defend­er.

The year is 1946. World War II has come to an end. And now mem­ber­ship in…

The Best Photographer You’ve Never Heard Of: An Introduction to Tseng Kwong Chi

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Once, the Unit­ed States was known for send­ing forth the world’s most com­plained-about inter­na­tion­al tourists; today, that dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion arguably belongs to Chi­na. But it was­n’t so long ago that the Chi­nese tourist was a prac­ti­cal­ly unheard-of phe­nom­e­non, espe­cial­ly in the West. That’s an impor­tant con­tex­tu­al ele­ment to under­stand when con­sid­er­ing the work of pho­tog­ra­ph­er…

Man Ray’s Surrealist Cinema: Watch Four Pioneering Films From the 1920s

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Man Ray was one of the lead­ing artists of the avant-garde of 1920s and 1930s Paris. A key fig­ure in the Dada and Sur­re­al­ist move­ments, his works spanned var­i­ous media, includ­ing film. He was a lead­ing expo­nent of the Ciné­ma Pur, or “Pure Cin­e­ma,” which reject­ed such “bour­geois” con­ceits as char­ac­ter,…

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Pastor, Theorized How Stupidity Enabled the Rise of the Nazis (1942)

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Two days after Adolf Hitler became Chan­cel­lor of Ger­many, the Luther­an pas­tor Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer took to the air­waves. Before his radio broad­cast was cut off, he warned his coun­try­men that their führer could well be a ver­führer, or mis­leader. Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s anti-Nazism last­ed until the end of his life in 1945, when he was exe­cut­ed…