The Internet, we’ve been told, is the greatest library in the history of man—immediate, boundless, constantly expanding. In practice, though, many of us experience the Internet more like history’s ...

Citizen Kane’s Xanadu fell into disrepair before it was ever finished. Hogwarts is now a tourist trap in Florida. Even Eloise’s quarters at the Plaza Hotel have recently been relocated to Brooklyn. Of ...

This piece originally appeared on Patton Oswalt’s website. 1. Thievery “Develop a little self-righteousness. A lot of that is an ugly thing, God knows, but a little spread over all your scruples is an ...

Photograph by Jason Kempin/Getty Images. As people were getting ready for the holiday season and its accompanying waist expansion late last year, Dr. Mehmet Oz let viewers of his TV show in on a ...

In 1996, the New Yorker published “Hating Hillary,” Henry Louis Gates’ reported piece on the widespread animosity for the then–first lady. “Like horse-racing, Hillary-hating has become one of those ...

Is genetically engineered food dangerous? Many people seem to think it is. In the past five years, companies have submitted more than 27,000 products to the Non-GMO Project, which certifies goods that ...

What you see at left is the front of her report card from the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, a vocational school she attended in the late 1920s, after she had finished the eighth grade. As you can ...

In 2007, Americans spent $95.2 billion on dental care, or $315 per capita. That represents only 4.3 percent of the $2.2 trillion ($7,421 per capita) spent on health care overall. It's no wonder, then, ...

Painted by John Giles Eccardt. Favorite examples of poetic endings include the interrogatives of Shelley (“If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”) and Yeats (“How come we know the dancer from the ...

The button—with its self-contained roundness and infinite variability—has a quiet perfection to it. Running a cascade of buttons through your fingers feels satisfyingly heavy, like coins or candy; ...

When Josephine Anderson, a formerly enslaved Floridian, was visited by a white government interviewer in the fall of 1937, she told him a ghost story. Anderson described to Jules Frost a “white man” ...

Unlike a construction company paid by the government to build a bridge, Walmart doesn't have to disclose how much the government pays it through the food stamp program. Photo-illustration by Slate.