When W.E.B. DuBois debated Lothrop Stoddard, white supremacy was laughed off the stage.

Think the Midwest is just corn country? The annual Great American Think-off will make you think again.

When the first blockbuster movie spread dangerous myths, one man rose to challenge them. And seeds were sown.

When smallpox ravaged Boston, Cotton Mather turned to science to stop this “Destroying Angel.” American medicine was never the same.

When Will Durant asked the wise about “the meaning of life,” he got the usual answers. Then he asked a prisoner.

Students called Jaime Escalante “Kimo.” He called them his “burros.” But the key to his success was ganas — the drive to succeed. (As seen in “Stand and Deliver.”)

Despite his glowing words, Jefferson thought blacks far from equal. Then a single letter took him to task.

Others saw TV as mindless, but George Gerbner saw it as mean. And he had the data to prove it.

He was a computer whiz. She was his creation, programmed to debunk AI. So why did people keep “talking” to ELIZA?

When The True Believer made his name, Eric Hoffer was a San Francisco longshoreman. Decades later, the zealots he labeled “true believers,” are still “everywhere on the march.”

Deaf, dumb, and blind, she lived “at sea in a dense fog.” And then her teacher came. (As seen in “The Miracle Worker.”)