Then & This

Finance

The Price of Everything, the Value of Nothing: What a Century of American Wages Actually Bought

A movie ticket for a quarter. A house for the price of a used car. College tuition you could cover with a summer job. The numbers from a century ago sound almost fictional — but the story they tell about today is the part nobody warned you about.

Mar 13, 2026

Finance

The Quiet Revolution Nobody Talks About: How Americans Stopped Spending Half Their Paycheck on Groceries

In the 1930s, a typical American family handed over nearly 40 cents of every dollar they earned just to keep the kitchen stocked. Today that number sits closer to 11 cents. The transformation in between is one of the most consequential — and least celebrated — economic shifts in modern American life.

Mar 13, 2026

Sport

They Smoked Between Innings and Called It Training: The Lost World of the Early Baseball Player

A century ago, professional baseball players drank during road trips, smoked in the dugout, and trained by doing almost nothing at all. The modern MLB athlete lives in a different universe — and the story of how we got from one to the other says something profound about how far our understanding of the human body has come.

Mar 13, 2026

Travel

The Open Road Was a Myth: What a Cross-Country Drive Actually Looked Like Before the Interstate

Before Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System, driving across America wasn't a vacation — it was an expedition. Dirt tracks, hand-sketched maps, and a tire blowout every few hundred miles made the 'open road' anything but open. Here's what the journey actually looked like.

Mar 13, 2026