This week’s What We’re Reading features taboo shorts, experiences within the history community, a baseball playing cult, and so much more!

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien: On Changing Jobs
Claire Potter gives her distinctive take on the difference between being faculty at liberal arts college and an urban university.

‘Why Can’t You Be Good at Something Else?’
Cornell undergraduate Melissa Sarmiento on being a history major and what she’s learned during her Mellon-Mays Fellowship.

When Wearing Shorts Was Taboo
In celebration of the newly warm weather, NPR gave us this retrospective on clothing taboos in U.S. history.

California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth
The California drought pushes on, this New York Times piece offers insight into various attitudes on the increasingly bleak situation, including University of Southern California historian Kevin Starr.

CalPERS and the Drought, Kevin Cortopassi, https://flic.kr/p/o4QuhC

Out with the Caraway, In with the Ginger: 50 Years of American Spice Consumption
Here at the AHA, we like history. We like food too. This data digest from FiveThirtyEight satisfies our hunger for some data-driven food history via trends in spice consumption.

How an Apocalyptic Cult Invented Baseball Beard Power
Some baseball history for the first week of the season, The Boston Globe featured the House of David. A religious commune whose members maintained no worldly possessions, the House of David also fielded some very popular barnstorming baseballs with even more noticeable haircuts.

How Google Pulled Off Its Ingenious Pac-Man Maps
Did you catch this delightful, yet production-halting April Fools prank by the folks at Google? If not, it was probably for the better, as Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde showed no remorse as we munched pellets with PacMan in the area around our DC office.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.