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The Senate is set to go on break without raising the debt ceiling, prompting grievances among Washington lawmakers. But the only time in history the debt was paid down, it didn't go quite as planned.

Mad Magazine is effectively ending its 67-year-long run. Maria Reidelbach, author of Completely MAD: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine joins NPR's Audie Cornish to discuss its legacy.

Internet Explorer officially retires Thursday. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Margaret O'Mara, professor at the University of Washington, about the embattled web browser's long history.

Much speculation has been aired about Syria's role in the current Mideast crisis. Joshua Landis, a professor of history and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Oklahoma, tells Scott Simon that Syria wants to use Hezbollah to get back in the Mideast's diplomatic game.

The Senate balked at confirming John Bolton partly because of his reputation for being abrasive with colleagues and for also being harshly critical of the United Nations. Throughout American history, presidents have angered senators by using recess appointments

David Grossman began working on his novel To the End of the Land while his son Uri was in the Israeli Army. He hoped it would protect him. It didn't. Uri was killed, and Grossman's fiction explores the fragility of families, nations and life itself.

White House photographers may take images of the president, but it's the public who interprets them. As the official photographer for the Obama White House, Pete Souza will play a key role in chronicling history as it unfolds — and shaping how posterity remembers it.

NPR's Scott Simon talks with Yale history professor Carlos Eire about living in the United States as a Cuban refugee. Eire is the author of Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy.

Political rhetoric is dividing many Americans. But for those in refugee and immigrant communities, that language gets filtered through another layer of history and lived experience.

Bradley Manning has been found guilty in the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history. A military judge convicted Manning of violating the Espionage Act and stealing government property. But he was acquitted on the most serious charge he faced: aiding the enemy. The sentencing phase of his trial begins Wednesday.