Welcome to the Critical Skills Blog, home to over a thousand human-generated articles—never AI—on topics that matter to continuous education. To find articles of interest, use the “Search” tab. Please feel free to comment, and please subscribe. All content on this site is free.
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Women History Wrote Out – 03 – The Manifesto in His Collected Works
She chose her own name as an act of theory — folding her mother’s surname into her own because a woman erased into her husband’s line was a woman erased. Then, around 1907, she wrote the first great structural critique of patriarchy in Chinese thought: that the oppression of women… More⇢
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Courage and Consequence – We Are All Bound Up Together
Courage: telling allies the truth they do not want to hear. In May 1866, the poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper stood before the most powerful white suffragists in America and refused their bargain — the vote for women, bought by leaving Black Americans behind. She told them her sex would… More⇢
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How Healthcare Changed – 02 – The Day the Pain Ended
Before 1846, a surgeon’s greatest skill was speed, because every second of cutting was a second his patient spent screaming, awake and held down. Then, on October 16 of that year, a Boston dentist named William Morton put a patient to sleep with ether, and the surgeon cut into a… More⇢
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Women History Wrote Out – 02 – The Voice That Left the Palace
A girl born into a family just out of slavery, given a name that meant slave. A palace music sealed in Arabic and reserved for a sultan’s court. She took it, sang it in the people’s language, filled it with the truth about the powerful — and made the defining… More⇢
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The Ads That . . . . Created Their Customer
Great advertising is not persuasion—it is authorship. The most powerful campaigns in American history did not find a customer and sell to him; they used words to invent a person who did not yet exist, then made the purchase the proof of belonging. This essay ranks the five ads that… More⇢
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The Brand That . . . . Floated Into Every American Home
For a hundred years Procter & Gamble told the world that Ivory floated by accident — a worker forgot to shut off the mixer. Then, in 2004, the company’s own archivist went into the files and found a chemist’s notebook from 1863 proving it was deliberate, and P&G let him… More⇢
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Women History Wrote Out – 01 – The Hand Behind Hokusai
A master of light two centuries ahead of her time. A father who admitted, out loud, that she painted beautiful women better than he did. A working life of sixty years — and ten paintings the world will let her keep. Katsushika Ōi worked at the same table as Hokusai,… More⇢
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Women History Wrote Out – 00 – The Hand and the Seal
You know the wave. Two centuries of the world have looked at it and read one name in the corner. Almost no one has asked the question the seal was built to prevent: in the studio that made it, how many hands held the brush? This is the front door… More⇢
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How Healthcare Changed -01- The Stethoscope and the Birth of Physical Diagnosis
In 1816, René Laënnec, a young doctor in Paris, developed the stethoscope out of embarrassment and necessity when he struggled to examine a patient directly. The design evolved from a simple paper tube to a wooden instrument, enabling doctors to listen to heart and lung sounds more accurately without the… More⇢
Meet Your Host – Charlie Jett
Charles C. Jett is an author, civic educator, and Professional Certified Coach based in Chicago. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (Class of 1964) and Harvard Business School, he served during the Cold War aboard the nuclear submarine USS Ray (SSN 653), where his tactical innovations helped inspire Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character. He developed the Field Studies methodology to teach “Critical Skills” and was endorsed by the Department of Labor in 1994. He is the author of six books, including Super Nuke!, hosts three podcasts, and writes across his Critical Skills Blog and Civic Sage platforms on history, leadership, and the health of the American republic. He and his wife, Dr. Nancy Church, co-host the Chicago Salons at Water Tower Residences.
