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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The Brand That . . . . Chewed Through the American Century
William Wrigley Jr. came to Chicago in 1891 to sell soap and gave away gum to move it. The gum won. A nickel pack built a white tower on Michigan Avenue, drew a court’s rebuke, went missing from home-front shelves in wartime, and rested all along on chicle tapped by… More⇢
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How Healthcare Changed – 20 – Anti-Virals – Every Four Hours
In Durban in 2000, a South African judge told the world’s AIDS researchers that he could pay $400 a month for his pills, and most of his continent could not. This piece follows how those drugs came to be, beginning with AZT, a failed 1964 cancer compound approved in 1987… More⇢
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After the Last Shift – 03 – South Bend
For more than a century Studebaker built vehicles in South Bend, Indiana, and in Building 84 it built the bodies for its cars. On December 9, 1963, word came that car production there would end; the main line stopped eleven days later. The third entry in After the Last Shift…… More⇢
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The City That . . . . Lit and Hauled the World
Schenectady built locomotives long before it built anything for General Electric, and for most of a century it did both: the machines that make electricity and the engines that pulled the trains. The hauling ended in January 1969. The lighting thinned for forty years and never quite went out —… More⇢
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Question With Boldness . . . . Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit in the Age of AI
Three audits certified a podcast script clean. An outside review found more than a dozen errors in one pass. Sagan’s thirty-year-old toolkit explains why, and what it now takes to use it. More⇢
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The Brand That . . . . Made Work Clothes Last
In 1900 Hamilton Carhartt told a federal commission that his bitterest competition was the sweatshop. His answer was the union label: a garment workers’ local made up wholly of his own employees, and a trademark that read Union Made and Highest Grade. This profile follows that promise from a Detroit… More⇢
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Question With Boldness . . . . Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit
Carl Sagan built a kit for catching bad arguments. This article runs it on Thomas Jefferson and on Sagan himself: both men wrote the rules better than they followed them. More⇢
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Question With Boldness . . . . Jefferson, Sagan, and the Standard of Evidence
Thomas Jefferson told his nephew to “question with boldness even the existence of a god.” Carl Sagan believed Jefferson was a scientist at heart who gave up the career he wanted for the one history demanded, and Jefferson’s letters agree. If he was a scientist at heart, he should be… More⇢
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After the Last Shift – 02 – Manchester
Amoskeag laid out modern Manchester, New Hampshire, to serve its mills, and for a century the bells on Canal Street set the city’s hours. In 1935 the mills went quiet. The second entry in After the Last Shift… follows the money out of the company in the 1920s, the staged… More⇢
Meet Your Host – Charles Cranston Jett
Charles Cranston 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.
