From the Triton Fountain in the Piazza Barberini to the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona, sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s glorious public fountains have impressed visitors to Rome for centuries. Bernini angled for immorality when carving his Baroque masterpieces from … | Continue reading
It’s winter, and we still have a ways to go. So maybe we could interest you in a free knitting pattern that depicts a vintage Penguin Classics cover of George Orwell’s 1984. A college student gave it a go and posted the results on Reddit. It’s pretty swellegant. You can download … | Continue reading
Imagine, if you will, an evening’s entertainment consisting of an episode of Portlandia, a spin of Nirvana’s In Utero, and a screening of Koyaanisqatsi. Perhaps these works would, at first glance, seem to have little in common. But if you end the night by watching the above episo … | Continue reading
In 1966, the sociologist and critic Philip Rieff published The Triumph of the Therapeutic, which diagnosed how thoroughly the culture of psychotherapy had come to influence ways of life and thought in the modern West. That same year, in the journal Communications of the Associati … | Continue reading
Pliny the Younger may be best remembered for writing the only eye-witness account of the destruction of Pompeii in 79 AD. It’s a memorable letter still found in modern collections of Pliny the Younger’s correspondence. There, you can also find a simple letter authored by Pliny, o … | Continue reading
Image via Wikimedia Commons A quick heads up: On Monday, Stanford Continuing Studies will kick off an online course called Psychedelia and Groove: The Music and Culture of the Grateful Dead. Taught by David Gans (author of Playing in the Band: An Oral and Visual Portrait of the G … | Continue reading
In 1966, Paul McCartney famously sang of “all the lonely people,” wondering aloud where they come from. Nearly six decades later, their numbers seem only to have increased; as for their origin, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Zen priest Robert Waldinger has made it a longtime pr … | Continue reading
?si=1D5y5yGeIhAfGnvh From the guy who brought you 51 Propaganda Techniques Explained in 11 Minutes comes this: Every Political Ideology Explained in 8 Minutes. You get the usual suspects–conservatism, liberalism, socialism, communism and fascism. And then some less frequently enc … | Continue reading
Your hosts Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al explore the characteristics of Jewish comedy with stand-up/graphic novelist Daniel, whose film Reconquistador explores his ancestors being kicked out of Spain. What’s the connection of Jewish humor to anti-semitism? We talk about relati … | Continue reading
“When I first encountered Wright’s work as an eight-year-old boy, it was the space and the light that got me all excited,” says Stuart Graff in the Architectural Digest video above. “I now understand why that gives us the feeling that it does, why we feel different in a Frank Llo … | Continue reading
During the 1940s and 50s, Hollywood entered a “noir” period, producing riveting films based on hard-boiled fiction. These films were set in dark locations and shot in a black & white aesthetic that fit like a glove. Hardened men wore fedoras and forever smoked cigarettes. Women p … | Continue reading
From the time that a nameless genius in either Ethiopia or Yemen decided to dry, crush and strain water through a berry known for making goats nervous and jumpy, coffee has been loved and worshiped like few other beverages. Early Arab doctors proclaimed the stuff to be a miracle … | Continue reading
It can be challenging to parse the meaning of many non-narrative artworks. Sometimes the title will offer a clue, or the artist will shed some light in an interview. Is it a comment on the cultural, socio-economic or political context in which it was created? Or is the act of cre … | Continue reading
Here’s some news that you can use… Coursera has announced that it’s extending (until February 1) a special deal that will let you get a $200 discount on its annual subscription plan called “Coursera Plus.” Normally priced at $399, Coursera Plus (now available for $199) gives you … | Continue reading
After serving two terms as the first President of the United States of America, George Washington refused to continue on to a third. We now see this action as beginning the tradition of peaceful relinquishment of power that has continued more or less ever since (interrupted, as i … | Continue reading
According to the laws of physics — at least in simplified form — an object in motion will stay in motion, at least if no other forces act on it. That’s all well and good in the realm of theory, but here in the complex reality of Earth, there always seems to be one force […] | Continue reading
Six months before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia, and asked What Is Your Life’s Blueprint? Addressing the students, he observed: “This is the most important and crucial period of your lives. For what you d … | Continue reading
In 2018, the Pixies performed live for BBC Radio 6 Music, playing some new songs (“In the Arms of Mrs. Mark of Cain”) and old classics (“Here Comes Your Man”). In that latter category, you’ll find a recording of “Gouge Away,” which I keep coming back to again, and yet again. Abou … | Continue reading
The story behind this painting is so sad! Now using AI we can complete what he couldn’t finish! ❤️ https://t.co/RuASoTfFdk pic.twitter.com/uAwM6SBUGW — Donnel (@DonnelVillager) December 31, 2023 The celebrity graffiti artist Keith Haring died in 1990, at the age of 31, no doubt h … | Continue reading
?si=pnmakCdYBQ6dTM0T From the Royal Society comes a short primer on snowflakes. Narrated by physicist Brian Cox, the video explains how they form, and why no two snowflakes have the exact same dimensions. It also recounts how Johannes Kepler developed a groundbreaking theory abou … | Continue reading
When we first travel somewhere, we see nothing quite so clearly as the usual categories of tourist destination: the monuments, the museums, the restaurants. Take one step deeper, and we find ourselves in places like cafés and bookstores, the latter especially having exploded in t … | Continue reading
Why must we all work long hours to earn the right to live? Why must only the wealthy have access to leisure, aesthetic pleasure, self-actualization…? Everyone seems to have an answer, according to their political or theological bent. One economic bogeyman, so-called “trickle-down … | Continue reading
We’re living in the age of data. Every second, massive amounts of data are being generated, processed, analyzed and, yes, monetized. Companies, governments, and individuals–they’re all awash in data and trying to make sense of it. That makes Data Analytics a valuable skill for pr … | Continue reading
Step right up, folks! Shoot the Chutes! Thrill to the Fire and Flames show! Ride an elephant! See the Bearded Lady! Early in the 20th century, crowds flocked to New York City’s Coney Island, where wonders awaited at every turn. In 1902, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published a few of … | Continue reading
The concept of propaganda has a great deal of power to fascinate. So does the very word propaganda, which to most of us today sounds faintly exotic, as if it referred mainly to phenomena from distant places and times. But in truth, can any one of us here in the twenty-first centu … | Continue reading
Author, educator and book restoration expert Sophia Bogle is in a constant race against time. Her mission: to rescue and restore ill-treated books before their lamentable conditions can consign them to the landfill. To the untrained eye, many of these volumes appear beyond repair … | Continue reading
Even by the standards of southeast Asia, Laos is a linguistically interesting place. As a former French colony, it remains part of la Francophonie, yet ironically, French is not its lingua franca; that would be Lao, spoken natively by just over half the population (as well, in an … | Continue reading
When Caspar David Friedrich completed Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, or Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, in 1818, it “was not well received.” So says gallerist-Youtuber James Payne in his new Great Art Explained video above, which focuses on Friedrich’s most famous painting. In t … | Continue reading
The very first skyscraper went up in 1885 in Chicago. It’s only natural that such a brazenly ambitious form of building would spring forth (or rather, up) from not just the United States of America, but from that most aesthetically American of all metropolises. And though nearly … | Continue reading
If you made it big in seventeenth-century Bavaria, you showed it by creating a garden with all the plants in the known world. That’s what Johann Konrad von Gemmingen, Prince-Bishop of Eichstätt did, anyway, and he wasn’t about to let his botanical wonderland die with him. To that … | Continue reading
Image via Diego Sevilla Ruiz A certain Zen proverb goes something like this: “A five year old can understand it, but an 80 year old cannot do it.” The subject of this riddle-like saying has been described as “mindfulness”—or being absorbed in the moment, free from routine mental … | Continue reading
We suppose it’s conceivable that a gift of a wooden Totoro figurine, hand-carved from a single block using 50 different kinds of chisels, might spark a reverence for traditional Japanese craft and nature in the next generation… Or, they may be left wishing you’d given them a vast … | Continue reading
This dance is serious. This dance is necessary. Do you feel that change? — David Byrne Everyone can dance, though some of us need a push from an enthusiastic, encouraging instructor…like singer-songwriter David Byrne. Movement has long been a hallmark of the former Talking Heads … | Continue reading
On December 21, Willis Gibson, a 13-year-old from Stillwater, Oklahoma, became the first person to push Tetris to its absolute limit. Around the 38:20 mark of the video above, Gibson advances to Level 157 and soon encounters Tetris’ “kill screen.” Realizing that he’s broken Tetri … | Continue reading
They Might Be Giants achieved pop-cultural immortality when they covered Jimmy Kennedy and music by Nat Simon’s novelty song “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” in 1990. Key to the the lyrics’ humor is their simultaneous fixation on and apparent disinterest in the reason for the re-n … | Continue reading
Are pinecones related to pineapples? This was the unexpected question with which my wife confronted me as we woke up this morning. As luck would have it, Dominic Walliman has given us an entertaining way to check: just a few days ago he released his Map of Plants, through which h … | Continue reading
More than thirty years after it was first privately published in 1928, Lady Chatterley’s Lover became the subject of the most famous obscenity trial in English history. Though the ultimate decision of R v Penguin Books Ltd in favor of the publisher opened a cultural floodgate in … | Continue reading
When The Great Gatsby was first published, it flopped; nearly a century later, its place at the pinnacle of American literature is almost universally agreed upon. Of the objectors, many no doubt remember too vividly having to answer essay questions about the meaning of the green … | Continue reading
Happy New Year! We can now “do to Disney what Disney did to the great works of the public domain before him,” according to Harvard law professor and public domain expert, Lawrence Lessig, hailed by The New Yorker as “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Inte … | Continue reading
From 2006 to 2009, Bob Dylan hosted the Theme Time Radio Hour on Sirius Satellite Radio. Each show featured “an eclectic mix of songs, from a wide variety of musical genres, … along with Dylan’s on-air thoughts and commentary interspersed with phone calls, email readings, contrib … | Continue reading
Early in his collecting odyssey, animation historian, archivist, and educator Tommy José Stathes earned the honorific Cartoon Cryptozoologist from Cinebeasts, a “New York-based collective of film nerds, vidiots, and programmers investigating the furthest reaches of the moving ima … | Continue reading
But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long tim … | Continue reading
A new deal to start a new year: Coursera is offering a $200 discount on its annual subscription plan called “Coursera Plus.” Normally priced at $399, Coursera Plus (now available for $199) gives you access to 90% of Coursera’s courses, Guided Projects, Specializations, and Profes … | Continue reading
However detailed they may be in other respects, many accounts of daily life centuries and centuries ago pass over the use of the toilet in silence. Even if they didn’t, they wouldn’t involve the kind of toilets we would recognize today, but rather chamber pots, outhouses, and oth … | Continue reading
From 1967 to 1969, Tom and Dick Smothers hosted The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, a politely edgy comedy show that tested the boundaries of mainstream television and the patience of CBS executives. Playing to a younger demographic, the show took positions against the Vietnam War … | Continue reading
Image by Zairon, via Wikimedia CommonsAmong the non-wine-related points of interest in the Loire Valley, the Château de Chambord stands tall — or rather, both tall and wide, being easily the largest château in the region. 'A Unesco World Heritage site with more than 400 rooms, in … | Continue reading
Some years ago, the Guardian’s Anne T. Donahue recommended, as an alternative Christmas movie, Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail from 1998. “Admittedly, You’ve Got Mail takes place from October to spring,” she writes, “but what matters most is that the movie’s most compelling scenes … | Continue reading
Image via The Bodleian Library If you were to ask a certain kind of Englishman what sets his homeland apart from the rest of the world, he might point to the strength of its traditions. And what holds true for England itself holds even truer for its most renowned institutions, es … | Continue reading