Image via Wikimedia Commons “The great Tao fades away.” So begins one translation of the Tao Te Ching’s 18th Chapter. The sentence captures the frustration that comes with a lost epiphany. Whether it’s a profound realization when you just wake...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8LeAZFcNxk These days, references to seventies television increasingly require prefatory explanation. Who under the age of 60 recalls, for example, the cultural phenomenon that was Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, an absurdist satire so faithful to the soap-opera form it parodied...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYk0GH5iFYI Even if a student assigned Beowulf is, at first, dismayed by its language, that same student may well be captivated by its setting. While that mythical but somehow both gloriously and dankly realistic realm of kings and dragons, mead...
Occupation is like a flood. The water doesn’t reach every house at the same time: first it covers the roads until it meets an obstacle – a wall or a fence. Then it starts to rise, finding cracks, seeping further,...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi-5EJbnYuY As the European Parliamentary elections are nearing their end, so is this show’s season. But have no fear; we’ll be back in no time. In today’s episode, we discuss how climate change affects food systems. Because, although we often...
If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Pablo Picasso, you might start at the Museo Picasso Málaga, located in the artist’s Spanish birthplace. But to understand how his work developed throughout his life, you’ll have to get...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaFZJ_ymueA Back in 2016, New York City staged a month-long festival celebrating Albert Camus’ historic visit to NYC in 1946. One event in the festival featured actor Viggo Mortensen giving a reading of Camus’ lecture,“La Crise de l’homme” (“The Human Crisis”) at Columbia...
If you haven’t heard of Hugo Gernsback, you’ve surely heard of the Hugo Award. Next to the Nebula, it’s the most prestigious of science fiction prizes, bringing together in its ranks of winners such venerable authors as Ursula K. Le...
The Indian elections have ended, and Narendra Modi has been sworn in for a third term. However, the opposition alliance (‘INDIA’) proclaimed the ‘moral and political defeat’ of Modi in these elections. Why? During the election campaign, Modi’s party, the BJP,...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qYwUn9mLKU Cellists unwilling to settle for any but the finest instrument must, sooner or later, make a pilgrimage to Cremona — or rather, to the Cremonas. One is, of course, the city in Lombardy that was home to numerous pioneering...
