CULTURE

Judith Vidal-Hall was an original. Irrepressible, mischievous, with a delight in challenging convention, she remained wholly dedicated to the causes she championed as a campaigning editor and journalist. She was a pioneer, bringing the voices of the Global South to...

Gary Gerstle, historian and Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus, Director of Research in American History and Emeritus Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, UK, considers American history since the fall of communism through the prism of the Civil...

Eurozine is deeply saddened by the death of Judith Vidal-Hall, editor of Index on Censorship from 1993–2006 and a longstanding member of Eurozine’s advisory board. Judith made a deep and lasting mark on Eurozine when she brought Index into the...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8scpGwbvxvI In 1957, the BBC pro­gram Panora­ma aired one of the first tele­vised April Fools’ Day hoax­es. Above, you can watch a faux news report from Switzer­land nar­rat­ed by respect­ed BBC jour­nal­ist Richard Dim­ble­by. Here’s the basic premise: After a...

Cer­tain cult his­tor­i­cal fig­ures have served as pre­scient avatars for the tech­no-vision­ar­ies of the dig­i­tal age. Where the altru­is­tic utopi­an designs of Buck­min­ster Fuller pro­vid­ed an ide­al for the first wave of Sil­i­con Val­ley pio­neers (a group includ­ing com­put­er sci­en­tist...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA Michael Jack­son’s Thriller is the best-sell­ing album of all time, and not by a par­tic­u­lar­ly slim mar­gin. The most recent fig­ures have it reg­is­tered at 51.3 mil­lion copies, as against the 31.2 mil­lion notched by the run­ner up, AC/DC’s Back...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSq4FNuW6GY Of the many read­ings and adap­ta­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s clas­sic moody-broody poem “The Raven,” none is more fun than The Simp­sons’, in which Lisa Simpson’s intro tran­si­tions into the read­ing voice of James Earl Jones and the slap­stick...

The launch press conference for the 2025 Berlin Biennale, at the Sophiensäle in the city’s Mitte district, was filled to capacity. First to speak was Katarzyna Wielgow-Skolimowska, artistic director of Germany’s Federal Cultural Foundation, for many years a principal supporter...

Apart from cer­tain stretch­es of absence, Leonar­do’s Mona Lisa has been on dis­play at the Lou­vre for 228 years and count­ing. Though cre­at­ed by an Ital­ian in Italy, the paint­ing has long since been a part of French cul­ture. At some point,...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a9VxRevIsY To many long­time fans, there are — at the very least — two Pink Floyds. The first is the rock band that in 1965 took the name the Pink Floyd Sound, an inven­tion of its newest mem­ber Syd Bar­rett....