CULTURE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jYOqu4b9BY If you hap­pen to be a high school stu­dent in Flori­da who’s eager to read A Clock­work Orange, that urge may turn out to be hard­er to sat­is­fy than you imag­ine. Antho­ny Burgess’ har­row­ing, lin­guis­ti­cal­ly inven­tive nov­el of a...

LIIBANON 2011. Olin kolinud Liibanoni õppima pärast seda, kui Iisrael keelas mul uuesti Palestiinasse sisenemise. Üks sõber, kellega olin kavatsenud korterit jagada, jõudis kohale mõni nädal enne mind. Kuulnud üürile antavast korterist Achrafiehis, läks ta seda vaatama. Jutuajamine, nagu ta mulle...

House keys are prosaic objects that carry extraordinary significance as symbols of home, security, place. Think for a moment: what do your house keys unlock? Do you always carry your house keys with you when you leave the house, or...

No his­tor­i­cal fig­ure bet­ter fits the def­i­n­i­tion of “Renais­sance man” than Leonar­do da Vin­ci, but that term has become so overused as to become mis­lead­ing. We use it to express mild sur­prise that one per­son could use both their left...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75V4ClJZME4 We’ve focused a fair bit here on the work of Delia Der­byshire, pio­neer­ing elec­tron­ic com­pos­er of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry—fea­tur­ing two doc­u­men­taries on her and dis­cussing her role in almost cre­at­ing an elec­tron­ic back­ing track for Paul McCartney’s “Yes­ter­day.” There’s...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USW8yf4L-R4 To many of us, the con­cept of soli­tary con­fine­ment may not sound all that bad: final­ly, a reprieve from the siege of social and pro­fes­sion­al requests. Final­ly, a chance to catch up on all the read­ing we’ve been mean­ing...

Few mod­ern writ­ers so remind me of the famous Vir­ginia Woolf quote about fic­tion as a “spi­der’s web” more than Argen­tine fab­u­list Jorge Luis Borges. But the life to which Borges attach­es his labyrinths is a librar­i­an’s life; the strands...

While reporting on the Eurovision Song Contest, the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane “asked a man named Seppo, from the seven-hundred-strong Eurovision Fan Club of Norway, what he loved about Eurovision. ‘Brotherhood of man,’ he said — a slightly ambiguous answer,...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3b6zSpy7P4 Jane Goodall, the revered con­ser­va­tion­ist, passed away today at age 91. In her hon­or, we’re fea­tur­ing above a Nation­al Geo­graph­ic doc­u­men­tary called Jane. Direct­ed by Brett Mor­gen, the film draws “from over 100 hours of nev­er-before-seen footage that has...

LEBANON 2011. I’d moved to Lebanon to study, after the Israelis had banned me from re-entering Palestine. A friend had already arrived a few weeks before me. Hearing of an apartment for rent in Ashrafiyyeh, she went to check it...