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...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjXZzB5bUAo Stalactites hang tight to the ceiling, and stalagmites push up with might from the floor: this is a mnemonic device you may once have learned, but chances are you haven’t had much occasion to remember it since. Still, it would...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frud5RFtTi0 Punk rock has a robust tradition of gross-out, offensive comedy—one carried into the present by bands like Fat White Family and Diarrhea Planet, who may not exist were it not for Fear, an unstable L.A. band led by an...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWaCsteIYig The work of the comic artist Jean Giraud, better known as Moebius (or, more stylishly, Mœbius), has often appeared on Open Culture over the years, but even if you’ve never seen it here, you know it. Granted, you may...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGKan6eX5ug Last night, while the home team lost the big game on TVs at a local dive bar, my noisy rock band opened for a chamber pop ensemble. Electric guitars and feedback gave way to classical acoustics, violin, piano, accordion,...
One of the most important stories of the last decade is the influence of identity politics on the Western world. This form of politics exists at the theoretical level, as well as in public policy, but also less subtly in...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUgdrno-2xY Though he died too young, Carl Sagan left behind an impressively large body of work, including more than 600 scientific papers and more than 20 books. Of those books, none is more widely known to the public — or,...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5bXws0hAu4 Difficult as it may be to remember now, there was a time when Meryl Streep was not yet synonymous with silver-screen stardom — a time, in fact, when she had yet to appear on the silver screen at all....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjpYzFtxfjU Ever-increasing economic inequality, rapid technological change, the creation of dominant corporations controlled by a small business elite, political corruption, and the rise of populism and nativism. These are all features of American life in 2025. But our nation has...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWOw884dPW4 With the tenth anniversary of David Bowie’s death coming up early next year, more than a few fans will have their minds on a pilgrimage to mark the occasion. Perhaps with that very time frame in mind, the V&A...
