CULTURE

‘Will the Slavic streams flow into the Russian sea? Or will it dry out? This is the question,’ wrote Alexander Pushkin in 1831. The line is from ‘To the Slanderers of Russia’, a triumphal ‘ode’ to Russia’s crushing of the...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CxmzkYPvsg We’ve long used the French word milieu in Eng­lish, but not with quite the same range of mean­ings it has back in France. For exam­ple, French soci­ety (and espe­cial­ly the mem­bers of its old­er gen­er­a­tions) explic­it­ly rec­og­nizes the val­ue of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm1OfxhmxEY These days, we hear much said on social media — sure­ly too much — in favor of the “hus­tle cul­ture” and the “grind mind­set” (or, abbre­vi­at­ed for max­i­mum effi­cien­cy, the “grind­set”). Ded­i­ca­tion to your work is to be admired,...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00fakzGYy9Y The memory of reading the very first book as a child remains vivid, unlocking worlds far beyond the limits of everyday reality. There was a powerful sense of inspiration and courage drawn from tales of strong, fearless girls like...

“Ear­ly cook­books were fit for kings,” writes Hen­ry Notak­er at The Atlantic. “The old­est pub­lished recipe col­lec­tions” in the 15th and 16th cen­turies in West­ern Europe “emanat­ed from the palaces of mon­archs, princes, and grand señores.” Cook­books were more than...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLHZZmTXhPM “May you live in inter­est­ing times,” goes the apoc­ryphal but nev­er­the­less much-invoked “Chi­nese curse.” Egon Schiele, born in the Aus­tria-Hun­gary of 1890, cer­tain­ly did live in inter­est­ing times, and his work, as fea­tured in the new Great Art Explained...

Our brains dic­tate our every move. They’re the ones who spur us to study hard, so we can make some­thing of our­selves, in order to bet­ter our com­mu­ni­ties. They name our babies, choose our clothes, decide what we’re hun­gry for....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmGIiBfWI0E Karl­heinz Stock­hausen appears, among many oth­er cul­tur­al fig­ures, on the cov­er of Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. His inclu­sion was more than a trendy ges­ture toward the Euro­pean avant-garde; any­one who knows that path­break­ing elec­tron­ic com­poser’s work will...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkIh3N8pyWg The world’s most famous organ piece, played on the world’s largest ful­ly func­tion­ing pipe organ. That’s what you have above. Here, organ­ist Dylan David Shaw per­forms Bach’s Toc­ca­ta and Fugue in D minor on the famous Wana­mak­er organ. Orig­i­nal­ly...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7izh06YBxHY No artist became a Renais­sance mas­ter through a sin­gle piece of work, though now, half a mil­len­ni­um lat­er, that may be how most of us iden­ti­fy them. Leonar­do? Painter of the Mona Lisa. Michelan­ge­lo? Painter of the Sis­tine Chapel...