CULTURE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGWwnlR3_-Q In the whole of Alien, the tit­u­lar enti­ty only appears on screen for about three min­utes. That’s one rea­son the movie holds up so well against the oth­er crea­ture fea­tures of its era: in glimpses, you nev­er get a...

In its current issue on contemporary Latin American literature, Ord&Bild lives up to its name (‘Word&Image’). The cover and accompanying photo essay by the Mexican artist Chavis Mármol show a colossal Olmec head that looks like it is made of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L6OGruW9i4 Mar­lon Bran­do has now been gone for more than two decades, and so thor­ough­go­ing was his impact on the art of film act­ing that younger gen­er­a­tions of movie-lovers may have trou­ble pin­ning down what, exact­ly, he did so dif­fer­ent­ly...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=playlist Look up the word archi­tec­ture in the dic­tio­nary, and though you won’t actu­al­ly find a pic­ture of Frank Lloyd Wright, it may feel as if you should. Or at least it will feel that way if you’re look­ing in an...

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...