CULTURE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA68B8u8G9k No art enthu­si­ast’s vis­it to the Unit­ed King­dom would be com­plete with­out days at the British Muse­um, the Tate, the V&A and the Nation­al Gallery. The fact that all those respect­ed insti­tu­tions are in Lon­don con­sti­tutes a plau­si­ble excuse...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rptW7zOPX2E More than a cen­tu­ry after women’s suf­frage in the Unit­ed States, it’s not enough to bone up on the plat­forms of female pri­ma­ry can­di­dates (though that’s an excel­lent start). A Twit­ter user and self-described Old Crone named Robyn urged...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUYzuAJeg3M If mono­rails have a bad name, The Simp­sons may be to blame. In an episode acclaimed for its hilar­i­ous­ness since it first aired 33 years ago, a huck­ster shows up in Spring­field and con­vinces the town to build just such...

Con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a tru­ly pro­le­tar­i­an art, the great Eng­lish lit­er­ary crit­ic William Emp­son once wrote, “the rea­son an Eng­lish audi­ence can enjoy Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dist films is that the pro­pa­gan­da is too remote to be annoy­ing.” Per­haps this is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voqCQSDAcn8 When we think of silence, we think of med­i­ta­tive stretch­es of calm: hikes through desert­ed for­est paths, an ear­ly morn­ing sun­set before the world awakes, a stay­ca­tion at home with a good book. But we know oth­er silences: awk­ward silences,...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibw_gaMxRGw “If Youth, through­out all his­to­ry, had had a cham­pi­on to stand up for it; to show a doubt­ing world that a child can think; and, pos­si­bly, do it prac­ti­cal­ly; you would­n’t con­stant­ly run across folks today who claim that...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=playlist Much has been writ­ten late­ly about the cri­sis in Hol­ly­wood, which has left many appar­ent­ly sure-fire block­busters floun­der­ing, the­aters emp­ty, and pro­duc­tion jobs lost. There are many fac­tors in play — some of them, as few diag­noses fail to...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBMStZ8mtcY Not too far back, we revis­it­ed some Cold War pro­pa­gan­da that taught upstand­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zens How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism. It’s a gem, but it has noth­ing on the 1954 film, The House in the Mid­dle. Select­ed for...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs9w5bgtJC8 Asked to name famous ship­wrecks at a bar triv­ia night, a fair few par­tic­i­pants might think imme­di­ate­ly of Pearl Har­bor, whether or not they can recall that it was the USS Ari­zona bombed there. More firm­ly with­in liv­ing mem­o­ry...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WlpTvmzwrk Very few of us have ever set foot near a gen­uine medieval cas­tle, espe­cial­ly if we don’t hap­pen to live in Europe. Yet prac­ti­cal­ly all of us still, here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, refer with some fre­quen­cy to their...