https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9gLmBgUTV4 Frank Zappa called them the “Mothers of Prevention,” the group of wives married to members of Congress who decided in the mid-80s to go to war against rock lyrics and whip up some good ol’ conservative hysteria. We’ve talked...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB1cEyy0fKs Fifty years ago this month, Lou Reed nearly destroyed his own career with one double album. Metal Machine Music sold 100,000 copies during the three weeks of summer 1975 between its release and its removal from the market. More...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH07_Lyw05Q Though now in his seventies, Jackie Chan continues to appear on the big screen with regularity. For most world-famous actors, that’s hardly notable, but it’s not as if Sir John Gielgud, say, had spent decades filming scenes of hand-to-hand...
In histories of early photography, Louis Daguerre faithfully appears as one of the fathers of the medium. His patented process, the daguerreotype, in wide use for nearly twenty years in the early 19th century, produced so many of the images...
Sometimes it is almost impossible to escape a feeling of wonder for the abundance of life in our world. Especially on a summer’s day – when bumblebees buzz among flower petals, grasshoppers play in the dry grass, blue-winged butterflies flutter...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnieUa2-22o They say that history is written by the victors, but that isn’t always true: sometimes it’s embroidered by the victors. Such was the case with the Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the build-up to and successful execution of the Norman...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka1DKkj7pGk Back in 2008, Bob Boilen (host of All Songs Considered) and NPR music critic Stephen Thompson attended a noisy concert where they struggled to hear Laura Gibson perform. Jokingly, Thompson suggested that Gibson perform at Boilen’s office desk instead....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gHE9blt0mQ When we speak English, we might say we’re speaking the language of Samuel Johnson, the man who wrote its first dictionary. Or we could say we’re speaking the language of Shakespeare, who coined more English terms than any other...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKjr9MSZnPo A few things to know about Charlie Chaplin. He starred in over 80 films, reeling off most during the silent film era. In 1914 alone, he acted in 40 films, then another 15 in 1915. By the 1920s, Chaplin...
Languages’ similarities are not rooted in a special genetics for language. They follow from culture and common information-processing solutions and have their own individual evolutionary stories. Daniel Everett, How Languages Began Nothing great can be expressed in Belarusian, it...
