CULTURE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90bjRafoP0Q Sci­en­tists need hob­bies. The gru­el­ing work of nav­i­gat­ing com­plex the­o­ry and the pol­i­tics of acad­e­mia can get to a per­son, even one as laid back as Brown Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and astro­physi­cist Stephon Alexan­der. So Alexan­der plays the sax­o­phone, though...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyTOYEk_Z2Y The idea of dis­cov­er­ing a lost ancient city under­ground has long cap­tured the human imag­i­na­tion. But why are the aban­doned built envi­ron­ments of those fan­tasies always buried? The answer, in large part, is that such places do indeed exist...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Y9NcqUHY4 On Youtube, jazz enthu­si­ast Jonathan Holmes declares: “I can guar­an­tee this is the clean­est sound­ing Louis Arm­strong record you’ll ever hear! With the orig­i­nal trans­fer sup­plied by Nick Del­low, here is the moth­er record which was shipped by Okeh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl-C5_RqJZg In the new Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above, Michael Wyet­zn­er talks about a fair few build­ings we’ve fea­tured over the years here on Open Cul­ture: the Impe­r­i­al Hotel, the Ennis House, Tal­iesin, Falling­wa­ter. These are all, of course, the work...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV59bqpCeAg East meets West, and the Ancient, the Mod­ern. That’s what hap­pens every time Luna Lee plays one of your favorites on the Gayageum, a Kore­an instru­ment that dates back to the 6th cen­tu­ry. We’ve fea­tured her work in years past (see...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am_si1K3Ftc Whether or not you believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, you prob­a­bly envi­sion him (or, if you pre­fer, Him) in much the same way as most every­one else does. The long hair and beard, the robe, the...

When John Nash wrote “Non-Coop­er­a­tive Games,” his Ph.D. dis­ser­ta­tion at Prince­ton in 1950, the text of his the­sis (read it online) was brief. It ran only 26 pages. And more par­tic­u­lar­ly, it was light on cita­tions. Nash’s diss cit­ed two texts: John von Neu­mann and Oskar...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q56PMJbCFXQ The Cit­i­group Cen­ter in Mid­town Man­hat­tan is also known by its address, 601 Lex­ing­ton Avenue, at which it’s been stand­ing for 47 years, longer than the medi­an New York­er has been alive. Though still a fair­ly hand­some build­ing, in...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWJeWYnTMSY It can be tempt­ing to view the box office’s dom­i­na­tion by visu­al-effects-laden Hol­ly­wood spec­ta­cle as a recent phe­nom­e­non. And indeed, there have been peri­ods dur­ing which that was­n’t the case: the “New Hol­ly­wood” that began in the late nine­teen...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNwgh787umM On Tues­day, the car­di­nals locked them­selves into the Sis­tine Chapel, offi­cial­ly begin­ning the con­clave to elect the 267th pope. First for­mal­ized by Pope Gre­go­ry X in 1274, the con­clave (a word derived from the Latin words cum clave, mean­ing “with...