https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HSIWfPTSMM Charlie Chaplin came up in vaudeville, but it was silent film that made him the most famous man in the world. His mastery of that form primed him to feel a degree of skepticism about sound when it came...
Image via Wikimedia Commons How did we get to the point where we’ve come to believe so many lies that 77 million Americans voted into the White House a criminal reality TV star from NBC, one groomed by a reality...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1p5Ozgwb1U Robots seem to have been much on the public mind back in the nineteen-thirties. Matt Novak at Paleofuture gives the example of a moment in 1932 when “the world was awash in newspaper stories about a robot that had...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFWCbGzxofU Say what you want about YouTube’s negative effects (endless soy faces, influencers, its devious and fascist-leaning algorithms) but it has offered to creators a space in which to indulge. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve been a fan...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHgn-eMxFnk Some remember the nineteen-nineties in America as the second coming of the nineteen-fifties. Whatever holes one can poke in that historical framing, it does feel strangely plausible inside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Circular Sun House. Though not actually built until...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VrLQXR7mKU Victoria Warmerdam, the writer and director of the short film, “I’m Not a Robot,” summarizes the plot of her 22-minute film as follows: The film “tells the story of Lara, a music producer who spirals into an existential crisis...
Now through March 9, 2025, Coursera is offering 40% off a three-month subscription to Coursera Plus. This plan provides access to 7,000+ courses for one all-inclusive price, including programs from 350 universities (e.g., Duke and the University of Michigan) and...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpFK9JCT8PU Today, when we watch genre-defining concert films like Monterey Pop, Woodstock, Gimme Shelter, or Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, we look upon the audience with nearly as much interest as we do the performers. But Pink Floyd...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib0zZ9SizZ8 Courtesy of Wired, historian Alexander Bevilacqua (Williams College) answers the internet’s burning questions about the cultural rebirth that came to be known as The Renaissance. In 30+ minutes, Bevilacqua covers an array of questions, including: When did The Renaissance...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXfklsKGwBU Nobody opens a Stephen King novel expecting to see a reflection of the real world. Then again, as those who get hooked on his books can attest, never is his work ever wholly detached from reality. Time and time...
