CULTURE

Even the least reli­gious among us speak, at least on occa­sion, of the cir­cles of hell. When we do so, we may or may not be think­ing of where the con­cept orig­i­nat­ed: Dan­te’s Div­ina Com­me­dia, or Divine Com­e­dy. We each imag­ine...

If you’ve read one work of Han­nah Arendt’s, it’s prob­a­bly Eich­mann in Jerusalem, her account of the tri­al of the epony­mous Nazi offi­cial — and the source of her much-quot­ed phrase “the banal­i­ty of evil.” That book came out in...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjUXV69MwNU Let’s rewind the video­tape and revis­it a clas­sic moment in The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the 1962 episode called “Hus­tling the Hus­tler,” Mary Tyler Moore (as Lau­ra Petrie) plays pool and sinks three balls in a sin­gle shot....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G9pnE0bnfE The sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat has its unfor­tu­nate aspects: not just his pre­ma­ture death, but also the aggres­sive mar­ket­ing of his work and per­sona in the years lead­ing up to it. He became a vogue artist of the eight­ies...

A heads-up on a Black Fri­day spe­cial: Between today and Decem­ber 2, 2024, Cours­era is offer­ing a 40% dis­count on its annu­al sub­scrip­tion plan called “Cours­era Plus.” Nor­mal­ly priced at $399, Cours­era Plus (now avail­able for $239.40) gives you access to...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIGNaDk9eIA Hip-hop was once a sub­cul­ture, but by now it’s long since been one of the unques­tion­ably dom­i­nant forms of pop­u­lar music — not just in Amer­i­ca, and not just among young peo­ple. There are, of course, still a fair...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLSveRGmpIE “Thanks­giv­ing Day, Nov. 28, 1986” first appeared in print in Tor­na­do Alley, a chap­book pub­lished by William S. Bur­roughs in 1989. Two years lat­er, Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunt­ing, My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, Milk) shot a mon­tage that brought the poem...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5_8U4j51lI Alice’s Restau­rant. It’s now a Thanks­giv­ing clas­sic, and some­thing of a tra­di­tion around here. Record­ed in 1967, the 18+ minute coun­ter­cul­ture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, start­ing on Thanks­giv­ing Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we...

We appre­ci­ate illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts and his­tor­i­cal books here on Open Cul­ture, adhere though we do to a much more restrained aes­thet­ic style in our own texts. But that’s not to deny the temp­ta­tion to start this para­graph with one of those...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UnwIgfe6uM A quick heads up: The film­mak­er Ken Burns has just released his new doc­u­men­tary on Leonar­do da Vin­ci. Run­ning near­ly four hours, the film offers what The New York Times calls a “thor­ough and engross­ing biog­ra­phy” of the 15th-cen­tu­ry...