https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0G5mbbNdBM Each culture has its own sayings about the uniqueness and transience of the present moment. In recent years, the English-speakers have often found themselves reminded, through the expression “YOLO,” that they only live once. (The question of whether that...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_XhcY5Hg2E Having not revisited The Hobbit in some time, I’ve felt the familiar pull—shared by many readers—to return to Tolkien’s fairy-tale novel itself. It was my first exposure to Tolkien, and the perfect book for a young reader ready to...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wn-OJSgVQs In 1991, the French husband-and-wife volcanologist-filmmaker team Maurice and Katia Krafft were killed by the flow of ash from the eruption of Mount Unzen in Nagasaki. Inexplicably, Werner Herzog didn’t get around to making a film about them for...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8uStVXNf0M Espresso is neither bean nor roast. It is a method of pressurized coffee brewing that ensures speedy delivery, and it has birthed a whole culture. Americans may be accustomed to camping out in cafes with their laptops for hours,...
On January 1, 1943, the American folk music legend Woody Guthrie jotted in his journal a list of 33 “New Years Rulin’s.” Nowadays, we’d call them New Year’s Resolutions. Adorned by doodles, the list is down to earth by any...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh9f_k7fQPA Though it isn’t the kind of thing one hears discussed every day, serious Disney fans do tend to know that Goofy’s original name was Dippy Dawg. But how many of the non-obsessive know that Mickey’s faithful pet Pluto was...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pkX2fLFy4E It wouldn’t surprise us to come across a Japanese person in Venice. Indeed, given the global touristic appeal of the place, we could hardly imagine a day there without a visitor from the Land of the Rising Sun. But...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw_GaeJnoSI One can easily imagine a reader enjoying both The Lord of the Rings and Dune. Both of those works of epic fantasy were published in the form of a series of long novels beginning in the mid-twentieth century; both create...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWjtQ5IGr2w If you’re a regular listener, you know that Ezra Klein wraps up his podcast interviews with a familiar question: what three books would you recommend to the audience? When Klein interviewed Brian Eno in October, the producer had these...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic It’s easy to imagine the myriad difficulties with which you’d be faced if you were suddenly transported a millennium back in time. But if you’re a native (or even proficient) English speaker in an English-speaking part of the world,...
