Christopher Hitchens once wrote that there were three major issues of the twentieth century — imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism — and George Orwell proved to be right about all of them. Orwell displays his remarkable foresight in a fascinating book...
Image from New York Public Library, via Wikimedia Commons If you visit Osaka, you’ll be urged to see two old buildings in particular: Osaka Castle and Shitennō-ji (above), Japan’s first Buddhist temple. In beholding both, you’ll behold the work of...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gkRTha6C3g Are your idle moments spent inventing imaginary conversations between strange bedfellows? The sort of conversation that might transpire in a pickup truck belonging to Samuel Beckett, say, were the Irish playwright to chauffeur the child André Rene Roussimoff—aka pro...
John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek published their landmark works over 75 years ago, so why do their ideas still generate such debate today? Kritika & Kontext devotes a special issue to a re-evaluation of these two 20th-century behemoths...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0A9M5wHBA4 In a 1956 New Statesman piece, the British scientist-novelist C. P. Snow first sounded the alarm about the increasingly chasm-like divide between what he called the “scientific” and “traditional” cultures. We would today refer to them as the sciences...
In the final episode of Knowledgeable Youth, the Ukrainian students of the Free People Educational Hub in Vienna reflect on what kind of future they envision for themselves and the world. Their conversation is inspired by the article “Children of...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t4qXH_YaBs Jimi Hendrix arrived on the London scene like a ton of bricks in 1966, smashing every British blues guitarist to pieces the instant they saw him play. As vocalist Terry Reid tells it, when Hendrix played his first showcase...
You know the sound of the theremin, that weird, warbly whine that signals mystery, danger, and otherworldly portent in many classic sci-fi films. It has the distinction of being not only the very first electronic instrument but also the only instrument...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYqqFqoLnnk Think back, if you will, to the climactic scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which take place in the hidden temple that contains the Holy Grail. His father having been shot by the dastardly Nazi-sympathizing immortality-seeker Walter...
Greta Thunberg accused participants of the 2023 World Economic Forum with ‘fuelling the destruction of the planet’. She argued that the irresponsibility of the economic elite, who ‘are prioritizing self-greed, corporate greed and short-term economic profits’, discredits their alleged competence....
