“That one was the gift of God… of Ja actually—the god of marijuana, right? So Ja gave me that one.” The Beatles 1966 Revolver, a mini-masterpiece, contains all the elements that would inform the band’s revolutionary late-60s sound on Sgt. Pepper’s, Abbey Road, The White Album, and Let it Be. The album’s first track, “Taxman,” …
https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/partiallyexaminedlife/PMP_89_4-4-21.mp3 In lieu of an Oscars episode, the Pretty Much Pop podcast this week considers one of the nominated films, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and the career of its writer/director, Aaron Sorkin, which started with A Few Good Men through four TV series (most notably The West Wing), and films like The Social …
If you are a frequent reader of Open Culture, or the many blogs we tend to read — especially those concerned with the rare, unusual, and obscure — it’s likely you’ve encountered some of the books in The Madman’s Library, Edward Brooke-Hitching’s fantastic new volume of literary oddities. If not, you’re probably familiar with a few …
The Japanese art of tsugite, or wood joinery, goes back more than a millennium. As still practiced today, it involves no nails, screws, or adhesives at all, yet it can be used to put up whole buildings — as well as to disassemble them with relative ease. The key is its canon of elaborately carved joints …
Follow along with the lyrics below, or in the video above. W’e took it on the chin The numbers were so grim Bossed around by pricks Stiffen upper lips Pacing in the yard You’re trying to take the mick You must think i’m really thick Looking at the graphs with a magnifying glass Cancel all …
This deep into the coronavirus pandemic, how many cinephiles haven’t yet got word of the bankruptcy or shuttering of a favorite movie theater? Though the coronavirus hasn’t quite killed filmgoing dead — at least not everywhere in the world — the culture of cinema itself had been showing signs of ill health long before any …
Why bother with reason and evidence to make predictions when you can put your faith in a chance roll of the dice? These two methods could be said to represent the vastly divergent ways of science and superstition, two realms that rarely intersect except, perhaps, when it comes to fortune-telling — or, in the idiom …
Nothing excites the imagination of young history-and-science-minded kids like the Egyptian pyramids, which is maybe why so many people grow up into amateur Egyptologists with very strong opinions about the pyramids. For such people, access to the highest quality information seems critical for their online debates. For professional academics and serious students of ancient Egypt …
I see Michael Jackson as a dance style, okay? — Ricardo Walker Ricardo Walker and his Crew’s The Evolution of Dance, 1950 to 2019 will make you regret every minute spent hugging the wall in middle school. The breakneck, 6-minute romp led by dancer, choreographer, and Michael Jackson impersonator Ricardo Walker, not only showcases the all-male …
We revere Leonardo da Vinci for his industry, but even more so for his imagination. Most of us would envision ourselves, had we lived in the late 15th or early 16th century, being perfectly content with having painted the Mona Lisa. But Leonardo had designs on a host of other domains as well, most of …