What’s the Big Idea? On average, students pay $35,000 a year for the privilege of being educated at a private nonprofit American college. In December of 2011, indebtedness among college […]
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Today’s video is part of a series on female genius, in proud collaboration with 92Y’s 7 Days of Genius Festival.
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The GRAMMYS turned out to be one of the classiest and most entertaining award shows ever. Certainly the show blew away the Super Bowl on both fronts. Even the commercials […]
What’s the Big Idea? “Your Gravity Theory Sucks!” Margaret Wertheim was surprised to find this comment on an order form for a self-published book called The Other Theory of Physics, […]
I don’t think I’ve ever written this sentence before, but here goes: There’s been so much good news on the pro-choice front lately, it’s hard to keep up! Since my […]
“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up,” says washed-up silent film star Norma Desmond in the final scene of Billy Wilder’s unforgettable 1950 film Sunset Boulevard. Gloria Swanson […]
What drives an artist to destroy something they spent their time and energy on to create? Hatred? Self-disgust? Embarassment? Fear of how it might be interpreted or misinterpreted? German artist […]
A few years ago, Brad Anderson, then CEO of Best Buy, told me something both provocative and profound. We were discussing what he looked for in selecting someone for a C-suite […]
Keeping up with the Joneses just got harder, with Facebook finally flipping the switch on its new Timeline Apps that make it easier to share every fleeting moment of your […]
Like the Beatles discography or the screenplay for Casablanca, the King James Bible is a rare instance of true collaborative genius.
As the times go, so goes Van Gogh. Toiling in relative obscurity during his life, known by fellow painters but not by the public at large, Vincent Van Gogh’s greatest […]
People with synesthesia “inhabit a strange no-man’s-land between reality and fantasy. They taste colors, see sounds, hear shapes, or touch emotions in myriad combinations.” We recognize this condition in infants, as well as artists, who seek to defamiliarize perceptions of reality.
What’s the difference between a Jackson Pollock painting and a finger-painting? Why is “The Magic Flute” so enduring, while other classical compositions have been forgotten? Leon Botstein, the dean of Bard College, examines what we’re talking about when we talk about art.
The hilarious swami of style and fashion egalitarian Simon Doonan, author of Gay Men Don’t Get Fat, offers some efficient guidelines to personal style for the mad scientist whose mind is on loftier things.
What’s the Big Idea? In a 2011 interview, physicist Stephen Hawking declared, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail.” Of course, the […]
In this segment from his Floating University lecture, Leon Botstein explores what makes an artist good. “Eventually you can look at your own photograph that you took of your friend […]
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As NYC police attempt to clear Zuccotti Park of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, it seems appropriate to reconsider who OWS is and what they want. To me, their goals […]
A forum where top mixologists explore the party drinks defining the 21st Century.
Breaking Dawn Part 1, the latest film version of Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling Twilight saga sank a stake into the weekend box office pulling in an estimated $283.5 million worldwide. A […]
Author Blake Nelson’s new book Dream School comes out today from Figment.com, the company’s first book to be printed on physical paper. Figment.com was launched 1 year ago today, Dec. […]
It was a dark and stormy night. By starting A Wrinkle in Time with the most famous “bad” opening in literary history—the same Edward Bulwer-Lytton line later adopted by Snoopy—Madeleine […]
Continuing a tradition I started last year, here’s a very personal, very subjective, “I can’t read everything, so I probably left out something, so mention it in the comments, OK?” […]
I’ve spent much of today traveling, but there is still a lot going on in Yemen. Hopefully in the next couple of days Waq al-waq will have more of a […]
Oh how I wish David Foster Wallace had been my English professor. The University of Texas has recently posted the syllabus from the English 102 class he taught at Pomona […]
Test writers should be challenged to address the fact that circumstances beyond your control influence how well you do a standardized test, says Shawn O’Connor. But you are not your score – and you have the power to improve your outcome.
Admit it: You read Harry Potter. And even if you didn’t, you’ve been unable to escape the billboards, backpacks, and advertising the mega-grossing films have spawned. Maybe, under cover of […]
by Michael Garfield “As viewed by astronauts from the moon, the earth lacks those lines of sociopolitical division that are so prominent on maps. And as recognized here below, the […]
What sends chills and thrills up your spine just by looking at it on a museum wall? Fright, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. But here is perhaps the scariest painting of them all.
The old adage that the key to creativity is to view the world through the eyes of a child has never been more relevant. Ever since this summer’s release of […]
“What is so distasteful about the Homeric gods,” W. H. Auden complains in his essay “The Frivolous & the Earnest,” is that they are well aware of human suffering but […]