"I had never known that beauty and death could go together." Joanna Ebenstein runs Brooklyn's Museum of Morbid Anatomy, which celebrates the memento mori that were part of daily life in the past. From art sculpted out of a dead person's hair, to death masks molded from a corpse's face, she give us a tour.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
Sarah Churchwell tells Steve Paulson that Marilyn Monroe was an ambitious, complex woman not simply the victim of the Hollywood star machine.
The firey debate over schooling has flared up again. The newest dialogue? Astra Taylor’s "Unschooling” essay in n+1, and Dana Goldstein’s response in Slate. In this NEW and UNCUT interview, Taylor and Goldstein join Steve Paulson for their first joint interview on schools.
Literary critic William Gass talks with Steve Paulson about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and explicates a poem of Rilke’s about a bowl of roses.
Ronda Rousey may be the best mixed martial arts fighter who ever lived, and she continues to dominate the MMA. But her rise to the top hasn't been easy. She tells the remarkable story of how she became a champion fighter.
It’s hard to wrap your head around climate change. How do you really take in the concept of planetary change over decades or even centuries? Visual artist Kambui Olujimi explores different ideas about time in his one-man show “Zulu Time.”
Today, the Dutch philosopher Spinoza - father of the Enlightenment - is revered, but in the mid-17th century, he was branded a heretic by his Jewish congregation in Amsterdam. Recently, philosopher Steve Nadler was asked if Spinoza should be exonerated. He explains why he said no.
Steven Poole tells Anne Strainchamps that video games can be an art form and that they will continue to increase in sophistication.
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