Of all the fantasies in all the world, being an artist by the sea is surely one of the most popular. To do so on 19th-century farm on the cliff of a breezy peninsula is simply the stuff of fairytales!
A Dreamy Seaside Artist’s Studio On A 19th Century Farm
Love songs have the same shape as sex: slow build to an ecstatic top note. But can music give you an orgasm? Love Songs
Formats Unpacked
From Storythings, a weekly newsletter called Formats Unpacked that takes a close look at different ways to tell stories and package content. Over the past year and a half, they have covered formats like Hot Ones:
The special magic ingredient — the spice in the sauce, if you will — is the way that each 20+ minute interview is guaranteed to become more compelling as it goes along. How many interview shows can you say that about?
The questions posed by the host, Sean Evans, are well researched softballs. The guests would all be having a comfortable enough time if they weren’t having to endure increasing levels of physical pain.
Army training prepares you for this sort of thing, media training not so much. By the time you reach Da Bomb — the scorching hot and apparently not-even-that-tasty 8th sauce — it’s hard not to let your personality show through.
Ze’s ideas were too small for TV, but perfectly in size and shape for the internet. He was probably too weird for TV too, which made him the perfect host for a daily internet video show in the era of MySpace, Bebo and early Youtube, when the web was still weird and unformed. Slate described him as a ‘Laptop Celebrity’ at the time, because the idea of YouTuber didn’t even exist yet.
Each story consists of nothing more than a single picture with a single quote, but it’s just enough to make the viewer feel as though the protagonist is speaking directly to them. We’re spared any unnecessary story arcs, dramatic backdrops, or interviewer intrusions. What we get is a story that someone had to get off their chest that day. Even if it means telling it to a stranger — in this instance Brandon Stanton, a six-foot-four photographer and blogger. Perhaps this tells us something about our desire for human connection, especially in big cities, where despite being surrounded by millions of people, it’s easy to feel alone or disconnected.
And the singles chart:
Every week, the chart created new stories — acts that were making their debut, roaring up the charts, being replaced by hotter new acts, or reaching the glorious summit of number one. The charts were an ongoing soap opera for pop fans, a mythic world in which their gods fought each other for supremacy.
- “To compromise on the detail is to change the subject” — an enjoyable and informative essay by Emmanuel Ordóñez Angulo (Oxford) on the challenges to and varieties of popularization in philosophy and mathematics
- Speaker series on the nature of belief — from the Concepts & Cognition Lab, hosted by Tania Lombrozo (Princeton) and Neil Van Leeuwen (Georgia State)
- New publication by John Locke — “the discovered manuscript provides the first evidence of Locke’s commitment to the principle that minimalistic theism would suffice for peaceable coexistence in any civil society”
- Reconceiving abortion as a public good — so that the state has a compelling interest in people having access to it
- “The position that I have in philosophy—I grew up poor, I am a Black woman, et cetera—means I have… very different evidence of what the stuff of anger actually looks like” — Myisha Cherry (UC Riverside) interviewed in The New Yorker about anger and philosophy
- What are and what should be the limits on scientific freedom? — Heather Douglas (Michigan State) talks with Maria Kronfeldner (CEU) as part of a series on socially engaged philosophy
- “The political/ideological takeover is the practice of using political positions to drive our philosophy (or drive out the rest of philosophy), rather than the other way around” — an interview with Michael Huemer (Colorado) at What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher