A recreation of the military sandals. (Photo: Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation) Whether you’re putting together a stage play, a film, or a television series, if the story is set in ancient Rome, you know you’re going to have to get a lot of sandals on order. This […]
Politics Forms
The Olympics in the 2020s Versus 1912: See Side-by-Side Comparisons of the Athletes’ Performance Then & Now
The Olympic Games have their origins in antiquity, but their modern revival has also been going on longer than any of us has been here. Even the fifth Summer Olympics, which took place in Stockholm in 1912, has passed out of living memory. But thanks to the technology of the […]
Scott Hahn on cremation, Gene Wolfe, Ben-Hur, Jane Greer, Charlie Parker
Aug 1, 2024 A collection of highlight clips from past episodes. 77 Gene Wolfe, Catholic Sci-Fi Legend—Sandra Miesel, Fr. Brendon Laroche https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-77-gene-wolfe-catholic-sci-fi-legend-sandra-miesel-fr-brendon-laroche/ Ben-Hur w/ Elizabeth Lev (Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast) https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ben-hur-1959-w-elizabeth-lev/ 80 Bring Out Your Dead – Scott Hahn https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-80-bring-out-your-dead-scott-hahn/ 81 Love Like a Conflagration – Jane Greer https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/ep-81-love-like-conflagration-jane-greer/ […]
David Bowie Predicts the Good & Bad of the Internet in 1999: “We’re on the Cusp of Something Exhilarating and Terrifying”
“We’re on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.” The year is 1999 and David Bowie, in shaggy hair and groovy glasses, has seen the future and it is the Internet. In this short but fascinating interview with BBC’s stalwart and withering interrogator cum interviewer Jeremy Paxman, Bowie offers a […]
Nick Cave Narrates an Animated Film about the Cat Piano, the Twisted 18th Century Musical Instrument Designed to Treat Mental Illness
What do you imagine when you hear the phrase “cat piano”? Some kind of whimsical furry beast with black and white keys for teeth, maybe? A relative of My Neighbor Totoro’s cat bus? Or maybe you picture a piano that contains several caged cats who shriek along an entire scale when keys […]
The First Animation That Hayao Miyazaki Directed on His Own: Watch Footage from the Pilot of Yuki’s Sun (1972)
Hayao Miyazaki began his career as an animator in 1963, getting in the door at Toei Animation not long before the company ceased to hire regularly. Miyazaki’s equally retirement-resistant contemporary Tetsuya Chiba, already well on his way to fame as a mangaka, or comic artist, published the series Yuki no […]
The Rolling Stones Introduce Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf on US TV, One of the “Greatest Cultural Moments of the 20th Century” (1965)
Howlin’ Wolf may well have been the greatest blues singer of the 20th century. Certainly many people have said so, but there are other measurements than mere opinion, though it’s one I happen to share. The man born Chester Arthur Burnett also had a profound historical effect on popular culture, […]
Behold the Kräuterbuch, a Lavishly Illustrated Guide to Plants and Herbs from 1462
When Konrad von Megenberg published his Buch der Natur in the mid-fourteenth century, he won the distinction of having assembled the very first natural history in German. More than half a millennium later, the book still fascinates — not least for its depictions of cats, previously featured here on Open […]
Jimi Hendrix Opens for The Monkees on a 1967 Tour; Then Flips Off the Crowd and Quits
It’s easy to dismiss The Monkees. Critics and listeners have been doing it since the sixties, although the band has also come in for its share of reappraisals, particularly for their psych-rock album Head. (That’s the soundtrack from the 1968 Jack Nicholson-directed art film of the same name: “One of […]
Stephen Fry Explains Why Artificial Intelligence Has a “70% Risk of Killing Us All”
Apart from his comedic, dramatic, and literary endeavors, Stephen Fry is widely known for his avowed technophilia. He once wrote a column on that theme, “Dork Talk,” for the Guardian, in whose inaugural dispatch he laid out his credentials by claiming to have been the owner of only the second […]