Part 1:

Early in his life, William Faulkner had an epiphany: “I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about, and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.

The film begins at a derelict gas station. A paper sign, peeling from the wall, warns in German that open flames and smoking are dangerous and strictly forbidden. In walks Tom Waits, smoking a cigarette.

Here’s a strikingly unconventional interpretation of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 1806 composition, 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C minor, by the Canadian virtuoso pianist Glenn Gould.

When archivist Stacey Chandler was combing through one of the “Massachusetts” files recently at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, she stumbled on something unexpected: a letter to Kennedy from an obscure writer named Kurt Vonnegut, volunteering his services on Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

Blank on Blank, the nonprofit group that uses the magic of animation to bring forgotten interviews back to life, has come out with a new episode featuring the Beastie Boys in their early days. “Beastie Boys on Being Stupid” (above) is built on excerpts from a 1985 interview with Rocci Fisch for ABC Radio.

The United States has only five percent of the world’s population, but somewhere between 35 and 50 percent of the world’s privately owned guns. Is it a surprise, then, that we have significantly higher rates of gun violence?
According to research published by the National Institutes of Health, homicide rates in the U.S. are 6.

On June 5, 1965, Joan Baez played a special concert at the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherd’s Bush, London. Although her fame at the time was newly eclipsed by that of her recently estranged lover Bob Dylan, Baez was very much in her prime.

The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously said that science and religion are “nonoverlapping magisteria”:
The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value.

Not long ago we posted a beautiful scene featuring the legendary guitarist Andrés Segovia playing Johann Sebastian Bach at the Alhambra, the storied 14th century Moorish palace in Granada, Spain. Today we’re pleased to bring you the entire 50-minute film from which it came, Andrés Segovia: The Song of the Guitar.

There are certain legends surrounding Brian Wilson, the troubled genius behind the Beach Boys. One is that he hates going to the beach. He never went surfing, even though he wrote classic songs like “Surfer Girl,” “Surfin’ Safari,” and “Surfin’ USA.