The Brilliant Engineering That Made Venice: How a City Was Built on Water

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Many of us have put off a vis­it to Venice for fear of the hordes of tourists who roam its streets and boat down its canals day in and day out. To judge by the most vis­i­ble of its eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, the once-mighty city-state now exists almost sole­ly as an Insta­gram­ming des­ti­na­tion. It was­n’t always…

The Long Game of Creativity: If You Haven’t Created a Masterpiece at 30, You’re Not a Failure

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Orson Welles direct­ed the great­est movie ever made, Cit­i­zen Kane, at age 25, with only a lim­it­ed knowl­edge of the medi­um. When Paul McCart­ney was 25, he, along with his fel­low Bea­t­les, released the era-defin­ing album Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. By age 29, Pablo Picas­so rev­o­lu­tion­ized mod­ern art by devel­op­ing cubism.

If hear­ing such sto­ries sets off an exis­ten­tial pan­ic attack because you squan­dered your 20s with too much real­i­ty TV and grad­u­ate school, then take heart — you’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly a fail­ure.

httpv://vimeo.com/87448006

As Adam West­brook points out in his video essay The Long Game, Leonar­do da Vin­ci was a los­er before he paint­ed The Last Sup­per at age 46. As a youth, Leonar­do planned grandiose projects that he wouldn’t be able to fin­ish. This, of course, did lit­tle for his rep­u­ta­tion and even less for his career as a free­lance artist. But he con­tin­ued to work, eking out a liv­ing by endur­ing the demands of picky, small-mind­ed clients, and, through this lean peri­od, Leonar­do emerged as a great artist. Robert Greene, in his […]

Carl Jung Offers an Introduction to His Psychological Thought in a 3‑Hour Interview (1957)

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In the 1950s, it was fash­ion­able to drop Freud’s name — often as not in pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­al sex jokes. Freud’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tions had as much to do with his fame as the actu­al prac­tice of psy­chother­a­py, and it was assumed — and still is to a great degree — that Freud had “won” the debate with…

Archaeologists Discover an Ancient Roman Sandal with Nails Used for Tread

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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 task may sound more…

The Olympics in the 2020s Versus 1912: See Side-by-Side Comparisons of the Athletes’ Performance Then & Now

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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 twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, we can call…