Watch James Earl Jones Read Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter Urging High-School Students to Create Art & Make Your Soul Grow

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As cul­tur­al fig­ures, the late James Earl Jones and Kurt Von­negut would seem to have had lit­tle in com­mon, but each could eas­i­ly be rec­og­nized by his voice. Jones’ will come to mind as soon as you think of Darth Vad­er, Sim­ba’s father, or “This is CNN.” Von­negut’s dis­tinc­tion was the voice evi­dent…

David Bowie’s 100 Must Read Books

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Image by Avro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 2013, the cura­tors of the tour­ing muse­um exhib­it “David Bowie Is” released a list of David Bowie’s 100 favorite reads, pro­vid­ing us with deep­er insights into his lit­er­ary tastes. Cov­er­ing fic­tion and non-fic­tion, the list spans six decades, mov­ing from Richard Wright’s mem­oir

Coursera Offers $120 Off of Coursera Plus (Until September 30), Giving You Unlimited Access to Courses & Certificates

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A quick reminder: As the new school year gets under­way, mil­lions of stu­dents are head­ing back to class­rooms. And you can too. From now until Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, Cours­era is offer­ing a 30% dis­count on its annu­al sub­scrip­tion plan called “Cours­era Plus.” Nor­mal­ly priced at $399, Cours­era Plus (cur­rent­ly avail­able for…

Behold a Creative Animation of the Bayeux Tapestry

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In pre­vi­ous cen­turies, unless you were a mem­ber of the nobil­i­ty, a wealthy reli­gious order, or a mer­chant guild, your chances of spend­ing any sig­nif­i­cant amount of time with a Medieval tapes­try were slim. Though “much pro­duc­tion was rel­a­tive­ly coarse, intend­ed for dec­o­ra­tive pur­pos­es,” writes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the tapes­try still com­mand­ed…

Do All Roads Lead to Philosophy on Wikipedia?: They Do About 97.3% of the Time

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Pull up the Wikipedia page for Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love,” the 1984 sin­gle now known for re-pop­u­lar­iz­ing the genre of Japan­ese “city pop.” Then click the first of its links (not relat­ed to the lan­guage of the arti­cle itself), which leads to Takeuchi’s own page. If you keep fol­low­ing that same pro­ce­dure,…