Tomorrow Never Knows: How The Beatles Invented the Future With Studio Magic, Tape Loops & LSD

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“Tomor­row Nev­er Dies” could­n’t be made today, and not just because the Bea­t­les already made it in 1966. Mark­ing per­haps the sin­gle biggest step in the group’s artis­tic evo­lu­tion, that song is in every sense a prod­uct of its time. The use of psy­che­del­ic drugs like LSD was on the rise in the coun­ter­cul­ture,…

Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books

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Image by The USO, via Flickr Com­mons

So you might think that if Stephen King – the guy who wrote such hor­ror clas­sics like Car­rie and The Stand – were to rat­tle off his top ten favorite books, it would fea­ture works by the likes of Edgar Allan…

The Invisible Horror of The Shining: How Music Makes Stanley Kubrick’s Iconic Film Even More Terrifying

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Inex­plic­a­ble as it may sound to read­ers of this site, there are movie-lovers who claim not to enjoy the work of Stan­ley Kubrick. But even his most stead­fast non-appre­ci­a­tors have to hand it to him for The Shin­ing, his 1980 Stephen King adap­ta­tion wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the scari­est — quite pos­si­bly the scari­est –…

A Rabbit Rides a Chariot Pulled by Geese in an Ancient Roman Mosaic (2nd century AD)

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If you head to the Lou­vre, make sure you vis­it the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Lib­er­ty Lead­ing the Peo­ple. But then swing by the Depart­ment of Greek, Etr­uscan, and Roman Antiq­ui­ties. There you might find (no guar­an­tee!) a Roman mosa­ic fea­tur­ing a rab­bit rid­ing a char­i­ot pulled by…

Paradise Lost Explained: How John Milton Wrote His Epic Religious Poem from Satan’s Perspective

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“Par­adise Lost is one of the books which the read­er admires and lays down, and for­gets to take up again,” Samuel John­son wrote in the late eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry. “None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a plea­sure. We read Mil­ton for instruc­tion, retire harassed and over­bur­dened, and…