Bob Dylan Reads “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” On His Holiday Radio Show (2006)

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Allow me to name just a few of the peo­ple I want to hear host­ing and curat­ing radio shows—former Sex Pis­tols’ singer John Lydon, for­mer Clash front­man Joe Strum­mer, for­mer Woody Guthrie imper­son­ator Bob Dylan.…

Luck­i­ly for me, this ain’t just fan­ta­sy base­ball; at var­i­ous times, and with vary­ing lev­els of com­mit­ment, each of these…

How A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Its Beloved Soundtrack Album, Almost Never Happened

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A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas uses a cast of ama­teur child voice actors, deals with the theme of sea­son­al depres­sion, and cul­mi­nates in the recita­tion of a Bible verse, all to a jazz score. It was not, safe to say, the spe­cial that CBS had expect­ed, to say noth­ing of its spon­sor, the Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny.…

How Leonardo da Vinci Painted The Last Supper: A Deep Dive Into a Masterpiece

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When Leonar­do da Vin­ci was 42 years old, he had­n’t yet com­plet­ed any major pub­licly view­able work. Not that he’d been idle: in that same era, while work­ing for the Duke of Milan, Ludovi­co Sforza, he “devel­oped, orga­nized, and direct­ed pro­duc­tions for fes­ti­val pageants, tri­umphal pro­ces­sions, masks, joust­ing tour­na­ments, and plays, for which he…

Read J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Letter From Father Christmas” To His Young Children (1925)

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J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for the sweep­ing fan­ta­sy land­scapes of Lord of The Rings and The Hob­bit. Apart from being a cel­e­brat­ed author, the Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of Anglo-Sax­on was also a devot­ed father who dot­ed on his chil­dren.

In 1920, a few short years after Tolkien…

The Story Behind the Making of the Iconic Surrealist Photograph, Dalí Atomicus (1948)

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With his cane, his famous waxed mus­tache, and his habit of tak­ing unusu­al ani­mals for walks, Sal­vador Dalí would appear to have cul­ti­vat­ed his own pho­tographa­bil­i­ty. But tak­ing a pic­ture of the man who stood as a liv­ing def­i­n­i­tion of pop­u­lar sur­re­al­ism was­n’t a task to be approached casu­al­ly — espe­cial­ly not for