How Frank Gehry (RIP) and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Changed Architecture

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It felt, for quite some time there, like the age of Frank Gehry would nev­er end. But now that the lat­est defin­ing fig­ure of Amer­i­can archi­tec­ture — or tech­ni­cal­ly, Cana­di­an-Amer­i­can archi­tec­ture — has died at the age of 96, the time has come to ask when, exact­ly, his age began. Or rather, with which…

“The Matilda Effect”: How Pioneering Women Scientists Have Been Written Out of Science History

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Pho­to via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The his­to­ry of sci­ence, like most every his­to­ry we learn, comes to us as a pro­ces­sion of great, almost exclu­sive­ly white, men, unbro­ken but for the occa­sion­al token woman—well-deserving of her hon­ors but seem­ing­ly anom­alous nonethe­less. “If you believe the his­to­ry books,” notes the Time­line series The…

The Gnostic Gospels: An Introduction to the Forbidden Teachings of Jesus

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It would be impos­si­ble to under­stand West­ern civ­i­liza­tion with­out under­stand­ing the his­to­ry of Chris­tian­i­ty. But in order to do that, it may serve us well to think of it as the his­to­ry of Chris­tian­i­ties, plur­al. So sug­gests Hochela­ga cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny in the new video above, which explains the Gnos­tic Gospels, the “for­bid­den…

George Orwell’s Six Rules for Writing Clear and Tight Prose

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Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Most every­one who knows the work of George Orwell knows his 1946 essay “Pol­i­tics and the Eng­lish Lan­guage” (pub­lished here), in which he rails against care­less, con­fus­ing, and unclear prose. “Our civ­i­liza­tion is deca­dent,” he argues, “and our lan­guage… must inevitably share in the gen­er­al col­lapse.”…

Did Tintin Creator Hergé Collaborate with the Nazis? A Historical Investigation

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The Adven­tures of Tintin may be a chil­dren’s com­ic series from mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Europe, but its appeal has long since tran­scend­ed the bound­aries of form, cul­ture, and gen­er­a­tion. In fact, many if not most seri­ous­ly ded­i­cat­ed fans of Tintin are in mid­dle age and beyond, and few of them can have avoid­ed ever con­sid­er­ing the ques­tion…