Thirteen minutes was an awful long time for The Ramones, since they could play an entire album of songs in a quarter of an hour. Thus, when Ramones fan Mark Gilman snuck a Super-8 sound camera into the Grenada Theater in Kansas City in July of 1978 to secretly film the band, he managed to capture an awful lot of The Ramones on film before he was forced to shut it down. The band, as you can see above, was in top form.

I exaggerate a little…. Ramones albums are longer than this film clip. Their self-titled 1976 debut is over twice the length at 29 minutes, which is still three or four minutes shy of the shortest LPs of the time (back when albums only meant vinyl). Into that almost-half-hour, the ultimate 70s New York punk band crammed 14 songs, at an average of two minutes each: no solos, no filler, no extended intros, outros, or remixes….

That’s exactly what we see above: mops of hair and a sweaty, leather-and-denim-clad wall of pure, dumb rock ‘n’ roll, played blisteringly fast with […]

Dumplings are so delicious and so venerable, it’s understandable why more than one country would want to claim authorship.

As cultural food historian Miranda Brown discovers in her TED-Ed animation, dumplings are among the artifacts found in ancient tombs in western China, rock hard, but still recognizable.

Scholar Shu Xi sang their praises over 1,700 years ago in a poem detailing their ingredients and preparation. He also indicated that the dish was not native to China.

Lamb stuffed dumplings flavored with garlic, yogurt, and herbs were an Ottoman Empire treat, circa 1300 CE.

The 13th-century Mongol invasions of Korea resulted in mass casualties , but the silver lining is, they gave the world mandoo.

The Japanese Army’s brutal occupation of China during World War II gave them a taste for dumplings that led to the creation of gyoza.

Eastern European pelmeni, pierogi and vareniki may seem like variations on a theme to the uninitiated, but don’t expect a Ukrainian or Russian to view it that way.

Is the history of dumplings really just a series of bloody conflicts, punctuated by periods of relative […]

Many of us avoid turning on the oven during a heatwave, but how do we feel about making cookies in a Dutch Oven heaped with glowing embers?

Justine Dorn, co-creator with other half, Ron Rayfield, of the Early American YouTube channel, strives to recreate 18th and early 19th century desserts in an authentic fashion, and if that means whisking egg whites by hand in a 100 degree room, so be it.

“Maybe hotter,” she wrote in a recent Instagram post, adding:

It’s hard work but still I love what I do. I hope that everyone can experience the feeling of being where you belong and doing what you know you were born to do. Maybe not everyone will understand your reasoning but if you are comfortable and happy doing what you do then continue.

Her historic labors have an epic quality, but the recipes from aged cookbooks are rarely complex.

The gluten free chocolate cookies from the 1800 edition of The Complete Confectioner have but three ingredients – grated chocolate, caster sugar, and the aforementioned egg whites – […]

If you are a graduate of a U.S. school system, the words “Remember the Lusitania” may be as vaguely familiar to you as “Remember the Alamo.” And you may be just as fuzzy about the details. We learn roughly that the sinking of the British luxury liner was an act of German aggression that moved the U.S. to enter World War I. That lesson is largely the result of a propaganda effort launched at the time to inflame anti-German sentiments and push the U.S. out of isolationism. But it would take almost two years after the attack before the country entered the war. The Lusitania did not change President Woodrow Wilson’s position. While the “sinking of the Lusitania was a crucial moment in helping to sway the American public in support of the Allied cause,” it was only kept in the public eye by those who wanted the U.S. in the war.

Mainstream U.S. coverage immediately afterward was not overly belligerent. A week after the disaster, in a May 16th, 1915 issue, the Sunday New York Times ran a two-page spread entitled “Prominent Americans […]

“She’s doing something very, very brave right now for you guys. This is a trust fall, and she picked the right people to do this with.” — Brandi Carlile introducing Joni Mitchell at the Newport Folk Festival, 2022

Comeback queen Joni Mitchell stunned fans with her recent appearance at the Newport Folk Festival this summer, her first full public concert since 2000. In Newport tradition, surprise stars make an appearance every year. Former guests have included Dolly Parton, Chaka Khan, and Mitchell’s friend David Crosby. Mitchell’s arrival this year was a revelation. She appeared out of the blue, when most people reasonably assumed she’d never perform again after suffering a debilitating brain aneurysm in 2015 that left her unable to speak or walk.

Yet, as we pointed out in an earlier post, Mitchell’s return to the stage has been years in the making. Since her aneurysm, she has confounded even the neurosurgeons with her recovery, teaching herself to play guitar again by watching online videos and learning to sing again not long after she re-learned how to get out of bed. […]