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Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson | Brain Pickings
25 MAY, 2012 by Maria Popova Fear and loathing in six panels. The past few years have given us some stellar graphic nonfiction, lending the comic book genre to “grown-up” storytelling ranging from photojournalism to media history to biography. Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson offers exactly what it says on the tin, and does so brilliantly — an uncommon biography of legendary iconoclastic author (and garden fence expert) Hunter S. Thompson, revered as the father of...
Brain PickingsThe Art of Scientific Investigation (1957), Part I: The Role of Openness and Serendipity in Creativity and Discovery | Brain Pickings
25 MAY, 2012 by Maria Popova “To be perfectly original one should think much and read little, and this is impossible, for one must have read before one has learnt to think.” What a magical Rube Goldberg machine of discovery literature is — the original “inter-net,” if you will, with the allusions, citations, and references in one work opening doors to countless others. One such Rube Goldberg chain reaction began in last month’s Dancing About Architecture: A Little Book of Creativity,...
Happy Birthday, Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Ideal in America | Brain Pickings
25 MAY, 2011 by Maria Popova Philosophy, entrepreneurship, and what classic spiritual movements have to do with modern geeks. Today marks the 208th birthday of poet, essayist, lecturer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, father of Transcendentalism — a belief system in which spirituality transcends the physical and the doctrines of organized religion, and is instead based on the individual’s intuition, advocating for “a poetry and philosophy of insight and not tradition.” His iconic...
People: A Meditation on Human Duality by French Illustrator Blexbolex | Brain Pickings
29 AUGUST, 2011 by Maria Popova The difference between a dictator and a conductor, or why a biologist is the opposite of an astronomer. From French illustrator Blexbolex — whose poetic meditation on time, impermanence and the seasons you might recall from earlier this month — comes People, a continued exploration of the world building on Seasons. Each charmingly matte and papery double-page spread features a full-bleed illustrated vignette that captures the human condition in its...
An Emergency in Slow Motion: A "Psychobiography" of Diane Arbus | Brain Pickings
30 AUGUST, 2011 by Maria Popova From dwarfs to giants, or what therapy has to do with the pinnacle of postmodern photography. Iconic photographer Diane Arbus is as known for her stunning, stark black-and-white square photographs of fringe characters — dwarfs, giants, nudists, nuns, transvestites — as she is for her troubled life and its untimely end with suicide at the age of 48. Barely a year after her death, Arbus became the first American photographer represented at the prestigious...
Doyald Young: The Self-Made Typography Icon in His Own Words | Brain Pickings
02 SEPTEMBER, 2011 by Maria Popova From high school dropout to design legend, or what the Oxford English Dictionary has to do with iconic logos. Last fall, mere months before iconic typeface and logotype designer Doyald Young passed away, Lynda.com produced a wonderful short documentary about him, in which Young tells his incredible rags-to-proverbial-riches story and reveals the principles behind his timeless, unique letterforms and logos. Besides being a design legend, he was also...
William Gottlieb's Iconic Photos of Jazz Greats, 1938-1948 | Brain Pickings
27 MARCH, 2012 by Maria Popova Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gilespie, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mister, Billie Holiday’s dog, too. In the 1930s, a young reporter by the name of William Gottlieb set out to cover the boom of the jazz scene for the Washington Post, only to find the paper didn’t care to dispatch an official staff photographer. So Gottlieb, a self-taught photographer armed with his Speed Graphic and an ample supply of flashbulbs, took...
The Unwilling Tourist: Vintage Czech Illustration Captures the Life of the Refugee | Brain Pickings
12 SEPTEMBER, 2011 by Maria Popova What the dawn of the Czech avant-garde has to do with UN statistics and outsmarting Hitler. Lawyer, politician, illustrator, cartoonist and dadaist are not the kinds of vocations that frequently converge in a single polyglot, but they did in Adolf Hoffmeister (1902-1973), whose illustrations, collages, and caricatures of prominent personalities shaped the Czech avant-garde. But parallel to his prolific creative career was a seemingly endless life on...
Asylum: Inside the Haunting World of 19th-Century Mental Hospitals | Brain Pickings
08 SEPTEMBER, 2011 by Maria Popova What straitjackets have to do with Eames chairs and the mutations of policy ideals. One of the 19th-century’s most notorious socioarchitectural phenomena were the “insane asylums” that housed the era’s mentally ill — enormous and stunning buildings whose architecture stood in stark contrast with the ominous athmosphere of their inner workings. Fascinated by this phenomenon and its ghosts, photographer Christopher Payne set out to document the...
Bob Dylan & Other Icons Resurrect the Unfinished Lost Songs of Hank Williams | Brain Pickings
06 OCTOBER, 2011 by Maria Popova What Jack White has to do with dumpster-diving for music history. Legendary singer-songwriter Hank Williams was only 29 when he died in the back of a car in 1953, yet in his short life he shaped the course of American music for decades to come. Some of the most celebrated rock’n'roll pioneers — including Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins — got their start recording Williams songs. He has a posthumous special citation from the...
Brian Cox on the Heart of Science | Brain Pickings
24 MAY, 2012 by Maria Popova “We explore because we are curious, not because we wish to develop grand views of reality or better widgets.” The precise purpose of and drive for science has been debated by some of history’s greatest minds. In The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen, physicist Brian Cox offers this beautiful window into the heart of science: Science, of course, has no brief to be useful, but many of the technological and social changes that have...
Women Are Heroes: A Global Portrait of Strength in Hardship by French Guerrilla Artist-Activist JR | Brain Pickings
24 MAY, 2012 by Maria Popova Poignant and powerful portraits of physical and emotional survival amidst atrocity. Last year, French guerrilla street artist JR won the $100,000 TED Prize for his Inside Out project — a global participatory project seeking to inspire civic engagement through art. But JR’s arguably most provocative project dates back to 2008, when he embarked on an ambitious quest to document the dignity of women in conflict zones and violent environments in his...
Love Is Wise, Hatred Is Foolish: Bertrand Russell on Rationality and Tolerance, 1959 | Brain Pickings
24 MAY, 2012 by Maria Popova What the cult of fact has to do with the essential condition for the survival of the human race. One need only look to British philosopher, mathematician, and sociocultural critic Bertrand Russell’s 10 commandments of teaching to understand his profound grasp on culture and the human condition. In this equally inspiring and timeless excerpt from BBC’s 1959 Face to Face interview, Russell articulates in just under two minutes one of the most important and...
Book Spine Poetry vol. 5: The Meaning of Life | Brain Pickings
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8 Bits of Wisdom on Being a Creator from Neil Gaiman | Brain Pickings
22 MAY, 2012 by Maria Popova “Someone on the internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid, or evil, or it’s all been done before? Make good art.” On the heels of last week’s timeless commencement addresses by icons like David Foster Wallace, Ellen DeGeneres, and Ray Bradbury comes this fantastic speech by Neil Gaiman, addressing the 2012 graduating class of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. (Which happens to be the technical birthplace of Brain Pickings as we know it today —...
Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant to See | Brain Pickings
22 MAY, 2012 by Maria Popova The art-science of walking the fine line between keen and crass. Since its inception in 1925, The New Yorker has garnered remarkable reverence as much for its editorial style as it has for its inimitable covers, a singular medium for political and sociocultural visual satire matched perhaps only by Al Jaffee’s legendary MAD magazine fold-ins. In Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant to See, Françoise Mouly, New Yorker art director of nearly...
5½ Timeless Commencement Speeches to Teach You to Define Your Own Success | Brain Pickings
18 MAY, 2012 by Maria Popova The great and terrible truth of clichés, why success is a dangerous bedfellow, and how disappointment paves the way for originality. It’s that time of year again, the time when cultural icons and luminaries of various stripes flock to podiums around the world to impart their wisdom on a fresh crop of graduating seniors hungry to take on the world. After last year’s omnibus of timeless commencement addresses by J. K. Rowling (“Climbing out of poverty by...
And So It Goes: A Rare Glimpse of Kurt Vonnegut's Tortured Soul | Brain Pickings
22 NOVEMBER, 2011 by Maria Popova The equilibrium of fiction, or what the Occupy movement can learn from a former GE PR executive. Kurt Vonnegut — prolific author, anarchist, Second Life dweller, imaginary interviewer of the dead. And, apparently, troubled soul. At least that’s what’s behind the curtain Charles Shields (of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee fame) peels in And So It Goes, subtitled Kurt Vonnegut: A Life — the first-ever true Vonnegut biography, revealing a...
Before Walt Disney: 5 Animations by Early Cinema Pioneers | Brain Pickings
05 JULY, 2011 by Maria Popova What a shape-shifting egg has to do with racehorses and the science of facial expressions. Animation is one of the most ubiquitous and all-permeating forms of visual communication today, seen everywhere from the multitude of TV channels dedicated solely to cartoons to the title sequences of our favorite movies to the reactive graphic interfaces our smartphones. And while most of us have a vague idea of how, when and where it all began, we tend to take for...
Spomenik: Retrofuturistic Monuments of the Eastern Bloc | Brain Pickings
05 JULY, 2011 by Maria Popova The ghosts of communism, or what alien architecture has to do with societal memory and Serbia’s mountains. Having grown up in the former Eastern Bloc, I vividly remember the bizarre and beautiful monuments commissioned by the communist leaders of the 1960s and 70s, which remained as retrofuturistic remnants after the fall of communism, like the undying ghosts of an era most sought to forget but would always remember. These are the subject of Spomenik — a...
Paper Art: Top 5 | Brain Pickings
09 APRIL, 2009 by Maria Popova The best thing to die for if you’re a tree, or what Darwin has to do with the visual scent of winter. Let’s get one thing straight. We aren’t fans of “pointless paper” — we take our toilet paper recycled, our notes digital, and our magazines online. And while the waste of paper is frowned upon around here, its artistic uses are a whole different story. Here are 5 fascinating instances of paper-centric creativity. YULIA BRODSKAYA Russian-born, UK-based...
The Exultant Ark: The Secret Emotional Lives of Animals | Brain Pickings
24 JUNE, 2011 by Maria Popova What dolphins at play have to do the mating rituals of butterflies and our capacity for kindness. Hundreds of books are published, research studies conducted and lectures given on human psychology and emotion every year, yet the question of animal emotion remains a hotpoint of scientific debate and contention. But why should our inability to measure these phenomena mean that they don’t exist at all? That’s exactly what scientist and animal advocate...
Kurt Vonnegut Interviewed on NPR Inside Second Life | Brain Pickings
24 JUNE, 2011 by Maria Popova What it means to be a man without a country, or what Marx has to do with improving life through technology. Kurt Vonnegut is one of my big literary heroes, a keen observer and wry critic of culture and society. His Armageddon in Retrospect is an absolute necessity and his wildly entertaining series of fictional interviews with luminaries, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian is an absolute gem, firmly planted on this year’s edition of the annual Brain Pickings...
Linda McCartney's Tender Photographs of The Beatles and Other Icons | Brain Pickings
01 JULY, 2011 by Maria Popova What the Queen’s speech has to do with Jimi Hendrix’s fro and John Lennon in color. Last year, the excellent Nowhere Boy offered an unprecedented look at John Lennon’s unknown early life, and earlier this year, the world took a first glimpse of some rare and intimate photos of The Beatles taken by the Fab Four’s tour manager in The Lost Beatles Photographs: The Bob Bonis Archive, 1964-1966. This month, the quest to know the private Beatles is catapulted...
Winsor McCay's Little Nemo: The First True Animation, 1911 | Brain Pickings
30 JUNE, 2011 by Maria Popova What the dawn of animation has to do with progressive microfuding for creativity. Cartoonist and artist Winsor McCay (1869-1964) is often considered one of the fathers of true animation, pioneering the drawn image in film and influencing iconic creators for generations to come, from Walt Disney to Moebius to Bill Watterson. His celebrated Little Nemo comic strip appeared in the New York Herald and New York American newspapers between 1905 and 1911. Upon...
The Ego Trick: Julian Baggini in Search of the Self | Brain Pickings
28 JUNE, 2011 by Maria Popova Why “I” is a verb, or what the building blocks of identity have to do with developing compassion. How “you” are you, really? Character is something we tend to think of as a static, enduring quality, and yet we glorify stories of personal transformation. In reality, our essence oscillates between a set of hard-wired patterns and a fluid spectrum of tendencies that shift over time and in reaction to circumstances. This is exactly what journalist Julian...
7 Essential Books on Data Visualization & Computational Art | Brain Pickings
30 JUNE, 2011 by Maria Popova What 12 million human emotions have to do with civilian air traffic and the order of the universe. I’ve spent the past week being consistently blown away at the EyeO Festival of data visualization and computational arts, organized by my friend Jer Thorp, New York Times data artist in residence, and Dave Schroeder of Flashbelt fame. While showcasing their mind-blowing, eye-blasting work, the festival’s all-star speakers have been recommending their...
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time | Brain Pickings
17 JUNE, 2011 by Maria Popova What the second law of thermodynamics has to do with the meaning of life. Several weeks ago, we took at look at What Is Time? — Michiu Kaku’s BBC documentary, exploring the nature and origin of the all-permeating phenomenon, and earlier this week Stephen Hawking’s iconic A Brief History of Time joined this list of 10 essential primers on (almost) everything. But the world might be ready for a compelling new voice to unravel and synthesize the fundamental...
The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices: The Untold Story of MIT Media Lab | Brain Pickings
07 JUNE, 2011 by Maria Popova What jazz-playing robots have to do with intelligent cars, the future of reading and augmented intuition. Since its inception by Nicholas Negroponte in 1985, the MIT Media Lab has become a potent petri dish of innovation, churning out some of the smartest, most exciting, most optimistic technology-driven promises for a better tomorrow. From humanoid robots to e-ink to smart city cars, the lab continually pushes the bleeding-edge of what MoMA’s Paola...
Happy Birthday, Frank Capra: 5 Essential Films | Brain Pickings
18 MAY, 2011 by Dan Colman What war propaganda has to do with vintage Hollywood romance and the American political process. 114 years ago today, Frank Capra was born in Sicily, but soon enough immigrated to the United States — to Los Angeles, to be precise — where he grew up, studied chemical engineering, and became a nationalized US citizen in 1920. Throughout the next decade, Capra threw himself into writing and directing silent films, then switched to making “talkies.” By 1934, he...
Time Piece: Muppeteer Jim Henson's Experimental 1965 Film on Time-Keeping | Brain Pickings
26 JANUARY, 2012 by Maria Popova An Oscar-nominated abstract meditation on how we experience time. The nature and mystery of time is a subject of long-running scientific fascination, but what about its subjective, abstract nature? In 1964, exactly a decade after creating his original Muppets for Sesame Street predecessor Sam + Friends, Jim Henson wrote, produced, directed, and starred in a short experimental film titled Time Piece, exploring in a visceral way the effect time-keeping...
100 Ideas That Changed Film
How the seventh art went from magic lanterns to state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery in 100 years. When a small handful of enthusiasts gathered at the first cinema show at the Grand Cafe in Paris on December 27, 1895, to celebrate early experimental film, they didn’t know that over the next century, their fringe fascination would carve its place in history as the “seventh art.” But how, exactly, did that happen? In 100 Ideas that Changed Film, Oxford Times film reviewer David Parkinson...
5½ Timeless Commencement Speeches to Teach You to Define Your Own Success
The great and terrible truth of clichés, why success is a dangerous bedfellow, and how disappointment paves the way for originality. It’s that time of year again, the time when cultural icons and luminaries of various stripes flock to podiums around the world to impart their wisdom on a fresh crop of graduating seniors hungry to take on the world. After last year’s omnibus of timeless commencement addresses by J. K. Rowling (“Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is something on...
C. S. Lewis on Why “School Stories” and Media Distortion Are a More Deceptive Fiction Than Fiction
“Children are not deceived by fairy-tales; they are often and gravely deceived by school-stories. Adults are not deceived by science-fiction; they can be deceived by the stories in the women’s magazines.” “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t,” Mark Twain reflected on the osmotic balance of truth and fiction, which has long fascinated famous authors. In An Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis — he of great insight on the...
Dear Me: Letters by Luminaries to Their 16-Year-Old Selves | Brain Pickings
02 JUNE, 2011 by Maria Popova What the renouncement of dieting has to do with love and buying shares in Google. Some moons ago, I came across this installment in The Rumpus’ wonderful Dear Sugar advice column, which proceeded to dash right past my unforgiving cheesiness radar and settle into that Really Excellent Read place. In it, Sugar shares 40-something wisdom with her 20-something self, reaching for those hard-learned truths with remarkable humor, vulnerability and grace. The...
The Medium Is Not The Message: 3 Handwritten Newspapers | Brain Pickings
23 MAY, 2011 by Maria Popova What Indian calligraphers have to do with disaster relief in Japan and free media in Liberia. Since their invention in the early 17th century, newspapers have remained one of society’s most important sources of what their name promises — news. Today, we hear various tonal cries of the “print is dying” chorus daily and it’s easy to get caught up in the Marshall McLuhanism that “the medium is the message. Today, let’s consider the possibility that maybe,...