Molly Crabapple: Activism/Art/History (Azimuths)

 Crabapple, Molly. "The Bund: Fighting Fascism, Fighting Zionism." Know Your Enemy (April 10, 2026) ["In 1897, a small group of Jewish Marxists on the outskirts of the Russian empire founded the General Jewish Labour Bund. The Bundists were revolutionary socialists, unapologetic internationalists, champions of the Yiddish language, and implacable foes of nationalism of every stripe, including (especially) Zionism. Bundists helped found the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, organized militias to defend Jews against pogroms, fought on the frontlines of the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, fought fascists wherever they found them, and helped lead the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The history of the Bund is largely forgotten today—in part because Bundists were such early and prescient critics of Zionism. As one of its leaders said in 1933, “If Jewish nationalism, as a general rule, is not bloodthirsty, this is only out of necessity, not virtue; if an appropriate opportunity arose, Jewish nationalism would show its sharp teeth and nails no less than the nationalisms of other nations.” Thankfully, Molly Crabapple spent the last seven years rediscovering the Bund’s fascinating history for her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. It was thrilling to have her on to discuss it. “For leftist Jews longing for resources within our own past for combating the Zionist death cult,” Crabapple says, “the Bund is a model.” Further Reading: Sam Adler-Bell, ‘For leftist Jews, the Bund is a model’: the radical history behind one of Europe’s biggest socialist movements, The Guardian (2026); Max Strasser, What Does Judaism Look Like Without Zionism? New York Times (2026)"]

---. "Here Where We Live Is Our Country." Open Source Radio (May 28, 2026) ["We’re entranced in Molly Crabapple’s reanimation of the Jewish Labour Bund in Europe and Russia, of a century ago. Yiddish Socialism was a nickname. You could plausibly describe that old Bund as forgotten but not gone in the wider world today. The question may be whether the Bund’s humane ideals will have another chance against the lawlessness and cruelty of the 2020s. We know Molly Crabapple as a one-off writer and artist, pens and paintbrushes at the ready, a sort of global muckraker in the rough places of the world. Last time she was here, she was just back from civil war in Syria. This time, she’s just back from unearthing history, World War I time, through an epidemic of hellish and deadly pogroms in pre-revolutionary Russia. The Bund, created in Poland, was a tough-minded working-class alliance demanding full rights for Jews at home. It was irreconcilably embattled against the rising young Zionist movement that would establish a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Molly Crabapple took it on herself—and learned the Yiddish language as part of the job—to research and write the whole story of the Jewish Bund: the old politics in it, the modern emotions that it still stirs, starting with the restored memory of her own family. And she’s made a monumental book of it under the title Here Where We Live Is Our Country."]

---. "The History of the Jewish Bund." American Prestige (August 12, 2026) ["Danny and Derek speak with artist and writer Molly Crabapple about her book on the history of the Jewish Labor Bund, Here Where We Live Is Our Country. They discuss Molly's personal connection to the story, the Pale of Settlement and Jewish emancipation, the founding of the Bund in 1897, the Bund's armed self-defense against pogroms, its fraught relationship with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the Bund's rivalry with Zionism, the flourishing of Bundist culture in interwar Poland, and the lessons of the Bund’s story for the Jewish left today."]

Crabapple, Molly, et al. "Zionism and Nationalism Built What Their Jewish Critics Feared in Israel and Palestine." Best of the Left #832 (November 6, 2026) ["Israel was formed to create a safe haven for Jews in the wake of World War II, an admirable goal. Since then, there have been major wars every decade, terrorist attacks, and Netanyahu has been warning about Iran getting a nuclear weapon since 1992. There were prominent Jews at the time, including Albert Einstein, who saw all of this coming and warned against the creation of a Jewish state with borders and an army, because they feared exactly what has come to pass because of the peril it would put Jews in and the damage that Jewish nationalism would do to the Jewish faith. The tragedy of Israel is that those warnings were not heeded and then that this perspective was effectively removed from the discussion entirely, making the path to true safety for Jews and everyone else, essentially invisible. We're exploring that history and those perspectives today."]

David Hudson: Film Studies/Film Culture (Azimuths)

 Hudson, David. "Alex Gibney's Musk." The Current (September 16, 2026) ["In a recent cover story for the Hollywood Reporter, Steven Zeitchik calls documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney “the closest the current film world has to a Bob Woodward.” Gibney won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), an investigation into the CIA’s use of torture, and he’s won Emmys for Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2012), which traces the history of clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, and Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief (2015). In 2022, Gibney and his team began working on a film about Elon Musk for HBO. Within two years, they had what they considered to be a pretty solid account of the South African–born software engineer who developed an uncanny talent for turning money-losing companies into personal cash cows before cofounding PayPal (and then stepping away), founding SpaceX, taking over Tesla and the satellite network Starlink, cofounding OpenAI (and then stepping away), and taking over Twitter and rebranding it as X, where his own account is boosted while others—particularly those expressing views he disagrees with—are throttled. By 2024, though, Musk was actively campaigning for—and to a considerable degree, helping to finance—the reelection of Donald Trump. Dressed in black and describing himself as “dark, gothic MAGA,” Musk joined the second Trump administration as the overseer of the newly launched Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), whose dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is widely believed to have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands around the world."

---. "Kubrick Season." Current (November 2, 2026) ["“Why does Kubrick’s work continue to fascinate, thrill, and move us?” asked Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri when he rolled out his ranking of the thirteen features (and placed Barry Lyndon at #1). “For starters, his mastery of style was never overtly showy or arty or cute: His films draw us in immediately on both a narrative and formal level (they look and sound amazing), which then allows them to gradually reveal their ideas to us. And his great themes are eternal ones. Kubrick made movies about the inevitable failure of humans’ most precise plans; about how our paths to success were often also our paths to ruin; about how the things we sought to control eventually controlled us; and, of course, about the unfeeling carelessness of the powerful toward those beneath them. The reason we’ll never lose interest in his work is because we’re still living in his world.”"]

---. "Luis Buñuel: Desire and Deviance." The Daily (January 28, 2026) ["In 1929, the poster boy of the movement, Salvador Dalí, teamed up with a fellow Spaniard, Luis Buñuel, who at the time was working in France as an assistant director for Jean Epstein, to turn their dreams into a screenplay that became Un chien andalou (1929). From this first, now-classic short through “to his final feature, That Obscure Object of Desire (1977),” wrote Adrian Martin in 2020, “Buñuel always stayed true to those primary surrealist principles with which he most identified: a spirit of revolt; the subversive power of passionate love, both romantic and erotic; a belief in the creativity of the unconscious (dreams and fantasies); a pronounced taste for black humor; and, last but never least, an abiding contempt for institutional religion and its representatives.”"]

---. "Oliver Laxe’s Sirât." Current (November 11, 2025) ["“The resilience of this group,” writes Filmmaker editor Scott Macaulay, “their small-scale collectivism, and the way in which dance, and drugs, are a kind of social and even spiritual practice, as opposed to simple escapism, made me think of the late Mark Fisher’s final unfinished work, ‘Acid Communism,’ and his thinking here is an analogue to the movie’s techno-scored hedonic flow: ‘The crucial defining feature of the psychedelic is the question of consciousness, and its relationship to what is experienced as reality. If the very fundamentals of our experience, such as our sense of space and time, can be altered, does that not mean that the categories by which we live are plastic, mutable?’”"]

---. "We Will Always Love Dolly Parton." The Daily (August 27, 2026) ["“I try not to get into the politics of everything,” Parton told Mesfin Fekadu in the Hollywood Reporter in 2023. “I try to get into the human element of it. I have some of everybody in my own immediate family and in my circle of employees. I’ve got transgender people. I’ve got gays. I’ve got lesbians. I’ve got drunks. I’ve got drug addicts—all within my own family. I know and love them all, and I do not judge . . . If there’s something to be judged, that is God’s business. But we are all God’s children and how we are is who we are.”"]

---. "Werner Herzog's Bucking Fastard." The Daily (September 30, 2026) ["In the early 1980s, the case of Freda and Greta Chaplin, twin sisters from Yorkshire, kicked up a flurry of media attention in the British press. The Chaplins had been obsessing over a local truck driver and were briefly locked up for harassing the man. The story lit a spark in Werner Herzog’s imagination, one that smoldered for decades until he hit upon the brilliant idea of casting Rooney and Kate Mara as Jean and Joan Holbrooke, two sisters in contemporary Ireland—not twins, they insist—who go on trial for taking sneaky revenge on the beau (Orlando Bloom) who has spurned them for another woman."]

ENG 102: Subject Guides for Research Projects

Arts:

Latest:

Mason, Daniel. "Writing an Enchanted Landscape." Wonder Cabinet (October 10, 2026) ["How does a landscape come alive and even feel enchanted? Bestselling author Daniel Mason explores this question in his novels “Country People” and “North Woods.” Both are steeped in the natural history of New England, from its geology to its native plants and animals. They capture the uncanny feeling of living in a landscape layered with human history — the stone walls, cellar holes, and other remnants of lives long past, hidden in the woods. In this conversation, Mason talks about the deep history of the land and the folklore of rural Vermont. One plot strand in “Country People” involves a secret society whose members believe the Earth is hollow, with a cave leading to a magical kingdom inside. Mason, who’s also a professor of psychiatry at Stanford, is fascinated by the thin line between imagination and delusion. He believes novelists exist in a state of wonder, and he’s drawn to visionary writers like Dante, Milton, and William Blake. One recurring theme in his fiction is the idea of a “paradise lost.”"]

Subject Guide:

Humanities/Arts/Culture

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Economics: 

Latest: 

Scanlon, Kyla. "You Can Know Everything (About the Economy)." Talk Easy with Sam Fragaso (November 1, 2026) ["The way Americans talk about money is changing. Economic commentator Kyla Scanlon has emerged as a fresh, influential voice in that conversation. Recently named one of TIME’s 100 Creators, her New York Times bestseller, In This Economy?: How Money & Markets Really Work, has been hailed as “essential reading” by Jon Stewart. She joins us this week to offer her “boots-on-the-ground” understanding of the economy, ahead of the midterms."]

Subject Guide:

Economics/Political Economy/Business/Labor

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Education:

Latest:

Lepore, Jill. "On Silicon Valley Priests and Academic Rot." Open Questions (October 23, 2026) ["A Harvard dean recently suggested that "there should be acceptance, even encouragement" of AI writing in the college classroom. That sort of thing creeps Jill Lepore out. We talked to the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian about what AI is doing to higher education, what went wrong at Harvard, and why our new tech overlords want dominion not just over our pockets and our politics but also our souls."
Guest: ⁠Jill Lepore⁠, professor of history and law at Harvard University]

Subject Guide:

Education/Students

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Film Studies/Film Culture

Latest:

Hudson, David. "Kubrick Season." Current (November 2, 2026) ["“Why does Kubrick’s work continue to fascinate, thrill, and move us?” asked Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri when he rolled out his ranking of the thirteen features (and placed Barry Lyndon at #1). “For starters, his mastery of style was never overtly showy or arty or cute: His films draw us in immediately on both a narrative and formal level (they look and sound amazing), which then allows them to gradually reveal their ideas to us. And his great themes are eternal ones. Kubrick made movies about the inevitable failure of humans’ most precise plans; about how our paths to success were often also our paths to ruin; about how the things we sought to control eventually controlled us; and, of course, about the unfeeling carelessness of the powerful toward those beneath them. The reason we’ll never lose interest in his work is because we’re still living in his world.”"]

Subject Guide:

Film Studies/Film Culture

------------------------------------------------------------------

Food:

Latest:

Mozaffarian, Dariush. Food is Medicine: Healing Our Bodies, Nourishing Our Minds, and Transforming Our Food System. Henry Holt and Company, 2026. ["An urgent indictment of the food we eat and a blueprint for a nutrition revolution to mend our health, economy, and planet, from a world-renowned expert in nutrition, medicine, and public policy. The food we eat is making us sick. In the United States and around the world, diet has become the leading cause of illness and premature death, from obesity and diabetes to heart disease and other chronic ailments. Advocates of healthier diets pin the blame on overeating, but the bigger issue is what we undereat—the dearth of food that nourishes and heals. Harnessing the power of the right foods can do more than prevent illness—it can treat it, extending life while reducing the crippling cost of ill health to our communities and economy. Food Is Medicine shows the way, from transforming our own diets to keep us healthy to getting the right foods from our farms into our stores and onto our plates—all while eating plentifully and pleasurably. A global authority, uniquely positioned on the front lines of nutrition science, medicine, and public policy, Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, draws on cutting-edge research to turn complex science into a clear, actionable program to end the health crisis in our homes and communities. Excavating the decisions that led to a broken food system, plagued by the harms of ultraprocessing and ruinous to the environment, he lays out how the meals we eat are damaging our bodies. He reveals the medicinal, healing power of ideal nutrition and introduces the innovators who are pioneering solutions—at the doctor’s office, in supermarkets, in the halls of Congress, and above all for individuals, to empower them to access the foods they need to live well. With clarity and optimism, braiding storytelling, science, and practical wisdom, Food Is Medicine lays out a vision for a twenty-first century food system that will restore health, nourishment, and equity without sacrificing convenience or choice. In the process, these solutions can revitalize our economy, and even help to heal our planet."]

Subject Guide: 

Food/Agriculture

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Healthcare:

Latest:

Mozaffarian, Dariush. "Why 94% of Americans Have Suboptimal Health (And How to Fix the System)." The Dan Buettner Podcast (October 22, 2026) ["Is almost everything you think you know about nutrition completely wrong? In this episode, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, cardiologist, public health scientist, and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, joins The Dan Buettner Podcast to dismantle decades of dietary dogma. Discover why 94% of American adults have suboptimal cardiometabolic health, why total fat and seed oils aren't the villains we made them out to be, and how ultra-processed foods are silently driving our chronic disease crisis. Plus, Dr. Mozaffarian breaks down the real science behind food as medicine, whole grains, and actionable policy solutions for a healthier future."]

Subject Guide:

Healthcare/Medicine/Body

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History:

Crabapple, Molly, et al. "Zionism and Nationalism Built What Their Jewish Critics Feared in Israel and Palestine." Best of the Left #832 (November 6, 2026) ["Israel was formed to create a safe haven for Jews in the wake of World War II, an admirable goal. Since then, there have been major wars every decade, terrorist attacks, and Netanyahu has been warning about Iran getting a nuclear weapon since 1992. There were prominent Jews at the time, including Albert Einstein, who saw all of this coming and warned against the creation of a Jewish state with borders and an army, because they feared exactly what has come to pass because of the peril it would put Jews in and the damage that Jewish nationalism would do to the Jewish faith. The tragedy of Israel is that those warnings were not heeded and then that this perspective was effectively removed from the discussion entirely, making the path to true safety for Jews and everyone else, essentially invisible. We're exploring that history and those perspectives today."]

Subject Guide:

History/Biography

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Philosophy:

Latest:

Johnson, David. "The Future That Makes Us: Nick Land and Hyperstition." The Observing I (November 3, 2026) ["One of the concepts associated with the CCRU is hyperstition. It’s an awkward word, admittedly, although considerably less awkward than some of the group’s other terminology. Broadly speaking, hyperstition concerns fictions that become effective within reality, influencing events and helping create the circumstances they describe. ... The philosopher Ian Hacking approached the problem from another direction, examining how classifications of people can influence the people being classified because we’re aware of the classification. The future we eventually experience isn’t necessarily the only future that could have happened. And the person we’ve become isn’t necessarily the only person we were capable of becoming. In this week’s episode of The Observing I, The Future That Makes Us: Nick Land and Hyperstition, I’m exploring that relationship between the stories we believe, the futures we anticipate, and the lives we end up living. Are we describing who we are, or deciding who we’re allowed to become?"]

Subject Guide:

Philosophy/Critical Theory

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Politics:

Latest:

Cohen, Cindy, et al. "The Secret Room." Privacy's Defenders (November 3, 2026) ["The government’s surveillance powers grew rapidly after Sept. 11, 2001, some in public view and some in secret. EFF suspected but couldn’t prove that the National Security Agency was spying on Americans' communications. The New York Times sat on a story about it for over a year, finally publishing it in December 2005. Then, in January 2006, a retired AT&T technician named Mark Klein walked into EFF's office with a manila folder of documents that blew the story wide open. Welcome to the third episode of “Privacy’s Defenders,” a podcast about the people – lawyers, journalists, hackers, and others – who’ve fought to secure your digital liberties since before most people even knew what the internet was. In this episode, former EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn talks with former EFF lawyer Kevin Bankston, who was at his desk drafting a lawsuit against AT&T when Klein showed up. Less than two weeks later, EFF sued the phone company on behalf of its own customers in Hepting v. AT&T. Cindy speaks again with now-retired Justice Department lawyer Tony Coppolino, who asked for the opportunity to defend the case. He called EFF with a warning after Klein’s documents were filed in court: If they were classified, EFF would be in big trouble. You’ll also hear from Klein himself, and from Carolyn Jewel, a romance novelist and AT&T customer who became the lead plaintiff in EFF's related case against the NSA. It's the story of a secret room in a San Francisco phone company building, a heroic whistleblower, and the people who refused to let mass surveillance stay hidden."]

Subject Guide:

Political Theory/Sociology/Government/Institutions

Technology:

Latest:

Rushkoff, Douglas. "Networks Don’t Throttle. Platforms Do: Zuck, Musk, and the Eugenics of Selective Reduction." Rushkoff (November 3, 2026) ["The internet was supposed to be a decentralised network of people sharing ideas, experimenting with identities, and imagining new possibilities. So how did it become a collection of privately owned platforms controlled by a handful of tech billionaires? From Elon Musk’s control over Starlink in Ukraine to Meta’s alleged interference in Brazilian politics, Douglas Rushkoff explores how the promise of an open internet gave way to systems of surveillance, corporate power, and algorithmic control. Reflecting on his experiences of the early internet, Rushkoff explains the fundamental difference between networks and platforms, why that distinction matters more than ever, and how we might reclaim the decentralised, collaborative spirit of the internet before its owners gain even greater control over our lives."]

Subject Guide:

Science/Technology/Mathematics

The Devils (United Kingdom: Ken Russell, 1971)

 

The Devils (United Kingdom: Ken Russell, 1971: 111 mins)

Crouse, Richard and Vincenzo Natali. "The Devils." The Projection Booth #168 (May 27, 2014)

Dry, Jude. "‘The Devils’ Is Just As Blasphemous, Bawdy, and Relevant Today As It Was When It Was Banned In 1971." IndieWire (March 22, 2017) ["Ken Russell's epic religious horror is a scathing critique on abuse of political power that new audiences will find prescient as ever in the age of Trump."]

Gallagher, Paul. "What a pact with the Devil (supposedly) looks like." Dangerous Minds (April 9, 2014)

Goldsmid, Edmund. "The Devils of Loudon." ("This is a 19th century translation of the primary account of the episode, originally written in French by Des Niau in 1634.")

Morgan, Kim. "The Devils are Here." Sunset Gun (October 16, 2026) ["Certain audiences, however (and some critics at the time), stunned by the film’s splendor and shock understood there was much more to the film than frenzied masturbating nuns and the violent martyrdom of Oliver Reed. Through time the cult grew and those who loved the film, appreciated not only its acting, cinematography (by David Watkin) and production design (by Derek Jarman), but its fiery politics, its inditement of Church and State, it’s condemnation of brainwashing, and it’s, at times, satirical edge. They saw that Ken Russell was more than just a demented provocateur – though to his eternally eclectic credit, he could be that too – and that this was a pollical film, his most political film – and one that has stood the test of time. Through his powerful fevered frames, the movie was a visceral wonder, unforgettable and finally, mythic. Those who saw it at the time, and loved it (or hated it), likely never forgot it. I can imagine some theatergoers felt as if they almost dreamt it."]

Riley, John A. "Great Directors: Ken Russell." Senses of Cinema (July 2009)

Thomas, Gordon. "'Nun-Lust, Torture-Porn, Church-Desecration and Bad Taste"': Reconnecting with Ken Russell's The Devils." Bright Lights Film Journal #76 (May 2012)

Wise, Damon. "Mark Kermode & Daphne Dentz On Restoring ‘Ken Russell’s The Devils’: “There’s A Balance Between The Grain, The Dirt, The Vibe And The Look.” Deadline (October 21, 2026)

ENG 102: My Students' Topics for Their 1st Argument-Research Essay

The Impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Substance Use Disorder Treatment How Social Media Changes Human Behavior
Early childhood education is essential as it promotes children's cognitive, social, and emotional development, prepares them for academic achievement, and fosters the vital skills necessary for them to grow into confident and competent individuals. Impact of Social Media on Mental Health
Children in foster care disproportionately face mental health challenges.
Perceived Superiority Through Language
Why Do Immigrants Face Mental-Health Challenges When Adjusting to a New Country?
America is an Oligarchy in Democracy’s Clothing
Addressing the Minimalization of Women in the Film Industry
Ultra-Processed people why we can’t stop eating food that is not food
GLP 1 Medications: Transforming Treatment or Trending Too Far?
Ways Society Can Be More Inclusive of Autistic Individuals
How to build a strong town – An architectural and civil engineering perspective Should adolescents have access to social media
A Body Without a Place
The Aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994: Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Healing
Exposing the Asylum: Nellie Bly's Journalism
Immigration, and How It is Not a Threat to America
Is Sleep Crucial to Work Productivity?
Why has housing become so difficult to afford and how does the problem affect people's financial stability and quality of life? The Benefits of Healthy Eating on Long-term Health and Disease Prevention
The Importance of Self-Discovery
The Myth and Messages of the Superhero Spider Man
Beyond conscious thoughts: Exploring the subconscious mind
The Consequences of Father Absence on Child and Society
What Are the Reasons Why People Continue to Smoke When They Know the Health Risks?
Virtual Idol - Hatsune Miku represents a large transformation in the way music is created and performed because she challenges the traditional way of a successful musical artist being a human performer.
Should Multinational Companies Be Required to Follow the Same Labor Standards in Every Country?
Dangers of superbugs and how bacteriophages can help?
Why Important Memories Live Within Us Forever
An Explanation of the Differences Between Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Bipolar Disorder
What Happened to the American Dream?: A Critique Drawn From Hunter S. Thompson's Writings
The Decline of Labor Unions and the Labor Trafficking Identification Gap in Agriculture
Overthinking: When Caring Becomes Too Much
How Does Patriarchy Shape the Everyday Lives of Women in Nepal
Peter S. Beagle’s, ‘The Last Unicorn’: A View on Declining Wonder
Save the Performing Arts
A Call For a Special Bracket for Trans Athletes
The Consequences of Social Exclusion for Autistic Children
Do People Need GLP-1 or More Self Discipline?
The belief in the inerrancy of the Bible causes harm because it prevents critical thought
The psychological and institutional realities of two distinct groups: women who acknowledge and accept responsibility for their offenses, and women who maintain that they were wrongfully accused or convicted.
The Social Messages in the X-Men Comics
Understanding Bipolar Disorder
Stigma, Prejudice and Discrimination Against People with Mental Health Issues
A Supporter of the Death Penalty Why He Cannot Support it in the Current Legal System
Is capturing and slaughtering thousands of wild horses necessary or inhumane?
How NIL and the Transfer Portal Stripped the Soul from College Athletics
One Hit Could Change Everything - The Continuing Problem of Brain Trauma in Organized Sports
Gender Inequality in Nepal
Why Ukraine has Been Successful in Staving Off Russia
Generative Artificial Intelligence and its Impact on Creative Industries
Corporate Power and Its Impact on Americans
Psychedelic Therapy and The Positive Effects on
Depression And Other Mental Illness
Rewiring the Post Stroke Brain
Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment
The American Dream
Misinformation Within the Health and Fitness Field
The History of Western Music and How Music Effects Emotions
A good designer needs to understand how light and darkness work together, account for neighboring properties and the environment, and use that knowledge to create the effect the client wants.

Maria Popova: Art/Biography/Literature/Philosophy/Poetry/Science (Azimuths)

We live our lives in the lacuna between truth and meaning, between objective reality and subjective sensemaking laced with feeling. All of our longings, all of our despairs, all of our reckonings with the perplexity of existence are aimed at one or the other. In the aiming is what we call creativity, how we contact beauty -- the beauty of a theorem, the beauty of a sonnet (1). - Popova, Maria. The Universe in Verse: 15 portals to Wonder Through Science & Poetry. Storey Publishing, 2024.

The Marginalian [Maria Popova's website, formerly 'Brain Pickings']

Popova, Maria. "20-Year-Old Hunter S. Thompson’s Superb Advice on How to Find Your Purpose and Live a Meaningful Life." Brain Pickings (November 4, 2013)

---. "Adrienne Rich on Lying, What “Truth” Really Means, and the Alchemy of Human Possibility." Brain Picking (November 13, 2014)

---. "Adrienne Rich on Why an Education Is Something You Claim, Not Something You Get." Brain Pickings (May 21, 2014)

---. "Alain de Botton on How to Think About Sex More." Brain Pickings (February 14, 2013) [“The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.”]

---. "Aldous Huxley on Drugs, Democracy, and Religion." Brain Pickings (March 25, 2014)

---. "Bob Dylan on the Unconscious Mind and the Ideal Conditions for Creative Work." The Marginalian (October 26, 2026)

---. "George Lucas on the Meaning of Life." Brain Pickings (March 17, 2014)

---. "The Hidden Brain: How Ocean Currents Explain Our Unconscious Social Biases." Brain Pickings (April 9, 2014)

---. "How Relationships Refine Our Truths: Adrienne Rich on the Dignity of Love." Brain Pickings (July 2, 2013)

---. "Intuition Pumps: Daniel Dennett on the Dignity and Art-Science of Making Mistakes." Brain Pickings (May 29, 2013)

---. "Love, Sex, and the World Between." Brain Pickings (January 14, 2014) [ Susan Sontag - “Part of the modern ideology of love is to assume that love and sex always go together… And probably the greatest problem for human beings is that they just don’t.”]

---. "Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being." Marginalian (August 27, 2023) ["In Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being (public library), the Buddhist scientist Neil Theise endeavors to bridge the mystery out there with the mystery of us, bringing together our three primary instruments of investigating reality — empirical science (with a focus on complexity theory), philosophy (with a focus on Western idealism), and metaphysics (with a focus on Buddhism, Vedanta, Kabbalah, and Saivism) — to paint a picture of the universe and all of its minutest parts “as nothing but a vast, self-organizing, complex system, the emergent properties of which are… everything.”"]

---. "Obey: How the Rise of Mass Propaganda Killed Populism." Brain Pickings (February 6, 2013)

---. "On 20 Years of he Marginalian." Wonder Cabinet (October 24, 2026) ["Twenty years ago, Maria Popova was newly arrived in the US and working four jobs to pay for college. Lonely and disoriented, she started keeping a record of her search for meaning. Today, what began as an email to seven friends has millions of followers and is preserved in the Library of Congress permanent web archive. The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) is still a one-woman labor of love, a free and ad-free cultural blog exploring science and philosophy, art and literature, poetry and children’s books. In this conversation, Maria Popova looks back on twenty years of reading and writing “through the lens of wonder.” How do we make sense of life in a random and chaotic universe? How do we sustain a sense of wonder in the face of disappointment or despair? Popova shares some of her own inspirations – from reading Mary Shelley’s diaries and J.R.R. Tolkien’s letters, to witnessing Bulgaria’s popular democratic uprising as a child. We discuss science as a portal to wonder, and her fascination with mapping the invisible connections that link people and ideas across time and place. In addition to The Marginalian, Popova has written multiple books: "Figuring" (2019), an LA Times Book Prize-winning “biographical mosaic” weaving together the lives of historical figures such as astronomer Johannes Kepler, sculptor Harriet Hosmer, and marine biologist Rachel Carson; "Traversal" (2026), connecting the lives and legacies of visionaries like Mary Shelley, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin; "The Universe in Verse" (2024), an anthology of science and poetry; "The Snail with the Right Heart" (2021), a true, illustrated children's story about genetic mutation, chance, and biological uniqueness; and "An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days" – an oracle deck."]

---. "Vladimir Nabokov on Writing, Reading, and the Three Qualities a Great Storyteller Must Have." Brain Pickings (February 21, 2014)

---. "What Power Really Means: Cheryl Strayed Reads Adrienne Rich’s Homage to Marie Curie." Brain Pickings (April 24, 2018)

---. "Why I Write: Joan Didion on Ego, Grammar, and the Creative Impulse." Brain Pickings (October 16, 2012)

---. "Why Look at Animals: John Berger on What Our Relationship with Our Fellow Beings Reveals About Us." Brain Pickings (April 1, 2014)

---. "Why We Ignore the Obvious: The Psychology of Willful Blindness." Brain Pickings (August 27, 2014)

Michael D. Benton: A Celebration of Alterity

 

A Celebration of Alterity  by Michael Benton  

Alterity

Slippery word

Whose meaning is

Not decipherable

Never stated clearly,

Nor fixed firmly

The nerve of the word

Altarity

It may be approached,

Though, if one dares,

Through networks

Of associations

Altar, Alter

Alternative, Alternation

I yearn to sacrifice

Myself upon the

Altar of your difference.

Yet, I hold back

Fearing that the pleasure

May somehow alter me.

Your scent and taste

Seizes the roots of my soul

What alternative is there?

I vacillate, between pleasure and pain

Ceaselessly resonating between

Yawning gaps of reason

Even the meaning of alterity

Precipitates a crisis

Symbol of difference

Naming of the OTHER

Its power mocks

Conformity’s lack

Resist the conservative urge

To embrace sameness

Explore those who differ

Open up closed circuits

Rise up to celebrate

The eros of alterity   

Michael D. Benton: I Am Past Imperfect

 “I Am Past Imperfect”

by Michael D. Benton

The little boys make up the man. A collection of little boys nestled together and masked to the world as an individual man. Russian Dolls situated one in another, each new incarnation rising out of the collective to claim the seat of power like a Roman autocrat, shouting out to the world I am "The Man." Each ascending self, conceiving of their self, as an immortal individual. Foolish little selves thinking that they will rule forever. Foolish little selves believing they are "The Man."

How do I remember who I am? Can one peel back the layers of one’s selves and penetrate to the core? Will I only find a million little pieces that people will revile as false and misleading? Is it just one missing piece somehow stuffed in the pocket of one of my selves that can make me whole? Can I ever be whole, or, is that just an illusion? Do we only become complete in death, our last breath, the author’s signature? Is the seeking of completeness a fool’s errand?

I’m sure this task requires a sense of humor because the surgeon of the soul exposes foolish personas; but mocking laughter would not be the worst effect, insecurities would be exposed, fears confronted, and hatred examined. My life has been violent. My life has been peaceful. My life has been boring. Do I have the courage to travel down the road that leads to the abyss? Can I stomach the dark tea time of the soul?

However foolish I have been in the past, my future self, now, now, now, now, now, recognizes the (im)possibility of truth(s). We re-member and re-cognize the past. The act of remembering reconstructs the past. The viewer gives meaning to the view. I remember what I remember today and will remember what I remember tomorrow. No one can expect these memories to remain the same. I am but an archivist of the self, pulling traces out of my clogged brain, seeking narrative sense, pulling fragments together, a collage of the selves represented as a self. Restor(y)ing the self.

This will be a horror story. No. This will be a bildungsroman. No. This will be a romance. No. This will be a comedy. No. Can we label today what may change tomorrow? No. This will be a true story? No. Yes. Maybe. Depending on what you conceive of as the truth. Some may even recognize themselves in what I write, but I warn you it is not you I write about, although, you might ask why it is I am writing about you? You might ask what is in you that you recognize in my story? You bring your own story to my tale in completing it anew for you. My story becomes our story when you read it, like love’s warm embrace, each union is unique. A fiction full of lovers, come feel my key stroke, aching to unite with you and create new meanings.

This will not be a true story. Yes! No! Maybe? This will be a true story. Yes! No! Maybe? What has always amazed me the most in life is not that so many people remember the same event/moment differently. No, that seems obvious to my 21st Century Mind, what amazes, nay, scares me, is how so many people, and societies, are able to erase the distinctive and memorable recognition that memories are but constructs of the moment and will change again and again and again. This is the violence we do to ourselves, a violence as deep and painful as our erasure of the fact that one day we will not exist. We are past imperfect.

So, what will follow is the absolute truth…

Cloud Cuckoo Land - Music Mix #60

 The Who; Hannah Mae Rector; Blind Faith; Traffic; Saya Gray; Doom Gong; Brenda; Clipse; John Legend; Voices of Fire; Pusha T; Malice; Julia Colum; The Cavemen; Angelique Kidjo; Twen; Everything Velvet; Fantastic Negrito; Orchestre de Paris; Rosalia; Yves Tumor; Maren Morris; Kesha; Orville Peck; Hudson Mohawke; Tayla Parx; Jeff Beck; Portugal. The Man; MGMT; De la Soul; Mavis Staples; Juana Molina; Electric Light Orchestra; The Belair Lip Bombs; Outkast; Alice in Chains; Jon Batista; Sessa; Clock DVA; Constant Smiles; Van Halen; Siouxsie and the Banshees; Thundercat; Aerosmith; Miles Davis; Goose; Water From Your Eyes; Paul Schalda; Strange Passage.