Arts and Culture

Practice dummy, Cryonics UK standby team training | Tim’s house, Sheffield, UK 2010

The Prospect of Immortality: Photographs by Murray Ballard

Photographer Murray Ballard says he expected a cryonics facility to look like something out of a sci-fi movie scene. But in visiting one, Ballard says he was intrigued by the contrast between such an ambitious endeavor and the somewhat unremarkable architecture and equipment.More

Days with My Father: Photographs by Phil Toledano

When photographer Phil Toledano's mother died in 2006...More

Social gathering and sharing a meal during Russian Easter honoring the dead, Spring Valley, New Jersey, 1997

Death in America: Photographs by Bastienne Schmidt & Philippe Cheng

Between 1996 and 1998, Bastienne Schmidt and her husband Philippe Cheng traveled throughout the United States photographing the diverse services and ceremonies Americans use to mark the death of family members and friends. According to Cheng, one of the goals was to "show some of the poetry of death and dying in America."More

Old People & Patients and People with AIDS: Photographs by Nicholas Nixon

Nicholas Nixon has devoted a significant amount of his long career — which stretches back to the 1970s — to taking portraits of people who are sick and dying. He continues to work with people coming to the end of their lives, including those in palliative care and hospice.More

Never Write In The Language of the Colonizer

Ngugi wa Thiong’o — the renowned Kenyan author — believes African writers should write in their native language, not the colonial language of English or French. He says the best way to decolonize the mind is to reclaim native languages.More

Rediscovering the Indigenous City of Addis Ababa

Dagmawi Woubshet and Julie Mehretu were both born in Addis Ababa and then moved to America. They wonder what the city's explosive growth will mean for its unique character — one rooted in Ethiopia's history as the only African nation never colonized.More

Country Singer Brandy Clark on a Big Day in a Small Town

One of Charles’ favorite musician interviews is with country music star Brandy Clark. Brandy and Charles have a similar upbringing and he had a strong connection with her album “Big Day in a Small Town.”More

Putting The Mood Of COVID-19 To Music

With "Broadcast From Home," New York City composer and musician Lisa Bielawa hopes to set the thoughts and emotions of quarantine to music, in the voices of anyone willing to contribute a performance. More

Richard Powers on Writing the Inner Life of Trees

Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” has overturned a lot of conventional thinking. Though human characters shape the plot of this 500-page epic, the real heroes are trees.More

Ruth Ozeki on 'Kamikaze Diaries'

For her own book, author Ruth Ozeki drew from “Kamikaze Diaries,” a collection of writings left behind by the young soldiers who died on suicide missions. They represent a generation of brilliant, highly educated young students who were conscripted into the army and ordered not just to kill but to die.More

Dæmon Pan and the alethiometer in HBO's adaptation of "His Dark Materials"

'His Dark Materials' Author Philip Pullman On The Consciousness Of All Things

Philip Pullman, the celebrated English writer has just written a 630-page sequel brimming with contentious ideas about religious tyranny, the loss of imagination and the nature of consciousness — all in a book that’s marketed to children.More

Philip Pullman on 'The Pocket Atlas of the World'

Philip Pullman — author of the fantasy classic "His Dark Materials" — is clearly attuned to the imaginative world of children. So maybe it’s not surprising that the book that exerted such a pull on his own imagination was "The Pocket Atlas of the World," which he first encountered at the age of nine.More