Trevor Noah Explains How Kintsugi, the Japanese Art of Repairing Pottery, Helped Him Overcome Life’s Tragedies

in Art, Life | January 9th, 2026

Trevor Noah end­ed his stint as the host of The Dai­ly Show a lit­tle over three years ago, but he’s made him­self into anoth­er kind of pop-cul­tur­al pres­ence since then. In evi­dence, we have his appear­ance above on the pop­u­lar pod­cast and YouTube show Diary of a CEO. For more than two and a half hours, Noah dis­cuss­es with host Steven Bartlett (who, like Noah, also hap­pens to be African-born with mixed parent­age) his rea­sons for quit­ting that polit­i­cal-news-com­e­dy TV insti­tu­tion, his strug­gles with depres­sion, and the time his step­fa­ther shot his moth­er in the head. She lived, owing to the mirac­u­lous­ly unlike­ly tra­jec­to­ry of the bul­let, but that did­n’t stop the expe­ri­ence from becom­ing what Noah describes as the worst of his life.

Dis­cussing all this brings to his mind the Japan­ese art of kintsu­gi (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). “It’s a prac­tice of repair­ing pot­tery and ceram­ics that have bro­ken,” Noah explains. “What hap­pens is, you break a plate, or you break a vase or some­thing,” and “they put it back togeth­er, these arti­sans who do it. But they don’t just glue it back togeth­er, they glue it back togeth­er and they sort of adorn it with a gold­en bind­ing. And what you get is an object that is some­how more beau­ti­ful than before it was bro­ken.”

Kintsu­gi struck him as “one of the most beau­ti­ful con­cepts, and a dif­fer­ent way to think about being ‘fixed’ or ‘over­com­ing’ ”; it was­n’t “the idea that we are per­fect, the way we were before some­thing hap­pened to us, but rather, it is that we get to wear our cracks with a new type of pride, and a new type of beau­ty.”

Noah would hard­ly be the only per­son to see in these recon­sti­tut­ed ceram­ic ves­sels with their gleam­ing kintsu­gi seams a metaphor for him­self. Like more than a few pub­lic fig­ures in the West, he’s been will­ing to dis­cuss the vicis­si­tudes of his life in detail, and even use them for mate­r­i­al in work like his stand-up com­e­dy and his mem­oir Born a Crime. But it is unusu­al, in a chat like this with mil­lions and mil­lions of view­ers, to hear ref­er­ence made to a half-mil­len­ni­um-old Japan­ese form of pot­tery repair. That pos­si­bil­i­ty, of course, is cen­tral to the appeal of long-form inter­view pod­casts, whose con­ver­sa­tions have the time and space to go far down unex­pect­ed paths. The Dai­ly Show may deliv­er more laughs per minute, but giv­en its for­mat’s time con­straints, kintsu­gi-type talk is no doubt the first thing to get edit­ed out — and the cut cer­tain­ly won’t be high­light­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Kintsu­gi, the Japan­ese Art of Repair­ing Bro­ken Pot­tery and Find­ing Beau­ty in Imper­fec­tion

How Japan­ese Kintsu­gi Mas­ters Restore Pot­tery by Beau­ti­fy­ing the Cracks

David Lynch Explains Why Depres­sion Is the Ene­my of Cre­ativ­i­ty — and Why Med­i­ta­tion Is the Solu­tion

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

Charles Bukows­ki Explains How to Beat Depres­sion: Spend 3–4 Days in Bed and You’ll Get the Juices Flow­ing Again (NSFW)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Can Genius Be Taught? The Polgár Sisters and the Experiment That Put the Question to the Test

in Education, Games | January 8th, 2026

As any new par­ent soon finds out, there exists a robust mar­ket for prod­ucts, ser­vices, and media that promise to boost a child’s intel­li­gence. Some of these offer­ings come as close as legal­ly pos­si­ble to hold­ing out the promise of putting any tot on the path to genius, brazen­ly beg­ging the ques­tion of whether it’s pos­si­ble to raise a genius in the first place. Still, the efforts par­ents have delib­er­ate­ly made in that direc­tion have occa­sion­al­ly pro­duced notable results, from epochal fig­ures like Mozart or John Stu­art Mill to the promis­ing-math­e­mati­cian-turned-street­car-trans­fer-obsessed-recluse William Sidis. More recent­ly came the Pol­gár sis­ters, who were suc­cess­ful­ly raised to become some of the great­est female chess play­ers in his­to­ry.

Hav­ing stud­ied the nature of intel­li­gence at uni­ver­si­ty, their father Lás­zló got it in his head that, since most genius­es start­ed learn­ing their sub­jects inten­sive­ly and ear­ly, par­ents could cul­ti­vate genius-lev­el per­for­mance in their chil­dren by direct­ing that learn­ing process them­selves. He sought out a wife both intel­lec­tu­al­ly promis­ing and will­ing to devote her­self to test­ing this hypoth­e­sis. Togeth­er they went on to father three daugh­ters, putting them through a rig­or­ous, cus­tom-made edu­ca­tion ori­ent­ed toward chess mas­tery. Chess became the pro­jec­t’s cen­tral sub­ject in large part because of its sheer objec­tiv­i­ty, all the bet­ter for Lás­zló Pol­gár to mea­sure the results of this domes­tic exper­i­ment.

Nor could it have hurt, giv­en the impor­tance of retain­ing the inter­est of chil­dren, that chess was a game — and one with evoca­tive toy-like pieces — that offers imme­di­ate feed­back and feel­ings of accom­plish­ment. For his daugh­ters, Pol­gár has empha­sized, learn­ing involved none of the drudgery and busy­work of school. “A child does not like only play: for them it is also enjoy­able to acquire infor­ma­tion and solve prob­lems,” he writes in his book Raise a Genius! “A child’s work can also be enjoy­able; so can learn­ing, if it is suf­fi­cient­ly moti­vat­ing, and if it means a con­stant sup­ply of prob­lems to solve that are appro­pri­ate for the lev­el of the child’s needs. A child does not need play sep­a­rate from work, but mean­ing­ful action.”

The proof of Pol­gár’s the­o­ries is in the pud­ding — or at any rate, in the rat­ings. All three of his daugh­ters became elite chess play­ers. Sofia, the mid­dle one, became the sixth-strongest female play­er in the world; Susan, the eldest, the top-ranked female play­er in the world; Judit, the youngest, the strongest female chess play­er of all time. This despite the fact that their father was an unex­cep­tion­al chess play­er, and their moth­er not a chess play­er at all. Some eager­ly take the sto­ry of the Pol­gár sis­ters as a vin­di­ca­tion of nur­ture over nature; oth­ers, sci­en­tif­ic researchers includ­ed, argue that it only shows that prac­tice is a nec­es­sary con­di­tion for this kind of genius, not a suf­fi­cient one. For my part, hav­ing kept an eye on a pair of infant twins while writ­ing this, I’d be hap­py if my own kids could just mas­ter hold­ing on to their bot­tles.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Learn How to Play Chess Online: Free Chess Lessons for Begin­ners, Inter­me­di­ate Play­ers & Beyond

Meet Alma Deutsch­er, the Clas­si­cal Music Prodi­gy: Watch Her Per­for­mances from Age 6 to 14

The Mag­ic of Chess: Kids Share Their Unin­hib­it­ed, Philo­soph­i­cal Insights about the Ben­e­fits of Chess

Hear the Pieces Mozart Com­posed When He Was Only 5 Years Old

Read an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Eye­wit­ness Account of 8‑Year-Old Mozart’s Extra­or­di­nary Musi­cal Skills

The Renewed Pop­u­lar­i­ty of Chess and The Queen’s Gam­bit: Pret­ty Much Pop Cul­ture Pod­cast Dis­cus­sion #78 with Chess Expert J. J. Lang

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hear James Joyce Reads From Ulysses and Finnegans Wake In His Only Two Recordings (1924/1929)

in Literature | January 8th, 2026

As much as it is about every part of Dublin that ever passed by James Joyce’s once-young eyes, Ulysses is also a book about books, and about writ­ing and speech—as myth­ic invo­ca­tion, as seduc­tion, chat­ter, and rhetoric, ful­some and emp­ty. Words—two-faced, like open books—carry with them at least two sens­es, the mean­ing of their present utter­ance, and the ver­so shades of his­to­ry. This is at least part­ly the import of Joyce’s myth­i­cal method, as it is that of all expos­i­tors of ancient texts, from preach­ers and the­olo­gians to lit­er­ary crit­ics. It seems par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant, then, that the pas­sage Joyce chose for the one and only record­ing of a read­ing from Ulysses comes from the “Aeo­lus” episode, which par­o­dies Odysseus and his com­pan­ions’ encounter with the god of wind.

Joyce sets the scene in the news­pa­per offices of the Freeman’s Jour­nal, epit­o­me of writ­ing in the present tense, where reporters and edi­tors give puffed-up speech­es punc­tu­at­ed by reduc­tive, pithy head­lines. Amidst this busi­ness, eru­dite pro­fes­sor MacHugh and Stephen Dedalus wax lit­er­ary and his­tor­i­cal, mak­ing con­nec­tions. MacHugh recites “the finest dis­play of ora­to­ry” he ever heard—a defense of the revival of the Irish lan­guage that com­pares the Irish peo­ple to Moses and the ancient Hebrews spurn­ing the seduc­tions of an oppres­sive empire in the per­son of an Egypt­ian high priest: Vagrants and day­labour­ers are you called: the world trem­bles at our name.

Joyce record­ed the pas­sage in 1924 at the urg­ing of Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny founder Sylvia Beach, who per­suad­ed the HMV gramo­phone stu­dio in Paris to make the record, under the pro­vi­sion that she would finance it and that the studio’s name would appear nowhere on the prod­uct. Ulysses, recall, was in many places under a ban for obscen­i­ty (not lift­ed in the U.S. until 1933 by Judge John Woolsey). The record­ing ses­sion was painful for Joyce, who need­ed two attempts on two sep­a­rate days to com­plete it, plagued as he was by his fail­ing eyes. And yet Joyce, Beach wrote in her notes, “was anx­ious to have the record­ing made… He had made up his mind, he told me, that this would be his only read­ing from Ulysses… it is more, one feels, than mere ora­to­ry.” You can read the speech here while lis­ten­ing to Joyce read above. Beach called Joyce’s read­ing a “won­der­ful per­for­mance.” “I nev­er hear it,” she wrote, “with­out being deeply moved.”

While Beach may have been sat­is­fied with the record­ing, her friend, lin­guist C.K. Ogden pro­nounced it “very bad,” mean­ing, writes Beach, “it was not a suc­cess tech­ni­cal­ly” (though it was not, in any case, “at all a com­mer­cial ven­ture”). You will notice this imme­di­ate­ly as you strug­gle to hear Joyce’s mut­ed read­ing. Anx­ious to pre­serve his voice in a clear­er doc­u­ment, Ogden cap­tured Joyce read­ing from Finnegans Wake five years lat­er at the stu­dio of the Ornitho­log­i­cal Soci­ety in Cam­bridge (he boast­ed of own­ing “the two biggest record­ing machines in the world”). By this time, Joyce’s eye­sight had almost com­plete­ly dimmed. Ogden pho­tographed the text and enlarged it so that the let­ters were a half-inch tall, yet Joyce still could bare­ly make them out and “sup­pos­ed­ly need­ed some­one to whis­per along” (Beach, who was not present, imag­ined he must have known the pas­sage by heart).

Joyce chose to read from the “Anna Livia Plura­belle” sec­tion of the exper­i­men­tal text—a pas­sage “over­flow­ing,” writes Men­tal Floss, with “allu­sions to the world’s rivers.” He reads in the voice of an old wash­er­woman, and begins with a most suc­cinct state­ment of the tem­po­ral dimen­sions of lan­guage: “I told you every telling has a tail­ing.” Where Ulysses fore­grounds lit­er­ary his­to­ry, Finnegans Wake dives deep into geo­log­ic time, and priv­i­leges the oral over the writ­ten. These are the only two record­ings Joyce ever made, and they sure­ly mark what were for him cen­tral loca­tions in both books, though he also chose them for their ease of read­ing aloud and, per­haps, mem­o­riz­ing.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

Sylvia Beach Tells the Sto­ry of Found­ing Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, Pub­lish­ing Joyce’s Ulysses, Sell­ing Copies of Hemingway’s First Book & More (1962)

Hear All of Finnegans Wake Read Aloud: A 35 Hour Read­ing

What Makes James Joyce’s Ulysses a Mas­ter­piece: Great Books Explained

Vir­ginia Woolf on James Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me.” Shen Then Quit at Page 200

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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The Ancient Tool Used in Japan to Strengthen Memory & Focus: The Abacus

in Education, Math | January 7th, 2026

William Gib­son famous­ly observed that the future is already here, it’s just not even­ly dis­trib­uted. That line is often thought to have been inspired by Japan, which was already pro­ject­ing a thor­ough­ly futur­is­tic image, at least in pop­u­lar cul­ture, by the time he made his debut with Neu­ro­mancer in 1984. But as any­one who’s spent enough time in the coun­try under­stands — albeit not with­out frus­tra­tion — even twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry Japan remains in many ways a pre-dig­i­tal soci­ety. Many busi­ness­es only take cash, more than a few ser­vices require com­mu­ni­ca­tion by fax, and there’s no sub­sti­tute for a phys­i­cal han­ko seal on impor­tant doc­u­ments. Even so, it may come as a sur­prise to learn that Japan still uses aba­cus­es.

Or rather, Japan still uses aba­cus­es as edu­ca­tion­al tools: you won’t see many shop­keep­ers pull them out while ring­ing up your pur­chas­es, but if you glance in the win­dow of the right kind of pri­vate acad­e­my, you might well see young stu­dents furi­ous­ly per­form­ing cal­cu­la­tions the very old-fash­ioned way.

If they’re suf­fi­cient­ly advanced, as explained in the BBC video above, they won’t even have actu­al aba­cus­es; they’ll just move around beads pic­tured in their heads. (It brings to mind how Dustin Hoff­man’s savant in Rain Man explains his per­for­mance of seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble men­tal math: “I see it.”) Such inten­sive aba­cus edu­ca­tion was com­mon across north­east Asia in the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, when the arith­metic skills it cul­ti­vat­ed were impor­tant for both indi­vid­ual sur­vival and nation­al devel­op­ment.

It was that very devel­op­ment that tend­ed to push the aba­cus into obso­les­cence. When Korea, where I live, could afford elec­tron­ic cal­cu­la­tors, the pres­tige asso­ci­at­ed with aba­cus mas­tery dis­solved prac­ti­cal­ly overnight. Deter­mined Kore­an par­ents can still sign their chil­dren up for jupan class­es, much as Chi­nese par­ents might encour­age theirs to enter into suan­pan com­pe­ti­tions out of a sense of civ­i­liza­tion­al pride, but they have noth­ing like the sta­tus the soroban enjoys in Japan. That may be vin­di­cat­ed by neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic research point­ing toward the ben­e­fits learn­ing the aba­cus can have on a devel­op­ing brain’s cog­ni­tive func­tions. As the BBC video explains, aba­cus train­ing enhances cog­ni­tive func­tion by sharp­en­ing con­cen­tra­tion, accel­er­at­ing infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing, and strength­en­ing visu­al mem­o­ry, lead­ing to improved mem­o­ry and sus­tained focus. But as any enthu­si­ast of Japan­ese craft cul­ture knows, no mat­ter how much hard­er it may be to do things with ana­log tools, some­times it’s just more sat­is­fy­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Math Cours­es

The Won­der­ful Wood­en Mar­ble Adding Machine

The Math­e­mat­ics Behind Origa­mi, the Ancient Japan­ese Art of Paper Fold­ing

Com­plex Math Made Sim­ple With Engag­ing Ani­ma­tions: Fouri­er Trans­form, Cal­cu­lus, Lin­ear Alge­bra, Neur­al Net­works & More

Japan­ese Musi­cians Turn Obso­lete Machines Into Musi­cal Instru­ments: Cath­ode Ray Tube TVs, Over­head Pro­jec­tors, Reel-to-Reel Tape Machines & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Dictionary of the Oldest Written Language–It Took 90 Years to Complete, and It’s Now Free Online

in History, Language | January 7th, 2026

It took 90 years to com­plete. But, in 2011, schol­ars at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go final­ly pub­lished a 21-vol­ume dic­tio­nary of Akka­di­an, the lan­guage used in ancient Mesopotamia. Unspo­ken for 2,000 years, Akka­di­an was pre­served on clay tablets and in stone inscrip­tions until schol­ars deci­phered it dur­ing the last two cen­turies.

In the past, we’ve pub­lished audio that lets you hear the recon­struct­ed sounds of Akka­di­an (Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia). Now, should you wish, you can down­load PDFs of U. Chicago’s Akka­di­an dic­tio­nary for free. All 21 vol­umes would cost well over $1,945 if pur­chased in hard copy. But the PDFs, they won’t run you a dime.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Largest His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of Eng­lish Slang Now Free Online: Cov­ers 500 Years of the “Vul­gar Tongue”

Learn Ancient Greek in 64 Free Lessons: A Free Online Course from Bran­deis & Har­vard

Who Decides What Words Get Into the Dic­tio­nary?

Lis­ten to The Epic of Gil­gamesh Being Read in its Orig­i­nal Ancient Lan­guage, Akka­di­an

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The Greek Mythology Family Tree: A Visual Guide Shows How Zeus, Athena, and the Ancient Gods Are Related

in Design, History, Religion | January 6th, 2026

It was long ago that poly­the­ism, as the sto­ry comes down to us, gave way to monothe­ism. Human­i­ty used to have many gods, and now almost every reli­gious believ­er acknowl­edges just one — though which god, exact­ly, does vary. Some pop­u­lar the­o­ries of “big his­to­ry” hold that, as the scale of a soci­ety grows larg­er, the num­ber of deities pro­posed by its faiths gets small­er. In that scheme, it makes sense that the grow­ing Roman Empire would even­tu­al­ly adopt Chris­tian­i­ty, and also that the gods it first inher­it­ed from the city-states of ancient Greece would be so numer­ous. Through our mod­ern eyes, the var­i­ous immor­tals invoked so read­i­ly by the Greeks look less like holy fig­ures than a cast of char­ac­ters in a long-run­ning tele­vi­sion dra­ma.

Or maybe it would have to be a soap opera, giv­en that most of them belong to one big, often trou­bled clan. Hence the struc­ture of Use­fulCharts’ Greek Mythol­o­gy Fam­i­ly Tree, explained in the video above. Also avail­able for pur­chase in poster form, it clear­ly dia­grams the rela­tion­ships between every­one in the Greek pan­theon, from the high­est “pri­mor­dial gods” like Eros Elder and Gaia down to the chil­dren of Zeus and Posei­don.

How­ev­er pow­er­ful they could be — and some were pow­er­ful indeed — none of these gods act­ed like the infal­li­ble, omni­scient enti­ties of the major reli­gions we know today. They could act capri­cious­ly, venge­ful­ly and even non­sen­si­cal­ly, a reflec­tion of the often capricious‑, vengeful‑, and non­sen­si­cal-seem­ing nature of life in the ancient world.

For the Greeks them­selves, these myth­i­cal gods and mon­sters offered not just an explana­to­ry mech­a­nism, but also a form of enter­tain­ment, giv­en that noth­ing could go on in their ele­vat­ed world with­out high dra­ma. For us, they remain present in leg­ends from which we still draw inspi­ra­tion for our own larg­er-than-life sto­ries of hero­ism and vil­lainy, but also in our very lan­guage. Con­sid­er the ways in which we con­tin­ue to evoke the likes of the time-rul­ing Chronos, the love-bring­ing Cupid, the androg­y­nous Her­maph­ro­di­tus, or the mul­ti-head­ed Hydra in every­day speech. Though we may no longer need them to orga­nize our soci­eties, some of them have kept play­ing roles in the age of monothe­ism — which, what­ev­er its oth­er advan­tages, does­n’t require us to con­sult dia­grams to know who’s who.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

Mythol­o­gy Expert Reviews Depic­tions of Greek & Roman Myths in Pop­u­lar Movies and TV Shows

How the Ancient Greeks Built Their Mag­nif­i­cent Tem­ples: The Art of Ancient Engi­neer­ing

18 Clas­sic Myths Explained with Ani­ma­tion: Pandora’s Box, Sisy­phus & More

Con­cepts of the Hero in Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (A Free Har­vard Course)

A Visu­al Time­line of World His­to­ry: Watch the Rise & Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions Over 5,000 Years

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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300,000 Wondrous Nature Illustrations Put Online by The Biodiversity Heritage Library

in Art, Nature, Photography, Science | January 6th, 2026

Are we tru­ly in the midst of a human-caused sixth mass extinc­tion, an era of “bio­log­i­cal anni­hi­la­tion”? Many sci­en­tists and pop­u­lar sci­ence writ­ers say yes, using terms like “Holocene” or “Anthro­pocene” to describe what fol­lows the Ordovi­cian, Devon­ian, Per­mi­an, Tri­as­sic, and Cre­ta­ceous peri­ods. Peter Bran­nen, the author of extinc­tion his­to­ry The Ends of the Earth has found at least one sci­en­tist who thinks the con­cept is “junk.” But Bran­nen quotes some alarm­ing sta­tis­tics. Chill­ing, even. “Until very recent­ly,” he writes, “all ver­te­brate life on the plan­et was wildlife. But astound­ing­ly, today wildlife accounts for only 3 per­cent of Earth’s land ani­mals; human beings, our live­stock, and our pets take up the remain­ing 97 per­cent of the bio­mass… almost half of the Earth’s land has been con­vert­ed into farm­land.”

This state of affairs does not bode well for the mil­lions of remain­ing species get­ting edged out of their envi­ron­ments by agribusi­ness and cli­mate change. We learn from extinc­tions past that the plan­et rebounds after unimag­in­able cat­a­stro­phe. Life real­ly does go on, though it may take mil­lions of years to recov­er. But the cur­rent forms of life may dis­ap­pear before their time. If we want to under­stand what is at stake besides our own frag­ile fos­sil-fuel-based civ­i­liza­tions, we need to con­nect to life emo­tion­al­ly as well as intel­lec­tu­al­ly. Short of globe-hop­ping phys­i­cal immer­sion in the Earth’s bio­di­ver­si­ty, we could hard­ly do bet­ter than immers­ing our­selves in the tra­di­tion of nat­u­ral­ist writ­ing, art, and pho­tog­ra­phy that brings the world to us.

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library (BHL), an “open access dig­i­tal library for bio­di­ver­si­ty lit­er­a­ture and archives,” has for many years been mak­ing it easy for peo­ple to con­nect to nature through nature writ­ing and illus­tra­tion. On Flickr, you can find 319,000 care­ful­ly curat­ed images. The col­lec­tion itself is sub­di­vid­ed into dif­fer­ent pho­to albums drawn from his­tor­i­cal pub­li­ca­tions. For exam­ple, The Fresh­wa­ter Fish­es of the British Isles (1911), The Bird (1869), and The Insect Book (1901).

This image archive offers expan­sive views of human­i­ty’s encounter with the nat­ur­al world, not only through sta­tis­tics and aca­d­e­m­ic jar­gon, but through the artis­tic record­ing of won­der, sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty, and deep appre­ci­a­tion. Enter the archive here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra & Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Explore a New Archive of 2,200 His­tor­i­cal Wildlife Illus­tra­tions (1916–1965): Cour­tesy of The Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety

In 1886, the US Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sioned 7,500 Water­col­or Paint­ings of Every Known Fruit in the World: Down­load Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and

The Metic­u­lous, Ele­gant Illus­tra­tions of the Nature Observed in England’s Coun­try­side

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Discover Ichi-go Ichi‑e, the Japanese Art of Savoring Every Moment

in Life, Philosophy | January 5th, 2026

Each cul­ture has its own say­ings about the unique­ness and tran­sience of the present moment. In recent years, the Eng­lish-speak­ers have often found them­selves remind­ed, through the expres­sion “YOLO,” that they only live once. (The ques­tion of whether that should real­ly be “YLOO,” or “You Live Only Once,” we put aside for the time being.) In Japan, unsur­pris­ing­ly, one some­times hears a much more ven­er­a­ble equiv­a­lent: “ichi-go ichi‑e,” which some read­ers acquaint­ed with the Japan­ese lan­guage should be assured has noth­ing to do with straw­ber­ries, ichi­go. Rather, the say­ing’s under­ly­ing Chi­nese char­ac­ters (一期一会) can be trans­lat­ed as “one time, one meet­ing.”

The Bud­dhis­ti­cal­ly inflect­ed “ichi-go ichi‑e” is just one in the vast library of yoji­juku­go, high­ly con­densed apho­ris­tic expres­sions writ­ten with just four char­ac­ters. (Oth­er coun­tries with Chi­nese-influ­enced lan­guages have their ver­sions, includ­ing sajaseon­geo in Korea and chéngyǔ in Chi­na itself.) It descends, as the sto­ry goes, from a slight­ly longer say­ing favored by the six­teenth-cen­tu­ry tea mas­ter Sen no Rikyū, “ichi-go ni ichi-do” (一期に一度).

One must pay respects to the host of a tea cer­e­mo­ny because the meet­ing would only ever occur once — which, of course, it would, even if the cer­e­mo­ny was a reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled event. For we nev­er, to bor­row an ancient Greek take on this whole sub­ject, step into the same riv­er twice; no two events, sep­a­rat­ed in time, can ever tru­ly be iden­ti­cal.

One impli­ca­tion, as not­ed in the explana­to­ry videos above from the BBC and Einzel­gänger, is that we should savor what­ev­er moment we hap­pen to find our­selves in, how­ev­er imper­fect, because we won’t get a sec­ond chance to do so. And if it offers lit­tle or noth­ing to enjoy, we can find solace in the fact that its par­tic­u­lar dis­plea­sure, too, can nev­er revis­it us. With the past gone and the future nev­er guar­an­teed, the present moment, in any case, is the only time that actu­al­ly exists for us, so we’d bet­ter make our­selves com­fort­able with­in it. Though these ideas have per­haps found their most ele­gant and mem­o­rable expres­sion in Japan, they’re hard­ly con­sid­ered exclu­sive cul­tur­al prop­er­ty there. The Japan­ese title of For­rest Gump, after all, was Fore­su­to Gan­pu: Ichi-go Ichi‑e.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What is the Secret to Liv­ing a Long, Hap­py & Cre­ative­ly Ful­fill­ing Life?: Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Con­cept of Iki­gai

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

Marie Kon­do v. Tsun­doku: Com­pet­ing Japan­ese Philoso­phies on Whether to Keep or Dis­card Unread Books

The Art of the Japan­ese Teapot: Watch a Mas­ter Crafts­man at Work, from the Begin­ning Until the Star­tling End

Memen­to Mori: How Smil­ing Skele­tons Have Remind­ed Us to Live Ful­ly Since Ancient Times

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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J.R.R. Tolkien, Using a Tape Recorder for the First Time, Reads from The Hobbit for 30 Minutes (1952)

in Audio Books, Literature | January 5th, 2026

Hav­ing not revis­it­ed The Hob­bit in some time, I’ve felt the famil­iar pull—shared by many readers—to return to Tolkien’s fairy-tale nov­el itself. It was my first expo­sure to Tolkien, and the per­fect book for a young read­er ready to dive into moral com­plex­i­ty and a ful­ly-real­ized fic­tion­al world.

And what bet­ter guide could there be through The Hob­bit than Tolkien him­self, read­ing (above) from the 1937 work? In this 1952 record­ing in two parts (part 2 is below), the ven­er­a­ble fan­ta­sist and schol­ar reads from his own work for the first time on tape.

Tolkien begins with a pas­sage that first describes the crea­ture Gol­lum; lis­ten­ing to this descrip­tion again, I am struck by how much dif­fer­ent­ly I imag­ined him when I first read the book. The Gol­lum of The Hob­bit seems some­how hoari­er and more mon­strous than many lat­er visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions. This is a minor point and not a crit­i­cism, but per­haps a com­ment on how nec­es­sary it is to return to the source of a myth­ic world as rich as Tolkien’s, even, or espe­cial­ly, when it’s been so well-real­ized in oth­er media. No one, after all, knows Mid­dle Earth bet­ter than its cre­ator.

These read­ings were part of a much longer record­ing ses­sion, dur­ing which Tolkien also read (and sang!) exten­sive­ly from The Lord of the Rings. A YouTube user has col­lect­ed, in sev­er­al parts, a radio broad­cast of that full ses­sion, and it’s cer­tain­ly worth your time to lis­ten to it all the way through. It’s also worth know­ing the neat con­text of the record­ing. Here’s the text that accom­pa­nies the video on YouTube:

When Tolkien vis­it­ed a friend in August of 1952 to retrieve a man­u­script of The Lord of the Rings, he was shown a “tape recorder”. Hav­ing nev­er seen one before, he asked how it worked and was then delight­ed to have his voice record­ed and hear him­self played back for the first time. His friend then asked him to read from The Hob­bit, and Tolkien did so in this one incred­i­ble take.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read Poems from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, in Elvish and Eng­lish (1952)

J. R. R. Tolkien Admit­ted to Dis­lik­ing Dune “With Some Inten­si­ty” (1966)

When the Nobel Prize Com­mit­tee Reject­ed The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien “Has Not Mea­sured Up to Sto­ry­telling of the High­est Qual­i­ty” (1961)

J. R. R. Tolkien Reads from The Hob­bit, The Lord of the Rings & Oth­er Works

J.R.R. Tolkien Snubs a Ger­man Pub­lish­er Ask­ing for Proof of His “Aryan Descent” (1938)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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When Two Filmmakers Make the Same Movie — and One of Them Is Werner Herzog

in Film, Nature | January 2nd, 2026

In 1991, the French hus­band-and-wife vol­ca­nol­o­gist-film­mak­er team Mau­rice and Katia Krafft were killed by the flow of ash from the erup­tion of Mount Unzen in Nagasa­ki. Inex­plic­a­bly, Wern­er Her­zog did­n’t get around to mak­ing a film about them for more than 30 years. These would seem to be ide­al sub­jects for the doc­u­men­tary half of his career, a large por­tion of which he’s spent on por­traits of eccen­tric, roman­tic, often fool­hardy, and more than occa­sion­al­ly ill-fat­ed indi­vid­u­als who pit them­selves, or in any case find them­selves pit­ted, against the raw ele­ments of nature. Their cou­ple­hood makes the Kraffts a slight excep­tion in that line­up, but it also makes them even less resistible to a more con­ven­tion­al doc­u­men­tar­i­an — not that a doc­u­men­tar­i­an could get much less con­ven­tion­al than Her­zog.

Hence, per­haps, the appear­ance of two entire­ly sep­a­rate doc­u­men­taries on the Kraffts in the same year, 2022: Her­zog’s The Fire With­in, and Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love. The Like Sto­ries of Old video above per­forms a direct com­par­i­son of the two films, both of which make heavy use of the vol­cano footage shot by the Kraffts them­selves.

Her­zog assem­bles it into word­less, oper­at­i­cal­ly scored, and some­times quite long sequences, inten­si­fy­ing their qual­i­ty of the sub­lime, which we feel in that aes­thet­ic zone where awe of beau­ty and fear of exis­ten­tial anni­hi­la­tion over­lap com­plete­ly. These do noth­ing to advance a nar­ra­tive, but every­thing to put forth what Her­zog has often referred to in inter­views as a sense of “ecsta­t­ic truth,” a dis­til­la­tion of real­i­ty that can­not be cap­tured by any con­ven­tion­al doc­u­men­tary means.

The video’s host Tom van der Lin­den describes Fire of Love as “much more fast-paced. Images come and go so quick­ly that they don’t real­ly have a chance to reveal that strange, secret beau­ty, to take the spot­light with their own mys­te­ri­ous star­dom. Instead, they feel sub­servient to what­ev­er pre­de­ter­mined emo­tion the nar­ra­tive wants you to expe­ri­ence,” as if the direc­tor is giv­ing you orders: “Be in awe. Feel the romance. And now the com­e­dy.” That hard­ly sug­gests incom­pe­tence on the part of Dosa and her col­lab­o­ra­tors, or any defi­cien­cy in her high­ly acclaimed film. But it does give us a sense of what becomes weary­ing about the tech­niques of main­stream cin­e­ma in gen­er­al, fic­tion­al, or non­fic­tion­al. The truth is that Wern­er Her­zog may be unique­ly well placed to appre­ci­ate not just the fear­some­ly enrap­tur­ing object of the Kraffts’ obses­sion, but also the dri­ving pas­sion, and flash­es of ridicu­lous­ness, in the Kraffts them­selves — who were, after all, fel­low sol­diers of cin­e­ma.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dream-Dri­ven Film­mak­ing of Wern­er Her­zog: Watch the Video Essay, “The Inner Chron­i­cle of What We Are: Under­stand­ing Wern­er Her­zog”

An Intro­duc­tion to the Paint­ing of Cas­par David Friedrich, Roman­ti­cism & the Sub­lime

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

Under­wa­ter Vol­canic Erup­tion Wit­nessed for the First Time

Two Ways To Shoot The Same Scene: A Com­par­i­son of The Shop Around the Cor­ner (1940) and You’ve Got Mail (1998) Shows How Film­mak­ing Changed Over the Decades

Wern­er Her­zog Dis­cov­ers the Ecsta­sy of Skate­board­ing: “That’s Kind of My Peo­ple”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Birth of Espresso: The Story Behind the Coffee Shots That Fuel Modern Life

in Food & Drink, History | January 2nd, 2026

Espres­so is nei­ther bean nor roast.

It is a method of pres­sur­ized cof­fee brew­ing that ensures speedy deliv­ery, and it has birthed a whole cul­ture.

Amer­i­cans may be accus­tomed to camp­ing out in cafes with their lap­tops for hours, but Ital­ian cof­fee bars are fast-paced envi­ron­ments where cus­tomers buzz in for a quick pick-me-up, then head right back out, no seat required.

It’s the sort of effi­cien­cy the Father of the Mod­ern Adver­tis­ing Poster, Leonet­to Cap­piel­lo, allud­ed to in his famous 1922 image for the Vic­to­ria Arduino machine (below).

Let 21st-cen­tu­ry cof­fee afi­ciona­dos cul­ti­vate their Zen-like patience with slow pourovers. A hun­dred years ago, the goal was a qual­i­ty prod­uct that the suc­cess­ful busi­nessper­son could enjoy with­out break­ing stride.

As cof­fee expert James Hoff­mann, author of The World Atlas of Cof­fee points out in the above video, the Steam Age was on the way out, but Cappiello’s image is “absolute­ly lever­ag­ing the idea that steam equals speed.”

That had been the goal since 1884, when inven­tor Ange­lo Morion­do patent­ed the first espres­so machine (see below).

The bulk brew­er caused a stir at the Turin Gen­er­al Expo­si­tion. Speed wise, it was a great improve­ment over the old method, in which indi­vid­ual cups were brewed in the Turk­ish style, requir­ing five min­utes per order.

This “new steam machin­ery for the eco­nom­ic and instan­ta­neous con­fec­tion of cof­fee bev­er­age” fea­tured a gas or wood burn­er at the bot­tom of an upright boil­er, and two sight glass­es that the oper­a­tor could mon­i­tor to get a feel for when to open the var­i­ous taps, to yield a large quan­ti­ty of fil­tered cof­fee. It was fast, but demand­ed some skill on the part of its human oper­a­tor.

As Jim­my Stamp explains in a Smith­son­ian arti­cle on the his­to­ry of the espres­so machine, there were  also a few bugs to work out.

Ear­ly machines’ hand-oper­at­ed pres­sure valves posed a risk to work­ers, and the cof­fee itself had a burnt taste.

Milanese café own­er Achille Gag­gia cracked the code after WWII, with a small, steam­less lever-dri­ven machine that upped the pres­sure to pro­duce the con­cen­trat­ed brew that is what we now think of as espres­so.

Stamp describes how Gaggia’s machine also stan­dard­ized the size of the espres­so, giv­ing rise to some now-famil­iar cof­fee­house vocab­u­lary:

The cylin­der on lever groups could only hold an ounce of water, lim­it­ing the vol­ume that could be used to pre­pare an espres­so. With the lever machines also came some new jar­gon: baris­tas oper­at­ing Gaggia’s spring-loaded levers coined the term “pulling a shot” of espres­so. But per­haps most impor­tant­ly, with the inven­tion of the high-pres­sure lever machine came the dis­cov­ery of cre­ma – the foam float­ing over the cof­fee liq­uid that is the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of a qual­i­ty espres­so. A his­tor­i­cal anec­dote claims that ear­ly con­sumers were dubi­ous of this “scum” float­ing over their cof­fee until Gag­gia began refer­ring to it as “caffe creme,“ sug­gest­ing that the cof­fee was of such qual­i­ty that it pro­duced its own creme.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cof­fee Entre­pre­neur Rena­to Bialet­ti Gets Buried in the Espres­so Mak­er He Made Famous

The Life & Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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