Why French sounds so unlike other Romance languages
Sound changes left French unlike Latin, Italian, Spanish or Romanian.
Mira Nakashima Talks Family, Furniture Design, and Legacy
Mira Nakashima has spent a lifetime honoring her father’s craft. For Harper’s BAZAAR’s Legacy Issue, the architect and master furniture maker reflects on growing up in the Nakashima workshop, where…
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History is a 1988 documentary film about the introduction of cane toads to Australia. Cane toads were introduced to Australia with the aim of controlling a…
Making 200-Year-Old Mayonnaise – How has it changed?
Mayonnaise (or magnonnaise, as Carême calls it in this recipe from 1828), didn’t really become popular until the early 19th century. First popular in France, by the 1850s, cookbooks in…
The Grasshoppers Are Coming!
by Alicia. She was reading a book about Laura Ingalls Wilder, and one chapter was all about this horrendous grasshopper invasion from the 1800s! It shocked AJ so much, and…
Cautionary Tales: The Lovestruck Explorer’s Deadly Guessing Game
In 1860, police officer Robert O’Hara Burke plans an expedition to map the mysterious blank in the centre of Australia. Joining him is scientist William Wills, and a ragtag team of…
Kalmykia – Europe’s Only Buddhist Region
Welcome to Europe's only Buddhist Region - Kalmykia. Some 160,000 Buddhists live here. Kalmykia is an autonomous republic of the Russian Federation, located between the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea.…
Entrepreneur à la vie rocambolesque et pionnier du livre de poche
Si vous lisez des livres en format poche, c’est en partie grâce à cet éditeur à la vie rocambolesque, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius. Dès 1919, ce militant socialiste, entrepreneur visionnaire, ami de…
Pourquoi on s’est trompé sur Auguste Renoir. Visite au Musée d’Orsay
Ses reproductions de tableaux mièvres ont plombé notre regard sur l’œuvre du maître de l’impressionnisme. Sauvons Renoir du syndrome de la boîte de chocolats ou du calendrier du facteur. Avec…
Why Leonardo was a saboteur, Gutenberg went broke, and Florence was weird – Ada Palmer
Renaissance history is so much wilder and weirder than you would have expected. Very fun chatting with Ada Palmer (historian, novelist, and composer based at the University of Chicago).