The half-goat-half-devil has been St. Nicholas’s sidekick and enforcer for hundreds of years, warning little Austrian children that they’d better not be naughty. Traditionally he’d only appear once a year and his mask and costume would be more-or-less homemade, but today’s masks have things like glowing LED eyes, and there are Krampus shows with heavy-metal accompaniment that “feels like a rock concert mixed with a rodeo.” — Public Radio International
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Warhol’s Warhorses at the Whitney: Insert Your Own Meanings Here
What most transfixed me about Mustard Race Riot was not the grim subject matter (which I saw anew through the perspective of our current racially charged moment), but Warhol’s uncanny prescience about our media-saturated world. — Lee Rosenbaum
Falla and Flamenco — “The Birth of Spanish Music”
According to my friend the remarkably loquacious Spanish pianist Pedro Carboné, the “birth of Spanish music” occurs during the third of Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain. — Joe Horowitz
How Cafe Culture Changed Debate
It wasn’t that the conversations in the café were necessarily intellectually productive; it was that the practice of free exchange itself—the ability to interact on equal terms with someone not of your clan or club—generated social habits of self-expression that abetted the appetite for self-government. – The New Yorker
Meet ‘The World’s First Sleep Storyteller-In-Residence’
Phoebe Smith writes what are basically bedtime stories for grownups, 20-to-40-minute narratives that are recorded by actors such as Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley and listened to on an app called Calm, created to help people fall asleep. — The Guardian
Want To Succeed? Listen To Those Who Disagree With You
Philosophers go to conferences to find critics who can help them improve their theories. All of us need to recognise the value of listening carefully and charitably to opponents. Then we need to go to the trouble of talking with those opponents, even if it means leaving our comfortable neighbourhoods or favourite websites. – Aeon
Inside The Lives Of Understudies
They get less rehearsal than the principal cast, they have to keep the lines and (crucially) the blocking straight in their minds while rarely getting the chance to use them, and they’re pinned down to one place for all of a show’s run. But even without star-is-born moments, the job is a terrific opportunity for actors fresh out of school to launch careers. Young reporter Zoe Grossinger talks with some Philadelphia actors who are living the understudy life. — The Philadelphia Inquirer
A Philosopher Asks: Would It Be So Bad If Humans Went Extinct?
What I am asking here is simply whether it would be a tragedy if the planet no longer contained human beings. And the answer I am going to give might seem puzzling at first. I want to suggest, at least tentatively, both that it would be a tragedy and that it might just be a good thing. – The New York Times
New York Times Book Review Editor Responds To Controversy Over Alice Waters’s Book Recommendation
In response to reader queries, Pamela Paul explains why Alice Walker was chosen for the “By the Book” Q&A feature, how the interview was conducted, and why the published feature didn’t include any explanation or context for Walker’s citation of a book and author widely seen as anti-Semitic. — The New York Times
Sydney’s Ambitious Public Art Plan Fights Battles
This week the construction of Cloud Arch, a Junya Ishigami-designed steel archway planned for George Street, was deferred until after the tramline is finished. Originally dubbed “the most significant artwork built in Australia in decades” by Sydney’s lord mayor, Clover Moore, the council blamed cost blowouts and obstruction by the light rail contractor Acciona. – The Guardian