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Read more: Modern Folklore: Exploring Miyazaki’s Fantasy World
Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films have transcended cultural boundaries to captivate audiences around the world. Often called Japan’s answer to Walt Disney, Miyazaki has created rich fantasy worlds steeped in Japanese folklore and mythology that nonetheless feel universally accessible. Children and adults from Los Angeles to London find themselves enchanted by forest spirits, witch’s charms, and…
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Read more: Buckminster Fuller: Geometry, Design, and the Imagination
Buckminster Fuller was a thinker who saw patterns where others saw only sky and stone. He became an inventor, architect, and polymath of the Space Age. Fuller famously called our planet “Spaceship Earth,” emphasizing that humanity is a crew on just one ship hurtling through space without an operator’s manual. This poetic metaphor – Earth…
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Read more: How Humans Perceive Time Now AND in the Future
What is time, really? Is it the slow wheel of the seasons, turning winter into spring each year as our ancestors watched the sky? Is it the steady beat of a heart and the rise and fall of the chest as we breathe each second? Or is it the digital numbers flickering on our screens,…
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Read more: Atomic Dreams and Radiant Nightmares: Nuclear Tourism, from Las Vegas to Chernobyl
The year is 1953. In a Nevada desert, before dawn, a crowd of eager onlookers gathered on hotel rooftops and hilltops, wearing protective goggles as if they were theater-goers awaiting the rise of a curtain. The stage, stretching beyond Las Vegas’s neon glow, is a vast expanse of sagebrush and sand. Silence – then a…
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Read more: How the Wild West Conquered Imagination: Buffalo Bill’s Enduring Legacy
William “Buffalo Bill” Cody stood in the center of a grand arena, the crack of a whip echoing under canvas and sky. Around him, a spectacle unfolded: cowboys galloping with wild whoops, Lakota warriors (some of them actual veterans of Little Bighorn) circling in full headdress, and the thunder of hooves as bison charged across…
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Read more: Art and Science: Three Celebrity Geniuses
We often draw a sharp line between art and science, imagining on one side the free-spirited artist and on the other the meticulous scientist. Yet history and human creativity frequently defy this division. In truth, the same spark that drives a musician to compose a melody or an actress to inhabit a role can drive…
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Read more: The Samurai Crab – Evolution, Myth, and the Face in the Shell
On the shores of Japan, there lives a little crab with a big reputation. Its shell, rugged and textured, bears a striking pattern that to human eyes looks uncannily like a face – not just any face, but the fierce visage of an ancient samurai warrior. Bulging eyes, a furrowed brow, a grimacing mouth: the…
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Read more: The Rise and Fall of Roadside Attractions
In the golden age of the American highway, before fast interstates stitched the coasts together in unbroken asphalt, travelers could find magic on the margins of the road. Neon-lit giants and oddball museums rose from cornfields and deserts, luring families out of their cars to stretch their legs and imaginations. These were the roadside attractions…
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Read more: Meltdown: Ocean Climate, Politics, Trade Routes
In the far north, where the world’s oceans meet the polar ice, a profound transformation is underway. The Arctic—once sealed by thick, unyielding sheets of ice—is thawing. Summer by summer, the white expanse that crowned our planet is shrinking, revealing blue water where there was none before. Where explorers of old once dreamed of a…
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Read more: Angkor Wat: Temple of the Flooded Forest
Every year, monsoon rains drench the plains of Cambodia. Rivers swell and burst their banks, turning fields into temporary lakes. To most ancient cities, such seasonal flooding would be a curse, a destructive force washing away homes and crops. Yet at Angkor Wat, the deluge was not an enemy to be feared but a heartbeat…
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Read more: Inventing New Gods and Reimagining Old
Despite living in an age of scientific marvels and secular philosophies, humanity’s fascination with gods and the divine has not vanished – it has merely shape-shifted. We continue to invent new gods, even as we reinterpret the old ones to find a place for them in our modern lives. This enduring phenomenon raises a compelling…
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Read more: The Spectacle of Evolution
In the late 20th century, philosophers warned of a coming Spectacle – a world where reality would be eclipsed by images and appearances. They saw modern life turning into an immense show, a perpetual carnival of impressions. In this spectacle, everything that was directly lived began to move into representation, as one thinker famously put…
