THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR (December 2, 2024): The latest issue features ‘From Atop The Magic Mountain’ – One-Hundred years later, Thomas Mann’s epic remains as prophetic as ever.
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil
Experience the marvel that is night-blooming tobacco By Leigh Ann Henion
In western North Carolina, the mountain growing season is short, and autumn is already tossing yellow-and-red confetti against my windshield as I drive the back roads to my friend Amy’s homestead. Curve after curve, I find locust trees that are a few shades lighter than they were last week. Buckeyes also seem well on their way to change. It is now hard to tell the difference between orange leaves falling and monarch butterfly wings rising. The signs of summer and fall, all intertwining.
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR(June 4, 2024): The latest issue features ‘An Olympian for the Ages’ – Why George Eyser’s feats at the 1904 Games deserve to be celebrated today; Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympian, Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing, new poetry from Ange Mlinko, and more…
Is the convergence of human and machine really upon us?
The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI by Ray Kurzweil
In the fall of 2014, an MIT cognitive scientist named Tomaso Poggio predicted that humankind was at least 20 years away from building computers that could interpret images on their own. Doing so, declared Poggio, “would be one of the most intellectually challenging things … for a machine to do.” One month later, Google released an AI program that did exactly what he’d deemed impossible.
FRANCE 24 English Films (September 7, 2023) – Deep in France’s Burgundy region lies the Boutissaint wildlife park. Within its 400 hectares of forest, several hundred animals roam free: stags, roe deer and boars, which visitors can observe as they wander through this natural setting with very few fences.
The park is the brainchild of the Borione family, which purchased this former priory and its vast abandoned estate in the early 20th century. When it opened in 1968, it was France’s very first wildlife park. FRANCE 24 takes you on a tour.
FRANCE 24 English Films (August 24, 2023) – The Seine is literally the center of life in Paris, flowing right through the heart of the capital. Considered one of the most romantic rivers in the world, the Seine is overflowing with history and is a great way to discover the city of light.
More recently, officials have given the Seine a facelift, making the banks more accessible and improving the quality of the water. Join Florence Villeminot and Genie Godula for this aquatic episode of French Connections Plus where they dive into the wondrous waters of the river Seine.
Great works of literature are sly and powerful beasts that pounce on their readers, grabbing them by the neck and shaking them back and forth. The young Augustine looks like a typical victim of Vergil’s Aeneid. The schoolboy being brought up as a Christian in fourth-century CE North Africa found the first-century BCE epic poem of pagan Rome the most impressive thing in his cultural life to date. Tellingly, his reaction shows no interest in the poem’s theme of individual sacrifice in the name of imperial destiny; rather, into middle age, the great theologian and founder of institutional Catholic monasticism remembered weeping for Dido, who commits suicide after her lover, Aeneas, abandons her at the end of Book IV.
FRANCE 24 English Films (July 18, 2023) – Known as the Wonder of the West, Mont-Saint-Michel looks as if it could have been plucked from a fairytale. The religious sanctuary on France’s Normandy coast turns 1,000 this year.
Since the first stone was laid in 1023, it has been home to monks, monarchs and prisoners; a historic pilgrimage site that welcomes 3 million visitors each year. In this edition we meet some of the people who preserve its magic.
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR – SUMMER 2023 issue: What does Antoni van Leeuwenhoek have to do with Covid? Can a digital restoration of a supposed da Vinci be just as good as the real thing? What was it like to be a young journalist on one of François Truffaut’s sets?
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, in a circa 1680 painting by the Dutch artist Jan Verkolje, famous for his portraits of prominent members of Delft society
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of microorganisms made possible the revolutionary advances in biology and medicine that continue to inform our Covid age
One night in 1677, a grizzled man in a wrinkled linen nightshirt rushed from his bemused wife’s bed with a candle in hand to examine the “remains of conjugal coitus, immediately after ejaculation before six beats of the pulse.” Using the candle to cast a pool of light in his dark study, he put a drop of the liquid into a tiny glass vial he had blown himself, attaching it to the back of a strange-looking device he had also constructed.
What a digital restoration of the most expensive painting ever sold tells us about beauty, authenticity, and the fragility of existence
I got the call late on a summer afternoon. Yanai Segal, an artist I’ve known for years, asked me whether I’d heard of the Salvator Mundi—the painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that was lost for more than two centuries before resurfacing in New Orleans in 2005. I told him that I’d heard something of the story but that I didn’t remember the details. He had recently undertaken a project related to the painting, he said, and wanted to tell me about it. I was eager to hear more, but first I needed to remind myself of the basic facts. We agreed to speak again soon.
FRANCE 24 (May 25, 2023) – In a small village deep in central France, the same family has run the “La Promenade” restaurant for four generations. The story began in 1960, when Lucienne created a small bistro. Then Jacky, the son, took over and won the first Michelin star in 1989.
Today, the grandson Fabrice watches over this mecca of French gastronomy, and now his son Clément is studying for his chef’s diploma. “La Promenade” is a moving family story, whose finest pages are perhaps yet to be written.
FRANCE 24 (May 24, 2023) – Located in France’s Normandy region, the Mont-Saint-Michel is one of the most iconic and photographed places in the country. Every year, the site attracts some 2.5 million visitors.
Built 1,000 years ago, the tidal island and its abbey, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, have stood the test of time and survived through the centuries. Our France 2 colleagues report on some of its secrets, with FRANCE 24’s Guillaume Gougeon.
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