Centre of the world Part II by Anthony Ham Amsterdam, September 12th 2021—Ag Mohamed Ali initiated travellers into Timbuktu’s secrets. He took them to the private family libraries that still held manuscripts from Timbuktu’s golden age – biographies of the Prophet Muhammad on pages of gold leaf and scientific treatises from the great Islamic scholars of…
Read more
Part I by: Anthony Ham Amsterdam, September 12th 2021– As the sun neared the horizon, before the day’s final call to prayer, Azima Ag Mohamed Ali began his nightly walk through the sandy streets of Timbuktu in Mali. Along the way, first one, then a second friend fell into step alongside him. The greetings continued…
Read more
Source: The Guardian – Jamie Waters According to addiction expert Dr Anna Lembke, our smartphones are making us dopamine junkies, with each swipe, like and tweet feeding our habit. So how do we beat our digital dependency? Dr Anna Lembke, a world-leading expert on addiction, is concerned about my “phone problem”. During our interview I…
Read more
A Journey to the End of Time How will it all end? This experience takes us on a journey to the end of time, trillions of years into the future, to find out what the ultimate fate of our planet and our universe might be. We begin in 2019 and travel exponentially through time to…
Read more
Photographer Sebastião Salgado has been honored for environmental work in Brazil, where he revived the lost forests of his childhood. The German Publishers and Booksellers Association said his work promotes biodiversity. Endless rows of saplings stretch peacefully up toward the blue sky over the village of Aimores, in Brazil’s southeastern state of Minas Gerais. Here…
Read more
Fifty Years ago Ammsterdam, Agust 4th 2021– It was 50 years ago but Zhang Xielin still remembers vividly how a shaggy-haired American table tennis player stepped onto the Chinese team’s bus, a chance encounter which would shape history. It was the world championships in Nagoya, Japan, and Glenn Cowan mistakenly hopped in with Zhang and…
Read more
Journalist Wim Kayzer interviews Martha Nussbaum. The American philosopher studied at New York University and Harvard. Later she wrote books like The Fragility of Goodness. She talks about her youth, the relationship with her parents, Sophocles, Aristotle and philosophy as comfort. Dutch Journalist Wim Kayzer interviews Martha Nussbaum. The American philosopher studied at the university…
Read more
On Sex, sexual desires and more by Persis Bekkering/nrc Amsterdam, July 29th 2021–Twelve years ago Maggie Nelson wrote Bluets, something between poetry, autobiography and philosophical treatise. The book, about the color blue, became a cult hit, which has now been translated. “The book is also about desire, about being horny, and being frustrated.” No, the…
Read more
Grand mural projects by Jeremy Musson Amsterdam, 23 July 2021–In her book, Lydia Hamlett unpacks the literary, cultural and political significance of “the animated wall” Mural paintings are some of the most ambitious works of art commissioned by British patrons during the 17th and early 18th centuries. From Rubens’ work at Banqueting House, Whitehall, to…
Read more
Recent Comments