Arts & Culture

The year 2008 saw the publication of Aravind Adiga's novel The White Tiger and the release of the film Slumdog Millionaire, two stories about young men escaping poverty and defying the odds against the backdrop of a rapidly globalizing India.

"Bob Ross was wrong," grumbles musician/actor John Lurie, in a voice grown so gravelly it's like listening to a rock tumbler. It's late at night, he's bent over the watercolor he's painting in his home on what he only refers to as "a tiny island in the Caribbean." Between each sentence he delivers to the camera, the rhythmic peeping of tree-frogs outside his window reasserts itself.

"Everyone can't paint," he continues. "It's not true."

Who are you?

Smashing the patriarchy is hard work.

The Doctors Blackwell, by historian Janice P. Nimura, profiles two sisters who faced what was a daunting lack of choices for 19th century women. They achieved a series of near-impossible feats to become America's first and third certified women medical doctors. Nimura's account is not only an exhaustive biography, but also a window into egregious 19th century medical practices and the role these sisters played in building medical institutions.

The morning after her powerful performance of "The Hill We Climb" at the inauguration of President Biden, poet Amanda Gorman hit another high point: She took the top two slots on Amazon's bestseller list — for titles that won't be out until the fall.

For much of history, human beings needed to be physically active every day in order to hunt or gather food — or to avoid becoming food themselves. It was an active lifestyle, but one thing it didn't include was any kind of formal exercise.

Daniel Lieberman is a professor in the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard. He says that the notion of "getting exercise" — movement just for movement's sake — is a relatively new phenomenon in human history.

The presidential inauguration ceremony on Wednesday looked a lot different than in previous years. Masks were a reminder of a pandemic still raging. The ceremonial parade was canceled and some customs went virtual.

We've seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed,

It can never be permanently defeated.

This essay contains major spoilers for Promising Young Woman and other works including the film Hard Candy and the series I May Destroy You, as well as discussion of sexual assault.

How do you like your revenge served on screen – via torture? In flames? A massive bloodbath?

How about ... via text message?

During the Cold War, the movies we saw from the Eastern bloc were steeped in politics. They critiqued, more or less obliquely, life under communism. More than 30 years later, the Berlin Wall is long gone, but the films from Eastern Europe haven't lost their political edge. These days, they're critical of post-communist societies that remain harsh and oppressive.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are about to receive an Indian-style welcome to Washington, D.C.

A group of volunteers are putting together a kolam, a traditional South Indian art form used as a sign of welcome, in the nation's capital in honor of the incoming president and vice president. Using 1,800 pieces submitted from the public, the volunteers are assembling a kolam of over 2,500 square feet.

"A lot of my stories are often based on several things," Nnedi Okorafor told NPR in 2016, "but their foundation is in the stories of the women and girls around me and also within myself." Okorafor was born in the United States, to Igbo parents from Nigeria, and her roots have unspooled themselves throughout her body of work — which has won the highest honors in the field of speculative fiction, including the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy Awards — while nourishing a fre

On Jan. 6, rioters broke into the U.S. Capitol building and disrupted democracy in action — in the name of saving the United States of America, so-called land of the free, from an election that was not stolen, as they claimed, but free and fair.

In the 1840s, Elizabeth Blackwell was admitted to a U.S. medical school — in part because the male students thought her application was part of an elaborate prank. She persisted and got her degree, becoming the first American woman to do so. A few years later, her younger sister Emily followed in her footsteps, earning her own medical degree from the institution that would become Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.