Carl Jung’s “Red Book”
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung created the psychological theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious. He advocated the scientific exploration of dreams, mythology, religion and art to understand the mind. Yet, unknown to millions of the people who have followed Jung’s work over the decades, Jung developed most of those ideas during a period of intense […]
The Loopy English Art of Changeringing
The English are one of the most endearingly eccentric group of people in earth. This story, which I collected in Country Somerset, looks at changeringing, a world that combines math, music, churchgoing, village fellowship and the elusive “other dimension.” Lots of fun! NPR
The Freedom Riders
The American South was a segregated society 50 years ago. In 1960, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in restaurants and bus terminals serving interstate travel, but African-Americans who tried to sit in the “whites only” section risked injury or even death at the hands of white mobs. In May of 1961, groups of […]
Coney Island Sideshow School
We all love the bizarre, or are at least sufficiently intrigued by the sigh and sound of people eating light bulbs and hammering spikes up their nose to pay good lucre to see it done. Meet Todd Robbins, the man who teaches other people some of the tricks of this ancient trade at his Sideshow […]
The Spiritual Music of Hawaii
Even given its colonial past and present day kitsch, Hawaii remains both an earthly paradise and a place of natural numinous power. This is evident in its variety of spiritual musical idioms. Here is a taste of some of them, culled from a Smithsonian Festival a few years back. Aloha!
Profile: Jules Feiffer
From his “Sick, Sick, Sick” book to the Village Voice, the Phantom Tollbooth, biting political satire and beyond, Jules Feiffer is known for his beautiful simple lines that bring often neurotic characters to life in both funny and heartbreakingly human ways. Here we get a taste of this American treasure in his own words, and […]