On June 5, 1965, Joan Baez played a special concert at the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherd’s Bush, London. Although her fame at the time was newly eclipsed by that of her recently estranged lover Bob Dylan, Baez was very much in her prime.

Very early in his career as a bandleader, Miles Davis developed a reputation for a too-cool persona on stage. Whether turning his back on the crowd or walking offstage while his sidemen soloed, his refusal to cater to audience expectations only enhanced his mystique.

You probably know Mikhail Bulgakov through one of two works: Heart of a Dog, his short novel about the forced transformation of a dog into a human being (comparisons to the grand Soviet project have, indeed, been suggested), or The Master and Margarita, his longer, later novel about a visit paid to Soviet Russia by the devil himself.

“Having others’ poems in our minds and hearts means we’re never really alone.”
—Karen Kovacik, Indiana State Poet Laureate
Youssef Biaz, reciting here, was 16 years old when he was named Poetry Out Loud National Champion. Biaz won a $20,000 award and $500 worth of poetry books for his high school in Auburn, Alabama.

Willie Nelson, America’s iconic country music singer, has logged lots of miles. And, today, he turns 80, with more than 60 studio albums, 10 live albums, and 27 collaborations to his credit.

Sarah Palin didn’t like the 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In a cranky tweet, she wrote: “That #WHCD was pathetic. The rest of America is out there working our asses off while these DC assclowns throw themselves a #nerdprom.” But I have to disagree with America’s most distinguished half-term governor.

The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould famously said that science and religion are “nonoverlapping magisteria”:
The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value.

In 1987, Compuserve begatteth Image Format 87A.
Image Format 87A begatteth Graphics Interchange Format or GIF (rhymes with a certain brand of peanut butter, the video history above helpfully points out).

Considering the possibility of a truly proletarian art, the great English literary critic William Empson once wrote, “the reason an English audience can enjoy Russian propagandist films is that the propaganda is too remote to be annoying.

Put yourself in the mind of an artistic young woman who goes to see Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when it first opens in 1937. Captivated by the film’s groundbreaking cel-based cinematic animation, understanding that it represents the future of the art form, you feel you should pursue a career with a studio yourself.