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The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
2mins
A conductor has to allow his face to show the character of the music. “Sometimes your face looks more serious, sometimes it looks more animated, sometimes it looks more pensive. […]
3mins
An orchestra has a momentum as it plays. Its flow can be affected and redirected, but the conductor must do it in an natural way to avoid jarring turns.
3mins
A conductor is a motivator—his main job is to “bring everybody together and to get them to cooperate.”
4mins
One of the most important skills a conductor must have is the ability to really focus. Gilbert says the confidence that comes from being well-prepared helps him get in the […]
4mins
The conductor describes what he was thinking and feeling during his first performance with the New York Philharmonic.
4mins
The conductor tries to make music as honest and natural as possible—but that doesn’t mean he keeps himself out of it. Gilbert says composers don’t necessarily know the best way […]
3mins
The idea of showing the tempo to help musicians play together is basic—but conducting so much more than that. It’s about inspiring them and making the musicians feel that there’s […]
31mins
A conversation with the music director of the New York Philharmonic.
n n If you want reliable, world-class journalism, you could do worse than The Economist. This London-based weekly magazine excels in reporting of the respectably serious kind. Serious, as in […]
. n . n American cities are gridded, and thus easily readable and navigable. Their Old World counterparts are older, messier and much more disorienting. That is the conventional wisdom. […]
n . n “No, I already understand how to copy and paste,” says the bearded man on his mobile to some kind of computer helpline. “What I want to do […]
n . n “And if I ever have a son, I think I’m gonna name him… n Bill or George! Anything but Sue! I still hate that name!” n (Johnny […]
n n n Every disaster is always bigger than the last one. Newspapers and tv anchors have to say that, don’t they? Otherwise it wouldn’t be news. But those slick-covered […]
. n n n n n To my admittedly vague recollection, The Streets of San Francisco was a mid-Seventies tv series very appropriately named after its main character. I was too […]
. . . The exemplary specimen of what were labelled, in the early 1980s, the ‘chattering classes’, was Islington Man (*). Both terms described a certain type of city-dwelling British […]
California's varied landscape has stood in for half the world in Hollywood movies. Here is Paramount Studios' 1927 map of international filming locations, all set in California.
Not merely a nice flower, but also a political tool
The only fictional map to feature prominently in the Three Stooges body of work
“Paula” is the emblem of the western world's most populous sub-nation
We’ve discussed the Ancient Greeks’ snowglobe vision of the Universe(#288), tackled the far-out theories of the Hollow Earth (#85), and yet managed to be surprised by the absurdity of the square […]