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How do you join a revolution? Egyptian artist Bahia Shehab says she was too quiet to shout in the streets during the uprising in Cairo, so she started spraying graffiti with the word "no" in Arabic.

Street art that reads "Love is Color"

Maybe you're familiar with art therapy — making art to cope with pain. Philosopher Alain de Botton has a different idea. He thinks just looking at great art can be therapeutic.

Columns

Have we lost sight of ancient virtues like courage, compassion and truth?  Mark Edmundson thinks we have, and he says we'd do well to read Homer, Plato and the ancient sages.

Palestine

Carlos Fraenkel wanted to take philosophy out into the streets, so he met with students at Palestinian and Egyptian universities, and found that Plato, Maimonides and other great philosophers can open up a culture of conversation and debate.

Egypt

Archeologist Eric Cline says a "perfect storm" of calamities led to the collapse of the Late Bronze Age. He points out that we face many of the same challenges today.

broken columns

Renowned classicist Mary Beard says we have lots to learn from Ancient Rome, including insights into how empires rise and fall.

Random balls? Or skill grab?

Jason Rohrer is one of the top game designers in the world. So when the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act came out, he found a loophole. Turns out, its' not all internet gambling games that are against the law. It's only the ones that are subject to chance. He claims that his new online gambling game is all skill.  

A discarded pen of a poet.

Renunciation can be a creative force. American scholar Ross Posnock tells stories of writers, philosophers and artists who've committed "acts of abandonment," leaving careers and creative lives behind. They weren't failures, Posnock says — they were necessary departures that led to creative and intellectual breakthroughs.

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