One of the many utopian groups that started during the late 19th century and early 20th century was the House of David—perhaps the first cult to become a pop culture sensation. Their compound in Benton Harbon, Michigan had an amusement park and a zoo; they had a baseball team that once played an exhibition game against Babe Ruth and the Yankees, and they had bands—highly regarded, touring bands. Here's Henry Sapoznik—the director of the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture here at the University of Wisconsin—on the mythology and music of the House of David.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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People who like baseball call it "the thinking person’s game," but for the first 100 years, baseball was governed by a surprisingly limited range of critical thinking. Decisions were made by insiders, the current and former players who spent a lifetime around the diamond, and did things mostly one way: the way they've always been done. But in the last 3 or 4 years, that storehouse of common knowledge—much of which was kept guarded in a true "old boy's club"—has been cracked wide open. Now the game isn't driven by intuition, it's driven by data. And the math nerds who rode the bench in Little League—if they played at all—are now telling pro ballplayers what to do. Journalist Travis Sawchik tells Steve Paulson the story.
Seduction seems like a dirty word these days. In our era of frankness, hook-ups and FWBs, why bother seducing someone?
Betsy Prioleau says charm is an endangered, misunderstood and useful art.
Sara Nelson tells Anne Strainchamps what publishers can do to make a book a best-seller and why the actual number of copies sold is a state secret.
Filmmaker Werner Herzog is obsessive about many things, including walking. Listen to find out why Werner walks.
Siva Vaidhyanathan is the author of “Copyrights and Copywrongs.” He talks with Jim Fleming about the history of copyright and says it was intended to preserve future creativity.
Performance artist Tim Miller focuses on dimensions of his life as a gay man in his work.
African Genre Fiction is breaking the mold of African literature. And “Broken Monsters” certainly does that. It is a crime novel written by a white South African that is set in Detroit.
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