Crash Course
The Birth of Off Broadway: Crash Course Theater #47
By the middle of the 20th century, the epicenter of American theater, the Broadway theater district in New York, was getting to be a pretty staid and commercial place. There was a lot of money to be made from prestige plays and dancing...
Crash Course
Synge, Wilde, Shaw, and the Irish Renaissance: Crash Course Theater #36
The Irish Renaissance in the early 20th century included a wealth of new plays written both in Ireland, and by Irish ex-patriots elsewhere. W.B. Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, and J.M. Synge were creating a new national theater of Ireland...
Crash Course
Realism Gets Even More Real: Crash Course Theater #32
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, theater was evolving rapidly in Europe. Impresarios like Georg II, Duke of the Duchy of Saxe Meinengen (in what is now Germany), were pushing theater troupes to new heights of realism. New...
PBS
How Glory Edim's Online Book Club Provides Community For 'Invisible' Black Women
Glory Edim is the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, a book club that has transformed into an online community and literary festival, all celebrating voices that otherwise might not be heard. She talks with Jeffrey Brown about her original...
PBS
Tayari Jones Answers Your Questions About ‘The Street’
Author Tayari Jones wrote the introduction to a new edition of Ann Petry's 1946 novel "The Street," our May pick for the NewsHour-New York Times book club, Now Read This. Jones joins Jeffrey Brown to answer reader questions about the...
PBS
How The First Black Head Of A Major Publishing House Wants To Change The Industry
In the wake of protests against systemic racism in the U.S., many industries are reexamining past practices and facing questions about their own racial biases. One new effort puts a spotlight on the world of publishing. Jeffrey Brown...
PBS
Stephen King wants to reach out and grab you - with his writing
Novelist Stephen King is best known for his works of horror, but he says what scares him the most is not being able to write. Jeffrey Brown spoke with him at the Library of Congress National Book Festival about his latest novel, "End of...
PBS
Author Ann Patchett On What To Read While Staying Home
As Americans stay home to try to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus, we wanted to provide suggestions for how to fill that time. Author Ann Patchett joins Jeffrey Brown to offer book recommendations for this strange time,...
PBS
John Banville Adopts Pen Name, Famous Protagonist to Reboot Chandler's Iconic Crime Series (March 21, 2014)
Irish writer John Banville slips into Raymond ChandlerÂs voice for a new crime novel starring one of the great characters in American fiction: private detective Philip Marlowe. 1950Âs Los Angeles, the femme fatale, Hollywood stars:...
PBS
The Long History Of Presidents As Authors
Journalist and historian Craig Fehrman has written a book called “Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote.” He sits down with John Yang to discuss the long history of presidential writing, the...
TED Talks
TED: How webtoons are changing movies and TV | Hyeonmi Kim
Pop culture is changing thanks to a different kind of storytelling, says digital strategist Hyeonmi Kim. They're called webtoons: comic-like illustrations published in short segments and meant to be read on a smartphone in five to 10...
TED Talks
TED: The revolutionary power of diverse thought | elif Shafak
From populist demagogues, we will learn the indispensability of democracy, says novelist elif Shafak. "From isolationists, we will learn the need for global solidarity. And from tribalists, we will learn the beauty of cosmopolitanism." A...
TED Talks
Chris Bliss: Comedy is translation
Every act of communication is, in some way, an act of translation. Writer Chris Bliss talks about the way that great comedy can translate deep truths for a mass audience.
TED Talks
TED: How I accidentally changed the way movies get made | Franklin Leonard
How does Hollywood choose what stories get told on-screen? Too often, it's groupthink informed by a narrow set of ideas about what sells at the box office. As a producer, Franklin Leonard saw too many great screenplays never get made...
TED-Ed
TED-ED: Beware of nominalizations (AKA zombie nouns) - Helen Sword
Few mistakes sour good writing like nominalizations, or, as Helen Sword likes to call them, zombie nouns. Zombie nouns transform simple and straightforward prose into verbose and often confusing writing. Keep your nouns away from...
TED Talks
TED: The beauty of being a misfit | Lidia Yuknavitch
To those who feel like they don't belong: there is beauty in being a misfit. Author Lidia Yuknavitch shares her own wayward journey in an intimate recollection of patchwork stories about loss, shame and the slow process of...
Crash Course
Florence and the Renaissance: Crash Course European History
The Renaissance was a cultural revitalization that spread across Europe, and had repercussions across the globe, but one smallish city-state in Italy was in many ways the epicenter of the thing. Florence, or as Italians might say,...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: History vs. Augustus - Alex Gendler and Peta Greenfield
His reign marked the beginning of one of history's greatest empires . . . and the end of one of its first republics. Was Rome's first emperor a visionary leader who guaranteed his civilization's place in history, or a tyrant who...
Crash Course
Toni Morrison: Crash Course Black American History #48
Today, Clint Smith will teach you about the legendary writer Toni Morrison. Morrison is best known for her novels which chronicle the experiences of Black Americans throughout history. She was the first Black American Woman to win a...
Crash Course
Arts and Letters of the Harlem Renaissance: Crash Course Black American History
The Harlem Renaissance was one of the richest, most vibrant, and most culturally generative artistic periods in American history and the work that emerged from that period continues to shape the landscape of American arts and letters...
MinuteEarth
How We Make MinuteEarth Videos (Behind the Scenes)
An outline of how we make our videos.
Crash Course
Television Production: Crash Course Film Production
In our final episode of Crash Course Film Production, it's time to take a look at television production and how it differs from feature film production. It's subtle but it has a lot to do with how television shows make money for their...
Crash Course
Langston Hughes & the Harlem Renaissance: Crash Course Literature 215
In which John Green teaches you about the poetry of Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was a poet and playwright in the first half of the 20th century, and he was involved in the Harlem Renaissance, which was a cultural movement among...