News
Filipino Coffee Shop Redefines “Hole in the Wall”
No doors, no windows, no seating — just drinks being passed through a gaping opening in a concrete wall.
Viral
Art
Disappointed in the World’s Most Viral Video
I asked myself what makes entertainment media go viral, in particular music videos, these videos that call up some feeling of want or remembrance so that millions of people (or perhaps billions) reach for them again and again.
Film
Looking at Ourselves Through Social Distance Cinema
A one-location movie tills fertile thematic ground for auteurs, celebrities, and ordinary people who explore facets of being alone through film and video — the subtle distinctions between solitude, loneliness, isolation, confinement, paranoia, and sanctuary.
Art
The Last Tourist in Assisi
A writer reflects on Giotto, St. Francis, and what it means to have faith amid a pandemic.
Art
A History of Disease, Faith, and Recovery in Rome
What happens when an epidemic strikes and that profoundly human urge to kiss and touch items thought to be sacred becomes part of the problem?
Art
Livestreams and Spirit in a Time of Pestilence
The emergence of spiritual circles online in the face of COVID-19 strikes me as the opposite of viral — a place to be still in the face of viral turbulence on the streets and in the air, and viral turbulence on social media and the broader internet.
Art
From Viruses to Algorithms, We Are Always Under Threat
What can we learn from the exponential unleashing of viral codes, as they circulate and duplicate beneath the surface of your cultural and physical world?
Art
The Pandemic’s Invisible Agent
Thin as one-thousandth the width of an eyelash, the malign virus appears to us in magnified images as a round glob of genetic material surrounded by a beady shell. The so-called crowns (corona in Latin) on its surface are its means of destruction.
Art
Introducing Our First Sunday Edition, Viral: 🦠From Pandemics to Popularity 🌐
Introducing our new Sunday edition, which will dive into both timely and timeless topics in a multifaceted way. For this first edition, we’ve chosen the theme “Viral.”