Mostrando títulos en Cultura Popular

What do we think about when we think about play? A pastime? Games? Childish activities? The opposite of work? Think again: If we are happy and well rested, we may approach even our daily tasks in a playful way, taking the attitude of play without the activity of play. So what, then, is play? In Play Matters, Miguel Sicart argues that to play is to be in the world; playing is a form of understanding what surrounds us and a way of engaging with others. Play goes beyond games; it is a mode of being human.

The Quantum Rules applies the laws of physics to explain everything from relationships and human nature to the effects of globalization. It achieves the impossible task of making quantum physics deeply relevant to all listeners - even those with no interest in science. With a lively and engaging tone, author Kunal Das ponders the underlying truths and patterns in our shared and common life experiences, using insights derived from the fundamental laws of physics.

This hilarious part memoir, part manifesto reveals what sets apart the latest generation of young people coming of age in an all-wired, overeducated, and underemployed world. People are obsessed with Ryan O'Connell's blogs. With tens of thousands reading his pieces on Thought Catalog and Vice, watching his videos on YouTube, and hanging on to each and every #dark tweet, Ryan has established himself as a unique young voice who's not afraid to dole out some real talk.

Fifty years after the sexual revolution, we are told that we live in a time of unprecedented sexual freedom: that if anything, we are too free now. But beneath the veneer of glossy hedonism, millennial journalist Rachel Hills argues, we are controlled by a new brand of sexual convention: one that influences all of us - woman or man, straight or gay, liberal or conservative.

NPR's popular new podcast features spirited round-table discussions covering a wild and unpredictable landscape of pop culture subject matter, from the 50th anniversary of Gilligan's Island to "pop culture carbon dating" (why some things age well and others not at all) to the "what's making us happy" segment of the show, which always leaves listeners with a smile.

In Canada, volunteers are raising money for charity by playing marathon stints of Penn & Teller's Desert Bus, probably the worst video game ever created. Across the globe, thousands of viewers tune in to Kurt J. Mac's epic but seemingly pointless voyage towards the outer realms of Minecraft's procedurally-generated world. In Iraq, mothers encourage their children to enter Call of Duty competitions to keep them off the bomb-ravaged streets of Baghdad.

Unsere Zeit: Ein wertvolles Gut! Uhren messen die Zeit physikalisch, doch wir erleben sie ganz anders und unterschiedlich: Etwa in der Langeweile, beim Spiel, im gesellschaftlichen Termingetriebe, in der Echtzeit-Kommunikation. Rüdiger Safranski beschreibt das Spannungsfeld zwischen Vergehen und Beharren und ermuntert uns, Zeitsouveränität zu erobern und zu bewahren - damit nicht nur die Zeit mit uns etwas macht, sondern auch wir etwas aus ihr.

Uhren messen die Zeit physikalisch, doch wir erleben sie ganz anders und unterschiedlich: Etwa in der Langeweile, beim Spiel, im gesellschaftlichen Termingetriebe, in der Echtzeit-Kommunikation. Rüdiger Safranski beschreibt das Spannungsfeld zwischen Vergehen und Beharren und ermuntert uns, Zeitsouveränität zu erobern und zu bewahren - damit nicht nur die Zeit mit uns etwas macht, sondern auch wir etwas aus ihr.

In this audiobook, Limor Shifman investigates Internet memes and what they tell us about digital culture. Shifman discusses a series of well-known Internet memes - including "Leave Britney Alone", the pepper-spraying cop, LOLCats, Scumbag Steve, and Occupy Wall Street's "We Are the 99 Percent". She offers a novel definition of Internet memes: digital content units with common characteristics, created with awareness of each other, and circulated, imitated, and transformed via the Internet by many users.

In the aftermath of World War II, America stood alone as the world's premier military power. Yet its martial confidence contrasted vividly with its sense of cultural inferiority. Still looking to a defeated and dispirited Europe for intellectual and artistic guidance, burgeoning transnational elite in New York and Washington embraced not only the war's refugees but many of their ideas as well, and nothing has proven more pernicious than those of the Frankfurt School and its reactionary philosophy of "critical theory".

Traveling from New York to Los Angeles, Stockholm to Korea, John Seabrook visits specialized teams composing songs in digital labs with novel techniques, and he traces the growth of these contagious hits from their origins in early '90s Sweden to their ubiquity on today's charts. Featuring the stories of artists like Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Rihanna as well as expert songsmiths like Max Martin, Ester Dean, and Dr. Luke, The Song Machine will change the way you listen to music.

Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper delves deeply into Michael Jackson's music and talent. From the artist's early days with the Jackson 5, to his stratospheric success as a solo artist, to "Beat It" and "Thriller", "Bad", and "The Man in the Mirror", to his volatile final years, his attempted comeback, and his untimely death, Knopper explores the beguiling and often contradictory forces that fueled Michael Jackson's genius.

Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls is a manifesto and call to arms for women of all sizes and ages. With smart and sassy eloquence, veteran blogger Jes M. Baker calls on women to be proud of their bodies, fight against fat shaming, and embrace a body-positive worldview to change public perceptions and help women maintain mental health.

Nearly a half century into being a feminist and legal pioneer, something funny happened to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The octogenarian won the Internet. Across America, people who weren't even born when Ginsburg made her name are tattooing themselves with her face, setting her famously searing dissents to music, and making viral videos in tribute.

St. Marks Place in New York City has spawned countless artistic and political movements. Here Frank O'Hara caroused, Emma Goldman plotted, and the Velvet Underground wailed. But every generation of miscreant denizens believes that their era, and no other, marked the street's apex.

Andy Griffith and Don Knotts met on Broadway in the 1950s. When Andy went to Hollywood to film a TV pilot about a small-town sheriff, Don called to ask if the sheriff could use a deputy. The comedic synergy between Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife ignited The Andy Griffith Show, elevating a folksy sitcom into a timeless study of human friendship, as potent off the screen as on.

From her well-remembered New Yorker essays about the financial demands of big-city ambition and the ethereal, strangely old-fashioned allure of cyber relationships to her dazzlingly hilarious riff in Harper's about musical passions that give way to middle-brow paraphernalia, Daum delves into the center of things while closely examining the detritus that spills out along the way. With precision and well-balanced irony, Daum implicates herself as readily as she does the targets that fascinate and horrify her.

Can migrations of birds foretell our future? Do phases of the moon hold sway over our lives? Are there sacred springs that cure the ill? What is the best way to brew a love potion? How do we create mutant humans who regenerate like Wolverine? In Science of the Magical, noted science journalist Matt Kaplan plumbs the rich, lively, and surprising history of the magical objects, places, and rituals that infuse ancient and contemporary myth.

Alternating between personal anecdote, hilarious insight, and smart analysis, Luke Skywalker Can't Read contends that Barbarella is good for you, that monster movies are just romantic comedies with commitment issues, and that Dracula and Sherlock Holmes are total hipsters and, most shockingly, shows how virtually everyone in the Star Wars universe is functionally illiterate.

In A Vulgar Art, Ian Brodie uses a folkloristic approach to stand-up comedy, engaging the discipline's central method of studying interpersonal, artistic communication and performance. Because stand-up comedy is a rather broad category, people who study it often begin by relating it to something they recognize - "literature" or "theatre"; "editorial" or "morality" - and analyze it accordingly. A Vulgar Art begins with a more fundamental observation: Someone is standing in front of a group of people, talking to them directly, and trying to make them laugh.