- By Adam Behr
One of rock’s clichés, originating in a Neil Young song lyric, is that “it’s better to burn out than to fade away”.
- By Ti-han Chang
Since the start of lockdown, more of us have taken to our bicycles, grown our own vegetables and baked our own bread.
For many of us, the forced confinement of lockdown has reiterated the importance of being out and about in nature – along with the benefits it can bring.
With university classrooms and language schools closed because of the pandemic, language students must find new ways to practise and improve.
- By Troy Potter
COVID-19 is changing the way we live. Panic buying, goods shortages, lockdown – these are new experiences for most of us. But it’s standard fare for the protagonists of young adult (YA) post-disaster novels.
Chronicling four generations of two families, Felicity Volk’s Desire Lines is set against landmarks of 20th century Australian history,
In a typical summer, millions of Americans head outdoors to national parks, hiking trails and rivers across the U.S.
Go into any bath and body store and you are sure to find soaps in a huge variety of scents, fragrances, colors, types, sizes, shapes and price ranges. How are these soaps different from the nationally advertised brand name soaps? How are they different from each other? What really makes a soap a "good" soap?
Less obvious are the subtle psychological drivers behind our collective online shopping splurge.
Franchises like The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and The Witcher often lead us to think of fantasy as a pastoral genre: a medieval landscape filled with knights riding on quests, enchanted woodland and isolated castles.
In the United States, churches in at least four states have filed lawsuits about the banning of religious gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Born Richard Wayne Penniman and nicknamed for his smallness as a child, Little Richard was one of 12 children. He developed his charismatic singing, piano and performance styles playing in black and Pentecostal churches.
Mary Shelley’s neglected later book The Last Man (1826) has the most to say to us in our present moment of crisis and global pandemic.
One of the things you get asked most when people find out that you’re a poet is whether you can recommend something that could be read at an upcoming wedding, or if you know something that might be suitable for a funeral.
People are social creatures. While many of us are making the best of social isolation, we’re much better together than apart.
- By Emma Smith
In recent years the orthodoxy that Shakespeare can only be truly appreciated on stage has become widespread.
- By Elaine Reese
Humans are innately social creatures. But as we stay home to limit the spread of COVID-19, video calls only go so far to satisfy our need for connection.
In her book How Games Move Us (2016), computer games researcher Katherine Isbister writes that her friends and colleagues believe that gaming might numb people’s emotions.
- By Diana Rowan
Knowing what I know now fires me up with enthusiasm to share this truth: there is a brighter way. What you seek, you will find. I want to impart this to all who approach me about their creative issues and anxieties: there are answers to your suffering and your longing.
The #PlayApartTogether campaign has recently been promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO) to encourage people to stay socially connected from home.
- By Tim Riley
Fifty years ago, when Paul McCartney announced he had left the Beatles, the news dashed the hopes of millions of fans, while fueling false reunion rumors that persisted well into the new decade.
In 1722, Daniel Defoe pulled off one of the great literary hoaxes of all time. A Journal of the Plague Year, he called his latest book.
He survived the last great plague in London and the city’s Great Fire. He was imprisoned and persecuted for his religious and political views.