Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Barry Duncan is known as ‘the master palindromist.’ For those unfamiliar with the term, palindromes are words, phrases or sentences that can be read the same way forward and backward, such as ‘race car’ and ‘a man, a plan, a canal, Panama’. Few people are as committed to the form as Duncan, who creates palindromes that range anywhere from two words to a whopping 800 or more. In this charming short from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Duncan works as a bookseller, he details the immense joy he finds in arranging his ‘26 steadfast and faithful collaborators’ into reversible reads.
Video by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Director: Melanie Gonick
video
Personality
A ‘little thief’ turned career criminal recounts a life on the wrong side of the law
5 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Do button-pushing dogs have something new to say about language?
9 minutes
video
Consciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
7 minutes
video
Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
video
Food and drink
The passage of time is a peculiar thing in a 24-hour diner
14 minutes
video
Art
Radical doodles – how ‘exquisite corpse’ games embodied the Surrealist movement
15 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Why Susan listens to recordings of herself speaking a language she no longer remembers
5 minutes
video
Home
How an artist transformed a dilapidated hunting lodge into a house made of dreams
8 minutes
video
Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes