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Although his master’s thesis on the topic was rejected by the University of Chicago’s anthropology department, it’s hard to discount the acuity of the US writer Kurt Vonnegut’s theory of ‘story shapes’. This archival video features Vonnegut using a chalkboard and his famous deadpan wit to map out three highly familiar narrative arcs that seem to have lost none of their popularity despite countless iterations. He addressed story shapes at greater length in his essay collection A Man Without a Country (2005). The US graphic designer Maya Eilam later adapted his archetypes into a series of handy infographics, which can be viewed at her website.
Image from A Man Without a Country
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Food and drink
Local tensions simmer amid a potato salad contest at the Czech-Polish border
14 minutes
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Technology and the self
A filmmaker finds a tactile beauty in the creation of her prosthetic leg
11 minutes
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Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
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War and peace
A war meteorologist’s riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster
6 minutes
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Technology and the self
How the magic of photography brought Victorian England closer to the spirit realm
16 minutes
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Neuroscience
Dog vision is a trendy topic, but what can we really know about how they see?
11 minutes
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Home
An artist endeavours to bring the Moon down to Earth in a ritual of yearning
5 minutes
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Information and communication
An animation built from road signs is a whirlwind study of flash communication
2 minutes
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Art
Creating art that was aware of itself – and the viewer – made Manet the first modernist
15 minutes