Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
The popular Primitive Technology blog features an anonymous man in Far North Queensland, Australia fashioning tools and structures using only naturally occurring, found materials. In this instalment, he makes a basket trap to catch freshwater prawns, deftly outdoing – or perhaps sending up – the foraged and ‘farm-to-table’ trend in contemporary cuisine. Having trapped a few prawns, he builds a fire and clay pot for cooking into which he drops a sizzling stone to boil them, and then has a small feast with a side of wild yam. To learn more about the step-by-step process while watching, turn on closed captions in the YouTube video player.
Video by Primitive Technology
video
Language and linguistics
The little Peruvian guide to public speaking that conjures up a grandiose world
7 minutes
video
Life stages
What Michelangelo’s late-in-life works reveal about his genius – and his humanness
13 minutes
video
The ancient world
Archeological discoveries animate the life of the warrior queen who took on Rome
6 minutes
video
Biography and memoir
Preserving memories of a Japanese internment camp, and the land where it stood
8 minutes
video
Making
Trek to a remote Himalayan village where artisans craft teapots fit for kings
11 minutes
video
Political philosophy
Beyond the veil – what rules would govern John Rawls’s ‘realistic Utopia’?
6 minutes
video
Stories and literature
To capture grief in poetry is to describe the ineffable. Here’s why Tennyson did it best
8 minutes
video
Childhood and adolescence
The unique fellowship between teens and young puffins on a remote Icelandic island
20 minutes
video
Animals and humans
Why be dragons? How massive, reptilian beasts entered our collective imagination
58 minutes