This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. Rivers, who died in 2014, spoke to Terry Gross in 2010 about the sacrifices she made as a female comedian.
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This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. In 2019, Stern told Terry Gross he was no longer the raunchy shock jock he'd been earlier in his career.
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This year, NPR's interactives and videos focused on everything from teens' relationships with guns to rapid migration in Mongolia. For some joy, Big Bird and friends performed at the Tiny Desk.
(Image credit: Claire Harbage/NPR)
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It’s the end of 2019. The last year of a glorious decade that brought us the iPad, the Ultrabook, wearables, VR, and a fleet of smart home devices. Okay, none of those things happened in 2019, but this past year was still important to the passing decade. This was the year that several infamous services and gizmos headed off into the horizon, or faded into darkness after hanging on far too long.
For 2019, we noticed that some high-profile companies experienced multiple tragic deaths, while other demises seemed to cluster naturally within particularly troubled product categories. Here’s our look at the biggest tech deaths of the year, organized into company or theme.
As Microsoft employees clink glasses and toast the holidays, it’s easy to see why. Business is booming, share prices are at an all-time high. Even the future looks bright—with dual-screen Surface devices, and maybe a revised Windows waiting in the wings.
But was 2019 really all that great? Name any feature that you remember from the two Windows feature updates. Are the new Surfaces worth the upgrade?
Okay, so maaaaybe Microsoft’s 2019 was more of a mixed bag. Join us as we take a look at the highlights and lowlights of Microsoft’s year, with a few “what was that?!” moments in there, too.
From J. Lo to Keanu, baseball GIFs to Phoebe Waller-Bridge's masterpiece, here are 50 great cultural moments — from TV, movies, theater, books, podcasts and more — from the year that was.
(Image credit: Steve Schofield/Amazon Prime Video)
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Our kids' books columnist, Juanita Giles, gave her daughter Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story for Christmas; she says the book's depiction of food and history mirrors her family's experiences.
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Android phones didn’t just break the bank in 2019, they also broke speed, photography, and display records. Samsung and OnePlus delivered handsets that were as groundbreaking as they were gorgeous; Google pushed the limits of smartphone photography; and LG continued to march to its own drum, crafting some truly unique beats along the way.
But for all their strengths, there’s no perfect Android phone. So this year, I decided to build one. Well, on paper. Without further ado, here’s the 2019 Android Frankenphone, built using the best parts of the best phones of the year.
Rob Schultz/IDG
You can build a killer Android phone with a piece of every great handset released in 2019.
This article was published in issue #7891 of British Journal of Photography. Visit the BJP Shop to purchase the magazine here.
Across the range of images produced by Ronan Mckenzie, the arresting stares of her subjects are mesmerising, asserting their autonomy while embodying the photographer’s own artistic vision. That balance is a skill that many image-makers spend a lifetime perfecting, but Mckenzie moved into photography just five years ago in 2014, while working as an assistant stylist. Even though she has no formal training in the medium, her retail jobs honed an ability to prioritise the people in front of her, helping them feel visible and comfortable with themselves in her presence.
In 2018, Mckenzie’s ability to connect with sitters prompted inclusive fashion brand Universal Standard [above] to approach her about collaborating. “They opened my eyes to the importance of representing real people, making me re-evaluate the way I photograph and face my own prejudice in order to see the beauty in others,” she says.
When the brand released their Foundation collection, and collaborated with high-fashion label Rodarte, [below] Mckenzie photographed the campaigns, publishing images of a truly diverse series of women wearing the apparel. “The beauty of commercial work for me, even though it’s not always where you can be the most free, is that it impacts so many people on a daily basis, so it has the power to change people’s perspective – even if it’s subconscious.”
In an editorial story for Luncheon Magazine, titled Present, Finally, [below] Mckenzie again cast a range of people across generations, creating a group that inspired her personally. For the first time, she was given the space in a reputable fashion context to showcase a narrative that was important to her. “In this story, I felt I could finally take up the space I wanted to without having to explain myself,” she says.
This everyday storytelling extends to her work with Our Place, a mission-driven cookware brand based in LA. For a recent campaign, Mckenzie created beautiful images of designer Akua Shabaka cooking and eating at home with her family. The photographs feel like personal snapshots with an editorial flare, again bound together by the carnal gaze that Mckenzie is a master at illuminating.
In addition to campaigns and editorial shoots, from May to November 2019, Mckenzie exhibited a project she created in response to Andrea Levy’s Small Island, and Helen Edmundson’s adaptation of the novel for the National Theatre [below]. The images, striking in their cinematic edge, colours and clothing, respond to the postwar journey of Caribbean men and women between 1948 and 1971. “For me, this project was about highlighting the importance of diversity and community, and the importance of supporting each other to make sure we are all valued,” she says. “It’s about respecting where your neighbours come from, and appreciating their place in England as valid.”
Mckenzie’s momentum shows no signs of slowing any time soon. She hopes to push her creativity further by exploring new mediums, emboldening her storytelling with film, objects and exhibitions. Her first solo show since A Black Body in 2015 is scheduled for 2020, and will confirm her name as one that’s here to stay. “Collaboration is so important, but so is the establishment of individuality,” she reflects. “I believe that there is space for everyone, and as much as I love photography, I’m ready to explore other things on my own now too.”
Many of us fell in love with Excel as we delved into its deep and sophisticated formula features. Because there are multiple ways to get results, you can decide which method works best for you. For example, there are several ways to enter formulas and calculate numbers in Excel.
5 ways to enter formulas
1. Manually enter Excel formulas:
Long Lists: =SUM(B4:B13)
Short Lists: =SUM(B4,B5,B6,B7) or=SUM(B4+B5+B6+B7). Or, place your cursor in the first empty cell at the bottom of your list (or any cell, really) and press the + sign, then click B4; press the plus sign again and click B5; and so on to the end; then press Enter. Excel adds up this list you just “pointed to” as =+B4+B5+B6+B7.
We’ve counted down our ten most-read articles of 2019 and found that health and medicine, physics—and of course animals—were fan-favorite topics this year.
Adulting in the 2010s involved some shade, some tea, especially if you were hanging with your bae, rocking some mom jeans in that selfie. We round up the slang that stuck in this decade.
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Ellison Nguyen, 6, wrote the book, and Hien Bui-Stafford, 13, illustrated it. They got a little help from Pulitzer Prize-winner Viet Nguyen (Ellison's dad) and cartoonist Thi Bui (Hien's mom).
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The creators of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child designed their show so it wouldn't look like the world Potterheads knew from the movies. They've documented that process in a new book, The Journey.
(Image credit: Courtesy of Scholastic)
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Every year, BJP-online asks a selection of industry leaders to recommend the photobooks, exhibitions, and projects that stood out to them most. Throughout December and January, we will be sharing their nominations for the Best of 2019.
Yumi Goto is an independent curator, editor and researcher who specialises in photography made in areas of conflict, natural disasters and human rights abuses. Based in Tokyo, Japan, Goto often works with human rights advocates, NGOs, and international photo festivals and events throughout Asia.
To mark the end of 2019, Goto selects five artists who caught her eye at workshops, festivals and fairs around the world. “They have all engaged with their subjects to such an extent that the work has affected their lives,” Goto comments. “The distance between the photographer and subject has diminished so that the photographer is able to have a better understanding, which is then reflected in their work.”
Below, we introduce Goto’s selection of five remarkable photographers in 2019.
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Arun Vijai Mathavan
Millennia of Oppression
Engineer turned photographer Arun Vijai Mathavan’s project, Millennia of Oppression, is an evocative depiction of the lives of Dalit workers in India, the people who are responsible for dissecting corpses during post-mortem examinations.
“In India, the reality of this process is shockingly different from our perception. In almost all hospitals, a range of tasks, sometimes even the opening of the torso with the Y-incision, is done by semi-literate, low-level staff,” Mathavan explains. “My project proposes to shine a light on this unknown, shrouded world and to look at how this caste evolves during the time which takes shape in new practices”.
Millennia of Oppression was on show at this year’s Chennai Photo Biennale in eastern India, where the 30-year-old photographer exhibited 50 images that capture the lesser known side of death in India.
Gao Shan’s Paris Photo/Aperture award-winning photobookThe Eighth Day, takes its title from a personal history: the day Shan was adopted by his mother. According to the photographer’s afterword, his relationship with his adopted mother was characterised by coldness and indifference, but recently he has begun to regard her as more than just a presence in his life. Using his camera not for cold observation but as an active tool in their relationship, Shan presents an intimate photographic document of their lives.
For the last decade, Argentinian photographer Seba Kurtis has been applying a personal and experimental approach to his continued exploration of immigration, partly instigated by the years he spent living as an illegal immigrant in Spain. His first book, Drowned (2011), was a series of sea-weathered negatives, echoing the tragic experiences of those who attempt to cross from Africa’s north-west coast to the Canary Islands. Heartbeat (2012) was an investigation into the immigration detection systems implemented by the UK Border Police — a human heartbeat detector.
In his latest series, ParaÃso (2018), Kurtis captures the landscape where refugees arrive after the journey across the Mediterraean Sea. Using glitter and abstract shapes in the place of statistics and graphs, Kurtis redraws the death toll of those who attempt this dangerous route.
In 2015, Liang Yingfei’s close friend, H, was sexually assaulted during a charity hiking trip. When she reported it three years later in July 2018, it instigated the beginning of the me too movement in the charity sector, encouraging more people to come forward with their experiences.
Behind the scar is Yingfei’s attempt to record and present the traumatic experiences of sexual abuse, and the impact of it on future life and work. The project is divided into three parts. The first is a collaboration with H, using words and polaroids to record life after abuse. Part two is a reconstruction of memories by other victims, and part three is a video piece in which strangers read out collected experiences about sexual abuse. “I hope this can serve as an entry into the hearts of sexual assault victims, while the viewers will develop a more comprehensive understanding of sexual assault through empathy,” writes Yingfei.
Sandler and writer/directors Josh and Benny Safdie discuss their manic thriller about a jewelry store owner. Critic David Bianculli says The Good Place was the best show on TV this year.
(Image credit: A24)
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Holidays are good for storytelling and games, so we're combining the two. Writers Kwame Alexander and Alissa Nutting join NPR's Scott Simon for a round-robin story about a cranky little boy.
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The title of Kiley Reid's debut novel works on multiple levels — it can refer to chronological age or political era — and those different meanings echo throughout this funny, uncomfortable book.
(Image credit: Petra Mayer/NPR)
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Every year, BJP-online asks a selection of industry leaders to recommend the photobooks, exhibitions, and projects that stood out to them most. Throughout December and January, we will be sharing their nominations for the Best of 2019.
Writer and curator Bruno Ceschel is the founder of Self Publish, Be Happy (SPBH), an organisation that collects and publishes contemporary photobooks by emerging practitioners. Established in 2010, SPBH has played an important part in amplifying the self-publishing movement, organising international events and workshops and collecting more than 2,000 photobooks and zines in their studio in Dalston, London.
In 2012, Ceschel established SPBH Editions, publishing photobooks by photographers such as Cristina De Middel, Lorenzo Vitturi and Lucas Blalock, and in 2015, he published Self Publish, Be Happy: A DIY Photobook Manual and Manifesto with Aperture.
Below, Ceschel picks out his highlights from 2019.
—
Liz Johnson Artur
2019 has been an amazing year for photographer Liz Johnson Artur: a shrine in the Grace Wales Bonner’s ‘A Time for New Dreams’ exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries, a collaboration with Rihanna’s Fenty, and solo shows at the Brooklyn Museum in NYC and South London Gallery. Her powerful London exhibition ‘If you know the beginning, the end is no trouble’ organically collected Liz’s extensive documentary work of the lives of black people from across the African Diaspora and presented within a rich programme of events rooted in the black community of Peckham.
Some books create social spaces, and The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion by Antwaun Sargent does exactly that. In showcasing the work of black photographers that operates within fashion and art, Sargent maps out and names a group of artists that is changing contemporary photographic language and creates a community around it.
Finally in 2019 two major shows, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Tate Modern in London (a third one is forthcoming at the Getty Museum in LA), have claimed Dora Maar’s place in the history of photography. Curator Amanda Maddox’s nearly ten years research successfully gathered together the forgotten (ignored?) vast production of one of the most eclectic and innovative artists of the 20th century.
I’m a sucker for podcasts so when I discovered Magic Hour, a podcast in which Jordan Weitzman interviews photographers about their work and life, I went on a binge (there are many episodes available). Jordan geeky, excitable and informal interviews are enlightening and entertaining.
The broadcaster, who typically wore a cowboy hat, was a pioneer of the radio genre that prized irreverence and caustic wit, and pushed back against political correctness.
(Image credit: Richard Drew/AP)
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This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. Terry Gross spoke to Miranda in 2017 about how his "mixed tape" musical came together.
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This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. In 2011, Terry Gross spoke to the creators of South Park about their Broadway hit.
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This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. Terry Gross spoke to Miranda in 2017 about how his "mixed tape" musical came together.
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This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. In 2011, Terry Gross spoke to the creators of South Park about their Broadway hit.
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We’ve been putting together these “Games You Might Have Missed” lists for a long time now, trying to surface deserving indies you might’ve overlooked. It gets harder every year though—to narrow it down, I mean. There are just so many games. We logged over 300 review codes in 2019, and that’s still a tiny fraction of what actually released. Even shouting out 30 indie games a year doesn’t feel like enough anymore.
All we can do is try, though. Below, you’ll find 15 fantastic indie games from the second half of 2019. Rhythm games, visual novels, frogs and alligators, skateboarding—it’s a rich and varied cross-section of the industry, and I’m certain you’ll find something worth taking a chance on. Though if you don’t...well, there’s our list of great indie games from the first half of the year as well, not to mention our Game of the Year list. That’s like, 45 great games from 2019.
Independent filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie have been trying to make their thriller, starring Adam Sandler as a New York jeweler, for nearly a decade. Here's what they've made leading up to it.
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This adaptation of attorney Bryan Stevenson's book about a wrongly condemned black man dramatizes that case while offering an unflinching look at the death penalty.
(Image credit: Jake Giles Netter/Warner Bros.)
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This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. Terry Gross spoke to the three-time Oscar winner in 2012 and again in 2016.
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This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. Terry Gross spoke to the Star Wars star in November 2016, just a month before Fisher's death.
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This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. Terry Gross spoke to the three-time Oscar winner in 2012 and again in 2016.
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This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. Terry Gross spoke to the Star Wars star in November 2016, just a month before Fisher's death.
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With a near “all-screen” design that barely has a bezel, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 is one of the prettiest phones we’ve ever seen, but it’s also very fragile. Even if you opt for the smaller model over the monster 6.7-inch version, you’re going to want to buy a case for your brand new thousand-dollar handset. We’re here to help you pick out one that will fit well, keep it safe, and of course, look good. We’ll keep updating this list as we test new cases, but here are our favorite picks so far.
Update 12/26/19:Added cases from Spigen, Speck, and Skinit.
Microsoft Word offers a variety of cursive and handwriting fonts (or typefaces, which is the more accurate name for the different font styles), and they're actually provided by the operating system rather than the Office version. For this story, we'll discuss the cursive and handwriting fonts available in Windows 10.
Windows 10 currently has twenty Cursive (or “Script” typefaces), two Handwriting typefaces, three Blackletter typefaces, one Greek-Roman, and once Curly or Fancy typeface. Typefaces often fall into multiple categories; for example, Script and Handwriting typefaces are also classified as Calligraphy, Fancy, and Decorative. The Blackletter typefaces are also called Old English and Medieval; and the Greek Roman typefaces crossover with the Roman, Serif, and Gothic typefaces. (Windows limits its categories to Text, Informal, Display, and Symbol). (Feeling creative? You can make your own fonts in Windows 10, too!)
The post-Christmas return lines are usually reserved for ill-fitting sweaters, ugly ties, and maybe even a duplicate Xbox game. But this year you might want to consider returning something a little more valuable: that new Google Pixel 4 Santa brought you. Why? Because any other phone you exchange it for will be better.
I don’t say this lightly. In my review of the Pixel 4 XL, I gave it 3.5 stars and wrote, “It falls well short of nailing a top-tier phone experience.” But after another month with it, I’m now thinking I was too generous. In no uncertain terms, the Pixel 4 is the worst Pixel phone I’ve used and one of the most frustrating and confounding Android phones ever at any price. It’s buggy as hell, its battery life sucks, its update schedule flouts expectations... and those are only some of my objections.
Delving into a post-apocalyptic world, Rick Pushinsky’s latest photobook is a satirical story about an intergalactic invasion that presents a unique interpretation of traditional gender roles. Named after the 1982 Blade Runner character Basic Pleasure Model, the project employs a light-hearted approach, embracing the trashy edge of science fiction, but with gentle nudges of symbolism.
The London-based fine art and editorial photographer is known for previous projects including Songs of Innocence and Experience: A Study Guide and Just Not Kosher, as well as for editorial commissions for the likes of Vogue, Tatler and Architectural Digest. But Pushinsky’s latest project is unlike his previous work. “I realised that if you’re going to do another project, it has to be something you’re innately passionate about and one of the things I’m really into is watching trashy big budget science fiction,” he says.
Basic Pleasure Model pursues an eclectic interpretation of the genre’s traditional heroic male characters and ultimately alludes to society’s rife gender stereotypes. Explaining his inspiration, Pushinsky says, “I wanted to do an evolving philosophical novel, like Kurt Vonnegut, who I liked reading in my teens, and used sci-fi as a way to talk about other issues, but most of these films don’t do that – they just confirm existing values.”
The photobook follows a traditional Hollywood film plot, but has an alternative antithetic ending to what would be expected. Divided into six chapters as “a way to enforce awareness of a structured narrative without having any text”, it captures the life of an alpha male being targeted by galactic explosives. Playing this role is comedian and 2017 BAFTA award winning actor Adeel Akhtar. “I approached him with the idea and he seemed into it which I was pleasantly surprised by, but he’s done lots of comedy and quite absurd things in the past, so it’s not exactly outside of his comfort zone,” says Pushinsky.
Throughout, the photobook alludes to traditionally mascluine tasks like fishing, fighting, war, karate and hunter-gathering. One of the images in the collection features the man’s hands shackled by sausages, which could be interpreted as a peculiar artistic choice, however “it is just a comical representation of all things traditionally masculine and a funny way of imprisoning him,” Pushinsky explains.
In the last two chapters the man reinvents himself to take on evil, clad in his new attire of a grey marl suit, wellington boots, a karate belt and armed with laser-shooting fishing poles. This seemingly bodes well for the character in the final chapter as we witness his heroic win and see the aftermath of the new post-apocalyptic world. However, rather than promoting a cliched sci-fi celebratory ending, the man “is left unfulfilled because ultimately the difficulties that he has are not outside but inside”.
Shooting the collection was, to some dismay, not in a galaxy far, far away, but rather on the Greek island, Milos and Pembrokshire and Seaford in the UK. “I scouted places which had landscape that would sit well without looking like different locations,” says Pushinsky.
For those looking for a deeper meaning, Basic Pleasure Model equips you with a thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be masculine in contemporary society and how traditional stereotypes have seeped into every aspect of life, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. Nevertheless, this photo collection contains a layer of significant humour and the bizarre, which is impossible to not notice.
The laptop world is a-changing. New CPUs and GPUs—yes, mobile discrete GPUs—are bringing forth laptops that are thinner, lighter, and faster than ever, even gaming laptops. And the advances keep coming: We first glimpsed Intel’s 10th-generation, 10nm laptop CPU first in Taipei at Computex, and we just got our first 10th-gen benchmarks as it rolls out officially. It will coexist with the 9th generation of Core mobile processors, and mobile GeForce GTX 1650 and 1660 Ti graphics. Stay tuned for new models we bring in for review.
Latest laptop reviews
Catch up on the latest models we’ve tested here, including:
Producer Amy Pascal says Greta Gerwig's new film adaptation does "a beautiful job of making all of these girls as complicated as Louisa May Alcott wanted them to be."
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To celebrate Christmas, Fresh Air listens back to a concert given by the late singer and actress on Feb. 11, 1997. Clooney spoke about her childhood and working with Bing Crosby and Billy Strayhorn.
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The holiday tradition continues. Writer David Sedaris reads from his "Santaland Diaries," recounting his time spent working as a Macy's department store elf named Crumpet.
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