From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We've had an explosion of platforms that have atomized the delivery and consumption of music, and I'm really for that- it's democratized music. Previously, there were a lot of gatekeepers that controlled how you were supposed to listen to music… that's all gone now.
Hip-hop gives a ground-level view of what it might mean to live under what are nearly warlike conditions in communities that face a myriad of daunting circumstances.
This is why today women account for a mere 0.5% of recorded history.
The moment you send Billy Connolly, Lenny Henry and Victoria Wood out somewhere to make an appeal – they are representatives of 'normal people' perhaps in some ways more than pop stars.... Comedians are a kind of humdrum kind of celebrity, and as such I think they're very good at evoking empathy.
We're also at a time where political culture has become popular culture – in other words, it's become a central talking point for everyone… it's become the water cooler conversation – and political comedy and satire have really come to the fore.
art has always played a role in revolution, evolution and change. Art has always been a great changing force, the great common denominator, and a force to help people understand the world we live in, and the people within that world.
He was playing it and people were dancing. They didn't need to know who the band was, they didn't know what Nile Rodgers… didn't mean anything. They were just going crazy.
For the most part, there are more average celebrities than superstars. When most people think of celebrities, they think of A-listers, but there's also B-list, C-list, D-list, F-list and even Z-list... he gets all the perks of celebrity, without much of the negativity that comes from being an A-lister.
A lot of people in society understandably want to feel important, and one of the ways you do this is to show people how busy you are… and one of the ways you show people how busy you are is to describe how little time you have for sleep.
Fashion is one of the most influential phenomena in Western civilisation since the renaissance. It has conquered an increasing number of modern man's fields of activity and has become almost 'second nature'.
Anti-Jewish prejudice can be likened to a reservoir of water, accumulating over time, with some elements diminishing while new ones are added. Three concepts became central: supersessionism, conspiracy theories, and the stereotype of a special, negative affinity Jews had with money.
Film is a reflection of society, both present and past.