Ex-Plain, Author at Ex-Plain - Page 2 of 6

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Pasts

Getting High with Shakespeare? It Might Have Happened

Ex-Plain
February 20, 2026

From clay pipe residues to cryptic sonnet lines, a long-running theory proposes that William Shakespeare experimented with mind-altering substances, raising…

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Sounds

Behind the Beat: Inside the Homes Where Hip-Hop Is Made

Ex-Plain
February 20, 2026

Raph Rashid’s intimate photographs map the domestic environments where hip-hop producers build influential records, showing how constraint, routine, and personal…

105 min read 0

Pasts
Sounds

The Eccentric Soviet Composer Who Conducted a City: Arseny Avraamov and the Sound of a Future That Never Arrived

Ex-Plain
February 19, 2026

In September 1922, amid the fifth anniversary commemorations of the October Revolution in the capital of Azerbaijan, a little-known Russian…

27 min read 0

Visions

When Sci-Fi and Body Horror Found Advertising: Chris Cunningham’s Commercial Work

Ex-Plain
February 12, 2026

Before retreating from the spotlight, Chris Cunningham, the elusive director behind the music videos for Aphex Twin and Björk injected…

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Pasts
Sounds

The Australian Afterlife of Elvis Presley

Ex-Plain
February 10, 2026

Each year on August 16, Elvis fans gather at a Melbourne cemetery on the anniversary of his death, observing the…

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Sounds

A Loud Minority? Investigating the Subculture of Audiophiles in Japan

Ex-Plain
February 9, 2026

Stories of Japanese audiophiles installing personal utility poles have become legend, but behind the myth is a shrinking, aging subculture…

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Sounds

Longplayer: One Song, A Thousand Years, No Intermission

Ex-Plain
February 3, 2026

A quarter of a century ago, a Celtic punk musician started a performance of a song so absurdly long that…

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Pasts

One Free Ride: When Texas Prison Inmates Became Rodeo Cowboys

Ex-Plain
February 2, 2026

For more than fifty years, the Texas Prison Rodeo turned incarceration into public entertainment, drawing massive crowds to Huntsville to…

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The Bulldozer Exhibition: When the Soviets Tried (and Failed) to Literally Crush an Art Show

Ex-Plain
January 29, 2026

In 1974, Soviet authorities used bulldozers, arrests, and violence to destroy an unsanctioned outdoor art exhibition, only to ignite an…

9 min read 0

Visions

Paintings of Tattoo Guns from a Mexican Prison

Ex-Plain
January 27, 2026

Willingly spending two months in a Mexican prison and collaborating with the inmates, artist Scott Campbell built tattoo machines out…