If you thought K-pop was weird, virtual idols—humans who perform as anime-style digital characters via motion capture—will blow your mind. My favorite is a girl group called Isegye Idol, created by Woowakgood, a Korean VTuber (a streamer who likewise performs as a digital persona). Isegye Idol’s six members are anonymous, which seems to let them deploy a rare breed of honesty and humor. They play games (League of Legends, Go, Minecraft), chitchat, and perform kitschy music that’s somewhere between anime soundtrack and video-game score. It’s very DIY—and very intimate. And the group’s wild popularity speaks to the mood of Gen Z South Koreans, famously lonely and culturally adrift—struggling to find work, giving up on dating, trying to find friendships online. Isegye Idol shows what a magical online universe people can build when reality stops working for them.
I am the kind of person who will pay $150 to watch a comedian in a smelly theater in San Francisco that charges $20 for a can of water—because I am crazy enough to hope that standup will not die. In February, I saw the British comedian James Acaster perform live … and it was a mediocre show. But Repertoire, his 2018 miniseries on Netflix, is gold. Shot shortly after Acaster went through a breakup, the four-part show features him portraying, among other characters, a cop who goes undercover as a standup comedian, forgets who he is, and gets divorced. And then things get weird. “What if every relationship you’ve ever been in,” Acaster asks, “is somebody slowly figuring out they didn’t like you as much as they hoped they would?” If the best comedy comes from paying attention to the hellhole that you’re in, I wish Acaster many more pitfalls.
The idea that modern humans inherited DNA from Neanderthal ancestors is one of the 21st century’s most celebrated discoveries in evolution. It may not be that simple.
Does free will exist? Neuroscientist Uri Maoz devises experiments to illuminate how—or if—the brain makes decisions.
A New England artist makes music from the imperceptible noises of nature—using tools that usually detect hidden nuclear explosions.
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