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In post-World War II Venice, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh), now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance. But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once again uncover the killer. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on Sep 16, 2023 - 16 comments

Featuring a blend of animated characters and live-action settings, CITY OF GHOSTS is a documentary-style series about a group of kids in LA who learn about the rich history of their city through encounters with friendly ghosts. Now streaming on Netflix. [more inside]
posted by 1970s Antihero on Mar 8, 2021 - 5 comments

Filled with colorful characters and history, Double Entry takes us from the ancient origins of accounting in Mesopotamia to the frontiers of modern finance. At the heart of the story is double-entry bookkeeping: the first system that allowed merchants to actually measure the worth of their businesses. Luca Pacioli―monk, mathematician, alchemist, and friend of Leonardo da Vinci―incorporated Arabic mathematics to formulate a system that could work across all trades and nations. As Jane Gleeson-White reveals, double-entry accounting was nothing short of revolutionary: it fueled the Renaissance, enabled capitalism to flourish, and created the global economy. John Maynard Keynes would use it to calculate GDP, the measure of a nation’s wealth. Yet double-entry accounting has had its failures. With the costs of sudden corporate collapses such as Enron and Lehman Brothers, and its disregard of environmental and human costs, the time may have come to re-create it for the future.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Sep 9, 2019 - 1 comment

The smell of sweet cinnamon on your morning oatmeal, the gentle heat of gingerbread, the sharp piquant bite from your everyday peppermill. The tales these spices could tell: of lavish Renaissance banquets perfumed with cloves, and flimsy sailing ships sent around the world to secure a scented prize; of cinnamon-dusted custard tarts and nutmeg-induced genocide; of pungent elixirs and the quest for the pepper groves of paradise. The Taste of Conquest offers up a riveting, globe-trotting tale of unquenchable desire, fanatical religion, raw greed, fickle fashion, and mouthwatering cuisine–in short, the very stuff of which our world is made. In this engaging, enlightening, and anecdote-filled history, Michael Krondl, a noted chef turned writer and food historian, tells the story of three legendary cities–Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam–and how their single-minded pursuit of spice helped to make (and remake) the Western diet and set in motion the first great wave of globalization. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on May 9, 2019 - 1 comment

John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) move to Venice after the tragic drowning of their young daughter. There they encounter eerie visions, omens, psychic sisters and (of course) murders. [more inside]
posted by brundlefly on May 8, 2015 - 11 comments