Speak­ing at TED, Nadya Tolokon­niko­va, found­ing mem­ber of Pussy Riot, has a pow­er­ful mes­sage for Rus­sians today: Resist­ing the author­i­ty of Vladimir Putin is an option. It’s a choice. Of that, Tolokon­niko­va has already pro­vid­ed ample proof. For more than a decade, the mem­bers of Pussy Riot have staged high-pro­file protests in Rus­sia … and paid the price, with time served in prison. As she puts it, “Courage is an abil­i­ty to act in the face of fear. And some of us have cho­sen to live coura­geous­ly.” That exam­ple is what makes her a threat:

The rea­son why I became a threat to the sys­tem, not because of any actu­al phys­i­cal pow­er that I have, but because courage is con­ta­gious. And any act of speak­ing the truth can cause incal­cu­la­ble trans­for­ma­tions in social con­scious­ness. And we all have this pow­er. It’s a moral act to use this pow­er. You may or may not achieve the results that you want­ed, but there is eter­nal beau­ty in try­ing to find truth, in risk­ing every­thing you’ve got for what’s right…

As always, she saves choice words for Putin: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, the Krem­lin walls became your prison walls. You have already lost. You know it. That’s why you’re so afraid. You lost in spir­it.” Now we just need Rus­sians at home, and Ukraini­ans on the bat­tle­field, to make the implic­it explic­it.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A His­to­ry of Pussy Riot: Watch the Band’s Ear­ly Performances/Protests Against the Putin Regime

Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokon­niko­va Tells Pro­tes­tors What to Do–and Not Do–If Arrest­ed by Author­i­tar­i­an Police

Slavoj Žižek & Pussy Riot’s Nadezh­da Tolokon­niko­va Exchange An Extra­or­di­nary Series of Let­ters

Last fall, Banksy trav­eled to Ukraine and spray-paint­ed a series of murals that offered a sting­ing com­men­tary on the war launched by Vladimir Putin and Rus­si­a’s mil­i­tary forces. Now, to mark the first anniver­sary of the inva­sion, a defi­ant Ukraine has released an offi­cial postage stamp fea­tur­ing one of Banksy’s murals. It depicts a young boy judo flip­ping an old­er man on his back. See­ing that Putain likes to pre­tend that he’s a judo expert (he does the same with hock­ey too), it’s not hard to get the mes­sage here. But just for good mea­sure, the Ukraini­ans dri­ve the point home with a lit­tle short­hand at the bot­tom of the stamp. Trans­lat­ing the Cyril­lic script, it reads “FCK PTN!” And who could dis­agree.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Banksy Spray Paints Murals in War-Torn Ukraine

The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Ukraine: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, Fea­tur­ing 23 Lec­tures

How Ukraine’s Works of Art Are Being Saved in Wartime — Using the Lessons of World War II

Until the end of his life, Carl Sagan (1934–1996) con­tin­ued doing what he did all along — pop­u­lar­iz­ing sci­ence and “enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly con­vey­ing the won­ders of the uni­verse to mil­lions of peo­ple on tele­vi­sion and in books.” When­ev­er Sagan appeared on ”The Tonight Show” with John­ny Car­son dur­ing the 70s and 80s, his goal was to con­nect with every­day Amer­i­cans — peo­ple who did­n’t sub­scribe to Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can — and increase the pub­lic’s under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of sci­ence.

At the end of his life, Sagan still cared deeply about where sci­ence stood in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion. But while los­ing a bat­tle with myelodys­pla­sia, Sagan also sensed that sci­en­tif­ic think­ing was los­ing ground in Amer­i­ca, and even more omi­nous­ly with­in the cham­bers of the Newt Gringrich-led Con­gress.

Dur­ing his final inter­view, aired on May 27, 1996, Sagan issued a strong warn­ing, telling Char­lie Rose:

We’ve arranged a soci­ety on sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in which nobody under­stands any­thing about sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, and this com­bustible mix­ture of igno­rance and pow­er soon­er or lat­er is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is run­ning the sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in a democ­ra­cy if the peo­ple don’t know any­thing about it.

20 years lat­er, fig­ures like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye are out there, try­ing to pop­u­lar­ize sci­ence with new forms of media. But the same struc­tur­al prob­lem, so well artic­u­lat­ed by Sagan, remains large­ly in place. And yet there’s rea­son to hope. Because even as estab­lish­ment politi­cians still play the same games with sci­ence, there are ear­ly signs that, as with oth­er impor­tant issues, pub­lic opin­ion is shift­ing beneath their feet.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Carl Sagan Tells John­ny Car­son What’s Wrong with Star Wars: “They’re All White” & There’s a “Large Amount of Human Chau­vin­ism in It” (1978)

Carl Sagan’s Ambi­tious Col­lege Read­ing List: Pla­to, Shake­speare, Gide, and Plen­ty of Phi­los­o­phy, Math & Physics (1954)

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan Writes a Let­ter to 17-Year-Old Neil deGrasse Tyson (1975)