This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s followed the rise of K’naan, M.I.A. and grime MCs like Tinchy Stryder, but there’s been some pretty exciting, forward-looking music coming out of the developing world and its diasporas over the past few years. Stuff like eight-bit Afrikaaner rave-rappers Die Antwoord.

Check out BA contributor Tyler Stiem’s awesome essay on Liberia, “Goodbye, Babylon King”, in the current issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review.

China almost bankrupted Rome through its aesthetic craving for imported silks, and wrenched the British Empire apart with the chemical high of costly teas. Now the West faces a metaphysical addiction to its “toys.”

A short film by Donald Weber—an insider’s glimpse at red carpet culture and paparazzi during the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.

Russians have for decades fashioned functional objects from such cast-off items as forks, plastic bottles and onion bags. Collector Vladimir Arkhipov sheds light on the artful labours collected in his archive of “post-material folklore”.

Got a notion for a business and need a foreign partner? Looking to out-source production to a country where the wages are cheap and the workers so compliant they’ll break into choreographed flag-waving teams? Consider North Korea.

The rise of the ‘Third World Preacher’ and how the increasingly global reach of African Pentecostalism is proving there are many ways of being modern.

A commonplace Hindi term, jugaad describes everyday acts of innovation. As artist Sanjeev Shankar tells it: “A guy with 10 rupees has a dream to own a tractor or a television. He’ll start thinking in a radically inventive manner to get it, and do so with whatever means or resources he has at hand.”

Andrew Gregg interviews Edmundo Edwards, one of the pre-eminent archeological experts of Polynesia, from his work studying the moai of Easter Island, to discovering lost cities in the Marquesas and Tahiti and unearthing the sacred tikis of Raivavae in the Austral Island chain. He is also one of the very best raconteurs alive and a first-hand witness to the weird modern history of Rapa Nui.

The UK has Susan Boyle, Brazil has Andressa Soares, AKA “The Watermelon Woman.” It’s just that singing isn’t the first thing that made her famous.