The Wide-Ranging Creative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Discover His Films, Music Videos, Cartoons, Commercials, Paintings, Photography & More

Image by Sasha Kar­galt­sev via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

As every cinephile has by now heard, and lament­ed, we’ve just lost a great Amer­i­can film­mak­er. From Eraser­head to Blue Vel­vet to Mul­hol­land Dri­ve to Inland Empire, David Lynch’s fea­tures will sure­ly con­tin­ue to bewil­der and inspire gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of aspir­ing young auteurs. (There seems even to be a re-eval­u­a­tion under­way of his adap­ta­tion of Dune, the box-office cat­a­stro­phe that turned him away from the Hol­ly­wood machine.) But Lynch was nev­er exact­ly an aspir­ing young auteur him­self. He actu­al­ly began his career as a painter, just one of the many facets of his artis­tic exis­tence that we’ve fea­tured over the years here at Open Cul­ture.

Lynch stud­ied paint­ing at the Penn­syl­va­nia Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in the mid-nine­teen-six­ties, and the urban decay of Philadel­phia at the time did a great deal to inspire the aes­thet­ic of Eraser­head, which made his name on the mid­night-movie cir­cuit a decade lat­er. When the MTV era fired up in just a few years, he found his sig­na­ture blend of grotes­querie and hyper-nor­mal­i­ty — what would soon be termed “Lynchi­an” — in demand from cer­tain like-mind­ed record­ing artists. It was around that same time that he launched a side career as a com­ic artist, or in any case a com­ic writer, con­tribut­ing a thor­ough­ly sta­t­ic yet com­pelling­ly var­ied strip called The Angri­est Dog in the World to the LA Read­er from the ear­ly eight­ies through the ear­ly nineties.

In 1987, the year after the art-house block­buster that was Blue Vel­vet set off what Guy Maddin lat­er called “the last real earth­quake in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma,” Lynch host­ed a BBC tele­vi­sion series on the his­to­ry of sur­re­al­ist film. That ultra-mass medi­um would turn out to be a sur­pris­ing­ly recep­tive venue for his high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic art: first he made com­mer­cials, then he co-cre­at­ed with Mark Frost the ABC mys­tery series Twin Peaks, which prac­ti­cal­ly over­took Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture when it debuted in 1990. (See also these video essays on the mak­ing and mean­ing of the show.) Not that the phe­nom­e­non was lim­it­ed to the U.S., as evi­denced by Lynch’s going on to direct a mini-sea­son of Twin Peaks in the form of canned-cof­fee com­mer­cials for the Japan­ese mar­ket.

Even Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, the pic­ture many con­sid­er to be Lynch’s mas­ter­piece, was con­ceived as a pilot for a TV show. Not long after its release, he put out more work in ser­i­al form, includ­ing the sav­age car­toon Dum­b­land and the har­row­ing sit­com homage Rab­bits (lat­er incor­po­rat­ed into Inland Empire, his final film). In the late two-thou­sands, he pre­sent­ed Inter­view Project, a doc­u­men­tary web series co-cre­at­ed by his son; in the ear­ly twen­ty-tens, he put out his first (but not last) solo music album, Crazy Clown Time. That same decade, his pho­tographs of old fac­to­ries went on dis­play, his line of organ­ic cof­fee came onto the mar­ket, his auto­bi­og­ra­phy was pub­lished, and his Mas­ter­Class went online.

Lynch remained pro­lif­ic through the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic of the twen­ty-twen­ties, in part by post­ing Los Ange­les weath­er reports from his home to his YouTube chan­nel. In recent years, he announced that he would nev­er retire, despite liv­ing with a case of emphy­se­ma so severe that he could no longer direct in any con­ven­tion­al man­ner. Such are the wages, as he acknowl­edged, of hav­ing smoked since age sev­en, though he also seemed to believe that every habit and choice in life con­tributed to his work. Per­haps the smok­ing did its part to inspire him, like his long prac­tice of Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion or his dai­ly milk­shake at Bob’s Big Boy, about all of which he spoke open­ly in life. But if there’s any par­tic­u­lar secret of his for­mi­da­ble cre­ativ­i­ty, it feels as if he’s tak­en it with him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Twin Peaks Actu­al­ly Explained: A 4‑Hour Video Essay Demys­ti­fies It All

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Strange, Sur­re­al­ist Video

David Lynch Being a Mad­man for a Relent­less 8 Min­utes and 30 Sec­onds

David Lynch Explains Why Depres­sion Is the Ene­my of Cre­ativ­i­ty — and Why Med­i­ta­tion Is the Solu­tion

David Lynch Mus­es About the Mag­ic of Cin­e­ma & Med­i­ta­tion in a New Abstract Short Film

David Lynch Tries to Make a List of the Good Things Hap­pen­ing in the World … and Comes Up Blank

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks’ “Love Theme”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

Watch Design for Disaster, a 1962 Film That Shows Why Los Angeles Is Always at Risk of Devastating Fires

“This is fire sea­son in Los Ange­les,” Joan Did­ion once wrote, relat­ing how every year “the San­ta Ana winds start blow­ing down through the pass­es, and the rel­a­tive humid­i­ty drops to fig­ures like sev­en or six or three per cent, and the bougainvil­lea starts rat­tling in the dri­ve­way, and peo­ple start watch­ing the hori­zon for smoke and tun­ing in to anoth­er of those extreme local pos­si­bil­i­ties — in this instance, that of immi­nent dev­as­ta­tion.” The New York­er pub­lished this piece in 1989, when Los Ange­les’ fire sea­son was “a par­tic­u­lar­ly ear­ly and bad one,” but it’s one of many writ­ings on the same phe­nom­e­non now cir­cu­lat­ing again, with the high­ly destruc­tive Pal­isades Fire still burn­ing away.

Back in 1989, long­time Ange­lenos would have cit­ed the Bel Air Fire of 1961 as a par­tic­u­lar­ly vivid exam­ple of what mis­for­tune the San­ta Ana winds could bring. Wide­ly rec­og­nized as a byword for afflu­ence (not unlike the now vir­tu­al­ly oblit­er­at­ed Pacif­ic Pal­isades), Bel Air was home to the likes of Den­nis Hop­per, Burt Lan­cast­er, Joan Fontaine, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Aldous Hux­ley — all of whose hous­es count­ed among the 484 destroyed in the con­fla­gra­tion (in which, mirac­u­lous­ly, no lives were lost). You can see the Bel Air Fire and its after­math in “Design for Dis­as­ter,” a short doc­u­men­tary pro­duced by the Los Ange­les Fire Depart­ment and nar­rat­ed by William Con­rad (whose voice would still have been instant­ly rec­og­niz­able as that of Mar­shal Matt Dil­lon from the gold­en-age radio dra­ma Gun­smoke).

Los Ange­les’ repeat­ed afflic­tion by these blazes is per­haps overde­ter­mined. The fac­tors include not just the dread­ed San­ta Anas, but also the geog­ra­phy of its canyons, the dry­ness of the veg­e­ta­tion in its chap­ar­ral (not, pace Did­ion, desert) ecol­o­gy, and the inabil­i­ty of its water-deliv­ery sys­tem to meet such a sud­den and enor­mous need (which also proved fate­ful in the Pal­isades Fire). It did­n’t help that the typ­i­cal house at the time was built with “a com­bustible roof; wide, low eaves to catch sparks and fire; and a big pic­ture win­dow to let the fire inside,” nor that such dwellings were “close­ly spaced in brush-cov­ered canyons and ridges ser­viced by nar­row roads.” The Bel Air Fire brought about a wood-shin­gle roof ban and a more inten­sive brush-clear­ance pol­i­cy, but the six decades of fire sea­sons since do make one won­der what kind of mea­sures, if any, could ever sub­due these par­tic­u­lar forces of nature.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

NASA Cap­tures the World on Fire

When Steve Busce­mi Was a Fire­fight­er — and Took It Up Again After 9/11

Take a Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, the Man­sion That Has Appeared in Blade Run­ner, Twin Peaks & Count­less Hol­ly­wood Films

Aldous Hux­ley Explains How Man Became “the Vic­tim of His Own Tech­nol­o­gy” (1961)

Take a Dri­ve Through 1940s, 50s & 60s Los Ange­les with Vin­tage Through-the-Car-Win­dow Films

Behold 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Firemen’s Coats, Rich­ly Dec­o­rat­ed with Myth­i­cal Heroes & Sym­bols

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Freddie Mercury & David Bowie’s Isolated Vocals for Queen’s “Under Pressure” (1981)

In the sum­mer of 1981, the British band Queen was record­ing tracks for their tenth stu­dio album, Hot Space, at Moun­tain Stu­dios in Mon­treux, Switzer­land. As it hap­pened, David Bowie had sched­uled time at the same stu­dio to record the title song for the movie Cat Peo­ple. Before long, Bowie stopped by the Queen ses­sions and joined in. The orig­i­nal idea was that he would add back­up vocals on the song “Cool Cat.” “David came in one night and we were play­ing oth­er peo­ple’s songs for fun, just jam­ming,” says Queen drum­mer Roger Tay­lor in Mark Blake’s book Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Sto­ry of Fred­die Mer­cury and Queen. “In the end, David said, ‘This is stu­pid, why don’t we just write one?’ ”

And so began a marathon ses­sion of near­ly 24 hours, fueled, accord­ing to Blake, by wine and cocaine. Built around John Dea­con’s dis­tinc­tive bass line, the song was most­ly writ­ten by Mer­cury and Bowie. Blake describes the scene, begin­ning with the rec­ol­lec­tions of Queen’s gui­tarist:

‘We felt our way through a back­ing track all togeth­er as an ensem­ble,’ recalled Bri­an May. ‘When the back­ing track was done, David said, “Okay, let’s each of us go in the vocal booth and sing how we think the melody should go–just off the top of our heads–and we’ll com­pile a vocal out of that.” And that’s what we did.’ Some of these impro­vi­sa­tions, includ­ing Mer­cury’s mem­o­rable intro­duc­to­ry scat­ting vocal, would endure on the fin­ished track. Bowie also insist­ed that he and Mer­cury should­n’t hear what the oth­er had sung, swap­ping vers­es blind, which helped give the song its cut-and-paste feel.

“It was very hard,” said May in 2008, “because you already had four pre­co­cious boys and David, who was pre­co­cious enough for all of us. Pas­sions ran very high. I found it very hard because I got so lit­tle of my own way. But David had a real vision and he took over the song lyri­cal­ly.” The song was orig­i­nal­ly titled “Peo­ple on Streets,” but Bowie want­ed it changed to “Under Pres­sure.” When the time came to mix the song at Pow­er Sta­tion stu­dios in New York, Bowie insist­ed on being there. “It did­n’t go too well,” Blake quotes Queen’s engi­neer Rein­hold Mack as say­ing. “We spent all day and Bowie was like, ‘Do this, do that.’ In the end, I called Fred­die and said, ‘I need help here,’ so Fred came in as a medi­a­tor.” Mer­cury and Bowie argued fierce­ly over the final mix.

At one point Bowie threat­ened to block the release of the song, but it was issued to the pub­lic on Octo­ber 26, 1981 and even­tu­al­ly rose to Num­ber One on the British charts. It was lat­er named the num­ber 31 song on VH1’s list of the 100 great­est songs of the 1980s. “ ‘Under Pres­sure’ is a sig­nif­i­cant song for us,” May said in 2008, “and that is because of David and its lyri­cal con­tent. I would have found that hard to admit in the old days, but I can admit it now.… But one day, I would love to sit down qui­et­ly on my own and re-mix it.”

After lis­ten­ing to the iso­lat­ed vocal track above, you can hear the offi­cial­ly released 1981 mix below:

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Bowie & Annie Lennox in Rehearsal, Singing “Under Pres­sure,” with Queen (1992)

The Mak­ing of Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 Hit “Under Pres­sure”: Demos, Stu­dio Ses­sions & More

An Opera Singer & Cabaret Artist Record an Aston­ish­ing Ver­sion of David Bowie & Queen’s “Under Pres­sure”

200 Bassists Play the Famous Bass Line of Queen & Bowie’s “Under Pres­sure”

 

10,000+ Free Online Certificates & Badges: A Resource for Lifelong Learners

For those look­ing to boost their skills or explore new fields with­out break­ing the bank, Class Cen­tral has done the heavy lift­ing. Known as a search engine for online cours­es, Class Cen­tral has com­piled what might be the largest col­lec­tion of free online cer­tifi­cates and badges avail­able any­where. From tech giants like Google and Microsoft to elite uni­ver­si­ties like Har­vard and Stan­ford, this list cov­ers a diverse range of sub­jects and skill sets.

There was a time when the world’s top uni­ver­si­ties used to offer free cer­tifi­cates for com­plet­ing online cours­es. While most of those cer­tifi­cates are no longer free, many of the cours­es them­selves remain open to learn­ers, cov­er­ing top­ics like Com­put­er Sci­ence, Lit­er­a­ture, and Busi­ness.

Cer­tifi­cates can serve as both moti­va­tion and proof of achieve­ment for com­plet­ing online cours­es. While plat­forms like Cours­era and edX have moved toward paid cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, a sur­pris­ing num­ber of free options remain — if you know where to look. Thank­ful­ly, Class Central’s guide makes it easy to find these oppor­tu­ni­ties.

What’s Includ­ed in the Guide?

The arti­cle orga­nizes free cer­tifi­cate offer­ings by providers, includ­ing:

  • Google: Over 1,000 free cer­tifi­cates and badges in top­ics like dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, Android devel­op­ment, and AI.
  • Har­vard: Free cer­tifi­cates for their pop­u­lar CS50 series and oth­er online cours­es.
  • Stan­ford Med­i­cine: Med­ical cours­es offer­ing free cer­tifi­cates and CME cred­it.
  • LinkedIn Learn­ing: 110+ hours of free cer­ti­fi­ca­tions in busi­ness, tech­nol­o­gy, and design.
  • Sem­rush Acad­e­my: 90+ cours­es with free cer­tifi­cates focused on mar­ket­ing and SEO.
  • CodeS­ig­nal: 700+ free skill cer­ti­fi­ca­tions to val­i­date cod­ing, tech­ni­cal abil­i­ties, and soft skills.

If you’re ready to explore the full list of free cours­es and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, head over to Class Central’s detailed guide: Mas­sive List of Thou­sands of Free Cer­tifi­cates and Badges. It’s a trea­sure trove for any­one look­ing to learn some­thing new, enhance their resume, or sim­ply sat­is­fy their curios­i­ty — all for free!

 

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Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting from Start to Finish: Every Episode from 31 Seasons in Chronological Order

Bob Ross the man died near­ly thir­ty years ago, but Bob Ross the arche­typ­al TV painter has nev­er been more wide­ly known. “With his dis­tinc­tive hair, gen­tle voice, and sig­na­ture expres­sions such as ‘hap­py lit­tle trees,’ he’s an endur­ing icon,” writes Michael J. Mooney in an Atlantic piece from 2020. “His like­ness appears on a wide assort­ment of objects: paints and brush­es, toast­ers, socks, cal­en­dars, dolls, orna­ments, and even a Chia Pet.” Here in Korea, where I live, he’s uni­ver­sal­ly called Bob Ajeossi, ajeossi being a kind of col­lo­qui­al title for mid­dle-aged men. It’s quite an after­life for a soft-spo­ken pub­lic-tele­vi­sion host from the eight­ies.

Ross quick­ly became a pop-cul­tur­al fig­ure in that era, star­ring in semi-iron­ic MTV spots by the ear­ly nineties. But over the decades, writes Mooney, “the appre­ci­a­tion of Bob Ross has mor­phed into some­thing near­ly uni­ver­sal­ly earnest.” It helps that he has “the ulti­mate calm­ing pres­ence,” which has drawn spe­cial appre­ci­a­tion here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry: “More than a decade before most ther­a­pists were telling clients to be mind­ful and present, Ross was telling his view­ers to appre­ci­ate their every breath.” This med­i­ta­tive, pos­i­tive mood per­vades all of The Joy of Paint­ing’s more than 400 record­ed broad­casts, and they even deliv­er the sooth­ing effects of what YouTube-view­ing gen­er­a­tions know as “unin­ten­tion­al ASMR.”

Now you can watch almost all those broad­casts on a sin­gle YouTube playlist, which includes all of The Joy of Paint­ing’s 31 sea­sons, orig­i­nal­ly aired between 1983 and 1994. (The videos come from the offi­cial YouTube chan­nel of The Joy of Paint­ing and Bob Ross.) Despite hav­ing end­ed its run well before any of us had ever imag­ined watch­ing video online, the show now feels prac­ti­cal­ly made for the inter­net, what with not just its ASMR qual­i­ties, but also the paraso­cial friend­li­ness of Ross’ per­son­al­i­ty, the instruc­tion­al val­ue and sheer quan­ti­ty of its con­tent, and the high­ly con­sis­tent for­mat. Every time, Ross paints a com­plete pic­ture from start to fin­ish: usu­al­ly a land­scape fea­tur­ing mighty moun­tains, free­dom-lov­ing clouds, and hap­py lit­tle trees, but occa­sion­al­ly some­thing just dif­fer­ent enough to keep it inter­est­ing. And so the man Mooney describes as “prob­a­bly America’s most famous painter” lives on as a beloved YouTu­ber.

Relat­ed com­ment:

The Bob Ross Vir­tu­al Art Gallery: A New Site Presents 403 Paint­ings from The Joy of Paint­ing Series

What Hap­pened to the 1200 Paint­ings Paint­ed by Bob Ross? The Mys­tery Has Final­ly Been Solved

Expe­ri­ence the Bob Ross Expe­ri­ence: A New Muse­um Open in the TV Painter’s For­mer Stu­dio Home

The Joy of Paint­ing with Bob Ross & Banksy: Watch Banksy Paint a Mur­al on the Jail That Once Housed Oscar Wilde

Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work Reveals What It Would Look Like to Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing on LSD

Watch a Mas­ter Japan­ese Print­mak­er at Work: Two Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Relax­ing ASMR Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Do You Really Need to Take 10,000 Steps a Day?

We are reg­u­lar­ly urged to take 10,000 steps a day. How­ev­er, it turns out 10,000 isn’t exact­ly a num­ber anchored in sci­ence. Rather, it’s a prod­uct of mar­ket­ing. Accord­ing to a Har­vard med­ical web­site, that fig­ure goes back to “1965, when a Japan­ese com­pa­ny made a device named Man­po-kei, which trans­lates to ’10,000 steps meter.’ ” 10,000 like­ly sound­ed bet­ter than a more pre­cise num­ber. And so it began.

So this rais­es the ques­tion: what’s the ide­al num­ber of steps accord­ing to sci­ence? Dr. I‑Min Lee, a pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine at Har­vard Med­ical School, focused on that ques­tion and deter­mined that mor­tal­i­ty rates decline when women increase their steps from low­er lev­els (e.g., 2,000 steps) to 4,400 steps per day, with gains increas­ing until they reach 7,500 steps. From there, the gains lev­el out. (Read the JAMA study here.) Mean­while, a Euro­pean study, which mon­i­tored 226,000 par­tic­i­pants, found that peo­ple who walked more than 2,337 steps dai­ly could start low­er­ing their risk of dying from heart dis­ease. And peo­ple who walked more than 3,867 steps dai­ly could start reduc­ing their risk of dying from any cause over­all. How­ev­er, unlike the Har­vard study, the Euro­pean study found that adding more steps con­tin­ues to low­er mor­tal­i­ty rates, with gains accru­ing past 7,500 steps, and per­haps beyond 20,000 steps. What’s the exact sweet spot? We’ll need more research to fig­ure that out. Until then, the exist­ing research sug­gests that it pays to spend time with your walk­ing shoes.

The new video above come from TED-Ed.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers & Writ­ers Have Always Known

British Doc­tors To Pre­scribe Arts & Cul­ture to Patients: “The Arts Are Essen­tial to our Health and Well­be­ing”

This Is Your Brain on Exer­cise: Why Phys­i­cal Exer­cise (Not Men­tal Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp

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Watch Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur, and Witness the Birth of Modern Animation (1911–1914)

“Con­sid­er­ing that, in a car­toon, any­thing can hap­pen that the mind can imag­ine, the comics have gen­er­al­ly depict­ed pret­ty mun­dane worlds,” writes Calvin and Hobbes cre­ator Bill Wat­ter­son. “Sure, there have been talk­ing ani­mals, a few space­ships and what­not, but the comics have rarely shown us any­thing tru­ly bizarre. Lit­tle Nemo’s dream imagery, how­ev­er, is as mind-bend­ing today as ever, and Win­sor McCay remains one of the great­est inno­va­tors and manip­u­la­tors of the com­ic strip medi­um.” And Lit­tle Nemo, which sprawled across entire news­pa­per pages in the ear­ly decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, pushed artis­tic bound­aries not just as a com­ic, but also as a film.

When first seen in 1911, the twelve-minute short Lit­tle Nemo was titled Win­sor McCay, the Famous Car­toon­ist of the N.Y. Her­ald and His Mov­ing Comics. A mix­ture of live action and ani­ma­tion, it dra­ma­tizes McCay mak­ing a gen­tle­man’s wager with his col­leagues that he can draw fig­ures that move — an idea that might have come with a cer­tain plau­si­bil­i­ty, giv­en that speed-draw­ing was already a suc­cess­ful part of his vaude­ville act. Meet­ing this chal­lenge entails draw­ing 4,000 pic­tures, a task as demand­ing for McCay the char­ac­ter as it was for McCay the real artist. This labor adds up to the four min­utes that end the film, which con­tains moments of still-impres­sive flu­id­i­ty, tech­nique, and humor.

Clear­ly pos­sessed of a sense of ani­ma­tion’s poten­tial as an art form, McCay went on to make nine more films, and ulti­mate­ly con­sid­ered them his proud­est work. Like the Lit­tle Nemo movie, he used his sec­ond such effort, Ger­tie the Dinosaur, in his vaude­ville act, per­form­ing along­side the pro­jec­tion to cre­ate the effect of his giv­ing the tit­u­lar pre­his­toric crea­ture com­mands. “In some ways, McCay was the fore­run­ner of Walt Dis­ney in terms of Amer­i­can ani­ma­tion,” writes Lucas O. Seastrom at The Walt Dis­ney Fam­i­ly Muse­um. “In order to cre­ate a lov­able dinosaur and accom­plish these seem­ing­ly mag­i­cal feats, McCay used math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion and ground­break­ing tech­niques, such as the process of inbe­tween­ing, which lat­er became a Dis­ney stan­dard.”

More than once, McCay the ani­ma­tor drew inspi­ra­tion from the work of McCay the news­pa­per artist: in 1921, he made a cou­ple of motion pic­tures out of his pre-Lit­tle Nemo sleep-themed com­ic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. But for his most ambi­tious ani­mat­ed work, he turned toward his­to­ry — and, at the time, rather recent his­to­ry — to re-cre­ate the sink­ing of the RMS Lusi­ta­nia, an event that his employ­er, the news­pa­per mag­nate William Ran­dolph Hearst, had insist­ed on down­play­ing at the time due to his stance against the U.S.’ join­ing the Great War. Decades there­after, Looney Tunes ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones said that “the two most impor­tant peo­ple in ani­ma­tion are Win­sor McCay and Walt Dis­ney, and I’m not sure which should go first.” Watch these and McCay’s oth­er sur­viv­ing films on this Youtube playlist, and you can decide for your­self.

H/T Izzy

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of Ani­ma­tion, 1833–2017: From the Phenakistis­cope to Pixar

Vis­it the World of Lit­tle Nemo Artist Win­sor McCay: Three Clas­sic Ani­ma­tions

Watch Fan­tas­magorie, the World’s First Ani­mat­ed Car­toon (1908)

Win­sor McCay Ani­mates the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia in the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Pro­pa­gan­da Film (1918)

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

The Ori­gins of Ani­me: Watch Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions (1917 to 1931)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Discover the Playful Drawings That Charles Darwin’s Children Left on His Manuscripts

Charles Dar­win’s work on hered­i­ty was part­ly dri­ven by trag­ic loss­es in his own fam­i­ly. Dar­win had mar­ried his first cousin, Emma, and “won­dered if his close genet­ic rela­tion to his wife had had an ill impact on his children’s health, three (of 10) of whom died before the age of 11,” Kather­ine Har­mon writes at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can. (His sus­pi­cions, researchers sur­mise, may have been cor­rect.) He was so con­cerned about the issue that, in 1870, he pres­sured the gov­ern­ment to include ques­tions about inbreed­ing on the cen­sus (they refused).

Darwin’s chil­dren would serve as sub­jects of sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­tion. His note­books, says Ali­son Pearn of the Dar­win Cor­re­spon­dence Project at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library, show a curi­ous father “prod­ding and pok­ing his young infant,” Charles Eras­mus, his first child, “like he’s anoth­er ape.” Com­par­isons of his children’s devel­op­ment with that of orang­utans helped him refine ideas in On the Ori­gin of Species, which he com­plet­ed as he raised his fam­i­ly at their house in rur­al Kent, and inspired lat­er ideas in Descent of Man.

But as they grew, the Dar­win chil­dren became far more than sci­en­tif­ic curiosi­ties. They became their father’s assis­tants and appren­tices. “It’s real­ly an envi­able fam­i­ly life,” Pearn tells the BBC. “The sci­ence was every­where. Dar­win just used any­thing that came to hand, all the way from his chil­dren right through to any­thing in his house­hold, the plants in the kitchen gar­den.” Steeped in sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tion from birth, it’s lit­tle won­der so many of the Dar­wins became accom­plished sci­en­tists them­selves.

Down House was “by all accounts a bois­ter­ous place,” writes McKen­na Staynor at The New York­er, “with a wood­en slide on the stairs and a rope swing on the first-floor land­ing.” Anoth­er archive of Darwin’s prodi­gious writ­ing, Cambridge’s Dar­win Man­u­scripts Project, gives us even more insight into his fam­i­ly life, with graph­ic evi­dence of the Dar­win brood’s curios­i­ty in the dozens of doo­dles and draw­ings they made in their father’s note­books, includ­ing the orig­i­nal man­u­script copy of his mag­num opus.

The project’s direc­tor, David Kohn, “doesn’t know for cer­tain which kids were the artists,” notes Staynor, “but he guess­es that at least three were involved: Fran­cis, who became a botanist; George, who became an astronomer and math­e­mati­cian; and Horace, who became an engi­neer.” One imag­ines com­pe­ti­tion among the Dar­win chil­dren must have been fierce, but the draw­ings, “though exact­ing, are also play­ful.” One depicts “The Bat­tle of Fruits and Veg­eta­bles.” Oth­ers show anthro­po­mor­phic ani­mals and illus­trate mil­i­tary fig­ures.

There are short sto­ries, like “The Fairies of the Moun­tain,” which “tells the tale of Poly­tax and Short Shanks, whose wings have been cut off by a ‘naughty fairy.’” Imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty clear­ly had a place in the Dar­win home. The man him­self, Maria Popo­va notes, felt sig­nif­i­cant ambiva­lence about father­hood. “Chil­dren are one’s great­est hap­pi­ness,” he once wrote, “but often & often a still greater mis­ery. A man of sci­ence ought to have none.”

It was an atti­tude born of grief, but one, it seems, that did not breed aloof­ness. The Dar­win kids “were used as vol­un­teers,” says Kohn, “to col­lect but­ter­flies, insects, and moths, and to make obser­va­tions on plants in the fields around town.” Fran­cis fol­lowed his father’s path and was the only Dar­win to co-author a book with his father. Darwin’s daugh­ter Hen­ri­et­ta became his edi­tor, and he relied on her, he wrote, for “deep crit­i­cism” and “cor­rec­tions of style.”

Despite his ear­ly fears for their genet­ic fit­ness, Darwin’s pro­fes­sion­al life became inti­mate­ly bound to the suc­cess­es of his chil­dren. The Dar­win Man­u­scripts Project, which aims to dig­i­tize and make pub­lic around 90,000 pages from the Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library’s Dar­win col­lec­tion will have a pro­found effect on how his­to­ri­ans of sci­ence under­stand his impact. “The scope of the enter­prise, of what we call evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy,” says Kohn, “is defined in these papers. He’s got his foot in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.”

The archive also shows the devel­op­ment of Darwin’s equal­ly impor­tant lega­cy as a par­ent who inspired a bound­less sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty in his kids. See many more of the dig­i­tized Dar­win children’s draw­ings at The Mar­gin­a­lian.

   

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

16,000 Pages of Charles Darwin’s Writ­ing on Evo­lu­tion Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Hear Carl Sagan Art­ful­ly Refute a Cre­ation­ist on a Talk Radio Show: “The Dar­win­ian Con­cept of Evo­lu­tion is Pro­found­ly Ver­i­fied”

Read the Orig­i­nal Let­ters Where Charles Dar­win Worked Out His The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion

Charles Dar­win Cre­ates a Hand­writ­ten List of Argu­ments for and Against Mar­riage (1838)

 

Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live: A Deep Dive into Every Season of the Iconic Comedy Show

Sat­ur­day Night Live began its 50th sea­son last fall, around the same time as the pre­miere of Jason Reit­man’s film Sat­ur­day Night, which dra­ma­tizes the pro­gram’s 1975 debut. All of this has put fans into some­thing of a ret­ro­spec­tive mood, espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to have been tun­ing in since the very begin­ning. For oth­ers, SNL is a show they haven’t been watch­ing all that long, used to watch, or watched at one time and have start­ed watch­ing again. With its ever-chang­ing cast, writ­ers, sketch con­cepts, and over­all comedic sen­si­bil­i­ty, it’s nev­er remained the same for too long at a stretch, and though many view­ers have their favorite sea­sons, few grasp the full sweep of its his­to­ry as a tele­vi­sion insti­tu­tion.

Now, any­one can get a sense of SNL in its entire­ty with Every­thing You NEED to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live, a YouTube series that, true to its title, recounts the show’s most notable per­form­ers, char­ac­ters, inno­va­tions, trou­bles, and moments planned or oth­er­wise (often the lat­ter, giv­en the nature of the broad­cast). Each sea­son gets its own episode, start­ing with the first, whose Not Ready for Prime Time Play­ers includ­ed such young up-and-com­ers as Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Gil­da Rad­ner.

As that list of names would imply, this “hip com­e­dy vari­ety pro­gram for baby boomers that dared to stay up late” soon became a ver­i­ta­ble force of era-defin­ing fun­ny­men and fun­ny­women. Then as now, SNL tends to send its break­out stars to Hol­ly­wood, albeit with vary­ing results.

That con­tributes to the con­stant churn that has brought onto the show’s ros­ter such house­hold-names-to-be as Bill Mur­ray, Eddie Mur­phy, Bil­ly Crys­tal, Adam San­dler, and Tina Fey, while also fea­tur­ing non-cast-mem­bers like Penn and Teller or guest hosts like Steve Mar­tin, whose appear­ances great­ly raised their own pro­files. To watch through these encap­su­la­tions, which as of this writ­ing have reached sea­son nine­teen (1993–94), is to take a jour­ney through Amer­i­can pop­u­lar cul­ture itself. Cre­ator Lorne Michaels’ recent­ly declared lack of intent to step down any time soon bol­sters SNL’s aura of unstop­pa­bilty, built up over five decades of influ­en­tial per­son­al­i­ties, still-quot­ed gags, and instant­ly rec­og­niz­able char­ac­ters — if also the occa­sion­al unco­op­er­a­tive host, chem­istry-free cast, or acci­den­tal­ly uttered bit of pro­fan­i­ty. But what’s the fun of doing half a cen­tu­ry of live TV if it goes with­out a hitch?

Fol­low Every­thing You NEED to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

Cre­at­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live: Behind-the Scenes Videos Reveal How the Icon­ic Com­e­dy Show Gets Made

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

RIP Nor­man Lear: Watch Full Episodes of His Dar­ing 70s Sit­coms, Includ­ing All in the Fam­i­ly, Maude, The Jef­fer­sons, and More

Revis­it Turn-On, the Inno­v­a­tive TV Show That Got Can­celed Right in the Mid­dle of Its First Episode (1969)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Nirvana Before They Were Nirvana: Watch Their 1988 Performance Recorded in a Radio Shack

Here’s a strange home video of Nir­vana when they were unknown, play­ing inside a Radio Shack in the band’s home­town of Aberdeen, Wash­ing­ton. The video was record­ed on the evening of Jan­u­ary 24, 1988, after the store had closed. In those days the group went by the name of Ted Ed Fred.

Only the day before, the band had record­ed its first demo tape at a stu­dio in Seat­tle. Gui­tarist and singer Kurt Cobain asked his new friend Eric Har­ter, who man­aged the Radio Shack, to video­tape the band play­ing Paper Cuts,” one of 10 songs from the demo. Along with Cobain, the video fea­tures Nir­vana co-founder Krist Novosel­ic on bass and Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums.

The video below includes footage of Har­ter talk­ing about the Radio Shack video and giv­ing a copy of the tape to Cobain’s griev­ing wid­ow Court­ney Love, who is shown with her friend Kat Bjel­land of Babes in Toy­land. At one point, Har­ter men­tions a “Ted Ed Fred” con­cert at the Com­mu­ni­ty World The­ater in Taco­ma. To see a full video of that show, which was staged the night before the Radio Shack tap­ing (and only hours after the demo ses­sion), click here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

The First Live Per­for­mance of ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’ (1991)

Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” Played By Musi­cians Around the World

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’

Nir­vana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life in 1988

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

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Coursera Offers $200 Off of Coursera Plus (Until January 27), Giving You Unlimited Access to Courses & Certificates

A new deal to start a new year: Cours­era is offer­ing a $200 dis­count on its annu­al sub­scrip­tion plan called “Cours­era Plus.” Nor­mal­ly priced at $399, Cours­era Plus (now avail­able for $199) gives you access to 90% of Cours­er­a’s cours­es, Guid­ed Projects, Spe­cial­iza­tions, and Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cates, all of which are taught by top instruc­tors from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties and com­pa­nies (e.g. Yale, Duke, Google, Face­book, and more). The $199 annu­al fee–which trans­lates rough­ly to 55 cents per day–could be a good invest­ment for any­one inter­est­ed in learn­ing new sub­jects and skills in 2025, or earn­ing cer­tifi­cates that can be added to your resume. Just as Net­flix’s stream­ing ser­vice gives you access to unlim­it­ed movies, Cours­era Plus gives you access to unlim­it­ed cours­es and cer­tifi­cates. It’s basi­cal­ly an all-you-can-eat deal.

You can try out Cours­era Plus for 14 days, and if it does­n’t work for you, you can get your mon­ey back. Explore the offer here. It expires on Jan­u­ary 27, 2025.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.


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