Penguin Turns 75 & Two Bestsellers to Give Away

in Books | July 30th, 2010

Today marks the 75th anniver­sary of Pen­guin Books. And to cel­e­brate this mile­stone, they’re dri­ving a Mini Coop­er adorned with the Pen­guin logo across the US this sum­mer, donat­ing books to local libraries and lit­er­a­cy groups. Then, in Sep­tem­ber, the fes­tiv­i­ties will cul­mi­nate with a fundrais­ing par­ty at the New York Pub­lic Library. The folks at Pen­guin were kind enough to include us in their cel­e­bra­tion. So today, we have two free books to give away. One is a copy of Eliz­a­beth Gib­ert’s best­seller Eat, Pray, Love; the oth­er is a copy of The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma by Michael Pol­lan. They’re just two among Pen­guin’s 4,000 books in print.

So how does this work?: The two copies will go to the first read­ers who send us a com­pelling piece of open/intelligent media that we choose to post on the site. (If you’re look­ing for more guid­ance on what we have in mind, please read the tips on this page.) You can sub­mit your media picks here. And when you do, please indi­cate which book you want. We will select two win­ners (one per book) and announce the names when we post the media picks on Open Cul­ture next week. Thanks for your sug­ges­tions, and have a great week­end.

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Elvis Costello Sings “Penny Lane” for Sir Paul McCartney at The White House

in Music | July 29th, 2010

Last month, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma award­ed Paul McCart­ney the Library of Con­gress Gersh­win Prize for Pop­u­lar Song. And then the con­cert (aired last night on PBS) began. Among the high­lights was Elvis Costel­lo singing “Pen­ny Lane” with a mem­ber of the Pres­i­den­t’s Unit­ed States Marine band play­ing the pic­co­lo trum­pet. It’s a down­right won­der­ful ver­sion. You can watch the entire pro­gram online here.

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:

Mal­colm Glad­well on Why Genius Takes Time: A Look at the Mak­ing of Elvis Costello’s “Depor­tee” & Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Hear a Playlist of 300 Songs That Influ­enced Elvis Costel­lo, Drawn From His New Mem­oir, Unfaith­ful Music & Dis­ap­pear­ing Ink

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Venezia

in Life | July 29th, 2010

Venice, the “Queen of the Adri­at­ic,” in HD and sat­u­rat­ed col­or. A lit­tle thing of beau­ty. You can watch a big­ger ver­sion of “Around Venezia,” filmed by “Icam,” on Vimeo here. It’s well worth it.

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The New Science of Morality (in Video)

in Psychology, Science | July 29th, 2010

Ear­li­er this year, Sam Har­ris argued at TED that we’re on the verge of a sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion. We’ll see the day when sci­ence (par­tic­u­lar­ly neu­ro­science) can rig­or­ous­ly address moral ques­tions, pro­vid­ing definitive/universal answers to ques­tions of right and wrong. The pur­suit of a “moral sci­ence” is noth­ing new. Enlight­en­ment thinkers began this project long ago. But Har­ris has dust­ed it off, mod­ern­ized it a bit, and cre­at­ed some con­tro­ver­sy along the way. Just last week, he took part in a con­fer­ence pre­sent­ed by Edge.org: The New Sci­ence of Moral­i­ty. Over the next month, Edge will be mak­ing avail­able 10 hours of video from the two-day con­fer­ence, rolling it out in a seri­al­ized fash­ion. It all kicks off with a talk by Jonathan Haidt, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, known for his book The Hap­pi­ness Hypoth­e­sis: Find­ing Mod­ern Truth in Ancient Wis­dom. You can start watch­ing here…

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The Math of Rock Climbing

in Math | July 29th, 2010

Heights, I hate them. But Skip Garibal­di, a pro­fes­sor of math­e­mat­ics at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, does­n’t mind them much, and here he describes how math fig­ures into his pas­sion for rock climb­ing – how it makes the dif­fer­ence between a safe climb and a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous one. Includes a quick trip to El Cap­i­tan, a 3000 foot ver­ti­cal climb in Yosemite Nation­al Park…

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“The Best Magazine Articles Ever”

in Literature, Media | July 28th, 2010

“The Best Mag­a­zine Arti­cles Ever” – Sure the list is sub­jec­tive. It’s all in Eng­lish, and heav­i­ly slant­ed toward male writ­ers. But you can’t quib­ble with this. This curat­ed col­lec­tion fea­tures pieces by some of the finest Amer­i­can writ­ers of the past gen­er­a­tion. We’ve high­light­ed 10 nota­bles ones from a much longer list avail­able here.

1 ) John Updike, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” The New York­er, Octo­ber 22, 1960.

2) Nor­man Mail­er, “Super­man Comes to the Super­mar­ket.” Esquire, Novem­ber 1960.

3) Tom Wolfe, “The Last Amer­i­can Hero is Junior John­son. Yes!” Esquire, March 1965.

4) Hunter Thomp­son, “The Ken­tucky Der­by is Deca­dent and Depraved.” Scan­lan’s Month­ly, June 1970.

5) Stew­art Brand, “Space War: Fanat­ic Life and Sym­bol­ic Dearth Among Com­put­er Bums. Rolling Stone, Decem­ber 7, 1972.

6) David Fos­ter Wal­lace, “The String The­o­ry.” Esquire, July 1996.

7) Jon Krakauer, “Into Thin Air.” Out­side Mag­a­zine, Sep­tem­ber 1996.

8) Susan Orlean, “Orchid Fever.” The New York­er, Jan­u­ary 23, 1995.

9) Mal­colm Glad­well, “The Pitch­man.” The New York­er, Octo­ber 30, 2000. (Yup, he’s Cana­di­an, I know.)

10) Katie Hafn­er, “The Epic Saga of The Well.” Wired, May 1997.

via @caitlinroper

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Nelson Mandela’s First-Ever TV Interview (1961)

in History, Politics, Television, Video - Politics/Society | July 28th, 2010

Note: This post was orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured on our site in 2010. In light of the news that Nel­son Man­dela has passed away at age 95, we’re bring­ing this vin­tage clip back to the fore. Here you can see a young Man­dela mak­ing his­to­ry, and with­out per­haps real­iz­ing it, build­ing the remark­able lega­cy that remains with us today.

In 1962, Nel­son Man­dela was arrest­ed on alle­ga­tions of sab­o­tage and oth­er charges and sen­tenced to life in prison, where he spent 27 years before becom­ing South Africa’s first pres­i­dent elect­ed in a ful­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion. His sto­ry, among mod­ern his­to­ry’s most pro­found­ly inspi­ra­tional, is beau­ti­ful­ly and poet­i­cal­ly cap­tured in Clint East­wood’s 2009 gem, Invic­tus. But what East­wood’s account leaves out are the events that pre­ced­ed and led to Man­de­la’s arrest.

In May of 1961, a 42-year-old Man­dela gave his first-ever inter­view to ITN reporter Bri­an Wid­lake as part of a longer ITN Rov­ing Report pro­gram about Apartheid. At that point, the police are already hunt­ing for Man­dela, but Wid­lake pulls some strings and arranges to meet him in his hide­out. When the reporter asks Man­dela what Africans want, he prompt­ly responds:

“The Africans require, want the fran­chise, the basis of One Man One Vote – they want polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence.”

But per­haps more inter­est­ing is the dia­logue towards the end of the inter­view, where Man­dela explores the com­plex rela­tion­ship between peace and vio­lence as protest and nego­ti­a­tion tac­tics. We’re left won­der­ing whether his seem­ing­ly sud­den shift from a com­plete­ly peace­ful cam­paign strat­e­gy up to that point towards con­sid­er­ing vio­lence as a pos­si­bil­i­ty may be the prod­uct of South African police going after him with full force that week. Vio­lence, it seems, does breed vio­lence even in the best and noblest of us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nel­son Man­dela Archive Goes Online (With Help From Google)

The Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive Goes Online

U2 Releas­es a Nel­son Man­dela-Inspired Song, “Ordi­nary Love”

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

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Powers of Ten: 1977 Short Film by Designers Ray & Charles Eames Gives Brilliant Tour of Universe

in Math, Science | July 27th, 2010

In 1977, Ray and Charles Eames, the famous LA design­ers, pro­duced the short film Pow­ers of Ten. The movie starts with a fixed point in Chica­go, then zooms out into the uni­verse by fac­tors of ten. And, before too long, you find your­self 100 mil­lion light years away. Based on Kees Boeke’s 1957 book, Cos­mic View, the 10-minute film offers what amounts to a breath­tak­ing tour of the uni­verse. This clip was sent our way by Hele­na, who will get a free copy of the new Rolling Stones doc­u­men­tary, Stones in Exile.

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!

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