15 Minute History: Quick History Lessons from a New, Chart-Topping Podcast

in History | February 17th, 2014

15 minute history

I’ve always been jeal­ous of friends who stud­ied his­to­ry in col­lege. They’ve got a work­ing knowl­edge of the caus­es of wars, eco­nom­ic crises, polit­i­cal upheavals, and any oth­er triv­ia ques­tion-wor­thy events. Thank­ful­ly, what­ev­er I’d like to learn is mere­ly a click away: we’ve got over 800 free online cours­es (includ­ing 67 free his­to­ry cours­es) list­ed on Open Cul­ture at the time of writ­ing, and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions con­tin­ue to upload new lec­tures every week. Most of the lec­tures, how­ev­er, last from 30 min­utes to an hour, requir­ing users to cor­don off a block of time for study. Want some­thing short­er? Enter the 15 Minute His­to­ry pod­cast, cur­rent­ly the fourth most pop­u­lar pod­cast on iTune­sU.

The result of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Hemi­spheres and Not Even Past pub­lic out­reach efforts, the 15 Minute His­to­ry pod­cast focus­es on key sub­jects in world his­to­ry and U.S. his­to­ry. Although the pod­cast is tai­lored to Texas teach­ers and stu­dents, empha­siz­ing the state’s K‑12 cur­ricu­lum, it also hap­pens to be a trea­sure trove of free con­tent for any­one inter­est­ed in his­to­ry. The short pod­casts, which last some 15 min­utes on aver­age, cov­er every­thing from Russia’s Octo­ber 1917 Rev­o­lu­tion, to the Ottoman Empire, to the glob­al con­text of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Each episode is led by one of three UT Austin aca­d­e­mics, who dis­cuss the top­ic at hand with anoth­er uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor or grad­u­ate stu­dent. Con­ve­nient­ly, on the 15 Minute His­to­ry web site, the pod­casts are accom­pa­nied by a care­ful­ly for­mat­ted tran­script, plus addi­tion­al read­ing mate­ri­als for those who find them­selves curi­ous about a par­tic­u­lar top­ic.

Inter­est­ed read­ers can find the whole pod­cast series on iTunes, or on the web.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the World (and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty) in 100 Objects

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

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Animated Video: Dock Ellis Throws a No-Hitter Against the Padres While Tripping on LSD (1970)

in Film, Sports | February 17th, 2014

For a sport obsessed with sta­tis­ti­cal aver­ages, base­ball seems to thrive like no oth­er on out­ra­geous anec­dotes and sin­gu­lar char­ac­ters. One of those char­ac­ters, pitch­er Dock Ellis, had a drug-fueled run in the 70s with the Pitts­burgh Pirates, claim­ing that he almost nev­er pitched a game sober, includ­ing sev­er­al Nation­al League East Cham­pi­onships and a 1971 World Series win. The drugs even­tu­al­ly became too much and he got help, but they gave Ellis his career best anec­dote, the sto­ry he tells in the short film above, “Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No.” It’s ani­mat­ed by James Blag­don from an inter­view Ellis gave to Don­nell Alexan­der and Neille Ilel that aired on NPR in March of 2008.

In June 1970, Ellis took a day off, dropped acid at the air­port and, “high as a Geor­gia pine,” checked into a friend’s girlfriend’s house to enjoy the rest of his trip. He woke up two days lat­er, still trip­ping, went to the sta­di­um, took some stimulants—which “over 90% of the league was using,” he says—and got to work, pitch­ing a no-hit­ter against the San Diego Padres. “I didn’t see the hit­ters,” Ellis says, “all I could tell was whether they were on the right side or left side.” Above, his col­or­ful nar­ra­tion gets a full com­pli­ment of sound effects and day-glo excla­ma­tions. (We also see allu­sions to Ellis’ oth­er sto­ried antics, like appear­ing on the mound in curlers and bean­ing oppos­ing play­ers with fast­balls.) “It was eas­i­er,” he says, “to pitch with the LSD because I was used to med­icat­ing myself.” In this instance at least, the meds were mag­ic.

The short film pre­miered at Sun­dance and film fes­ti­vals world­wide in 2010, and the Dock Ellis leg­end has only grown since. The same inter­view become part of Beyond Ellis D, a “mul­ti­me­dia book” for iPads devel­oped in 2012 by Don­nell Alexan­der and ani­mat­ed by Hei­di Per­ry. (See Part 1, “Super­fly Spit­ball,” above.) In an essay for Dead­spin, Alexan­der laments that Ellis—an out­spo­ken crit­ic of racism in baseball—has been large­ly reduced to the LSD no-hit­ter, which he calls “a short take on a big life.” While it’s a hell of a good sto­ry, Alexan­der also sees Ellis “on a con­tin­u­um with Jack­ie Robin­son” (who advised him to tone it down), “a black ballplay­er strad­dling the reserve-clause era and the arrival of free agency, a man who brought many of the old ways with him into baseball’s new, Day-Glo epoch.” Ellis—who died in 2008 of liv­er fail­ure at age 63 after years as a drug counselor—certainly lived up to the hype. His wild life and career get a full treat­ment in the doc­u­men­tary No No, which just screened at Sun­dance this past month. Watch the film’s trail­er below.

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

Errol Mor­ris’ New Short Film, Team Spir­it, Finds Sports Fans Lov­ing Their Teams, Even in Death

This is What Oliv­er Sacks Learned on LSD and Amphet­a­mines

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Jorge Luis Borges Chats with William F. Buckley on Firing Line (1977)

in Literature, Television | February 17th, 2014

Despite his respect­ed facil­i­ty with the Eng­lish lan­guage, Argen­tine mas­ter crafts­man of short fic­tion Jorge Luis Borges did his best work in his native Span­ish. Though we remem­ber pro­lif­ic inter­view­er and even more pro­lif­ic writer William F. Buck­ley for his for­mi­da­ble com­mand of Eng­lish above all else, he did­n’t even learn it as his first lan­guage, start­ing in on his Eng­lish edu­ca­tion at age sev­en, hav­ing already learned Span­ish (not to men­tion French).

This must have placed him well to appre­ci­ate Borges’ writ­ing, and indeed, in his intro­duc­tion to their Fir­ing Line con­ver­sa­tion above, Buck­ley cites Borges’ rep­u­ta­tion as the great­est, most influ­en­tial writer then alive. “We met in Buenos Aires, in 1977, dur­ing the mil­i­tary jun­ta days,” Buck­ley recalls of the tap­ing in a Paris Review inter­view. “He seemed aston­ish­ing­ly frail, but he spoke with­out a pause.”

Buck­ley goes on to pro­vide many choice quotes from Borges’ answers to ques­tions about his sight (“When you are blind, time flows in a dif­fer­ent way. It flows, let’s say, on an easy slope”), his love of Amer­i­can writ­ers like Emer­son and Melville, his lan­guages (“Of course, my Latin is very rusty. But still, as I once wrote, to have for­got­ten Latin is already, in itself, a gift”), and where he finds beau­ty and art (“A man may say a very fine thing, not being aware of it. I am hear­ing fine sen­tences all the time from the man in the street, for exam­ple. From any­body”), and how he taught (“I tried to teach my stu­dents not literature—that can’t be taught—but the love of lit­er­a­ture”). For more on that last, see also “The Dag­gers of Jorge Luis Borges,” a piece on the new book Pro­fes­sor Borges: A Course on Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, by Michael Green­berg in the New York Review of Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 33 Vol­umes of Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Borges: Pro­file of a Writer Presents the Life and Writ­ings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Two Draw­ings by Jorge Luis Borges Illus­trate the Author’s Obses­sions

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Salvador Dalí’s Melting Clocks Painted on a Latte

in Art, Food & Drink | February 16th, 2014

dali coffeeIn 1931, Sal­vador Dalí paint­ed The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry, a land­mark piece of sur­re­al­ist art that used melt­ing pock­et watch­es to sym­bol­ize the rel­a­tiv­i­ty of space and time in dream­scapes. (More on that below.)

If you haven’t seen the paint­ing at the MoMA in NYC, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly seen those melt­ing watch­es on posters and all sorts of kitschy prod­ucts. Those poor watch­es have been abused over the years. But some­how I don’t mind see­ing them on my favorite ephemer­al can­vas — the frothy milk sur­face of a lat­te. The lat­te above was dec­o­rat­ed by Kazu­ki Yamamo­to, a Japan­ese artist who uses noth­ing but a tooth­pick for a paint brush. You can find an online gallery of his work here, which includes some 3D cre­ations. Or fol­low pic­tures of his lat­est works on Twit­ter.

The 6‑minute intro­duc­tion to Dalí’s 1931 paint­ing (below) comes cour­tesy of Smart His­to­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

The (Beau­ti­ful) Physics of Adding Cream to Your Cof­fee

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Browse The Magical Worlds of Harry Houdini’s Scrapbooks

in History, Religion, Science, Theatre | February 16th, 2014

houdini scrapbook2

Between the mid-nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­turies, men and women alike made scrap­books as a way of pro­cess­ing the news. As Ellen Gru­ber Gar­vey shows in her book Writ­ing with Scis­sors: Amer­i­can Scrap­books from the Civ­il War to the Harlem Renais­sance, the prac­tice crossed lines of class and gen­der. Every­one from Mark Twain and Susan B. Antho­ny to Joseph W.H. Cath­cart, an African-Amer­i­can jan­i­tor liv­ing in Philadel­phia who amassed more than a hun­dred vol­umes in the sec­ond half of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, select­ed and past­ed arti­cles and ephemera into big books, often anno­tat­ing and com­ment­ing upon the mate­r­i­al.

The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin has recent­ly dig­i­tized ten scrap­books belong­ing to Har­ry Hou­di­ni. The books are divid­ed into three groups: vol­umes com­piled by oth­er magi­cians about their careers; scrap­books hold­ing Houdini’s clip­pings on the prac­tice of mag­ic in gen­er­al; and books that chart Houdini’s inves­ti­ga­tions of fakes, frauds, and con­jur­ers. (Lat­er in his life, Hou­di­ni became fas­ci­nat­ed with the post-WWI fad for spiritualism—mediums, séances, and psychics—and took on a role as skep­ti­cal debunker of spir­i­tu­al­ist per­form­ers.)

title_w_border_Houdini_Magicians_Scrapbook_062b_2

The scrap­books are fun to look at on a num­ber of lev­els. First, it’s cool to think of Hou­di­ni and his magi­cian col­leagues select­ing the arti­cles and images and arrang­ing them on the page. Sec­ond, the mate­r­i­al that’s cov­ered is col­or­ful and bizarre (an arti­cle in one of Hou­dini’s books: “Tri­al By Com­bat Between A Dog And His Master’s Mur­der­er”). Third, Hou­di­ni and his cohort clipped and saved from a wide array of peri­od­i­cals; while it’s some­times annoy­ing that many of the arti­cles have lost their meta­da­ta (date and place of pub­li­ca­tion), it’s still inter­est­ing to see the range of types of cov­er­age that pre­vailed at the time.

houdini scrap 6

The book put togeth­er by the per­former S.S. Bald­win, mailed to Hou­di­ni by Baldwin’s daugh­ter Shad­ow after Baldwin’s death, is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing.  The Ran­som Center’s intro­duc­tion to the col­lec­tion notes that some items in the Bald­win scrap­book “depict graph­ic sub­ject matter”—a sure entice­ment for this researcher, at least, to make sure to check it out. The warn­ing may refer to this amaz­ing image of the Indi­an god­dess Kali draped in sev­ered heads and limbs, or an engrav­ing of an exe­cu­tion by ele­phant. Along­side many arti­cles about his per­for­mances, fliers, and oth­er ephemera, Bald­win also col­lect­ed images of peo­ple liv­ing in the places where he performed—an approach that adds yet anoth­er lev­el of inter­est to his scrap­book.

H/T Not Even Past

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Online Emi­ly Dick­in­son Archive Makes Thou­sands of the Poet’s Man­u­scripts Freely Avail­able

The Pulp Fic­tion Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Sto­ries That Enter­tained A Gen­er­a­tion of Read­ers (1896–1946)

 New Archive Makes Avail­able 800,000 Pages Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of Film, Tele­vi­sion, and Radio

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion.

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New “Hemingway” App Promises to Make Your Writing “Strong and Clear”

in English Language, Literature, Writing | February 15th, 2014

hemingway writing app

I con­fess, I pre­fer Faulkn­er to Hem­ing­way and see noth­ing wrong with long, com­plex sen­tences when they are well-con­struct­ed. But in most non-Faulkn­er writ­ing, they are not. Stream of con­scious­ness is a delib­er­ate effect of care­ful­ly edit­ed prose, not the unre­vised slop of a first draft. In my days as a writ­ing teacher, I’ve read my share of the lat­ter. The Eng­lish teacher’s guide for par­ing down unruly writ­ing resem­bles a new online app called “Hem­ing­way,” which exam­ines writ­ing and grades it on a col­or-cod­ed dif­fi­cul­ty scale. “Hem­ing­way” sug­gests using sim­pler dic­tion, edit­ing out adverbs in favor of stronger verbs, and elim­i­nat­ing pas­sive voice. It promis­es to make your writ­ing like that of the famous Amer­i­can min­i­mal­ist, “strong and clear.”

Of course I couldn’t resist run­ning the above para­graph through Hem­ing­way. It received a score of 11—merely “O.K.” It sug­gest­ed that I change the pas­sive in sen­tence one and remove “care­ful­ly” from the fourth sen­tence (I declined), and it iden­ti­fied “unruly” as an adverb (it is not). Like all forms of advice, it pays to use your own judg­ment before apply­ing whole­sale. Nev­er­the­less, the sug­ges­tion to stream­line and sim­pli­fy for clarity’s sake is a gen­er­al rule worth heed­ing more often than not. Broth­ers Adam and Ben Long, cre­ators of the app, real­ized that their “sen­tences often grow long to the point that they became dif­fi­cult to read.” It hap­pens to every­one, ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al alike. The app sug­gests writ­ing that scores a Grade 10 or below is “bold and clear.” Writ­ing above this mea­sure is “hard” or “very hard” to read. Which prompts the inevitable ques­tion: How does Hem­ing­way him­self score in the Hem­ing­way app?

In a blog post yes­ter­day for The New York­er, Ian Crouch ran a few of the master’s pas­sages through the online edit­ing tool (a con­cept akin to John Malkovich enter­ing John Malkovich’s head). The open­ing para­graph of “A Clean, Well-Light­ed Place” received a score of 15. Hemingway’s descrip­tion of Romero the bull­fight­er from The Sun Also Ris­es also “breaks sev­er­al of the Hem­ing­way rules” with its use of pas­sive voice and extra­ne­ous adverbs. Does this mean even Hem­ing­way falls short of the ide­al? Or only that writ­ing rules exist to be bro­ken? Both, per­haps, and nei­ther. Style is as elu­sive as gram­mar is con­strict­ing, and both are mas­tered only through end­less prac­tice. Will “Hem­ing­way” turn you into Hem­ing­way? No. Will it make you a bet­ter writer? Maybe. But only, I’d sug­gest, inas­much as you learn when to accept and when to ignore its advice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Crime Writer Elmore Leonard Pro­vides 13 Writ­ing Tips for Aspir­ing Writ­ers

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Download De La Soul’s Hip Hop Albums for Free — Until Noon Saturday

in Music | February 14th, 2014

25 years ago, the hip hop trio De La Soul released its debut album 3 Feet High and Ris­ing (above). Robert Christ­gau, the self-pro­claimed “Dean of Amer­i­can Rock Crit­ics” and long-time music edi­tor for the Vil­lage Voice, declared that it was “unlike any rap album you or any­body else has ever heard.” And it wound up 23rd on The Source Mag­a­zine’s list of The 100 Best Rap Albums.

To cel­e­brate the anniver­sary of this release, De La Soul has gone over and beyond and made all (but one) of their stu­dio albums free to down­load until noon tomor­row (Sat­ur­day). Head over to the band’s web site, select the albums that you want to down­load,  enter your name and email address, click “Sub­mit for Sounds” and then wait until you receive an email con­tain­ing the down­load links. It’s as sim­ple as that. Hap­py lis­ten­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

The Great­ness of Charles Dar­win Explained with Rap Music

The Large Hadron Col­lid­er Rap, Yo

A Brief His­to­ry of Sam­pling: From the Bea­t­les to the Beast­ie Boys

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Paul McCartney’s Conceptual Drawings For the Abbey Road Cover and Magical Mystery Tour Film

in Art, Music | February 14th, 2014

abbey-road-sketch

The web­site of Abbey Road stu­dios has an Earth­Cam trained on the inter­sec­tion of Abbey Road and Grove End Road, right out­side its state­ly Geor­gian Town­house. You can mon­i­tor the site all day and night if you like, and the prospect of doing so seems no cra­zier to me than indulging a fix­a­tion with Paul is dead con­spir­a­cies. It’s a mag­i­cal place, as like­ly to inspire awe as blind obses­sion. Although it has record­ed artists from Paul Robe­son to Lady Gaga, the his­toric stu­dio acquired its shrine sta­tus from one moment only—The Bea­t­les final record­ed album, Abbey Road, and its infa­mous cov­er shot.

abbey-road-empty-690808-580x389

See­ing the sausage of that cov­er made in the alter­nate takes post­ed at the Bea­t­les Bible site (two of which have Paul wear­ing san­dals) doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly dis­pel the mys­tique, but it does dis­abuse one of illu­sions of total spon­tane­ity. Even more so does the draw­ing at the top, which Paul McCart­ney made for pho­tog­ra­ph­er Iain Macmil­lan, who had 10 min­utes to get the hand­ful of shots he cap­tured with his Has­sel­blad. In the top right-hand cor­ner, you can see a small draw­ing added by Macmil­lan which adds depth to McCartney’s rudi­men­ta­ry com­po­si­tions. These sketch­es show McCart­ney and Macmil­lan care­ful­ly visu­al­iz­ing the sym­me­tries, strides, and even shad­ows of the cross­walk pho­to. (See the land­mark above, emp­ty, in a pho­to tak­en that same day.)

SgtPeppersSketch

Sketch­ing out impor­tant shots like these is com­mon prac­tice. For exam­ple, above you can see Peter Blake’s 1967 out­line for the Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band cov­er art. But the Abbey Road sketch is fur­ther evi­dence of McCartney’s guid­ing hand in The Bea­t­les’ image-mak­ing. Of Sgt. Pepper’s, John Lennon went on record as say­ing of the con­cept that “Sgt Pep­per is Paul.” In this case, McCartney’s idea for the cov­er was instru­men­tal in Blake’s even­tu­al design: “a pre­sen­ta­tion fea­tur­ing a may­or and a cor­po­ra­tion, with a flo­ral clock and a selec­tion of pho­tographs of famous faces on the wall behind The Bea­t­les.” McCart­ney cir­cu­lat­ed a list among the band mem­bers, ask­ing them to list their choice of celebri­ties. Many of the sug­gest­ed fig­ures end­ed up on the cov­er.

McCartneyMMTSketch

Of their sub­se­quent con­cept album, The Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour, Ringo like­wise claimed “it’s Paul’s idea real­ly, he came up with this.” When­ev­er McCart­ney for­mu­lat­ed his ideas—for album struc­tures, cov­er designs, or movies—he says in this video (which we can’t embed, unfor­tu­nate­ly) that he would “draw some­thing out.” Above, see his con­cep­tu­al map for the Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour film (click to enlarge). It may only be a coin­ci­dence that it looks some­thing like a dream­catch­er. Maybe it’s more of a pie chart. In any case, McCart­ney describes it in fair­ly mat­ter-of-fact terms as “vir­tu­al­ly a script” that allowed him to “focus his thoughts.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks for The Bea­t­les’ Cli­mac­tic 16-Minute Med­ley on Abbey Road

John, Paul and George Per­form Duel­ing Gui­tar Solos on The Bea­t­les’ Farewell Song (1969)

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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