Watch the New Trailer for the Stanford Prison Experiment Film, Soon in Theaters Near You

in Psychology | June 17th, 2015

In 1971, Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Philip Zim­bar­do under­took a study to deter­mine whether sit­u­a­tions deter­mine behav­ior or whether a person’s dis­po­si­tion leads to behav­ior regard­less of their sit­u­a­tion. As seen in the above trail­er for the Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment, a new film adap­ta­tion of Zimbardo’s con­tro­ver­sial study, it was explained thus­ly: peo­ple act­ed like prisoners–lashing out at author­i­ty, angry, maladjusted–purely by dint of being put in pris­ons. And peo­ple abused their author­i­ty when put in the posi­tion of author­i­ty. The hypoth­e­sis had its basis in the past: the action of Nazi guards at the con­cen­tra­tion camps. The results have ram­i­fi­ca­tions through to the present: wit­ness the con­fes­sions of the guards who tor­tured inmates in Abu Ghraib.

The trail­er plays like a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller, but so far it looks true to the record. Prof. Zim­bar­do–hav­ing just earned tenure at Stan­ford (and played in the film by Bil­ly Crudup)–chose 24 healthy stu­dent sub­jects and ran­dom­ly assigned them either the role of guard or of pris­on­er. The Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment’s base­ment was turned into a mock prison, with hold­ing cells, guard rooms, soli­tary con­fine­ment, and an exer­cise yard. Cam­eras record­ed all that went on, observed by Zim­bar­do and his crew. The “guards” could come and go accord­ing to shifts, but the “pris­on­ers” could not. While the “guards” could not use phys­i­cal force on the “pris­on­ers,” they could use as many psy­cho­log­i­cal tac­tics as pos­si­ble to break the will of their fel­low stu­dents. How­ev­er, the “pris­on­ers” were not told exact­ly what would hap­pen to them. When, on the first day, the “pris­on­ers” were “arrest­ed” in the morn­ing, stripped, searched, shaved and deloused, they were already in a state of shock. An ear­ly doc­u­men­tary exists on the exper­i­ment and its results here:

Suf­fice it to say (and you may have seen this com­ing) the stu­dent guards real­ly got into their roles, and the “pris­on­ers” rebelled. All the while Prof. Zim­bar­do want­ed to keep going for the planned one to two weeks. Only because of the objec­tions of Christi­na Maslach, a grad­u­ate stu­dent and Prof. Zimbardo’s girl­friend, did the group aban­don the study after six increas­ing­ly fright­en­ing days. (Prov­ing as well that Prof. Zim­bar­do was affect­ed by the exper­i­ment in ways sim­i­lar to his sub­jects, as he was unable to ini­tial­ly stop some­thing out of con­trol.)

The study was fund­ed by the U.S. Office of Naval Research to “study anti­so­cial behav­ior.” The stu­dent sub­jects were paid $15 a day for their help and half quit the exper­i­ment before it was fin­ished. All of the guards stayed on. As detailed in the offi­cial FAQ on the study, none of the stu­dents showed any last­ing trau­ma, though Prof. Zim­bar­do said:

“I was guilty of the sin of omis­sion — the evil of inac­tion — of not pro­vid­ing ade­quate over­sight and sur­veil­lance when it was required… the find­ings came at the expense of human suf­fer­ing. I am sor­ry for that and to this day apol­o­gize for con­tribut­ing to this inhu­man­i­ty.”

The exper­i­ment is now used in psy­chol­o­gy text­books as an exam­ple of the “psy­chol­o­gy of impris­on­ment.” Prof. Zim­bar­do turned his sci­ence to help­ing peo­ple, look­ing at pro­mot­ing hero­ism in dai­ly life, help­ing vet­er­ans nor­mal­ize into social life, work­ing with shy peo­ple, and, com­ing full cir­cle, tes­ti­fy­ing dur­ing the court mar­tial of Sgt. Ivan “Chip” Fred­er­ick, who was charged with crimes dur­ing his time at Abu Ghraib. Zim­bar­do has since retired and recent­ly advised on the upcom­ing film. Christi­na Maslach lat­er mar­ried Prof. Zim­bar­do and is cur­rent­ly Vice Provost for Under­grad­u­ate Edu­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley.

And if Prof. Zimbardo’s exper­i­ment sounds a bit like Stan­ley Mil­gram’s 1961 exper­i­ment in obe­di­ence to author­i­ty, well, it’s no coin­ci­dence. Stan­ley Mil­gram and Philip Zim­bar­do were high school friends.

How­ev­er, there’s some inter­est­ing dif­fer­ences. For one, the “vic­tims” of Mil­gram’s exper­i­ment were act­ing the elec­tric shocks they sup­pos­ed­ly received. Despite that lev­el of fak­ery, Mil­gram was denied tenure at Har­vard. The City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York Grad­u­ate Cen­ter, on the oth­er hand, knew a psy­chol­o­gy super­star when they saw one and gave him tenure.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Footage from the Psy­chol­o­gy Exper­i­ment That Shocked the World: Milgram’s Obe­di­ence Study (1961)

The Lit­tle Albert Exper­i­ment: The Per­verse 1920 Study That Made a Baby Afraid of San­ta Claus & Bun­nies

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

How To Think Like a Psy­chol­o­gist: A Free Online Course from Stan­ford

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See? (1921)

 

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Alan Watts Explains Why Death is an Art, Adventure and Creative Act

in Philosophy, Religion | June 17th, 2015

Many of us in the West live in some of the most frag­ment­ed reli­gious land­scapes in the world, but in the midst of deep­en­ing lev­els of con­flict over poli­cies of birth and death, these two issues that divide us also join us togeth­er. More than at any time in his­to­ry, peo­ple live in expec­ta­tion of sim­i­lar spans of life; we all lament the loss of loved ones who die at any age; and most of us live with some fear of death, or at least vio­lent, untime­ly death like the kind Alan Watts describes above.

Watts, Eng­lish Zen guru of sorts (though he would not like the label) lec­tured more on death than per­haps any oth­er philo­soph­i­cal or reli­gious teacher since the Bud­dha, but he did so in a way that illu­mi­nates our ideas about the inevitable end, even if it should come upon us all of the sud­den.

You heard a bomb com­ing at you, you could hear it whis­tle and you knew it was right above you and head­ing straight at you, and that you were fin­ished. 

This is no abstract thought exper­i­ment, of course, but the his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ence of mil­lions of peo­ple, from Dres­den to Iraq. But despite the ter­ri­fy­ing exam­ple, Watts describes achiev­ing in that moment absolute clar­i­ty and uni­ver­sal­i­ty. The dread­ed bomb whis­tles toward you, “and you accept­ed it,” he says.

How exact­ly does one achieve that accep­tance? With­out dog­ma­tiz­ing or mys­ti­cism, Watts offers some wis­dom in anoth­er excerpt from a lec­ture above. This video’s use of melo­dra­mat­ic film clips and cin­e­mat­ic music may be a lit­tle schmaltzy, but his mat­ter of fact talk isn’t less­ened by it. Though not every­one pass­es on their genes to a next gen­er­a­tion, an exam­ple he dis­cuss­es in both excerpts, we do all leave the plan­et to make room for new peo­ple, wher­ev­er they come from, and this, he says, “is an hon­or­able thing…. It’s a far more amus­ing arrange­ment for nature to con­tin­ue the process of life through dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als than it is through the same indi­vid­ual.”

Watts was not at all doc­tri­naire about death, par­tic­u­lar­ly in his lat­er years. In a con­ver­sa­tion with Aldous Huxley’s wife Lau­ra in 1968, he called dying “an art,” though not quite like Sylvia Plath did: “It is also,” he said, “an adven­ture.” He con­sid­ered Aldous Hux­ley’s unortho­dox death—on an LSD trip while Lau­ra read to him from the Tibetan Bar­do Thodol—a “high­ly intel­li­gent form of dying.” Nonethe­less, Watts, an Epis­co­pal priest become an explain­er of Zen Bud­dhism in Amer­i­ca, also had a great deal to say about more for­mal reli­gious ideas of death.

In the lec­ture above, from a 1959 Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion pro­gram, Watts explains a par­tic­u­lar Bud­dhist con­cept of rein­car­na­tion and rebirth through var­i­ous realms. It’s a pic­ture as fan­tas­tic and pic­turesque as Dante’s, and like his cre­ative act, one that can be read with some lit­er­al and much pro­found­ly philo­soph­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. These con­cep­tions help demon­strate that far from fear­ful, our puz­zling over the inevitabil­i­ty and mys­tery of death can be, as it was for Watts, “one of the most cre­ative thoughts I ever thought in my life.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets of Aldous Hux­ley and His Art of Dying

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

The Zen Teach­ings of Alan Watts: A Free Audio Archive of His Enlight­en­ing Lec­tures

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear Seven Hours of Women Making Electronic Music (1938–2014)

in Music | June 16th, 2015

seven hours of women making music

Image via Flickr Com­mons

Two years ago, in a post on the pio­neer­ing com­pos­er of the orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who theme, we wrote that “the ear­ly era of exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic music belonged to Delia Der­byshire.” Derbyshire—who almost gave Paul McCart­ney a ver­sion of “Yes­ter­day” with an elec­tron­ic back­ing in place of strings—helped invent the ear­ly elec­tron­ic music of the six­ties through her work with the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop, the sound effects lab­o­ra­to­ry of the BBC. She went on to form one of the most influ­en­tial, if large­ly obscure, elec­tron­ic acts of the decade, White Noise. And yet, call­ing the ear­ly eras of the elec­tron­ic music hers is an exag­ger­a­tion. Of course her many col­lab­o­ra­tors deserve men­tion, as well as musi­cians like Bruce Haack, Pierre Hen­ry, Kraftwerk, Bri­an Eno, and so many oth­ers. But what gets almost com­plete­ly left out of many his­to­ries of elec­tron­ic music, as with so many oth­er his­to­ries, is the promi­nent role so many women besides Der­byshire played in the devel­op­ment of the sounds we now hear all around us all the time.

In recog­ni­tion of this fact, musi­cian, DJ, and “escaped housewife/schoolteacher” Bar­bara Gold­en devot­ed two episodes of her KPFA radio pro­gram “Crack o’ Dawn” to women in elec­tron­ic music, once in 2010 and again in 2013. She shares each broad­cast with co-host Jon Lei­deck­er (“Wob­bly”), and in each seg­ment, the two ban­ter in casu­al radio show style, offer­ing his­to­ry and con­text for each musi­cian and com­pos­er. Recent­ly high­light­ed on Ubu’s Twit­ter stream, the first show, “Women in Elec­tron­ic Music 1938–1982 Part 1” (above) gives Der­byshire her due, with three tracks from her, includ­ing the Doc­tor Who theme.

It also includes music from twen­ty one oth­er com­posers, begin­ning with Clara Rock­more, a refin­er and pop­u­lar­iz­er of the theremin, that weird instru­ment designed to sim­u­late a high, tremu­lous human voice. Also fea­tured is Wendy Carlos’s “Timesteps,” an orig­i­nal piece from her A Clock­work Orange score. (You’ll remem­ber her enthralling syn­the­siz­er recre­ations of Beethoven’s 9th Sym­pho­ny from the film).

The sec­ond show, above, fills in sev­er­al gaps in the orig­i­nal broad­cast and “could eas­i­ly be six hours” says co-host Lei­deck­er, giv­en the sheer amount of elec­tron­ic music out there com­posed and record­ed by women over the past sev­en­ty years. This show includes one of our host Golden’s own com­po­si­tions, “Melody Sum­n­er Car­na­han,” as well as music from Lau­rie Ander­son and musique con­crete com­pos­er Doris Hays. These two broad­casts alone cov­er an enor­mous range of styl­is­tic and tech­no­log­i­cal ground, but for even more disco­graph­i­cal his­to­ry of women in elec­tron­ic music, see the playlist below, com­piled by “Nerd­girl” Antye Greie-Ripat­ti for Women’s Day, 2014. Com­mis­sioned by Club Trans­me­di­ale Berlin, the mix includes such well-known names as Yoko Ono, Bjork, and M.I.A., as well as fore­moth­ers Der­byshire and Car­los, and dozens more.

In lieu of the radio-show chat­ter of Gold­en and Lei­deck­er, we have Greie-Ripatti’s post detail­ing each artist’s time peri­od, coun­try of ori­gin, and con­tri­bu­tions to elec­tron­ic music his­to­ry. Many of the com­posers rep­re­sent­ed here worked for major radio and film stu­dios, scored fea­ture films (like 1956’s For­bid­den Plan­et), invent­ed and inno­vat­ed new instru­ments and tech­niques, wrote for orches­tras, and passed on their knowl­edge as edu­ca­tors and pro­duc­ers. Greie-Ripatti’s page quotes a Dan­ish elec­tron­ic pro­duc­er and per­former say­ing “there is a lot of women in elec­tron­ic music… invis­i­ble women.” Thanks to efforts like hers and Golden’s, these pio­neer­ing cre­ators need no longer go unseen or, more impor­tant­ly, unheard.

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 13 ) |

Christopher Lee Reads “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 Classic

in Audio Books, Literature | June 16th, 2015

Last Fri­day, after we marked the pass­ing of Christo­pher Lee by fea­tur­ing his read­ing of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 nar­ra­tive poem “The Raven,” we stum­bled, by chance, upon Lee’s read­ing of anoth­er Poe classic–“The Tell-Tale Heart.” Oper­at­ing with the the­o­ry that there’s no such thing as too much Edgar Allan Poe, and cer­tain­ly no such thing as too much Christo­pher Lee read­ing Edgar Allan Poe, we’ve fea­tured that sec­ond read­ing above. It’ll be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books…

via the Edgar Allan Poe Face­book Page

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!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Blade Runner Recut with the Sci-Fi Masterpiece’s Unused Original Footage

in Film, Sci Fi | June 16th, 2015

I recent­ly talked with a friend who’s plan­ning to sched­ule a screen­ing of Blade Run­ner at her film fes­ti­val. We dis­cussed the impor­tant deci­sion that any­one who wants to show Rid­ley Scot­t’s Philip K. Dick-adapt­ing mas­ter­piece faces: which Blade Run­ner? Sev­en dif­fer­ent offi­cial cuts exist: many would instinc­tive­ly choose the 2007 “final cut,” some might pre­fer the 1992 “direc­tor’s cut,” and a curi­ous minor­i­ty might even like to see the cut orig­i­nal­ly released in U.S. the­aters in 1982, fea­tur­ing the Har­ri­son Ford voiceover and hap­py end­ing that fans now con­sid­er ruinous.

But now we have yet anoth­er cut of Blade Run­ner, per­haps the most unusu­al of them all: a “new” ver­sion made out of shots that, even if you’ve seen every offi­cial cut of the film, you may nev­er have seen before. “Some enter­pris­ing souls have com­piled a B‑roll cut of the film, using all of the excised footage that was not incor­po­rat­ed in the pre­vi­ous cuts,” writes Nerdis­t’s Joseph McCabe. “There’s so much here that most Blade Run­ner fans have not seen before that it’s absolute­ly required view­ing. I found it worth watch­ing all forty-five min­utes just to hear Edward James Olmos’ gruff Gaff hilar­i­ous­ly exclaim, ‘I spit on meta­physics!’ ” Not to men­tion all the new views of the pic­ture’s still-strik­ing pro­duc­tion design.

That run­ning time, over an hour short­er than every oth­er cut, effec­tive­ly con­dens­es Blade Run­ner into a short film. It does­n’t play quite like any of the wide­ly seen ver­sions of the film, even though it retains the hat­ed nar­ra­tion and incon­gru­ous Hol­ly­wood end­ing of the Amer­i­can the­atri­cal cut. But the ele­ments that feel clunky, over-explana­to­ry, and audi­ence-dis­trust­ing in a two-hour Blade Run­ner some­how work bet­ter in this briefer ren­di­tion. (Cer­tain­ly Ford’s voiceover, awk­ward though it always sounds, helps this trimmed-down sto­ry cohere.) You haven’t real­ly seen Blade Run­ner, so many who love the movie feel, until you’ve seen every Blade Run­ner — but even now, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them.

via Nerdist

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book: The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead and Rid­ley Scott Online

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Samurai 7, an Anime Adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai

in Animation, Film | June 16th, 2015


Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Sev­en Samu­rai (1954) might be over three hours long but you nev­er feel bored. The action scenes nev­er fail to thrill and the char­ac­ters are so well devel­oped that you gen­uine­ly grieve when they die. The epic is so bril­liant­ly real­ized that it’s no sur­prise that film­mak­ers every­where took note. In The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en (1960), a direct remake of Sev­en Samu­rai, Hol­ly­wood swapped out katanas for six-shoot­ers and recast the movie as a West­ern. Oth­er films from The Guns of Navar­ro to the Bol­ly­wood block­buster Sholay to even Pixar’s A Bug’s Life have drawn heav­i­ly from Kurosawa’s mas­ter­piece.

Add to this list Toshi­fu­mi Tak­iza­wa’s 26-episode ani­mat­ed TV series Samu­rai 7. The set up is iden­ti­cal to the orig­i­nal — mas­ter­less samu­rais are hired to pro­tect a vil­lage from a ruth­less gang of ban­dits — and many of the char­ac­ters in the ani­mat­ed series have the same names as char­ac­ters in the orig­i­nal film. But the total run­ning time of the TV show is three times longer than that of Kurosawa’s film, so Tak­iza­wa took a few lib­er­ties.

The show’s open­ing scene, for instance, fea­tures a mas­sive inter­stel­lar bat­tle involv­ing lasers and space­ships. There’s a rust­ing, ele­phan­tine mega­lopo­lis straight out of Blade Run­ner. And also there are robots. The ban­dits, as it turns out, are more metal­lic than human, and Kikuchiyo, who was played bril­liant­ly as a drunk­en wild man by Toshi­ro Mifu­ne, is in this iter­a­tion a grumpy, poor­ly-con­struct­ed cyborg who wields a chain­saw-like sword. The series even has Kirara, a cow-eyed teenaged priest­ess who sports a midriff-bar­ing kimono.

Either the sto­ry ele­ments above sound com­plete­ly pre­pos­ter­ous or total­ly awe­some. If you’re in the for­mer cat­e­go­ry, you can watch the trail­er for Kurosawa’s film below. If you’re in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry – and the show is a lot of fun – then you can watch episode 1 above, and catch the rest on Youtube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Lynda Barry’s Graduation Speech; Give a Shout Out to the Teachers Who Changed Your Life

in Comics/Cartoons, Graduation Speech, Life | June 15th, 2015

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts’ most recent grads are lucky ducks to have had a speak­er as engag­ing as car­toon­ist and edu­ca­tor Lyn­da Bar­ry deliv­er­ing their commencement’s keynote address.

Speak­er Bar­ry was also made an Hon­orary Doc­tor of Fine Arts, an award that occa­sioned the ill-fit­ting tam seen in the video above, as well as a new title—Doctor Nursey—conferred by pre-kinder­garten­ers with whom she works at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin. (Pre­vi­ous alias­es include Pro­fes­sor Chew­bac­ca and Pro­fes­sor Old Skull)

Bar­ry kept things live­ly by mix­ing in some tried and true mate­r­i­al from oth­er pub­lic appear­ances, includ­ing her Fil­ipino grandmother’s belief in the aswang, a poem set to music (here “Cot­ton Song” by Harlem Renais­sance poet, Jean Toomer) and the sto­ry of the col­lab­o­ra­tive car­toon, “Chick­en Attack by Jack.”

This last anec­dote con­tains a strong indict­ment of con­tem­po­rary society’s screen addic­tion, and it is heart­en­ing to see the graduates—members of the last gen­er­a­tion to pre-date the Internet—listening so atten­tive­ly, no one tex­ting or tweet­ing as the cam­era pans the crowd.

When Bar­ry exhort­ed them to shout out the names of their three most inspir­ing teach­ers on the count of three, most did!

For me, this was the most thrilling moment, though I also appre­ci­at­ed the advice on the best time to sched­ule oral surgery, and a bliss­ful untruth about Ever­green State Col­lege’s appli­ca­tion process cir­ca the mid-70s.

Not your typ­i­cal com­mence­ment speech… those lucky, lucky ducks!

Read­ers, we invite you to get in the spir­it and cel­e­brate the Class of 2015 by “shout­ing” the names of your most inspi­ra­tional teach­ers in the com­ment sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Barry’s Won­der­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her UW-Madi­son Class, “The Unthink­able Mind”

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth is Nev­er Hav­ing to Spend Time with A‑Holes

Robert De Niro Tells Grad­u­at­ing NYU Arts Grads, “You Made It… And You’re F*cked”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Con­grat­u­la­tions, grad­u­ates, espe­cial­ly the mem­bers of NYC’s most fresh­ly forged the­ater com­pa­ny, Ras­cal Arts. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 15 ) |

Isaac Asimov’s Favorite Story “The Last Question” Read by Leonard Nimoy

in Audio Books, Sci Fi | June 15th, 2015

Isaac Asi­mov, one of the most pro­lif­ic cre­ators in sci­ence-fic­tion his­to­ry, wrote or edit­ed more than 500 books in his life­time, includ­ing the high-pro­file ones we all rec­og­nize like I, Robot and the Foun­da­tion series (hear a ver­sion dra­ma­tized here). But which piece of this mas­sive body of work did Asi­mov him­self con­sid­er his favorite? Always a fan of clar­i­ty, the man did­n’t leave that issue shroud­ed in mys­tery: the hon­or belongs to “The Last Ques­tion,” which first appeared in the Novem­ber 1956 issue of Sci­ence Fic­tion Quar­ter­ly. It’s now avail­able in Isaac Asi­mov: The Com­plete Sto­ries, Vol. 1.

“Why is it my favorite?” Asi­mov lat­er wrote. “For one thing I got the idea all at once and did­n’t have to fid­dle with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarce­ly had to change a word. This sort of thing endears any sto­ry to any writer.” But it also had, and con­tin­ues to have, “the strangest effect on my read­ers. Fre­quent­ly some­one writes to ask me if I can give them the name of a sto­ry, which they ‘think’ I may have writ­ten, and tell them where to find it. They don’t remem­ber the title but when they describe the sto­ry it is invari­ably ‘The Last Ques­tion.’ ”

You cer­tain­ly won’t for­get who wrote the sto­ry if you can hear it read by Leonard Nimoy, sure­ly the most dis­tinc­tive sci-fi nar­ra­tor of our time, in the video just above. Nimoy first read “The Last Ques­tion” aloud for an adap­ta­tion staged at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty’s Abrams Plan­e­tar­i­um in 1966, a pro­duc­tion that first moved Asi­mov him­self to con­sid­er rank­ing its source mate­r­i­al among his best works. Of course, the sto­ry would have received none of this ret­ro­spec­tive atten­tion, from its author or oth­ers, if not for its intel­lec­tu­al con­tent, which comes through vivid­ly no mat­ter how you take it in.

Look past the more enter­tain­ing­ly dat­ed ele­ments — expres­sions like “for Pete’s sake,” enor­mous cen­tral com­put­ers that print all their out­put on paper slips, an ear­ly ref­er­ence to “high­balls” — and you find plen­ty of ele­ments that qual­i­fy as eter­nal: the ever more rapid expan­sion of human­i­ty, the ever more rapid progress of tech­nol­o­gy, and the seem­ing­ly ever-fal­ter­ing abil­i­ty of the for­mer to main­tain dom­i­nance over the lat­ter. With­in the sto­ry’s nine pages, Asi­mov even digs into sci­en­tif­ic con­cepts like entropy and the heat death of the uni­verse as well as philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts like the true nature of “for­ev­er” and the ori­gin of life, the uni­verse, and every­thing. If you read only one of Asi­mov’s sto­ries, he’d sure­ly approve if you made it “The Last Ques­tion.” (And if you read two, why not “The Last Answer”?). Find these read­ings added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com, includ­ing ones writ­ten by Isaac Asi­mov? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Isaac Asi­mov Explains the Ori­gins of Good Ideas & Cre­ativ­i­ty in Nev­er-Before-Pub­lished Essay

Isaac Asi­mov Explains His Three Laws of Robots

Leonard Nimoy Reads Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries From The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles & The Illus­trat­ed Man (1975–76)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.