Richard Dawkins Reads “Love Letters” from “Fans” (NSFW)

in Random, Religion | January 28th, 2015

Richard Dawkins — some know him as the Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist who coined the term “meme” in his influ­en­tial 1976 book, The Self­ish Gene; oth­ers con­sid­er him a lead­ing fig­ure in the New Athe­ism move­ment, a posi­tion he has assumed unapolo­get­i­cal­ly. In recent years, Dawkins has made his case against reli­gion though dif­fer­ent forms of media: books, doc­u­men­taries, col­lege lec­tures, and pub­lic debates. He can be aggres­sive and snide, to be sure. But he dish­es out far less than he receives in return. Just wit­ness him read­ing the “love let­ters” (as he euphemisti­cal­ly calls them) that he has received from the gen­er­al pub­lic. They are not safe for work. You can see him read­ing a pre­vi­ous batch of let­ters here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Richard Dawkins’ Doc­u­men­tary The God Delu­sion Tack­les Faith & Reli­gious Vio­lence (2006)

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

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Hear Gandhi’s Famous Speech on the Existence of God (1931)

in History | January 28th, 2015

A per­fect sym­bol of the mech­a­nisms of British rule over India, the Salt Acts pro­hib­it­ed Indi­ans from access and trade of their own resources, forc­ing them to buy salt from British monop­o­lies, who taxed the min­er­al heav­i­ly. In 1930, in one of the defin­ing acts of his Satya­gra­ha move­ment, Mohan­das Gand­hi decid­ed to defy the Salt Act with a very grand gesture—a march, with thou­sands of his sup­port­ers, over a dis­tance of over 200 miles, to the Ara­bi­an Sea. Once there, fol­low­ing Gandhi’s lead, the crowd pro­ceed­ed to col­lect sea salt, prompt­ing British colo­nial police to arrest over 60,000 peo­ple, includ­ing Gand­hi him­self.

The 1930 action, the first orga­nized act of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence after the Indi­an Nation­al Con­gress’ dec­la­ra­tion of inde­pen­dence, got the atten­tion of the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, who had been direct­ing harsh repres­sive mea­sures against the grow­ing inde­pen­dence move­ment, and in Jan­u­ary of 1931, after his release, Gand­hi and Irwin signed a pact. Gand­hi agreed to end the move­ment; Irwin agreed to allow the Indi­ans to make their own salt, and the Indi­ans would have an equal role in nego­ti­at­ing India’s future. British offi­cials were out­raged and dis­gust­ed. Win­ston Churchill, for exam­ple, staunch­ly opposed to inde­pen­dence, called the meet­ing of the two lead­ers a “nau­se­at­ing and humil­i­at­ing spec­ta­cle,” say­ing “Gand­hi-ism and every­thing it stands for will have to be grap­pled with and crushed.” (Churchill favored let­ting Gand­hi die if he went on hunger strike.)

The terms of the pact, of course, did not hold, and the move­ment would con­tin­ue until even­tu­al inde­pen­dence in 1947. But Gand­hi had not only suc­ceed­ed in incur­ring the wrath of the British colo­nial­ists; he had also won many sup­port­ers in Eng­land. One of them, Muriel Lester, invit­ed the Indi­an leader to stay with her in Lon­don at a com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter she had found­ed called Kings­ley Hall. “He enjoyed his stay here,” says the cur­rent Kings­ley Hall man­ag­er David Bak­er, “and it was wise because if he had stayed in the West End the press would have lam­pooned him. He wouldn’t have had a life, but here he was left alone and walked around in the streets. He want­ed to stay with the peo­ple that he lived with in India, i.e. the poor.” How­ev­er, Gand­hi wasn’t total­ly ignored by the press. While at Kings­ley, he deliv­ered a short speech, which you can hear above, and the BBC was there to record it.

In the speech, Gand­hi says absolute­ly noth­ing about Indi­an inde­pen­dence, British oppres­sion, or the aims and tac­tics of the move­ment. He says noth­ing at all about pol­i­tics or any world­ly affairs what­so­ev­er. Instead, he lec­tures on the exis­tence of God, “an inde­fin­able mys­te­ri­ous pow­er that per­vades every­thing,” and which “defies all proof.” Gand­hi tes­ti­fies to “an unal­ter­able law gov­ern­ing every­thing and every being that exists or lives,” though he also con­fess­es “that I have no argu­ment to con­vince through rea­son.” Instead relies on analo­gies, on things he “dim­ly per­ceives,” on the “mar­velous research­es of [Indi­an engi­neer and sci­en­tist] Sir J.C. Bose,” and on “the expe­ri­ences of an unbro­ken line of prophets and sages in all coun­tries and climes.” It’s not a speech like­ly to per­suade any­one who isn’t already some sort of a believ­er, I think, but it’s of much inter­est to any­one inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of Indi­an inde­pen­dence and in Gandhi’s life and mes­sage.

You can read the full text of the speech here, and see footage of Kings­ley Hall and a filmed inter­view with Muriel Lester, dis­cussing Gandhi’s stay, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mahat­ma Gandhi’s List of the 7 Social Sins; or Tips on How to Avoid Liv­ing the Bad Life

Mahat­ma Gand­hi Talks (in First Record­ed Video)

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

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

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Confusion Through Sand: A Short, Hand-Drawn Animation on the Terror & Confusion of War

in Animation | January 27th, 2015

Back in Octo­ber 2012, Ornana Films raised $30,000 through a Kick­starter cam­paign to pro­duce Con­fu­sion Through Sand, an ani­ma­tion that “explores the spec­trum of haze expe­ri­enced by today’s sol­diers in the desert.” It’s an inter­pre­ta­tion, Ornana tells us, “of what hap­pens when top train­ing encoun­ters cir­cum­stances beyond the realm of human con­trol, in both inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or con­flicts.” The action takes place “on the ground, under the hel­met of a 19 year-old infantry­man.” Once com­plet­ed, the film pre­miered at the 2013 SXSW film fes­ti­val and took home the Jury Award. Now, a year lat­er, it’s free online. And even bet­ter, it comes accom­pa­nied by a behind-the-scenes film that takes you inside the film­mak­ers’ artis­tic process, show­ing how they hand-ani­mat­ed the film with mark­ers on recy­cled paper. Enjoy both.

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.

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The Cahiers du Cinéma Names the 10 Best Films of the Year, from 1951 to 2014

in Film | January 27th, 2015

 

cahiers2

It’s hard to over­state the impact of Cahiers du ciné­ma on film his­to­ry.

In the ear­ly ‘50s, the great crit­ic André Bazin led a small coterie of film fanat­ics – guys with names like Jean-Luc Godard, François Truf­faut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Riv­ette — who hung out at the Ciné­math­èque française. The­aters were flood­ed with Hol­ly­wood movies, real­ly for the first time since the begin­ning of World War II, and this group took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to watch any­thing they could get their hands on, from high brow art films to cut rate West­erns. They would watch any­thing.

In 1951, Bazin found­ed Cahiers and this band of cin­e­mat­ic out­siders became famous­ly bru­tal and uncom­pro­mis­ing icon­o­clasts. They praised low­ly genre films – film noir espe­cial­ly – as mas­ter­pieces while slam­ming the mid­dle­brow flicks the French film indus­try was crank­ing out at the time. Truf­faut was famous for being par­tic­u­lar­ly harsh, earn­ing the moniker “The Gravedig­ger of French Cin­e­ma.” His reviews were so acer­bic that he was the only French film crit­ic not invit­ed to cov­er the 1958 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. (The fact that he then turned around and won the fest’s top prize the next year for his mas­ter­piece 400 Blows might be one of the great­est feats of badassery in cin­e­ma his­to­ry.)

Per­haps the Cahiers’ great­est con­tri­bu­tion was an arti­cle, writ­ten by Truf­faut in 1954, called “A Cer­tain Ten­den­cy of the French Cin­e­ma,” which was a man­i­festo for what would lat­er be called auteur the­o­ry – an idea that cer­tain direc­tors have such a com­mand of the medi­um that they impress their indi­vid­ual vision on a film, in the same way an author does to a book. This idea has been so com­plete­ly absorbed into pop­u­lar con­scious­ness that it’s hard to see just how rev­o­lu­tion­ary it was at the time. Before Cahiers, peo­ple gen­er­al­ly thought about movies in terms of the stars, not the direc­tor. Most would refer to Rear Win­dow, say, as a Jim­my Stew­art movie, not an Alfred Hitch­cock film. The con­cept result­ed in a basic reorder­ing in the way film­mak­ers thought about their art.

Truf­faut and com­pa­ny obsessed with film­mak­ers they con­sid­ered auteurs. Their top 10 list for 1955, the year after “A Cer­tain Ten­den­cy” was pub­lished, shows who in par­tic­u­lar they con­sid­ered auteurs – art house icons (Carl Drey­er and Rober­to Rosselli­ni), Hol­ly­wood rene­gades (Robert Aldrich and Nicholas Ray) and, of course, Hitch­cock.

1955
1. Voy­age To Italy (Rober­to Rosselli­ni)
2. Ordet (Carl Drey­er)
3. The Big Knife (Robert Aldrich)
4. Lola Montes (Max Ophuls)
5. Rear Win­dow (Alfred Hitch­cock)
6. Les Mau­vais Recon­tres (Alexan­dre Astruc)
7. La Stra­da (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni)
8. The Bare­foot Con­tes­sa (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
9. John­ny Gui­tar (Nicholas Ray)
10. Kiss Me Dead­ly (Robert Aldrich)

1960 was the year that seem­ing­ly the entire edi­to­r­i­al staff at Cahiers du ciné­ma took cam­era in hand and became film­mak­ers, launch­ing the French New Wave. Truffaut’s 400 Blows in 1959 was fol­lowed up by Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes and Godard’s ground­break­ing assault on cin­e­mat­ic form, Breath­less. Yet for their top 10 list, Cahiers put Japan­ese mas­ter Ken­ji Mizoguchi’s San­sho the Bailiff at the top. Hitch­cock also makes the list, num­ber 9, with a lit­tle film called Psy­cho.

1960
1. San­sho The Bailiff (Ken­ji Mizoguchi)
2. L’avven­tu­ra (Michae­lan­ge­lo Anto­nioni)
3. Breath­less (Jean-Luc Godard)
4. Shoot The Piano Play­er (François Truf­faut)
5. Poem Of The Sea (Alexan­der Dovzhenko/Julia Sol­ntes­va)
6. Les Bonnes Femmes (Claude Chabrol)
7. Nazarin (Luis Buñuel)
8. Moon­fleet (Fritz Lang)
9. Psy­cho (Alfred Hitch­cock)
10. Le Trou (Jacques Beck­er)

Start­ing from 1968 until the late-70s, the jour­nal became a Maoist col­lec­tive and renounced bour­geois con­cepts like “best of” lists, nar­ra­tive cin­e­ma and, y’know, fun. But in the ear­ly ‘80s, Cahiers shift­ed its edi­to­r­i­al focus back to the world of com­mer­cial film. They laud­ed movies by Nou­velle Vague vet­er­ans like Godard and Rohmer, film fes­ti­val dar­lings like Hou Hsiao Hsien and, to a per­verse degree, Clint East­wood. You can see all of Cahiers du ciné­ma’s top 10 lists here, includ­ing the most recent list for 2014 here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock on the Filmmaker’s Essen­tial Tool: ‘The Kuleshov Effect’

Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Han­nah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Wakes Up New York; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

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 bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Bill Hicks’ 12 Principles of Comedy

in Comedy | January 27th, 2015

When we think of trash-talk­ing, trans­gres­sive come­di­ans, a few big names spring imme­di­ate­ly to mind: George Car­lin and Richard Pry­or; Joan Rivers and Lenny Bruce. Cur­rent­ly, we have Amy Schumer, and Louis CK and Chris Rock, who—though both promi­nent fam­i­ly men now—still piss peo­ple off from time to time. We’ve just scratched the sur­face, of course, but we might even think of Denis Leary, who dom­i­nat­ed the 90s with his rapid-fire deliv­ery and unre­pen­tant chain smok­ing. And if you know Leary, you may know the man whose act he’s been accused of stealing—chain-smoking fire­brand com­ic Bill Hicks.

I won’t get into the mer­its of those charges (com­e­dy pla­gia­rism is a long and sto­ried sub­ject). What I find inter­est­ing is that in one of the key sim­i­lar­i­ties between Leary and Hicks lies one of their great­est dif­fer­ences: a dis­tinc­tive regionalism—Leary the wiseass New Eng­lan­der; Hicks the rebel­lious South­ern­er. Hicks grew up in Texas, and was very much a Tex­an, though not your red state, Bush-vot­er but the kind of Tex­an who once upon a time elect­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor Ann Richards. (He described his fam­i­ly as “Yup­pie Bap­tists,” who “wor­ried about things like, ‘If you scratch your neighbor’s Sub­aru, should you leave a note?’”)

In rebelling against both an uptight urban lib­er­al­ism and the angry rur­al chau­vin­ism of his con­ser­v­a­tive South­ern milieu, Hicks, who died of can­cer in 1993, became some­thing of a folk hero as well as a com­e­dy leg­end. For a taste of his com­ic invec­tive, see him rip into Amer­i­can anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism in the clip above. And for a taste of his method­ol­o­gy, see the list below, once post­ed on the wall of Atlanta’s Laugh­ing Skull com­e­dy club. This comes to us via come­di­an Chris Hard­wick at Nerdist, who, after offer­ing his own advice, turns to Hicks to answer to the ques­tion, “How does one go about being a com­ic.”

BILL HICKS’ PRINCIPLES OF COMEDY

1. If you can be your­self on stage nobody else can be you and you have the law of sup­ply and demand cov­ered.

2. The act is some­thing you fall back on if you can’t think of any­thing else to say.

3. Only do what you think is fun­ny, nev­er just what you think they will like, even though it’s not that fun­ny to you.

4. Nev­er ask them is this fun­ny – you tell them this is fun­ny.

5. You are not mar­ried to any of this shit – if some­thing hap­pens, tak­ing you off on a tan­gent, NEVER go back and fin­ish a bit, just move on.

6. NEVER ask the audi­ence “How You Doing?” Peo­ple who do that can’t think of an open­ing line. They came to see you to tell them how they’re doing, ask­ing that stu­pid ques­tion up front just digs a hole. This is The Most Com­mon Mis­take made by per­form­ers. I want to leave as soon as they say that.

7. Write what enter­tains you. If you can’t be fun­ny be inter­est­ing. You haven’t lost the crowd. Have some­thing to say and then do it in a fun­ny way.

8. I close my eyes and walk out there and that’s where I start, Hon­est.

9. Lis­ten to what you are say­ing, ask your­self, “Why am I say­ing it and is it Nec­es­sary?” (This will fil­ter all your mate­r­i­al and cut the unnec­es­sary words, econ­o­my of words)

10. Play to the top of the intel­li­gence of the room. There aren’t any bad crowds, just wrong choic­es.

11. Remem­ber this is the hard­est thing there is to do. If you can do this you can do any­thing.

12. I love my crack­er roots. Get to know your fam­i­ly, be friends with them.

I’ve nev­er for a sec­ond con­sid­ered doing stand-up, but I’ve stood in front of many a crowd­ed music venue and class­room and have had to con­quer stage fright and self-doubt. Seems to me much of Hicks’ advice is plen­ty applic­a­ble to any kind of per­for­mance sit­u­a­tion, whether its teach­ing, play­ing music, giv­ing a job or con­fer­ence talk, a mag­ic act, or doing stand-up, which I don’t doubt is “the hard­est thing there is to do.” I espe­cial­ly like num­ber 12. Hicks’ mis­an­throp­ic salvos against Amer­i­can igno­rance hit the tar­get so often because he gen­uine­ly seemed to care about the cul­ture he took aim at.

via @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) Describes on Louie Her Undy­ing Com­mit­ment to Com­e­dy

Lenny Bruce Riffs and Rants on Injus­tice and Hypocrisy in One of His Final Per­for­mances (NSFW)

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

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Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Gets Turned Into “The Weirdest Sci-Fi Comic Ever Made” by Jack Kirby

in Comics/Cartoons, Sci Fi | January 27th, 2015

Kirby 2001 covers

Sure, we all enjoyed the adap­ta­tion of 2001: A Space Odyssey pre­sent­ed on the Howard John­son’s chil­dren’s menu from 1968 that we fea­tured last May. But would you believe that, when you swap out the name Howard John­son for that of Jack Kir­by, you get a work of high­er artis­tic mer­it? In his long career, the wide­ly respect­ed com­ic book artist, writer, and edi­tor put in time on both the DC and Mar­vel sides of the fence. 1976’s 2001: A Space Odyssey com­ic book, a meet­ing of Kir­by’s mind with those of Stan­ley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, marked his return to Mar­vel after spend­ing the ear­ly 70s at DC.

Kubrick­o­nia, which calls the com­mis­sion “a match made in bizarro world heav­en,” describes the prod­uct: “The adap­ta­tion was writ­ten & pen­ciled by Kir­by with ink­ing duties car­ried out by Frank Gia­coia. The almost 2 times larg­er than the reg­u­lar com­ic-book for­mat suit­ed Kir­by’s out­landish pop style, but this was a great tal­ent mere­ly going through the motions.” The Sequart Orga­ni­za­tion’s Julian Dar­ius calls it “sure­ly one of the strangest sci-fi fran­chise comics ever pub­lished,” a stuffy mar­riage between Kir­by’s “bom­bas­tic,” “action-ori­ent­ed,” “in-your-face” art and the style of Kubrick­’s film, one “all about the sub­tle. No one ever accused Kir­by of being sub­tle. Indeed, his almost com­plete lack of sub­tle­ty is part of his charm, but it’s not a charm one could pos­si­bly imag­ine fit­ting 2001.”

2001-adaptation-page-13-660x901

At The Dis­solve, Noel Mur­ray includes an exam­i­na­tion of Kir­by’s 2001 in the site’s “Adven­tures in Licens­ing” col­umn. Kir­by’s descrip­tion of Kubrick­’s immor­tal mil­len­nia-span­ning match cut, which the arti­cle quotes as an open­er, tells you every­thing you need to know:

As the surge of ela­tion sweeps through him, Moon­watch­er shouts in vic­to­ry and throws his weapon at the sky!! High­er and high­er, it sails — aimed at the infi­nite where the count­less stars wait for the com­ing of man… And, man comes to space!! Across the ago­niz­ing ages he fol­lows the des­tiny bequeathed to him by the mono­lith.

2001: A Space Odyssey in comics, which com­pris­es not just the over­sized book but ten month­ly issues that expand­ed upon the film — tak­ing it in, shall we say, a dif­fer­ent direc­tion than either Kubrick or Clarke might have envi­sioned — has, as you can see, inspired no small amount of dis­cus­sion among sci­ence fic­tion and com­ic book enthu­si­asts. Dar­ius wrote a whole book called The Weird­est Sci-Fi Com­ic Ever Made. At Sci­FiDi­men­sons, Robert L. Bryant Jr. and Robert B. Cooke offer two more analy­ses of this unusu­al chap­ter in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can sequen­tial art. What­ev­er its mer­its as read­ing mate­r­i­al, it shows us that genius plus genius does­n’t always pro­duce genius — but it nev­er fails to pro­duce some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing.

You can check out scans of the first issue of 2001: A Space Odyssey over on this web site.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Fea­tur­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

1966 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

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

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

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

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NASA Puts Online a Big Collection of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Download and Use

in Archives, Science | January 26th, 2015


When we envi­sion the fruits of the research of the Unit­ed States’ Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (aka NASA), we tend to think of images. I think I exag­ger­ate not at all when I say that the nev­er-before-seen view of the Earth from space gave human­i­ty a whole new per­spec­tive, no pun intend­ed, on our very exis­tence. But you don’t have to strain too hard to think of his­tor­i­cal­ly momen­tous NASA sounds, either: “Hous­ton we’ve had a prob­lem,” “One giant leap for mankind.”

If you can’t think of more than those two, why not spend some lis­ten­ing time with NASA’s new Sound­cloud account, or alter­na­tive­ly perus­ing the NASA Sounds web site, which fea­tures a larg­er num­ber of down­load­able mp3s. “There are rock­et sounds, the chirps of satel­lites and equip­ment, light­ning on Jupiter, inter­stel­lar plas­ma and radio emis­sions,” writes Cre­ate Dig­i­tal Music’s Peter Kirn. “And in one nod to human­i­ty, and not just Amer­i­can human­i­ty, there’s the Sovi­et satel­lite Sput­nik (among many projects that are inter­na­tion­al in nature).” Bet­ter still, “you’re free to use all of these sounds as you wish, because NASA’s own audio isn’t copy­right­ed.”

We’ve includ­ed here three of NASA’s Sound­cloud playlists: space shut­tle mis­sion sounds, solar sys­tem and beyond sounds, and Pres­i­dent Kennedy sounds. When you’ve lis­tened through all NASA them­selves have uploaded, you can find more sound clips of out­er-space inter­est in NASA’s liked sounds, a col­lec­tion of the ambi­ent sounds of space explo­ration that include those of a space suit­’s inter­nal pump, a Japan­ese exper­i­ment mod­ule, and, of course, a space toi­let — a con­stant son­ic com­pan­ion on any trip to the final fron­tier.

Please note that you can down­load the Sound­cloud files by fol­low­ing these instruc­tions. From the NASA Sounds web page, you can down­load files by right click­ing on them and then sav­ing them to your hard dri­ve.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

NASA Presents “The Earth as Art” in a Free eBook and Free iPad App

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

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Hear the Only Recording of Raymond Carver Reading “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”

in Audio Books, Literature | January 26th, 2015

This is sure­ly worth a quick men­tion: Today we have a record­ing of Ray­mond Carv­er read­ing his most famous sto­ry, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Taped in a Palo Alto hotel room in 1983 for a new radio series called Tell Me a Sto­ry, it’s the only known record­ing of Carv­er read­ing his sig­na­ture sto­ry. The read­ing itself starts at the 6:00 mark. Start lis­ten­ing here (or stream it above).

In 2009, Stephen King called Ray­mond Carv­er “sure­ly the most influ­en­tial writer of Amer­i­can short sto­ries in the sec­ond half of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” If you’d like to get deep­er into his lit­er­ary world — a lit­er­ary world that explores “the dim ache in the non­de­script lives of aspir­ing stu­dents, down-and-out­ers, din­er wait­ress­es, sales­men, and unhap­pi­ly hitched blue-col­lar cou­ples,” as Josh Jones once put it — you can refer back to a pre­vi­ous post where we fea­tured Richard Ford, Anne Enright, and David Means read­ing sev­er­al oth­er Carv­er sto­ries.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.