Cab Calloway Stars in “Minnie the Moocher,” a Trippy Betty Boop Cartoon That’s Ranked as the 20th Greatest Cartoon of All Time (1932)

in Animation, Jazz, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | June 2nd, 2017

The cast of Dave Fleis­ch­er’s 1932 car­toon, Min­nie the Moocher, above, are a far cry from the can­dy-col­ored ponies and sim­per­ing drag­ons pop­u­lat­ing today’s car­toon uni­verse.

There’s not much of a nar­ra­tive, and the clos­est thing to a moral is an unspo­ken “don’t be cokey.”

Who cares?

The lyrics to band­leader Cab Cal­loway’s crossover hit were ample excuse to send a rebel­lious Bet­ty Boop and her anthro­po­mor­phized pal, Bim­bo, on a trip­py jaunt through the under­world.

While there’s no evi­dence of Bet­ty or Bim­bo hit­ting the pipe, one won­ders what the ani­ma­tors were smok­ing to come up with such an imag­i­na­tive palette of ghouls.

The ghosts are pris­on­ers sport­ing chain gang stripes.

A witch with an out­sized head pre­fig­ures Miyaza­k­i’s com­mand­ing old ladies.

A blank-sock­et­ed mama cat, leached dry by her equal­ly eye­less kit­tens, con­jures the sort of night­mare vision that appealed to Hierony­mus Bosch.

The most benign pres­ence is a phan­tas­magoric wal­rus, mod­eled on a roto­scoped Cal­loway. The Hi De Ho Man cut a far svel­ter pres­ence in the flesh, as evi­denced by the live action sequence that intro­duces the car­toon.

Betty’s home sweet home offers near­ly as weird a land­scape as the one she and Bim­bo flee at film’s end.

Its many inor­gan­ic inhab­i­tants would have felt right at home in PeeWee’s Play­house, as would a self-sac­ri­fic­ing flow­er­ing plant, who suc­cumbs to a sam­ple of the hasenpf­ef­fer Betty’s immi­grant moth­er unsuc­cess­ful­ly urges on her. As for Bet­ty’s father, Fleis­ch­er struck a blow for teenagers every­where by hav­ing his head morph into a gramo­phone on which a bro­ken record (or rather, cylin­der) plays.

Min­nie the Moocher was vot­ed the 20th great­est car­toon of all time, in a 1994 sur­vey of 1,ooo ani­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als. We hope you enjoy it now, as the ani­ma­tors did then, and audi­ences did way back in 1932.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Harlem Jazz Singer Who Inspired Bet­ty Boop: Meet the Orig­i­nal Boop-Oop-a-Doop, “Baby Esther”

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day

Hear 2,000 Record­ings of the Most Essen­tial Jazz Songs: A Huge Playlist for Your Jazz Edu­ca­tion

Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la: #38 on the List of The 50 Great­est Car­toons of All Time

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She’ll be appear­ing onstage in New York City this June as one of the clowns in Paul David Young’s Faust 3. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Artists May Have Different Brains (More Grey Matter) Than the Rest of Us, According to a Recent Scientific Study

in Neuroscience, Science | June 2nd, 2017

Image Pho­to cour­tesy of the Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Neu­ro Imag­ing at UCLA.

Sometimes—as in the case of neuroscience—scientists and researchers seem to be say­ing sev­er­al con­tra­dic­to­ry things at once. Yes, oppos­ing claims can both be true, giv­en dif­fer­ent con­text and lev­els of descrip­tion. But which is it, Neu­ro­sci­en­tists? Do we have “neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty”—the abil­i­ty to change our brains, and there­fore our behav­ior? Or are we “hard-wired” to be a cer­tain way by innate struc­tures.

The debate long pre­dates the field of neu­ro­science. It fig­ured promi­nent­ly in the work, for exam­ple, of John Locke and oth­er ear­ly mod­ern the­o­rists of cognition—which is why Locke is best known as the the­o­rist of tab­u­la rasa. In “Some Thoughts Con­cern­ing Edu­ca­tion,” Locke most­ly denies that we are able to change much at all in adult­hood.

Per­son­al­i­ty, he rea­soned, is deter­mined not by biol­o­gy, but in the “cra­dle” by “lit­tle, almost insen­si­ble impres­sions on our ten­der infan­cies.” Such imprints “have very impor­tant and last­ing con­se­quences.” Sor­ry, par­ents. Not only did your kid get wait-list­ed for that elite preschool, but their future will also be deter­mined by mil­lions of sights and sounds that hap­pened around them before they could walk.

It’s an extreme, and unsci­en­tif­ic, con­tention, fas­ci­nat­ing as it may be from a cul­tur­al stand­point. Now we have psy­che­del­ic-look­ing brain scans pop­ping up in our news feeds all the time, promis­ing to reveal the true ori­gins of con­scious­ness and per­son­al­i­ty. But the con­clu­sions drawn from such research are ten­ta­tive and often high­ly con­test­ed.

So what does sci­ence say about the eter­nal­ly mys­te­ri­ous act of artis­tic cre­ation? The abil­i­ties of artists have long seemed to us god­like, drawn from super­nat­ur­al sources, or chan­neled from oth­er dimen­sions. Many neu­ro­sci­en­tists, you may not be sur­prised to hear, believe that such abil­i­ties reside in the brain. More­over, some think that artists’ brains are supe­ri­or to those of mediocre abil­i­ty.

Or at least that artists’ brains have more gray and white mat­ter than “right-brained” thinkers in the areas of “visu­al per­cep­tion, spa­tial nav­i­ga­tion and fine motor skills.” So writes Kather­ine Brooks in a Huff­in­g­ton Post sum­ma­ry of “Draw­ing on the right side of the brain: A vox­el-based mor­phom­e­try analy­sis of obser­va­tion­al draw­ing.” The 2014 study, pub­lished at Neu­roIm­age, involved a very small sam­pling of grad­u­ate stu­dents, 21 of whom were artists, 23 of whom were not. All 44 stu­dents were asked to com­plete draw­ing tasks, which were then scored and com­pared to images of their brain tak­en by a method called “vox­el-based mor­phom­e­try.”

“The peo­ple who are bet­ter at draw­ing real­ly seem to have more devel­oped struc­tures in regions of the brain that con­trol for fine motor per­for­mance and what we call pro­ce­dur­al mem­o­ry,” the study’s lead author, Rebec­ca Cham­ber­lain of Belgium’s KU Leu­ven Uni­ver­si­ty, told the BBC. (Hear her seg­ment on BBC Radio 4’s Inside Sci­ence here.) Does this mean, as Art­net News claims in their quick take, that “artists’ brains are more ful­ly devel­oped?”

It’s a juicy head­line, but the find­ings of this lim­it­ed study, while “intrigu­ing,” are “far from con­clu­sive.” Nonethe­less, it marks an impor­tant first step. “No stud­ies” thus far, Cham­ber­lain says, “have assessed the struc­tur­al dif­fer­ences asso­ci­at­ed with rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al skills in visu­al arts.” Would a dozen such stud­ies resolve ques­tions about causality–nature or nur­ture? As usu­al, the truth prob­a­bly lies some­where in-between.

At Smith­son­ian, Randy Rieland quotes sev­er­al crit­ics of the neu­ro­science of art, which has pre­vi­ous­ly focused on what hap­pens in the brain when we look at a Van Gogh or read Jane Austen. The prob­lem with such stud­ies, writes Philip Ball at Nature, is that they can lead to “cre­at­ing cri­te­ria of right or wrong, either in the art itself or in indi­vid­ual reac­tions to it.” But such cri­te­ria may already be pre­de­ter­mined by cul­tur­al­ly-con­di­tioned respons­es to art.

The sci­ence is fas­ci­nat­ing and may lead to numer­ous dis­cov­er­ies. It does not, as the Cre­ators Project writes hyper­bol­i­cal­ly, sug­gest that “artists actu­al­ly are dif­fer­ent crea­tures from every­one else on the plan­et.” As Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia philoso­pher pro­fes­sor Alva Noe states suc­cinct­ly, one prob­lem with mak­ing sweep­ing gen­er­al­iza­tions about brains that view or cre­ate art is that “there can be noth­ing like a set­tled, once-and-for-all account of what art is.”

Emerg­ing fields of “neu­roaes­thet­ics” and “neu­ro­hu­man­i­ties” may mud­dy the waters between quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive dis­tinc­tions, and may not real­ly answer ques­tions about where art comes from and what it does to us. But then again, giv­en enough time, they just might.

via The Cre­ators Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neu­ro­science of Read­ing Great Lit­er­a­ture

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

The Neu­ro­science & Psy­chol­o­gy of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and How to Over­come It

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

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240 Hours of Relaxing, Sleep-Inducing Sounds from Sci-Fi Video Games: From Blade Runner to Star Wars

in Health, Sci Fi | June 2nd, 2017

Need to put a lit­tle geek in your sleep? We’ve got just what you need…

Back in 2009, the musi­cian dubbed Cheesy Nir­vosa” began exper­i­ment­ing with ambi­ent music, before launch­ing a YouTube chan­nel where he “com­pos­es long­form space and sci­fi ambi­ence,” much of it designed to help you relax, or ide­al­ly fall asleep. He calls the videos “ambi­ent geek sleep aids.”

You can sam­ple his work with the playlist above. Called “Video Game Relax­ation Sounds,” the playlist fea­tures “long relax­ing sound­scapes from video games.” Sci-fi video games, to be pre­cise. The playlist gives you access to 21 sound­scapes, run­ning more than 240 hours in total. Lull your­self to sleep, for exam­ple, with ambi­ent sounds from the 1997 Blade Run­ner video game, a “sid­e­quel” to the Rid­ley Scott film. Or de-stress with this ambi­ent noise pro­duced by the A/SF-01 B‑Wing Starfight­er. It’s tak­en from this 2001 Star Wars game cre­at­ed by LucasArts.

Stream the playlist above. And hope you enjoy dream­ing of elec­tric sheep.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Dymax­ion Sleep Plan: He Slept Two Hours a Day for Two Years & Felt “Vig­or­ous” and “Alert”

The Pow­er of Pow­er Naps: Sal­vador Dali Teach­es You How Micro-Naps Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

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Manchester Benefit Concert Is Streaming Live Now

in Music | June 2nd, 2017

Just a quick fyi: The Man­ches­ter Ben­e­fit con­cert is hap­pen­ing now, and stream­ing live on YouTube. Cold­play, Phar­rell Williams, Justin Bieber, Katy Per­ry, Miley Cyrus, Niall Horan, Ush­er, and Ari­ana Grande will all per­form. Click play above to stream the live video feed.

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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Animated GIFs Show How Subway Maps of Berlin, New York, Tokyo & London Compare to the Real Geography of Those Great Cities

in Data, Design, Maps | June 1st, 2017

You can’t make a per­fect­ly accu­rate map, as Jorge Luis Borges so suc­cinct­ly told us, with­out mak­ing it the exact same size and shape as the land it por­trays. But giv­en the utter use­less­ness of such an enor­mous piece of paper (which so frus­trat­ed the cit­i­zens of the imag­i­nary empire in Borges’ sto­ry that, “not with­out some piti­less­ness,” they tossed theirs into the desert), no map­mak­er would ever want to. A more com­pact map is a more use­ful one; unfor­tu­nate­ly, a more com­pact map is also, by its very nature, a less accu­rate one.

New York

The same rule applies to maps of all kinds, and espe­cial­ly to tran­sit maps, quite pos­si­bly the most use­ful spe­cial­ized maps we con­sult today. They show us how to nav­i­gate cities, and yet their clean, bold lines, some­times turn­ing but nev­er waver­ing, hard­ly rep­re­sent those cities — sub­ject as they are to vari­a­tions in ter­rain and den­si­ty, as well as cen­turies of unplannably organ­ic growth — with geo­graph­i­cal faith­ful­ness. One can’t help but won­der just how each urban tran­sit map, some of them beloved works of design, strikes the use­ful­ness-faith­ful­ness bal­ance.

Lon­don

Liv­ing in Seoul, I’ve grown used to the city’s stan­dard sub­way map. I thus get a kick out of scru­ti­niz­ing the more geo­graph­i­cal­ly accu­rate one, which over­lays the train lines onto an exist­ing map of the city, post­ed on some sta­tion plat­forms. It reveals the truth that some lines are short­er than they look on the stan­dard map, some are much longer, and none cut quite as clean a path through the city as they seem to. At Twist­ed Sifter you’ll find a GIF gallery of 15 stan­dard sub­way maps that morph into more geo­graph­i­cal­ly faith­ful equiv­a­lents, a vivid demon­stra­tion of just how much tran­sit map design­ers need to twist, squeeze, and sim­pli­fy an urban land­scape to pro­duce some­thing leg­i­ble at a glance.

Tokyo

All of those ani­ma­tions, just five of which you see in this post, come from the sub­red­dit Data Is Beau­ti­ful, a realm pop­u­lat­ed by enthu­si­asts of the visu­al dis­play of quan­ti­ta­tive infor­ma­tion — enthu­si­asts so enthu­si­as­tic that many of them cre­ate inno­v­a­tive data visu­al­iza­tions like these by them­selves. Accord­ing to their cre­ations, sub­way maps, like that of New York City’s ven­er­a­ble sys­tem, do rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle to dis­tort the city; oth­ers, like Toky­o’s, look near­ly unrec­og­niz­able when made to con­form to geog­ra­phy.

Austin

Even the maps of new and incom­plete tran­sit net­works do a num­ber on the real shape and direc­tion of their paths: the map of Austin, Texas’ Cap­i­tal Metro­Rail, for instance, straight­ens a some­what zig-zag­gy north­east-south­west track into a sin­gle hor­i­zon­tal line. It may take a few gen­er­a­tions before Austin’s “sys­tem” devel­ops into one exten­sive and com­plex enough to inspire one of the great tran­sit maps (the ranks, for exam­ple, of “The Won­der­ground Map of Lon­don Town”). But I would­n’t count out the pos­si­bil­i­ty: the more ful­ly cities real­ize their pub­lic-tran­sit poten­tial, the more oppor­tu­ni­ty opens up for the advance­ment of the sub­way map­mak­er’s art.

See all 15 of the sub­way GIFs at Twist­ed Sifter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Won­der­ful Archive of His­toric Tran­sit Maps: Expres­sive Art Meets Pre­cise Graph­ic Design

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

“The Won­der­ground Map of Lon­don Town,” the Icon­ic 1914 Map That Saved the World’s First Sub­way Sys­tem

Bauhaus Artist Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy Designs an Avant-Garde Map to Help Peo­ple Get Over the Fear of Fly­ing (1936)

Why Mak­ing Accu­rate World Maps Is Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly Impos­si­ble

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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See What Happens When a Camera’s Shutter Speed Gets Perfectly Synced with a Helicopter’s Rotor

in Photography | June 1st, 2017

Ger­man cam­era­man Chris Fay recent­ly post­ed on YouTube a neat video show­ing what hap­pens when the frames per sec­ond on a cam­era and the speed of a heli­copter rotor are per­fect­ly aligned. The heli­copter blades appear not to rotate at all. And the heli­copter hov­ers mag­i­cal­ly in the air. Even if you know the mechan­ics of the illu­sion, it’s still fun to watch!

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!

via PetaPix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy: Take a Free Course from Stan­ford Prof/Google Researcher Marc Lev­oy

Vis­it a New Dig­i­tal Archive of 2.2 Mil­lion Images from the First Hun­dred Years of Pho­tog­ra­phy

Hol­ly­wood by Heli­copter, 1958

Watch Karl­heinz Stockhausen’s Great Heli­copter String Quar­tet, Star­ring 4 Musi­cians, 4 Cam­eras & 4 Copters

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Paul McCartney Admits to Dropping Acid in a Scrappy Interview with a Prying Reporter (June, 1967)

in Music | June 1st, 2017

When we think of LSD and the Bea­t­les, John Lennon invari­ably gets the nod as the main mind expander of the group. After all, despite all protes­ta­tions to the con­trary, “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” lit­er­al­ly spells out Lennon’s indul­gence in the psy­che­del­ic drug.

But it was Paul, as seen in this above news­reel, who announced that he him­self had dropped acid before any oth­er band mem­ber admit­ted to such. And in doing so, know­ing the whole world was watch­ing, McCart­ney insist­ed on telling the truth and fac­ing the music, as it were.

The inter­view was record­ed on June 19, 1967, a day after Paul’s 25th birth­day. Their album Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band had been released three weeks pri­or on June 1, ush­er­ing in a par­tic­u­lar psy­che­del­ic era in Lon­don, though the band had been drop­ping hints (as well as lyser­gic acid) as ear­ly as 1966’s Revolver and 1965’s “Day Trip­per.”

McCart­ney had already let it be known he had tak­en the drug in an inter­view a few days before in Queen mag­a­zine, which Life then reprint­ed.

After I took it (LSD), it opened my eyes. We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think what we could accom­plish if we could only tap that hid­den part. It would mean a whole new world.

The quote sent ITV crews to McCartney’s back­yard gar­den on Cavendish Ave. for this con­fronta­tion­al inter­view, where the inter­view­er wants to know first where he got the LSD from, but then chas­tis­es the singer for not keep­ing such a per­son­al event qui­et.

McCart­ney respond­ed:

Mmm, but the thing is — I was asked a ques­tion by a news­pa­per, and the deci­sion was whether to tell a lie or tell him the truth. I decid­ed to tell him the truth… but I real­ly did­n’t want to say any­thing, you know, because if I had my way I would­n’t have told any­one. I’m not try­ing to spread the word about this. But the man from the news­pa­per is the man from the mass medi­um. I’ll keep it a per­son­al thing if he does too you know… if he keeps it qui­et. But he want­ed to spread it so it’s his respon­si­bil­i­ty, you know, for spread­ing it not mine.

The reporter, look­ing for an angle, asks “Do you think that you have now encour­aged your fans to take drugs?”

McCart­ney puts the onus back on the reporter for sen­sa­tion­al­iz­ing a per­son­al mat­ter.

No, it’s you who’ve got the respon­si­bil­i­ty. You’ve got the respon­si­bil­i­ty not to spread this NOW. You know, I’m quite pre­pared to keep it as a very per­son­al thing if you will too. If you’ll shut up about it, I will.

Fun­ni­ly enough, it was Paul who came to LSD long after Lennon and Har­ri­son had tak­en it for the first time…inadvertantly, that is:

John, George and their wives were slipped a dose on a sug­ar pill in their evening cof­fee by den­tist John Riley, who had the cou­ples over for din­ner, and pos­si­bly some free love. Instead the four went club­bing and had their minds expand­ed. You can read the whole sto­ry over here at this fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry of Bea­t­le drug use. Also hear John tell it in the ani­ma­tion above.

McCart­ney final­ly dropped acid–the last Bea­t­le to do so–on March 21, 1967 after a record­ing ses­sion for “Get­ting Bet­ter.” Lennon had tak­en some acid by acci­dent and sat out the ses­sion, unable to con­tin­ue and McCart­ney took him home to his flat, where he decid­ed to try LSD, to “sort of catch up” with his friend. The Beat­les­Bible site quotes from McCartney’s bio by Bar­ry Miles, Many Years from Now.

And we looked into each oth­er’s eyes, the eye con­tact thing we used to do, which is fair­ly mind-bog­gling. You dis­solve into each oth­er. But that’s what we did, round about that time, that’s what we did a lot. And it was amaz­ing. You’re look­ing into each oth­er’s eyes and you would want to look away, but you would­n’t, and you could see your­self in the oth­er per­son. It was a very freaky expe­ri­ence and I was total­ly blown away.

There’s some­thing dis­turb­ing about it. You ask your­self, ‘How do you come back from it? How do you then lead a nor­mal life after that?’ And the answer is, you don’t. After that you’ve got to get trepanned or you’ve got to med­i­tate for the rest of your life. You’ve got to make a deci­sion which way you’re going to go.

I would walk out into the gar­den — ‘Oh no, I’ve got to go back in.’ It was very tir­ing, walk­ing made me very tired, wast­ed me, always wast­ed me. But ‘I’ve got to do it, for my well-being.’ In the mean­time John had been sit­ting around very enig­mat­i­cal­ly and I had a big vision of him as a king, the absolute Emper­or of Eter­ni­ty. It was a good trip. It was great but I want­ed to go to bed after a while.

I’d just had enough after about four or five hours. John was quite amazed that it had struck me in that way. John said, ‘Go to bed? You won’t sleep!’ ‘I know that, I’ve still got to go to bed.’ I thought, now that’s enough fun and par­ty­ing, now … It’s like with drink. That’s enough. That was a lot of fun, now I got­ta go and sleep this off. But of course you don’t just sleep off an acid trip so I went to bed and hal­lu­ci­nat­ed a lot in bed. I remem­ber Mal com­ing up and check­ing that I was all right. ‘Yeah, I think so.’ I mean, I could feel every inch of the house, and John seemed like some sort of emper­or in con­trol of it all. It was quite strange. Of course he was just sit­ting there, very inscrutably.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed John Lennon Describes His First Acid Trip

Meet the Icon­ic Fig­ures on the Cov­er of The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band

Sgt. Pepper’s Album Cov­er Gets Reworked to Remem­ber Icons Lost in 2016

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Blitzscaling: A Free Stanford Course on Scaling a Startup, Led by LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman

in Business, Entrepreneurship, Online Courses | June 1st, 2017

A quick post­script to yes­ter­day’s men­tion of Reid Hoff­man’s new pod­cast, Mas­ters of Scale. Many of the con­cepts dis­cussed in Mas­ters of Scale expand on a 2015 course taught at Stan­ford by Hoff­man and his col­leagues– John Lil­ly from Grey­lock Part­ners, LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue, and author Chris Yeh. The course focus­es on Blitzs­cal­ing–or what Hoff­man described in the Har­vard Busi­ness Review as “the sci­ence and art of rapid­ly build­ing out a com­pa­ny to serve a large and usu­al­ly glob­al mar­ket, with the goal of becom­ing the first mover at scale.” And to help demys­ti­fy that process, Hoff­man invit­ed guest speak­ers to class to break things down. Eric Schmidt on Struc­tur­ing Teams and Scal­ing Google, Net­flix’s Reed Hast­ings on Build­ing a Stream­ing Empire, Airbn­b’s Bri­an Chesky on Launch­ing Airbnb and the Chal­lenges of Scale–they’re among the experts fea­tured in the course.

You can stream the 20 lec­tures from start to fin­ish above, or find the playlist on Grey­lock Part­ner’s YouTube chan­nel. You can also find class notes for the course on Medi­um.

Blitzs­cal­ing will be added to our list of Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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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Relat­ed Con­tent:

LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoff­man Cre­ates a New Pod­cast Offer­ing Wis­dom on Nur­tur­ing & Scal­ing New Busi­ness­es

Seth Godin’s Start­up School: A Free Mini-Course for New Entre­pre­neurs

Peter Thiel’s Stan­ford Course on Star­tups: Read the Lec­ture Notes Free Online

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.