An Animation of The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” … for Your Sunday Morning

in Animation, Music | April 30th, 2017

50 years ago, The Vel­vet Under­ground released their first album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico. And while the album nev­er topped the charts, its influ­ence you can’t deny. In a 1982 inter­view with Musi­cian Mag­a­zine, Bri­an Eno famous­ly said:

I was talk­ing to Lou Reed the oth­er day and he said that the first Vel­vet Under­ground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years. The sales have picked up in the past few years, but I mean, that record was such an impor­tant record for so many peo­ple. I think every­one who bought one of those 30,000 copies start­ed a band! So I con­sole myself think­ing that some things gen­er­ate their rewards in a sec­ond-hand way.

“Sun­day Morn­ing” was the last song VU record­ed for that album–a last ditch attempt to write a hit. Accord­ing to Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, the band’s patron, sug­gest­ed the theme for the song: “Andy said, ‘Why don’t you just make it a song about para­noia?’ I thought that was great so I came up with ‘Watch out, the world’s behind you, there’s always some­one watch­ing you,’ which I feel is the ulti­mate para­noid state­ment in that the world cares enough to watch you.” Writes Joe Har­vard, in his short book on the album, the song “calls to mind a sleepy, qui­et Sun­day so per­fect­ly that you can lis­ten to the song repeat­ed­ly before reg­is­ter­ing what it’s real­ly about: para­noia and dis­place­ment.”

Above, you watch a new ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed to com­mem­o­rate the 50th anniver­sary of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico. Cre­at­ed by James Eads and Chris McDaniel, it’ll hope­ful­ly get your Sun­day under­way.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

The Vel­vet Under­ground & Andy Warhol Stage Pro­to-Punk Per­for­mance Art: Dis­cov­er the Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable (1966)

Hear Lost Acetate Ver­sions of Songs from The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

 

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Animated Stories Written by Tom Waits, Nick Cave & Other Artists, Read by Danny Devito, Zach Galifianakis & More

in Art, Audio Books, Music | April 28th, 2017

Ten years ago, Jeff Ante­bi, the founder of the record com­pa­ny Wax­ploita­tion, asked musi­cians and con­tem­po­rary painters to col­lab­o­rate on a col­lec­tion of children’s sto­ries for grown-ups. Today, you can find the fruits of their labor col­lect­ed in a new, 350-page book project called Sto­ries for Ways & Means. The book fea­tures tales by Tom Waits (above), Nick Cave, Bon Iver, The Pix­ies’ Frank Black and oth­er artists. (Note: the sto­ries con­tain “out­re art, weird images, graph­ic dis­plays of nasty stuff and cuss words.”) Also, you can now watch a series of short pro­mo films where celebs like Dan­ny Devi­to, Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis and Nick Offer­man read items in the col­lec­tion.

As a quick week­end treat, we’ve high­light­ed some of those read­ings on this page. More read­ings can be viewed here. Pro­ceeds from Sto­ries for Ways & Means (pur­chase a copy here) will sup­port NGOs and non­prof­its advanc­ing children’s caus­es around the world, includ­ing Room to Read, Pen­cils of Promise, and 826 Nation­al.

Dan­ny Devi­to Reads “Doug the Bug” by Frank Black 

Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis Reads “Next Big Thing” by Gib­by Haynes

“The Lone­ly Giant” by Nick Cave, Read by Andre Royo (aka Bub­bles from The Wire)



“Wish­ing Well Foun­tain,” Writ­ten and Nar­rat­ed by Ali­son Mosshart

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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Inspiration from Charles Bukowski: You Might Be Old, Your Life May Be “Crappy,” But You Can Still Make Good Art

in Animation, Life, Literature, Poetry, Writing | April 28th, 2017

Now more than ever, there’s tremen­dous pres­sure to make it big while you’re young.

Pity the 31-year-old who fails to make it onto a 30-under-30 list…

The soon-to-grad­u­ate high school­er passed over for YouTube star­dom…

The great hordes who creep into mid­dle age with­out so much as a TED Talk to their names…

Social media def­i­nite­ly mag­ni­fies the sen­sa­tion that an unac­cept­able num­ber of our peers have been grant­ed first-class cab­ins aboard a ship that’s sailed with­out us. If we weren’t so demor­al­ized, we’d sue Insta­gram for cre­at­ing the impres­sion that every­one else’s #Van­Life is lead­ing to book deals and pro­files in The New York­er.

Don’t despair, dear read­er. Charles Bukows­ki is about to make your day from beyond the grave.

In 1993, at the age of 73, the late writer and self-described “spoiled old toad,” took a break from record­ing the audio­book of Run With the Hunt­ed to reflect upon his “crap­py” life.

Some of these thoughts made it into Drew Christie’s ani­ma­tion, above, a reminder that the smoothest road isn’t always nec­es­sar­i­ly the rich­est one.

In ser­vice of his ill-pay­ing muse, Bukows­ki logged decades in unglam­orous jobs —dish­wash­er, truck­driv­er and loader, gas sta­tion atten­dant, stock boy, ware­house­man, ship­ping clerk, park­ing lot atten­dant, Red Cross order­ly, ele­va­tor oper­a­tor, and most noto­ri­ous­ly, postal car­ri­er and clerk. These gigs gave him plen­ty of mate­r­i­al, the sort of real world expe­ri­ence that eludes those upon whom lit­er­ary fame and for­tune smiles ear­ly.

(His alco­holic mis­ad­ven­tures pro­vid­ed yet more mate­r­i­al, earn­ing him such hon­orifics as the ”poet lau­re­ate of L.A. lowlife” and “enfant ter­ri­ble of the Meat School poets.”)

One might also take com­fort in hear­ing a writer as prodi­gious as Bukows­ki reveal­ing that he didn’t hold him­self to the sort of dai­ly writ­ing reg­i­men that can be dif­fi­cult to achieve when one is jug­gling day jobs, stu­dent loans, and/or a fam­i­ly. Also appre­ci­at­ed is the far-from-cur­so­ry nod he accords the ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fits that are avail­able to all those who write, regard­less of any pub­lic or finan­cial recog­ni­tion:

Three or four nights out of sev­en. If I don’t get those in, I don’t act right. I feel sick. I get very depressed. It’s a release. It’s my psy­chi­a­trist, let­ting this shit out. I’m lucky I get paid for it. I’d do it for noth­ing. In fact, I’d pay to do it. Here, I’ll give you ten thou­sand a year if you’ll let me write. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4 Hours of Charles Bukowski’s Riotous Read­ings and Rants

Hear 130 Min­utes of Charles Bukowski’s First-Ever Record­ed Read­ings (1968)

Rare Record­ings of Bur­roughs, Bukows­ki, Gins­berg & More Now Avail­able in a Dig­i­tal Archive Cre­at­ed by the Mary­land Insti­tute Col­lege of Art (MICA)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Rick Wakeman’s Prog-Rock Opera Adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984

in Music | April 28th, 2017

We’ve seen sales of George Orwell’s dystopi­an night­mare sce­nario 1984 peak in recent months. Mil­lions of read­ers seek to under­stand the brave new world we live in through Orwell’s vision. Par­al­lels abound. We might rea­son­ably ascribe to the rul­ing par­ty in the U.S. and its media appa­ra­tus the slo­gan “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” But our expe­ri­ence of real­i­ty nev­er fails to val­i­date that old saw about truth and fic­tion. As Case West­ern Reserve pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry John Broich writes, “2017 is stranger than Orwell imag­ined.”

The state doesn’t need a Min­istry of Truth to cen­sure the infor­ma­tion that reach­es us. We are sim­ply over­whelmed with “alter­na­tive author­i­ties and real­i­ties” who dele­git­imize the facts and accel­er­ate “the decline in stan­dards of evi­dence and rea­son­ing in the US elec­torate.” A sad state of affairs. But in every decade since the pub­li­ca­tion of Orwell’s nov­el, crit­ics, jour­nal­ists, and pun­dits have seen evi­dence of his dire fore­cast. In the tit­u­lar year itself, Man­hat­tan Col­lege pro­fes­sor Edmond van den Boss­che summed up the gen­er­al tenor in The New York Times: “In our 1984… the warn­ings of George Orwell are more than ever rel­e­vant.”

Van den Boss­che wrote of NATO and the UN. But he might have writ­ten about MTV and CNN— both in their infancy—who birthed 24-hour cable news and real­i­ty TV.  What Orwell under­stood about state pow­er, lat­er thinkers like Guy DeBord, Roland Barthes, and Jean Bau­drillard built careers writ­ing about: the impor­tance not only of sur­veil­lance, but also of spec­ta­cle that blurs the lines of truth and fic­tion as it over­whelms our sens­es. It’s large­ly this key theme, I’d argue, that has ren­dered 1984 so attrac­tive to some of the most spec­tac­u­lar of musi­cians, includ­ing David Bowie—whose attempts to make an Orwell con­cept album formed part of his Dia­mond Dogs—and Rick Wake­man, the vir­tu­oso prog-rock key­boardist of Yes fame.

After releas­ing as a solo artist such rock-lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions as 1974’s Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth and the fol­low­ing year’s The Myths and Leg­ends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Wake­man turned Orwell’s clas­sic into a rock opera. The 1981 pro­duc­tion is an extrav­a­gan­za of musi­cal excess, with lyrics and vocals by Tim Rice, riv­et­ing per­for­mances by Cha­ka Khan (above) and Wakeman’s for­mer Yes band­mate Jon Ander­son, and eclec­tic orches­tral instru­men­ta­tion woven in with Wakeman’s bat­tery of key­boards and syn­the­siz­ers. The record has become a fan favorite and All­mu­sic describes it as one of Wakeman’s “most well-round­ed albums.”

The per­fec­tion­is­tic Wake­man him­self looks back on his 1984 with embar­rass­ment. “In ret­ro­spect, a mis­take,” he has said. “The wrong album at the wrong time, with all the wrong peo­ple around at the time…. I formed the wrong band, (the worst I have ever had), the deal for the stage show fell through and all in all I lis­ten back to the music with my head in my hands.” Luck­i­ly, we are not bound to respect an artist’s assess­ment of his work. Wakeman’s music and Rice’s lyrics take the lead­en, gray world of Win­ston Smith and Julia and turn it into a car­ni­val, mov­ing from soar­ing bal­lads to rock­ers with the sneer­ing vaude­vil­lian satire of The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show. (See espe­cial­ly “The Pro­les,” above, the penul­ti­mate num­ber before the final title track.)

Orwell’s nov­el is not what one would call an enter­tain­ing book; it is gloomy—though not with­out its own kind of dark humor—and its mono­chro­mat­ic tone was per­fect­ly cap­tured by Michael Radford’s 1984 film adap­ta­tion. But it heav­i­ly sug­gest­ed the world to come, one con­stant­ly illu­mi­nat­ed and obscured by mass media, with screens in every home and pock­et, for­ev­er broad­cast­ing some col­or­ful dis­trac­tion. In the videos above, you’ll see excerpts from the movie mixed with daz­zling live per­for­mance footage of Wake­man and band play­ing their 1984 live, synced to the stu­dio record­ings, cour­tesy of Youtu­ber ROLT (Ronal­do Lopes Teix­eira.) Watch his full project at the top of the post. The mash-up suit­ably shows how these very dif­fer­ent interpretations—the more straight­for­ward­ly dour and the prog-rock operatic—somehow both do jus­tice to Orwell’s pre­scient nov­el. Just above, you can hear Wake­man’s full album on Spo­ti­fy (whose soft­ware you can down­load for free here).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Dreamed of Turn­ing George Orwell’s 1984 Into a Musi­cal: Hear the Songs That Sur­vived the Aban­doned Project

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

George Orwell’s 1984 Staged as an Opera: Watch Scenes from the 2005 Pro­duc­tion in Lon­don

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

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Metamorfosis: Franz Kafka’s Best-Known Short Story Gets Adapted Into a Tim Burtonesque Spanish Short Film

in Film, Literature | April 28th, 2017

In one sense, giv­en their spare set­tings and alle­gor­i­cal feel, the sto­ries of Franz Kaf­ka could play out any­where. But in anoth­er, one can only with dif­fi­cul­ty sep­a­rate those sto­ries from the late 19th- and ear­ly 2oth-cen­tu­ry cen­tral Europe in which Kaf­ka him­self spent his short life. This simul­ta­ne­ous con­nec­tion to place and place­less­ness (and also, per David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s inter­pre­ta­tion, play­ful­ness, or at least humor of some kind) has made Kafka’s work appeal­ing mate­r­i­al indeed for ani­ma­tors, some of whose work we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture before.

When film­mak­ers try their hands at live-action Kaf­ka adap­ta­tions, though, they tend to find them­selves per­form­ing acts of not just artis­tic but cul­tur­al trans­plan­ta­tion. Just last year we post­ed Dominic Allen’s Two Men, an award-win­ning short film that relo­cates Kafka’s para­ble “Passers-by” to a remote sec­tion of West­ern Aus­tralia.

Work­ing with a much longer and bet­ter-known piece of the Kaf­ka canon, direc­tor Fran Estévez’s Meta­mor­fo­s­is brings the tale of Gre­gor Sam­sa’s sud­den trans­for­ma­tion into a large insect to Spain — or into the Span­ish lan­guage, any­way.

The recip­i­ent of quite a few awards itself in South Amer­i­ca and Europe (includ­ing a fes­ti­val in Kafka’s own birth­place, the cur­rent Czech Repub­lic), Meta­mor­fo­s­is com­bines Kafka’s still-star­tling man-turned-bug first-per­son nar­ra­tion with both stark black-and-white footage and illus­tra­tions to cre­ate just the right claus­tro­pho­bic, askew atmos­phere. The set design, which at cer­tain moments feels right out of ear­ly Tim Bur­ton, under­scores the fairy-tale aspect of this grim work of imag­i­na­tion. But then, at the very end, the aes­thet­ic ceil­ing lifts, widen­ing the view­er’s per­spec­tive on not just the movie’s fore­go­ing six­teen min­utes but on the nature of The Meta­mor­pho­sis, Kafka’s orig­i­nal sto­ry, itself — though, alas, things still don’t end par­tic­u­lar­ly well for poor old Gre­gor Sam­sa.

Meta­mor­fo­s­is will be added to our list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Read Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

Franz Kaf­ka Sto­ry Gets Adapt­ed into an Award-Win­ning Aus­tralian Short Film: Watch Two Men

Franz Kaf­ka Says the Insect in The Meta­mor­pho­sis Should Nev­er Be Drawn; Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Any­way

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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The First 100 Days of Fascist Germany: A New Online Project from Emory University

in Current Affairs, History | April 28th, 2017

From Emory Uni­ver­si­ty comes The First 100 Days of Fas­cist Ger­many, an attempt to doc­u­ment online what hap­pened on each day–from Jan­u­ary 30, 1933 through May 9, 1933–when Hitler was named Reich­skan­zler of Ger­many.

As you can per­haps imag­ine, the moti­va­tion for the project isn’t entire­ly divorced from cur­rent events. The grad stu­dents behind The First 100 Days explain:

Dur­ing the high­ly con­tentious polit­i­cal cli­mate in this coun­try, the terms “fas­cism” and “Nazi Ger­many” have been tossed around quite freely by both sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. As a response to this and in an effort to pro­vide some clar­i­ty of what fas­cism in Nazi Ger­many actu­al­ly looked like, we at the Emory Uni­ver­si­ty Ger­man Depart­ment ini­ti­at­ed a research project that aims to doc­u­ment the first 100 days of Nation­al Social­ism- from the day that Adolf Hitler was named Reich­skan­zler on Jan­u­ary 30, 1933 until May 9, 1933.

They con­tin­ue:

The gen­er­al plan for our project is that our research team will work its way through the 100 days, inves­ti­gat­ing and doc­u­ment­ing the events of each day and then post­ing the find­ings on a dai­ly basis for pub­lic con­sump­tion.

As the dai­ly cal­en­dar shows, Hitler did­n’t waste a lot of time. By Day 51, Dachau–one of the first con­cen­tra­tion camps–opened and received its first pris­on­ers, notes Emory News. By Day 60, all new sto­ries crit­i­cal of the gov­ern­ment were cen­sored. And, by Day 88, the press expelled from its ranks all Marx­ists and Jews. That was just the begin­ning.

Mean­while, on Day 88 over here, Trump’s ini­tia­tives (some rel­a­tive­ly innocu­ous, some alarm­ing) have met civ­il, judi­cial and polit­i­cal resis­tance, or col­lapsed under their own weight. The con­cern of Jan­u­ary has giv­en way to com­e­dy in April. So far, it’s more farce than fas­cism:

But don’t get com­pla­cent, ter­ror might be the oper­a­tive word in May.

You can learn more about Emory’s his­tor­i­cal project here.

via John McMur­trie

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Stu­dents Launch a Free Course on How to Resist Trump

Hitler Was ‘Blitzed’ On Cocaine & Opi­ates Dur­ing World War II: Hear a Wide-Rang­ing Inter­view with Best-Sell­ing Author Nor­man Ohler

Fritz Lang Tells the Riv­et­ing Sto­ry of the Day He Met Joseph Goebbels and Then High-Tailed It Out of Ger­many

How Did Hitler Rise to Pow­er? : New TED-ED Ani­ma­tion Pro­vides a Case Study in How Fas­cists Get Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly Elect­ed

The New York Times’ First Pro­file of Hitler: His Anti-Semi­tism Is Not as “Gen­uine or Vio­lent” as It Sounds (1922)

Leni Riefenstahl’s Tri­umph of the Will Wasn’t a Cin­e­mat­ic Mas­ter­piece; It Was a Stag­ger­ing­ly Effec­tive Piece of Pro­pa­gan­da

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Artist is Creating a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Monument to Democracy & Intellectual Freedom

in Art, Current Affairs, Politics | April 27th, 2017

With the rise of Far Right can­di­dates in Europe and in Amer­i­ca, along with creep­ing dic­ta­tor­ship in Turkey and author­i­tar­i­an­ism in the Philip­pines, the idea of democ­ra­cy and free­dom of speech feels under threat more than ever. While we don’t talk about polit­i­cal solu­tions here on Open Cul­ture, we do believe in the pow­er of art to illu­mi­nate.

Argen­tine artist Mar­ta Min­u­jín is cre­at­ing a large-scale art­work called The Parthenon of Books that will be con­struct­ed on Friedrich­splatz in Kas­sel, Ger­many, and will be con­struct­ed from as many as 100,000 banned books from all over the world.

The loca­tion has been cho­sen for its his­tor­i­cal impor­tance. In 1933, the Nazis burned two-thou­sand books there dur­ing the so-called “Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist” (Cam­paign against the Un-Ger­man Spir­it), destroy­ing books by Com­mu­nists, Jews, and paci­fists, along with any oth­ers deemed un-Ger­man.

Min­u­jín chose the Parthenon—one of the great struc­tures of Ancient Greece—for its con­tin­u­ing sym­bol­ism of the endur­ing pow­er of democ­ra­cy through­out the ages.

When it comes to mate­ri­als, she using a list of 100,000 books that have been, or still are, banned in coun­tries across the world, going all the way back to the year 1500. You can browse that list here, but for less eye-strain, try this short­er list of 170 or so titles. New titles can be sug­gest­ed for the project here.

Some of the books that have been banned over the years include Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Lit­tle Prince (banned in Argenti­na), Lewis Car­rol­l’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (banned in Chi­na), and Nor­man Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (banned in Cana­da).

Min­u­jín con­struct­ed a sim­i­lar Parthenon in 1983 after the fall of her country’s dic­ta­tor­ship. The orig­i­nal El Partenón de libros fea­tured the books that the for­mer gov­ern­ment had banned, and, at the end of the instal­la­tion, Min­u­jín let the pub­lic take what they want­ed home. (She will be allow­ing the same thing to hap­pen this time.)

Her peo­ple, as she says in the video above, didn’t know what democ­ra­cy was after years of mil­i­tary rule. We might be on the oppo­site side of the spec­trum: we won’t know what democ­ra­cy is until we lose it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

It’s Banned Books Week: Lis­ten to Allen Gins­berg Read His Famous­ly Banned Poem, “Howl,” in San Fran­cis­co, 1956

John Waters Reads Steamy Scene from Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Banned Books Week (NSFW)
Read 14 Great Banned & Cen­sored Nov­els Free Online: For Banned Books Week 2014

The Cov­er of George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes Less Cen­sored with Wear and Tear

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.

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George Saunders Tries to Order One Mousetrap Over The Phone

in Random | April 27th, 2017

This adven­ture in mod­ern shop­ping is brought to you by Click­hole.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Tell a Good Sto­ry, as Explained by George Saun­ders, Ira Glass, Ken Burns, Scott Simon, Cather­ine Burns & Oth­ers

George Saun­ders Demys­ti­fies the Art of Sto­ry­telling in a Short Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

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