Bill Murray Reads the Poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins, Lorine Niedecker, Lucille Clifton & More

in Audio Books, Poetry | March 20th, 2018

Who among us wouldn’t want the inef­fa­bly mel­low, wit­ty, and wise Bill Mur­ray to crash their par­ty, wed­ding, or White House press brief­ing room? Maybe you’re one of the few who could resist his com­ic charms. But could you throw him out if he brought along a cel­list and read Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem “Dog”? Not I.

Mur­ray appeared at SXSW on Mon­day and read the poem as part of the pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign for Wes Anderson’s new stop-motion ani­ma­tion film Isle of Dogs. And it can seem when we look back at Murray’s many pub­lic appear­ances over the last few years, that the one thing he’s done more than crash oth­er peo­ple’s par­ties and star in Wes Ander­son films has been read poet­ry in pub­lic.

Mur­ray, as Ayun Hal­l­i­day point­ed out in a pre­vi­ous post, is a “doc­u­ment­ed poet­ry nut,” who once wrote poet­ry him­self as a much younger man. He’s been “wise enough,” writes Gavin Edwards at Rolling Stone “not to share it with the world.”  Per­haps we’re miss­ing out.

But we do have many, many clips of Mur­ray read­ing his favorites from oth­er poets he admires, like Fer­linghet­ti, and like Wal­lace Stevens, whose “The Plan­et on The Table” and “A Rab­bit as King of the Ghosts,” he reads above at New York’s Poets House, an insti­tu­tion he has whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port­ed.

Wal­lace Stevens is a famous­ly dif­fi­cult poet, but he is also quite fun­ny, in an oblique­ly droll way, and its no won­der Mur­ray likes his verse. Poets House direc­tor Lee Bric­oc­cetti observes that there is “an align­ment between com­e­dy and poet­ry… a pre­ci­sion in the way you han­dle lan­guage.” Some of my own favorite poets—like Frank O’Hara and the “will­ful­ly ridicu­lous” Ste­vie Smith—are also some of the fun­ni­est writ­ers I’ve ever encoun­tered in any form. Murray’s own poet­ic efforts, were we ever to hear them, may not mea­sure up to the work of his favorites, but he is undoubt­ed­ly “a mas­ter of lin­guis­tic con­trol and pac­ing.”

We also know that he can turn in fine­ly nuanced dra­mat­ic per­for­mances when he wants to, and his mas­tery of the spo­ken word con­tributes just as much to mood­i­er poets like Emi­ly Dick­in­son, whom he reads above in a sur­prise per­for­mance for con­struc­tion work­ers at work on the new Poets House home in 2009. You might agree, how­ev­er, that he real­ly shines with com­ic fare, like Bil­ly Collins “Anoth­er Rea­son I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House” and Lorine Niedecker’s major­ly con­densed “Poet’s Work.”

Any of these read­ings should grant Mur­ray admis­sion into the most uptight of lit­er­ary affairs. If any­one still doubts his skill in the craft of read­ing lit­er­a­ture well in public—which, any writer will you, is no easy thing by far—then hear him read Lucille Clifton’s uplift­ing “What the Mir­ror Said” (above), or Sarah Manguso’s “What We Miss,” Bil­ly Collins’ “For­get­ful­ness,” and Cole Porter’s song “Brush Up on Your Shake­speare.” Hear him read from Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and mum­ble his way through Bob Dylan’s “Shel­ter from the Storm,” in char­ac­ter in the film St. Vin­cent.

Oh, but does the mul­ti­tal­ent­ed Bill Mur­ray, “mas­ter of lin­guis­tic con­trol and pac­ing,” sing show tunes? Does he ever….

Find these poet­ry read­ings added to OC’s col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Bill Murray’s Favorite Poems Read Aloud by Mur­ray Him­self & Their Authors

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Read­ing of Twain’sHuckleberry Finn (1996)

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

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

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Watch the Original Black Panther Animated Series Online: All Six Episodes Now Available Thanks to Marvel

in Animation, Comics/Cartoons | March 20th, 2018

Last month, I was thrilled to learn of a talk com­ing to my town called “The Writ­ers of Wakan­da.” I scored a (free) tick­et, think­ing that maybe the mas­sive block­buster movie’s director/writer Ryan Coogler might make an appear­ance (or his co-writer Joe Robert Cole), or maybe one or more of the high-pro­file writ­ers who have expand­ed the comic’s world recent­ly, like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Rox­anne Gay, or Nne­di Oko­rafor. Well, either there was some kind of bait-and-switch at work or I naive­ly failed to read the fine print. The event was a pan­el of devot­ed fans of the com­ic hav­ing a dis­cus­sion about their life­long fan­dom, the many iter­a­tions of the char­ac­ter through var­i­ous Mar­vel writer’s hands, and the film’s huge cul­tur­al impact at home and abroad. It was slight­ly dis­ap­point­ing but also quite enjoy­able and infor­ma­tive.

I learned, for exam­ple, that some of the most well-loved and high­ly-praised char­ac­ters in the film appeared very late in the series’ run (which began with the character’s cre­ation by Stan Lee and Jack Kir­by in 1966) and were intro­duced by its first black writ­ers, the “chron­i­cal­ly under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed” Christo­pher Priest and the film­mak­er Regi­nald Hudlin.

In the late 90s, Priest invent­ed the Dora Mila­je, the elite all-female fight­ing force who pro­tect Wakanda’s kings (who each take on the man­tle of super­hero Black Pan­ther once they ascend the throne). Hudlin cre­at­ed the char­ac­ter of Shuri, King T’Challa’s younger sis­ter and the sci­en­tif­ic mas­ter­mind behind his high-tech empire of vibra­ni­um-pow­ered gear and gad­getry. Which brings us, at last, to the sub­ject of this post, the Black Pan­ther ani­mat­ed series, co-pro­duced by BET and Mar­vel, who have released all six episodes on Mar­vel’s YouTube chan­nel. Stream them all above.

Tak­ing its sto­ry from Hudlin’s 2005 comics run, the series is less ani­ma­tion and more “a stop motion com­ic,” as Nerdist writes, “added to the art­work of John Romi­ta, Jr.” This is all to its cred­it, as is its star-stud­ded voice cast­ing, with Ker­ry Wash­ing­ton as Shuri, Alfre Woodard as the Queen Moth­er, Jill Scott as Storm, and Dji­mon Houn­sou as T’Challa/Black Pan­ther. How does it com­pare to the block­buster film? From its first sal­vo of Wakan­dan war­rior prowess in a cold open set in the 5th cen­tu­ry A.D., to its sev­en­ties-African-funk-inspired theme song, to a present-day scene in the White House, with a blus­tery racist army gen­er­al (played by Stan Lee) who sounds like a mem­ber of the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion, the first episode, above, sug­gests it will live up to Hudlin’s cast­ing of the char­ac­ter as “an unapolo­getic African man,” as Todd Steven Bur­roughs writes at The Root, “open­ly opposed to white, West­ern suprema­cy.”

Hudlin wrote some of the comic’s most polit­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing sto­ries, delv­ing into “seri­ous Euro­pean col­o­niza­tion themes.” These themes are woven through­out the ani­mat­ed series, which fea­tures such char­ac­ters now famil­iar to film­go­ers as Everett Ross and the vil­lain Klaw. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca para­chutes in—in a flashback—meets an ear­li­er Black Pan­ther dur­ing World War II, and takes a beat­ing. (“These are dan­ger­ous times,” says Cap, “you need to choose a side.” The reply: “We have, our own.”) The X‑Men’s Storm, for­mer­ly the first most-famous African super­hero, plays a sig­nif­i­cant role. Not in the series, like­ly to many people’s dis­ap­point­ment, are the Dora Mila­je, at least in star­ring roles, and the film’s pri­ma­ry antag­o­nist Erik Kill­mon­ger.

But not to wor­ry. The ass-kick­ing gen­er­al Okoye and her cadre of war­riors will soon get a spin-off com­ic writ­ten by Oko­rafor, and there’s been some spec­u­la­tion, at least, about whether Kill­mon­ger will return (res­ur­rect­ed, per­haps, as he was in the comics) in the inevitable Black Pan­ther 2. In the mean­time, both long­time and new fans of the char­ac­ter can get their fix in this six-episode series, which offers a thrilling, bloody, and his­tor­i­cal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing take not only on the Black Pan­ther him­self, but on the com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship of Wakan­da to the machi­na­tions of the West­ern world through­out colo­nial his­to­ry and into the present.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from the Com­ic Book Plus Archive

Why Mar­vel and Oth­er Hol­ly­wood Films Have Such Bland Music: Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Per­ils of the “Temp Score”

How to Draw in the Style of Japan­ese Man­ga: A Series of Free & Wild­ly Pop­u­lar Video Tuto­ri­als from Artist Mark Cril­ley

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

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Coursera Now Offering Complete Bachelor’s and Master’s Programs–With Tuition Reduced by 70%

in Online Courses | March 20th, 2018

As we observed last Octo­ber, Cours­era has been under­go­ing an evo­lu­tion of sorts. When the ed tech com­pa­ny start­ed out, it offered an array of indi­vid­ual cours­es to stu­dents world­wide. A lit­tle of this. And a lit­tle of that. Now, they’re increas­ing­ly mov­ing towards cours­es that work togeth­er in sequences. First came “course spe­cial­iza­tions”–col­lec­tions of cours­es that allow stu­dents to gain a mas­tery of spe­cial­ized top­ics like Deep Learn­ing, Data Sci­ence (Johns Hop­kins), Busi­ness Fun­da­men­tals (Whar­ton), Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing (Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois), and Big Data (UC San Diego). Next it was just a log­i­cal jump to offer­ing full-blown Bach­e­lor’s and Mas­ter’s pro­grams at a dis­count­ed price (rough­ly 1/3 the usu­al cost.) As of this month, Cours­era offers one Bach­e­lor’s pro­gram (Com­put­er Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don), one MBA, and eight Mas­ter’s pro­grams. The full list of degree pro­grams appears below:

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!

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cours­era Part­ners with Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties to Offer Master’s Degrees at a More Afford­able Price

New Deep Learn­ing Cours­es Released on Cours­era, with Hope of Teach­ing Mil­lions the Basics of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many With Cer­tifi­cates)

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Play a Collection of Classic Handheld Video Games at the Internet Archive: Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Tron and MC Hammer

in Technology, Video Games | March 20th, 2018

Equipped with smart­phones that grow more pow­er­ful by the year, gamers on the go now have a seem­ing­ly unlim­it­ed vari­ety of play­ing options. A decade ago they relied on hand­held game con­soles with their thou­sands of avail­able game car­tridges and lat­er discs, whose reign began with Nin­ten­do’s intro­duc­tion of the orig­i­nal Game Boy (a device whose unwrap­ping on Christ­mas 1990 remains one of my most vivid child­hood mem­o­ries). But even before the Game Boy and its suc­ces­sors, there were stand­alone hand­held pro­to-video-games, “LCD, VFD and LED-based machines that sold, often cheap­ly, at toy stores and booths over the decades.”

Those words come from Jason Scott at the Inter­net Archive, where you can now play a range of those hand­held games again, emu­lat­ed right here in your brows­er. â€śThey range from notably sim­plis­tic efforts to tru­ly com­pli­cat­ed, many-but­toned affairs that are tru­ly dif­fi­cult to learn, much less mas­ter,” Scott writes.

“They are, of course, enter­tain­ing in them­selves – these are attempts to put togeth­er inex­pen­sive ver­sions of video games of the time, or bring­ing new prop­er­ties whole­cloth into exis­tence.” They also “rep­re­sent the dif­fi­cul­ty ahead for many aspects of dig­i­tal enter­tain­ment, and as such are worth expe­ri­enc­ing and under­stand­ing for that rea­son alone.”

What kind of games came in this form? The Inter­net Archive’s cur­rent offer­ings include vague approx­i­ma­tions of 70s and 80s arcade hits like Pac-Man, Don­key Kong, and Q*Bert;  even vaguer approx­i­ma­tions of such major motion pic­tures of the day as Tron, Robo­cop 2 (as well as Robo­cop 3), and Apol­lo 13; and sports titles like World Cham­pi­onship Base­ball, NFL Foot­ball, and Blades of Steel. You’ll even find pop­u­lar odd­i­ties like Bandai’s Tam­agotchi, the orig­i­nal vir­tu­al pet, along with less pop­u­lar odd­i­ties like MC Ham­mer, a dual-direc­tion­al-padded sim­u­la­tion of a dance bat­tle with the auteur of “U Can’t Touch This.”

So as you play, spare a thought for the devel­op­ers of these hand­held games, not just because of the dire intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty they often had to work with, but the severe tech­no­log­i­cal restric­tions they invari­ably had to work under. â€śThis sort of Her­culean effort to squeeze a major arcade machine into a hand­ful of cir­cuits and a beep­ing, boop­ing shell of what it once was is an ongo­ing sit­u­a­tion,” writes Scott. “Where once it was try­ing to make arcade machines work both on home con­soles like the 2600 and Cole­co­v­i­sion, so it was also the case of these plas­tic toy games. Work of this sort con­tin­ues, as mobile games take charge and devel­op­ers often work to bring huge immer­sive expe­ri­ences to where a phone hits all the same notes.” And the day will cer­tain­ly come when even the most impres­sive games we play now, hand­held or oth­er­wise, will seem just as hilar­i­ous­ly sim­plis­tic.

Enter the hand­held video col­lec­tion here. And find more clas­sic video games in the Relat­eds below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play “Space War!,” One of the Ear­li­est Video Games, on Your Com­put­er (1962)

Pong, 1969: A Mile­stone in Video Game His­to­ry

The Inter­net Arcade Lets You Play 900 Vin­tage Video Games in Your Web Brows­er (Free)

Run Vin­tage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Soft­ware in Your Web Brows­er, Thanks to Archive.org

Free: Play 2,400 Vin­tage Com­put­er Games in Your Web Brows­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Stephen Hawking’s Interview with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Recorded 10 Days Before His Death: A Last Conversation about Black Holes, Time Travel & More

in Physics, Science | March 19th, 2018

Ten days before Stephen Hawking’s death, Neil DeGrasse Tyson sat down with the world-famous physi­cist for an inter­view on Tyson’s StarTalk pod­cast. “I picked his leg­endary brain,” says Tyson in his intro­duc­tion, “on every­thing, from the big bang to the ori­gins of the uni­verse.” He starts off, how­ev­er, with some soft­balls. Hawking’s favorite food? He likes oys­ters. Favorite drink? Pimms.

Your appre­ci­a­tion for Tyson’s earnest­ly awk­ward small talk may vary. He’s prone to mak­ing him­self laugh, which doesn’t elic­it laughs from Hawk­ing, whose com­mu­ni­ca­tion was, of course, extra­or­di­nar­i­ly con­strained. And yet, when it came to mat­ters most of con­se­quence to him, he was elo­quent, wit­ty, pro­found into his final days.

Though we can­not detect any tonal inflec­tion in Hawking’s com­put­er voice, we know him as a sen­si­tive, com­pas­sion­ate per­son as well as a bril­liant mind. It doesn’t sound like he’s brag­ging when—in answer to Tyson’s ques­tion about his favorite equa­tion (at 4:10)—he replies, “the equa­tion I dis­cov­ered relat­ing the entropy of black hole to the area of its hori­zon.” â€śHow many peo­ple,” Tyson replies, chuck­ling, “get to say that their favorite equa­tion is one they came up with? That’s badass.”

Cut­away seg­ments with Tyson, the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Jan­na Levin, and come­di­an Matt Kir­shen sur­round the short inter­view, with Levin offer­ing her pro­fes­sion­al exper­tise as a cos­mol­o­gist to explain Hawking’s ideas in lay terms. His favorite equa­tion, she says, demon­strates that black holes actu­al­ly radi­ate ener­gy, return­ing infor­ma­tion, though in a high­ly dis­or­dered form, that was pre­vi­ous­ly thought lost for­ev­er.

At 8:05, hear Hawking’s answer to the ques­tion of what he would ask Isaac New­ton if he could go back in time. Whether we under­stand his reply or not, we learn how “badass” it is in the cut­away com­men­tary (which begins to seem a lit­tle ESPN-like, with Levin as the sea­soned play­er on the pan­el). Rather than ask­ing New­ton a ques­tion Hawk­ing him­self didn’t know the answer to, which New­ton like­ly couldn’t answer either, Hawk­ing would ask him to solve a prob­lem at the lim­it of Newton’s own stud­ies, there­by test­ing the Enlight­en­ment giant’s abil­i­ties.

Offered ad-free in Hawking’s mem­o­ry, the pod­cast inter­view also tack­les the ques­tion of whether it might ever be pos­si­ble to actu­al­ly trav­el back in time, at 24:00 (the answer may dis­ap­point you). Michio Kaku joins the pan­el in the stu­dio to clar­i­fy and sticks around for the remain­der of the dis­cus­sion. The pan­el also answers fan-sub­mit­ted ques­tions, and Bill Nye makes an appear­ance at 42:16. Hawking’s inter­view makes up a com­par­a­tive­ly small por­tion of the show.

His answers, by neces­si­ty, were very brief and to the point. His final the­o­ries, by con­trast, are mind-expand­ing­ly vast, open­ing us up to the secrets of black holes and the exis­tence of the mul­ti­verse. While Hawk­ing’s the­o­ret­i­cal work may have been too spec­u­la­tive for the Nobel com­mit­tee, who need hard evi­dence to make a call, his lega­cy as “one of our great­est minds, of our gen­er­a­tion, of the cen­tu­ry, or maybe, ever,” as Tyson says, seems secure.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Hawk­ing (RIP) Explains His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary The­o­ry of Black Holes with the Help of Chalk­board Ani­ma­tions

The Lighter Side of Stephen Hawk­ing: The Physi­cist Cracks Jokes and a Smile with John Oliv­er

Stephen Hawking’s Uni­verse: A Visu­al­iza­tion of His Lec­tures with Stars & Sound

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

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A Huge Scale Model Showing Ancient Rome at Its Architectural Peak (Built Between 1933 and 1937)

in History | March 19th, 2018

The nar­ra­tor of Teju Cole’s Open City, one of the bet­ter nov­els of mem­o­ry and urban space to come along in recent years, at one point flies into New York City and remem­bers going to see a “sprawl­ing scale mod­el” of the metrop­o­lis at the Queens Muse­um of Art. “The mod­el had been built for the World’s Fair in 1964, at great cost, and after­ward had been peri­od­i­cal­ly updat­ed to keep up with the chang­ing topog­ra­phy and built envi­ron­ment of the city. It showed, in impres­sive detail, with almost a mil­lion tiny build­ings, and with bridges, parks, rivers, and archi­tec­tur­al land­marks, the true form of the city.” The mod­el real­ly exists; you can go see it your­self.

But if you get to Rome before you next get to New York, you can see anoth­er city mod­el of equal­ly impres­sive, almost implau­si­ble accom­plish­ment there. At the Muse­um of Roman Cul­ture resides a 1:250 recre­ation of impe­r­i­al Rome, known as the Plas­ti­co di Roma Impe­ri­ale, which trans­ports view­ers not just through space but time as well.

“To com­mem­o­rate the birth of Augus­tus (63 BC) two thou­sand years ear­li­er, Mus­soli­ni com­mis­sioned a mod­el of Rome as it appeared at the time of Con­stan­tine (AD 306–337), when the city had reached its great­est size,” says Ency­clo­pe­dia Romana. Con­struct­ed by Ita­lo Gis­mon­di between 1933 and 1937, then extend­ed and restored in the 1990s, it takes as its basis Rodol­fo Lan­cian­i’s 1901 atlas the For­ma Urbis Romae.

You can see more detailed pic­tures of the Plas­ti­co di Roma Impe­ri­ale at the Muse­um of Roman Cul­ture’s site as well as at Viral Spell, zoom­ing in on such Roman land­marks as the Cam­pus Mar­tius, the Cir­cus Max­imus, the Tiber Island, and the Fla­vian Amphithe­atre, bet­ter know as the Colos­se­um. “The atten­tion to detail was so metic­u­lous that one could not help but think of Borges’s car­tog­ra­phers,” says Open City’s nar­ra­tor, â€śwho, obsessed with accu­ra­cy, had made a map so large and so fine­ly detailed that it matched the empire’s scale on a ratio of one to one, a map in which each thing coin­cid­ed with its spot on the map.” This mem­o­ry comes prompt­ed by the sight of the Big Apple, of course, but it some­how sounds even more fit­ting for the Eter­nal City at the height of its ambi­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Map Lets You Take a Lit­er­ary Jour­ney Through the His­toric Mon­u­ments of Rome

New Dig­i­tal Archive Puts Online 4,000 His­toric Images of Rome: The Eter­nal City from the 16th to 20th Cen­turies

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome’s Sys­tem of Roads Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Jane Goodall Now Teaching a Free Online Course on Developing Compassionate Leaders: Enroll and Start Today

in Online Courses | March 19th, 2018

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

FYI: Start­ing today, you can enroll in Jane Goodal­l’s course on cul­ti­vat­ing com­pas­sion­ate lead­ers. Offered through the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado-Boul­der, the free MOOC will help par­tic­i­pants â€śmen­tor young peo­ple to lead change in their com­mu­ni­ties using com­mu­ni­ty map­ping, col­lab­o­rat­ing with stake­hold­ers, and design­ing prac­ti­cal solu­tions in the form of cam­paigns.” Although main­ly designed for “K‑12 for­mal and infor­mal edu­ca­tors in the Unit­ed States,” the course nonethe­less wel­comes any­one inter­est­ed in com­pas­sion and lead­er­ship. Find more infor­ma­tion about the class at this UC-Boul­der page.

Sep­a­rate­ly, Goodall has also recent­ly devel­oped a course on con­serv­ing the envi­ron­ment. It’s avail­able through Mas­ter­class. We have a few more details here.

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:

Google Street View Lets You Walk in Jane Goodall’s Foot­steps and Vis­it the Chim­panzees of Tan­za­nia

Ani­mat­ed: The Inspi­ra­tional Sto­ry of Jane Goodall, and Why She Believes in Big­foot

The Dalai Lama on the Neu­ro­science of Com­pas­sion

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Feel Strangely Nostalgic as You Hear Classic Songs Reworked to Sound as If They’re Playing in an Empty Shopping Mall: David Bowie, Toto, Ah-ha & More

in Life, Music, Psychology | March 19th, 2018

“…if he went away, as he had once upon a time, oth­er voic­es, oth­er rooms, voic­es lost and cloud­ed, strummed his dreams.” — Tru­man Capote, Oth­er Voic­es, Oth­er Rooms

Is there a word for the emo­tion­al flood­tide that wells up when a song from the past catch­es us alone and unawares?

The sen­sa­tion is too pri­vate to be writ­ten off as mere nos­tal­gia.

What­ev­er chem­i­cal phe­nom­e­non explains it, “Cecil Robert,” a 20-year-old from Kaukau­na, Wis­con­sin, has tapped into it in a big way, by mess­ing with the fre­quen­cies of pop songs from the 70s, 80s and 90s, until they sound like some­thing play­ing on the neighbor’s side of the wall, or the echo cham­ber of an emp­ty shop­ping mall.

The New Yorker’s Jia Tolenti­no wrote that his far­away remix of Toto’s ear­ly 80s soft rock hit, “Africa,” above, sound­ed like “long­ing and con­so­la­tion togeth­er, extend­ed into empti­ness, a shot of warmth com­ing out of a void.”

Fun­ny. That pret­ty much sums up how I feel lis­ten­ing to Cecil Robert’s take on Nena’s “99 Luft­bal­lons”…

It was released in 1983, the year that I grad­u­at­ed high school and in which “Africa”—which I con­fess leaves me cold—hit Num­ber One on Billboard’s Hot 100 list.

Were it a mat­ter of sheer gen­er­a­tional nos­tal­gia, Tolenti­no (one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for 2017) should be laid flat by Mac DeMarco’s “My Kind of Woman” “play­ing slow­ly from anoth­er room.”

And I’d be get­ting all gooey over “Africa.”

It doesn’t work that way.

But it def­i­nite­ly works, as evi­denced by the pletho­ra of com­ments that greet every new Cecil Robert upload:

This is what plays when I’m cry­ing in a bath­room of a par­ty and my crush comes in and com­forts me…

This is the song you lis­ten to dur­ing the after­math of a par­ty while every­one is passed out and some­one left the music play­ing…

This real­ly evokes the feel­ing of slow­ly bleed­ing out alone on the kitchen floor & all your sens­es slow­ly blur­ring togeth­er under the glare of the flu­o­res­cent light over­head set to the tune of the muf­fled music com­ing from the record play­er in the next room…

Such a deep con­nec­tion begs that requests be tak­en, and Cecil Roberts does his best to oblige, pri­or­i­tiz­ing those who make a mod­est dona­tion on his Patre­on page:

I need “Hotel Cal­i­for­nia” play­ing at an air­port restau­rant bar late at night…

I need U2—“Beautiful Day”  play­ing in a din­er while it’s rain­ing in the after­noon…

I need “Com­ing of Age” by Fos­ter the Peo­ple being played in a din­er while I eat a hot­dog and wait for my car to get out of the shop across the street…

(For the record, Tolenti­no asked for an anoth­er-room edit of Jai Paul’s dreamy 2011 elec­tro-soul hit “BTSTU.”)

Some of Cecil Robert’s source mate­r­i­al—Julee Cruise’s Twin Peaks theme, “Falling,” for instance—is so ethe­re­al that plac­ing it at the oth­er end of the son­ic tele­scope almost feels like overkill.

On the oth­er hand, it could add a wel­come lay­er for fans sub­con­scious­ly pin­ing for that lost sense of anticipation—for ear­ly 90s girls in 50s sad­dle shoes and pen­cil skirts, for episodes doled out one week at a time…

Get in a weird mood on Cecil Robert’s YouTube chan­nel.

Fast track a request for $2 on his Patre­on page.

Lis­ten to his orig­i­nal ambi­ent com­po­si­tions on Sound­cloud.

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Shift­ed from Minor to Major Key, and Radiohead’s “Creep” Moved from Major to Minor

The Orig­i­nal Noise Artist: Hear the Strange Exper­i­men­tal Sounds & Instru­ments of Ital­ian Futur­ist, Lui­gi Rus­so­lo (1913)

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Thanks to the UCSB Cylin­der Audio Archive

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC this Tues­day, March 20 for the sec­ond install­ment of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain at The Tank. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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