160,000 Pages of Glorious Medieval Manuscripts Digitized: Visit the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis

We might think we have a gen­er­al grasp of the peri­od in Euro­pean his­to­ry immor­tal­ized in theme restau­rant form as “Medieval Times.” After all, writes Amy White at Medievalists.net, “from tat­toos to video games to Game of Thrones, medieval iconog­ra­phy has long inspired fas­ci­na­tion, imi­ta­tion and ven­er­a­tion.” The mar­ket for sword­play, armor, quests, and sor­cery has nev­er been so crowd­ed.

But whether the his­tor­i­cal peri­od we call medieval (a word derived from medi­um aevum, or “mid­dle age”) resem­bled the mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tions it inspired presents us with anoth­er ques­tion entirely—a ques­tion inde­pen­dent and pro­fes­sion­al schol­ars can now answer with free, easy ref­er­ence to “high-res­o­lu­tion images of more than 160,000 pages of Euro­pean medieval and ear­ly mod­ern codices”: rich­ly illu­mi­nat­ed (and ama­teur­ish­ly illus­trat­ed) man­u­scripts, musi­cal scores, cook­books, and much more.

The online project, called Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis, hous­es its dig­i­tal col­lec­tion at the Inter­net Archive and rep­re­sents “vir­tu­al­ly all of the hold­ings of PACSCL [Philadel­phia Area Con­sor­tium of Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Libraries],” a wealth of doc­u­ments from Prince­ton, Bryn Mawr, Vil­lano­va, Swarth­more, and many more col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty libraries, as well as the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Soci­ety, Nation­al Archives at Philadel­phia, and oth­er august insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing and con­ser­va­tion.

Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty “con­tributed 27 man­u­scripts amount­ing to about 5,000 pages,” writes White, includ­ing “a 1462 hand­writ­ten copy of Virgil’s Aeneid with pen­ciled sketch­es in the mar­gins” (see above). There are man­u­scripts from that peri­od like the Ital­ian Trac­ta­tus de mal­efici­is (Trea­tise on evil deeds), a legal com­pendi­um from 1460 with “thir­ty-one mar­gin­al draw­ings in ink” show­ing “var­i­ous crimes (both delib­er­ate and acci­den­tal) being com­mit­ted, from sword-fights and mur­ders to hunt­ing acci­dents and a hang­ing.”

The Trac­ta­tus’ draw­ings “do not appear to be the work of a pro­fes­sion­al artist,” the notes point out, though it also con­tains pages, like the image at the top, show­ing a trained illu­mi­na­tor’s hand. The Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis archive includes 15th and 16th-cen­tu­ry recipes and extracts on alche­my, med­ical texts, and copi­ous Bibles and books of prayer and devo­tion. There is a 1425 edi­tion of Chaucer’s Can­ter­bury Tales in Mid­dle Eng­lish (lack­ing the pro­logue and sev­er­al tales).

These may all seem of recent vin­tage, rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing, for a medieval archive, but the col­lec­tion reach­es back to the 9th cen­tu­ry, with hun­dreds of doc­u­ments, like the 1000 AD music man­u­script above, from a far ear­li­er time. “Users can view, down­load and com­pare man­u­scripts in near­ly micro­scop­ic detail,” notes White. “It is the nation’s largest region­al online col­lec­tion of medieval man­u­scripts,” a col­lec­tion schol­ars can draw on for cen­turies to come to learn what life was real­ly like—at least for the few who could read and write—in Medieval Times.

via Medievalists.net

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

A Free Yale Course on Medieval His­to­ry: 700 Years in 22 Lec­tures

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

How Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Helps Us Understand the Meaning of Life

Abra­ham Maslow’s 1943 paper “A The­o­ry of Human Moti­va­tion” was “writ­ten as pure psy­chol­o­gy,” notes the BBC, but “it has found its main appli­ca­tion in man­age­ment the­o­ry.” It has also become one of the best-known the­o­ries of human well-being. But whether you first encoun­tered it in an Intro Psych class or a busi­ness train­ing sem­i­nar, you’ll imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize the tri­an­gu­lar scheme of the “hier­ar­chy of needs,” lead­ing upward from basic phys­i­cal neces­si­ties to full self-actu­al­iza­tion.

Maslow’s the­o­ry had great explana­to­ry pow­er, offer­ing what he called a “third force” between ide­al­ism and mate­ri­al­ism. He was in line, he wrote, with the more spir­i­tu­al­ly-mind­ed prag­ma­tists, or what he called “the func­tion­al­ist tra­di­tion of James and Dewey… fused with the holism of Wertheimer, Gold­stein, and Gestalt Psy­chol­o­gy, and with the dynam­i­cism of Freud and Adler.” Against the gen­er­al trend in psy­chol­o­gy to pathol­o­gize, Maslow offered his paper as “an attempt to for­mu­late a pos­i­tive the­o­ry of moti­va­tion.”

His work helped inspire man­agers to “shape the con­di­tions that cre­ate people’s aspi­ra­tions,” says Ger­ald Hodgkin­son, psy­chol­o­gist at the War­wick Busi­ness School,” in order to influ­ence pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and loy­al­ty in their employ­ees. If this seems manip­u­la­tive, per­haps Maslow can be held no more respon­si­ble than can Freud for the use of his work by his nephew Edward Bernays, who almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly invent­ed mod­ern adver­tis­ing and pro­pa­gan­da using Freudi­an appeals.

Maslow had in mind some­thing grander than man­ag­ing human capital—“no less,” says Alain de Bot­ton in the School of Life video above, “than the mean­ing of life.” His quest came itself from a per­son­al moti­va­tion. “I was awful­ly curi­ous,” he once remarked, “to find out why I didn’t go insane.” Or, as de Bot­ton says, he want­ed to know “what could make life pur­pose­ful for peo­ple, him­self includ­ed, in mod­ern-day Amer­i­ca, a coun­try where the pur­suit of mon­ey and fame seemed to have eclipsed any more inte­ri­or or authen­tic aspi­ra­tions.”

De Bot­ton walks us through the hier­ar­chy, which divides into two dimen­sions, the material—basic bio­log­i­cal needs (includ­ing sex) and the need for safety—and the psy­cho­log­i­cal. In this last cat­e­go­ry, we find the social needs for belong­ing (“the love needs,” Maslow called them) and esteem, capped with the apex need—self-actualization—the real­iza­tion of one’s true pur­pose. “A musi­cian must make music,” wrote Maslow, “an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ulti­mate­ly hap­py. What a man can be, he must be.”

“How do we arrange our pri­or­i­ties and give due regard to the dif­fer­ent and com­pet­ing claims we have on our atten­tion?” De Bot­ton asks. In an increas­ing­ly dis­em­bod­ied cul­ture, we may ignore or neglect the needs of the body, even if we have the means to meet them, an unsus­tain­able course over the long term. Even those on the path of the “starv­ing artist” will sad­ly have to reeval­u­ate after a time, Maslow argued, giv­ing pri­or­i­ty to their need to eat over their cre­ative aspi­ra­tions. But Maslow’s is not, or not only, a the­o­ry of ratio­nal choice.

On the con­trary, he had a com­pas­sion­ate response to alien­ation and pover­ty of all kinds: “the bold pos­tu­la­tion,” he wrote “that a man who is thwart­ed in any of his basic needs may fair­ly be envis­aged sim­ply as a sick man…. Who is to say that a lack of love is less impor­tant than a lack of vit­a­mins?” The mate­r­i­al needs in Maslow’s scheme must be con­sis­tent­ly met in order to cre­ate a sta­ble base for all the oth­ers. Yet, while self-actu­al­iza­tion may sit at the top, its lack, accord­ing to Maslow, may still affect us as much as much if we suf­fered from “pel­la­gra or scurvy.”

It’s pos­si­ble to read in the hier­ar­chy of needs a psy­cho­log­i­cal elab­o­ra­tion of Marx’s slo­gan “from each accord­ing to his abil­i­ty, to each accord­ing to his needs,” but Maslow was no dialec­ti­cal mate­ri­al­ist. He val­ued spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, and if he was “ambiva­lent about busi­ness,” he also held out hope that com­pa­nies would mar­ket prod­ucts to meet con­sumers’ high­er desires as well as their needs for food, shel­ter, and phys­i­cal com­fort. Maslow died in 1970, and in the ensu­ing decades, his wish has become a huge­ly prof­itable real­i­ty.

From reli­gious broad­cast­ing com­pa­nies to social media to dat­ing and med­i­ta­tion apps, mar­keters find ever-new ways to sell promis­es of belong­ing, esteem, and self-actu­al­iza­tion. Per­haps Maslow would see this as progress. In any case, com­merce aside, his the­o­ry con­tin­ues to address press­ing soci­o­log­i­cal and exis­ten­tial prob­lems. And as an aid to per­son­al reflec­tion, it can help us notice how we “haven’t arranged and bal­anced our needs as wise­ly and ele­gant­ly as we might,” says de Bot­ton. We may have denied our­selves, or been denied, impor­tant expe­ri­ences we need in order to become who we tru­ly are.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Course on Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: Watch 30 Lec­tures from the University’s Extreme­ly Pop­u­lar Course

The Caus­es & Preva­lence of Sui­cide Explained by Two Videos from Alain de Botton’s School of Life

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

Clive James & Jonathan Miller (Both RIP) Talk Together About How the Brain Works

“Were they the last rep­re­sen­ta­tives of a spe­cial kind of pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al?” asks John Mullen in the Guardian. He writes of Clive James and Jonathan Miller, two fig­ures who exem­pli­fied “the poly­math as enter­tain­er.” The Aus­tralian-born James became famous on the back of the tele­vi­sion crit­i­cism that turned him into a tele­vi­sion fix­ture him­self. The com­bined TV crit­ic and TV host also played the same dual role in the realm of poet­ry, and as his life and career went on — and his bib­li­og­ra­phy great­ly expand­ed — it came to seem that there were few forms, tra­di­tions, time peri­ods, or lan­guages his cul­tur­al omniv­o­rous­ness did­n’t reach. Trained as a doc­tor before he rede­fined British com­e­dy as a mem­ber of Beyond the Fringe, Miller retained his sci­en­tif­ic inter­ests, using his fame to write books and present a tele­vi­sion show on anato­my, psy­chol­o­gy, and lan­guage, and much more besides.

Since the deaths of both James and Miller were announced last Fri­day, the out­pour­ing of trib­utes (most of them lament­ing the seem­ing loss, in our time, of high-pro­file roles for enter­tain­ing poly­maths free to move between “high” and “low”) has been accom­pa­nied by a renewed enthu­si­asm for both men’s con­sid­er­able bod­ies of work.

Despite hav­ing known each oth­er, James and Miller seem nev­er to have explic­it­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed on any­thing — except, that is, an episode of Talk­ing in the Library, an ear­ly exam­ple of what we would now call an inter­view web series. Pro­duced from 2006 to 2008, the show has James pio­neer­ing a form that has now become stan­dard among pod­cast­ers: record­ing the con­ver­sa­tions he want­ed to have with his friends any­way.

In James’ case, his friends include the likes of not just Miller but Mar­tin Amis, Ruby Wax, Ian McE­wan, Stephen Fry, and Ter­ry Gilliam. With Miller, James spends the half-hour talk­ing sci­ence, and specif­i­cal­ly neu­ro­science. Miller, who spe­cial­ized in neu­rol­o­gy while study­ing med­i­cine (and who count­ed Oliv­er Sacks as a close friend since age 12), returned to the sub­ject in the ear­ly 1980s for his book and BBC series States of Mind. Not long there­after he returned at the age of 50 to his med­ical stud­ies, div­ing into neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy at McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty and becom­ing a research fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex.

Though James aban­doned his own uni­ver­si­ty stud­ies in psy­chol­o­gy by 1960, his curios­i­ty about the work­ings of the human brain — and how it could pro­duce all the art, lit­er­a­ture, film, and indeed tele­vi­sion to whose appre­ci­a­tion he ded­i­cat­ed his life — nev­er aban­doned him, as evi­denced by the eager­ness with which he asks ques­tions of his more neu­ro­sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly savvy friend. “The brain is the most com­pli­cat­ed thing in the uni­verse,” says Miller, “so com­pli­cat­ed, in fact, that by con­trast the uni­verse itself it not much more com­pli­cat­ed than a cuck­oo clock.” Fair to say that both Miller and James had the good luck to pos­sess more com­pli­cat­ed, or at least more inter­est­ing, brains than aver­age — and that it’s our good luck to be able to enjoy their work in per­pe­tu­ity.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Athe­ism: A Rough His­to­ry of Dis­be­lief, with Jonathan Miller

John Cleese & Jonathan Miller Turn Profs Talk­ing About Wittgen­stein Into a Clas­sic Com­e­dy Rou­tine (1977)

The Drink­ing Par­ty, 1965 Film Adapts Plato’s Sym­po­sium to Mod­ern Times

Join Clive James on His Clas­sic Tele­vi­sion Trips to Paris, LA, Tokyo, Rio, Cairo & Beyond

Your Brain on Art: The Emerg­ing Sci­ence of Neu­roaes­thet­ics Probes What Art Does to Our Brains

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 Cin­e­maand the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Watch a Hand-Drawn Animation of Neil Gaiman’s Poem “The Mushroom Hunters,” Narrated by Amanda Palmer

The arrival of a new­born son has inspired no few poets to com­pose works pre­serv­ing the occa­sion. When Neil Gaiman wrote such a poem, he used its words to pay trib­ute to not just the cre­ation of new life but to the sci­en­tif­ic method as well. “Sci­ence, as you know, my lit­tle one, is the study / of the nature and behav­ior of the uni­verse,” begins Gaiman’s “The Mush­room Hunters.” An impor­tant thing for a child to know, cer­tain­ly, but Gaiman does­n’t hes­i­tate to get into even more detail: “It’s based on obser­va­tion, on exper­i­ment, and mea­sure­ment / and the for­mu­la­tion of laws to describe the facts revealed.” Go slight­ly over the head of a new­born as all this may, any par­ent of an old­er but still young child knows what ques­tion nat­u­ral­ly comes next: “Why?”

As if in antic­i­pa­tion of that inevitable expres­sion of curios­i­ty, Gaiman harks back to “the old times,” when “men came already fit­ted with brains / designed to fol­low flesh-beasts at a run,” and with any luck to come back with a slain ante­lope for din­ner. The women, “who did not need to run down prey / had brains that spot­ted land­marks and made paths between them,” tak­ing spe­cial note of the spots where they could find mush­rooms. It was these mush­room hunters who used “the first tool of all,” a sling to hold the baby but also to “put the berries and the mush­rooms in / the roots and the good leaves, the seeds and the crawlers. / Then a flint pes­tle to smash, to crush, to grind or break.” But how to know which of the mush­rooms — to say noth­ing of the berries, roots, and leaves — will kill you, which will “show you gods,” and which will “feed the hunger in our bel­lies?”

“Observe every­thing.” That’s what Gaiman’s poem rec­om­mends, and what it memo­ri­al­izes these mush­room hunters for hav­ing done: observ­ing the con­di­tions under which mush­rooms aren’t dead­ly to eat, observ­ing child­birth to “dis­cov­er how to bring babies safe­ly into the world,” observ­ing every­thing around them in order to cre­ate “the tools we make to build our lives / our clothes, our food, our path home…” In Gaiman’s poet­ic view, the obser­va­tions and for­mu­la­tions made by these ear­ly mush­room-hunt­ing women to serve only the imper­a­tive of sur­vival lead straight (if over a long dis­tance), to the mod­ern sci­en­tif­ic enter­prise, with its con­tin­ued gath­er­ing of facts, as well as its con­stant pro­pos­al and revi­sion of laws to describe the pat­terns in those facts.

You can see “The Mush­room Hunters” brought to life in the video above, a hand-drawn ani­ma­tion by Cre­ative Con­nec­tion scored by the com­pos­er Jherek Bischoff (pre­vi­ous­ly heard in the David Bowie trib­ute Strung Out in Heav­en). You can read the poem at Brain Pick­ings, whose cre­ator Maria Popo­va hosts “The Uni­verse in Verse,” an annu­al “char­i­ta­ble cel­e­bra­tion of sci­ence through poet­ry” where “The Mush­room Hunters” made its debut in 2017. There it was read aloud by the musi­cian Aman­da Palmer, Gaiman’s wife and the moth­er of the afore­men­tioned son, and so it is in this more recent ani­mat­ed video. Young Ash will sure­ly grow up faced with few obsta­cles to the appre­ci­a­tion of sci­ence, and even less so to the kind of imag­i­na­tion that sci­ence requires. As for all the oth­er chil­dren in the world — well, it cer­tain­ly would­n’t hurt to show them the mush­room hunters at work.

This read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Neil Gaiman & Aman­da Palmer’s Haunt­ing, Ani­mat­ed Take on Leonard Cohen’s “Democ­ra­cy”

Hear Strung Out in Heav­en, a Gor­geous Trib­ute to David Bowie by Aman­da Palmer & Jherek Bischoff’s, Made with Help from Neil Gaiman

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

Watch Love­birds Aman­da Palmer and Neil Gaiman Sing “Makin’ Whoopee!” Live

Neil Gaiman’s Dark Christ­mas Poem Ani­mat­ed

Dis­cov­er Emi­ly Dickinson’s Herbar­i­um: A Beau­ti­ful Dig­i­tal Edi­tion of the Poet’s Col­lec­tion of Pressed Plants & Flow­ers Is Now Online

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 Cin­e­maand the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

You Can Sleep in an Edward Hopper Painting at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts: Is This the Next New Museum Trend?

Let’s pre­tend our Fairy Art Moth­er is grant­i­ng one wish—to spend the night inside the paint­ing of your choice.

What paint­ing will we each choose, and why?

Will you sleep out in the open, undis­turbed by lions, a la Rousseau’s The Sleep­ing Gyp­sy?

Or expe­ri­ence the volup­tuous dreams of Fred­er­ic Leighton’s Flam­ing June?

Paul Gauguin’s por­trait of his son, Clo­vis presents a tan­ta­liz­ing prospect for those of us who haven’t slept like a baby in decades…

The Night­mare by Herny Fuseli should chime with Goth­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties…

And it’s a fair­ly safe bet that some of us will select Edward Hop­per’s West­ern Motel, at the top of this post, if only because we heard the Vir­ginia Muse­um of Fine Arts was accept­ing dou­ble occu­pan­cy book­ings for an extreme­ly faith­ful fac­sim­i­le, as part of its Edward Hop­per and the Amer­i­can Hotel exhi­bi­tion.

Alas, if unsur­pris­ing­ly, the Hop­per Hotel Expe­ri­ence, with mini golf and a curat­ed tour, sold out quick­ly, with prices rang­ing from $150 to $500 for an off-hours stay.

Tick­et-hold­ing vis­i­tors can still peer in at the room any time the exhib­it is open to the pub­lic, but it’s after hours when the Insta­gram­ming kicks into high gear.

What guest could resist the temp­ta­tion to strike a pose amid the vin­tage lug­gage and (blue­tooth-enabled) wood pan­eled radio, fill­ing in for the 1957 painting’s lone fig­ure, an icon­ic Hop­per woman in a bur­gundy dress?

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go notes that she is sin­gu­lar among Hopper’s sub­jects, in that she appears to be gaz­ing direct­ly at the view­er.

But as per the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Art Gallery, from which West­ern Motel is on loan:

The woman star­ing across the room does not seem to see us; the pen­sive­ness of her stare and her tense pos­ture accen­tu­ate the sense of some impend­ing event. She appears to be wait­ing: the lug­gage is packed, the room is devoid of per­son­al objects, the bed is made, and a car is parked out­side the win­dow.

Hope­ful­ly, those lucky enough to have secured a book­ing will have per­fect­ed the pose in the mir­ror at home pri­or to arrival. This “motel” is a bit of a stage set, in that guests must leave the paint­ing to access the pub­lic bath­room that con­sti­tutes the facil­i­ties.

(No word on whether the theme extends to a paper “san­i­tized for your pro­tec­tion” band across the toi­let, but there’s no show­er and a secu­ri­ty offi­cer is sta­tioned out­side the room for the dura­tion of each stay.)

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of this once-in-a-life­time exhib­it tie-in may spark oth­er muse­ums to fol­low suit.

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go start­ed the trend in 2016 with a painstak­ing recre­ation of Vin­cent Van Gogh’s room at Arles, which it list­ed on Air BnB for $10/night.

Think of all the fun we could have if the bed­rooms of art his­to­ry opened to us…

Dog lovers could get cozy in Andrew Wyeth’s Mas­ter Bed­room.

Delacroix’s The Death of Sar­dana­palus (1827) would require some­thing more than dou­ble occu­pan­cy for prop­er Insta­gram­ming.

Piero del­la Francesca’s The Dream of Con­stan­tine might elic­it impres­sive mes­sages from the sub-con­science

Tuber­cu­lo­sis noth­with­stand­ing, Aubrey Beardsley’s Self Por­trait in Bed is rife with pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Or skip the cul­tur­al fore­play and head straight for the NSFW plea­sures of The French Bed, a la Rembrandt’s etch­ing.

Edward Hop­per and the Amer­i­can Hotel will be trav­el­ing to the Indi­anapo­lis Muse­um of Art at New­fields in June 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Jour­ney Inside Vin­cent Van Gogh’s Paint­ings with a New Dig­i­tal Exhi­bi­tion

How Edward Hop­per “Sto­ry­board­ed” His Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks

60-Sec­ond Intro­duc­tions to 12 Ground­break­ing Artists: Matisse, Dalí, Duchamp, Hop­per, Pol­lock, Rothko & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Masterclass Is Running a “Buy One, Give One Free” Deal: It Gives You and a Family Member/Friend Access to Their Complete Course Catalog

FYI: This spe­cial deal is now over…

You can see their stan­dard 0ffer–an all-access pass to their cat­a­logue of 70+ courses–here.

A New Online Archive Lets You Listen to 40 Years Worth of Terry Gross’ Fresh Air Interviews: Stream 22,000 Segment Online

As the weath­er grows cold­er, we look for rea­sons to stay inside, snug­gled up under a blan­ket, steamy mug in hand.

Or some­times we look for an incen­tive to bun­dle up and go for a long freez­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Either way, 40 years’ worth of Fresh Air, Peabody award-win­ning radio jour­nal­ist Ter­ry Gross’ inter­view show, is just the tick­et.

A com­plete dig­i­tal data­base of over 22,000 seg­ments is now avail­able for your lis­ten­ing plea­sure.

Feel­ing over­whelmed?

Scroll down on the home page to delve into a recent episode.

Or dial it back to one of the ear­li­est extant install­ments.

(In the first decade of the show’s his­to­ry, many episodes went untaped or got record­ed over.)

The mas­sive data­base, cre­at­ed with help from library sci­en­tists at Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty, is also search­able by guest and top­ic.

If you feel like hand­ing over the con­trols, home sta­tion WHYY in Philadel­phia has some sug­gest­ed col­lec­tions—Jazz Leg­endsSat­ur­day Night LiveHow the Brain Works

If you’re open to any­thing, try the wild card option at the bot­tom of the screen. Click play for a ran­dom episode.

Or try typ­ing one of your inter­ests into the search bar.

“Cats” yield­ed 1713 results, from a chat with author John Brad­shaw on the evo­lu­tion of house cats to an inter­view with zool­o­gist Alan Rabi­nowitz on endan­gered large cats to some train­ing tips, cour­tesy of feline behav­ior spe­cial­ist Sarah Ellis.

Of less direct rel­e­vance, but of no less inter­est, are:

A review of Iran­ian direc­tor Bah­man Ghobadi’s film No One Knows about Per­sian Cats, which net­ted the 2009 Spe­cial Jury Prize at Cannes.

A review of Mar­garet Atwood’s 1989 nov­el Cat’s Eye.

A His­to­ry of Catskills resorts.

A post-mortem with come­di­an (and avowed cat per­son) Mark Maron fol­low­ing then-Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s 2015 appear­ance on his WTF pod­cast (an occa­sion which required Maron’s house cats to be cor­ralled in his bed­room).

The Coen Broth­ers on writ­ing The Big Lebows­ki and the dif­fi­cul­ties of wran­gling Inside Llewyn Davis’s feline per­former:

Gross: So how do you cast a cat for your film?

One Coen broth­er: Ooh, that was hor­ri­ble. We just used on the advice of the trainer—the ani­mal train­er, kind of an orange, kind of a mar­malade tab­by cat, just because they are, you know, com­mon, and so easy to dou­ble, triple, quadru­ple. There were, you know, many cats play­ing the one cat and, you know, the whole thing is actu­al­ly pret­ty, it comes across well in the movie, but the whole exer­cise of shoot­ing a cat is pret­ty night­mar­ish because they don’t care about any­thing; they don’t want to do what you want them to do. As the ani­mal train­er said to us, a dog wants to please you; a cat only wants to please itself. It was just long, painstak­ing, frus­trat­ing days shoot­ing the cat.

Oth­er Coen broth­er: What you have to do is basi­cal­ly find the cat that’s pre­dis­posed to doing what­ev­er par­tic­u­lar piece of action it is that you have to film. So you find the cat that can—isn’t afraid to run down a fire escape or this, you know, the cat that’s very docile and will let the actor just hold them for extend­ed peri­ods of time with­out being fid­gety. And then you want the fid­gety cat—the squir­re­ly cat—for when you want the cat to run away and you just keep swap­ping them out—depending on what the task at hand is.

If some­thing real­ly catch­es your fan­cy, you can add it to a playlist to share via social media or email.

Read­ers, what would you have us add to ours?

Begin your explo­ration of Fresh Air’s archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pens When a Ter­ry Gross/Fresh Air Inter­view Ends: A Com­ic Look

Mau­rice Sendak’s Emo­tion­al Last Inter­view with NPR’s Ter­ry Gross, Ani­mat­ed by Christoph Nie­mann

Lis­ten to Ira Glass’ 10 Favorite Episodes of This Amer­i­can Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Depeche Mode Before They Were Actually Depeche Mode: Stream Their Early Demo Recordings from 1980

After their 1986 album Black Cel­e­bra­tion, new wave leg­ends Depeche Mode ful­ly com­mit­ted to being the most glo­ri­ous­ly gloomy band next to The Cure to appear on sta­di­um stages. Earnest pleas for tol­er­ance like “Peo­ple are Peo­ple” and play­ful­ly sug­ges­tive vamps like “Mas­ter and Ser­vant” gave way to atmos­pher­ic dirge‑y wash­es and fune­re­al tem­pos made for mop­ing, not danc­ing. The move defined them after their ear­ly break­out with an image as a kind of New Roman­tic boy band.

The Depeche Mode of the ear­ly 80s was always edgi­er than most of their peers, even if they looked clean cut and cheru­bic. They were also more exper­i­men­tal, draw­ing from Kraftwerk’s dead­pan Ger­man dis­co in their min­i­mal­ist first sin­gle “Dream­ing of Me” and mak­ing indus­tri­al pop in Con­struc­tion Time Again’s “Every­thing Counts.” Theirs is a body of work, for bet­ter or worse, that launched a hun­dred dark­wave bands decades on, and their very first incar­na­tion may remind indie fans of oth­er lo-fi indie pop artists of recent years.

Before they were Depeche Mode, they were a min­i­mal­ist post-punk/new wave band called Com­po­si­tion of Sound. They record­ed two demo tapes under the name, “one with Vince Clarke on vocals and gui­tar,” notes Post-Punk.com, “Andy Fletch­er on bass and Mar­tin L. Gore on syn­the­siz­ers, and one [above] just after the arrival of Dave Gahan in the band, short­ly before they were renamed.” These tapes, from 1980, are the first record­ed man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Depeche Mode line­up.

Clarke and Fletch­er began play­ing togeth­er in the 1977 Cure-influ­enced band No Romance in Chi­na. They formed Com­po­si­tion of Sound with Gore, who’d played gui­tar in an acoustic duo, in 1980 and recruit­ed Gahan that same year whey they heard him sing Bowie’s “’Heroes’” at a jam ses­sion. By that time, they’d most­ly giv­en up on gui­tars, after Clarke—who left Depeche Mode after Speak & Spell to form the huge­ly influ­en­tial syn­th­pop band Yazoo (or Yaz in the U.S.)—encountered Orches­tral Maneu­vers in the Dark. The three-song demo at the top rep­re­sents that evo­lu­tion­ary step in action.

The first track, “Ice Machine,” was released as the b‑side of “Dream­ing of Me,” Depeche Mode’s first artis­tic state­ment of intent on their long­time label Mute. Fletch­er plays bass gui­tar on this and the oth­er two tracks, “Radio News” and “Pho­to­graph­ic,” but the songs are oth­er­wise rudi­men­ta­ry ances­tors of Depeche Mode’s synth-dom­i­nat­ed sound, which would per­sist until they brought gui­tars back into the fore­ground in the 90s.

It appears they did play a “hand­ful of gigs” in the tran­si­tion­al phase of Com­po­si­tion of Sound, as Mar­tin Schnei­der writes at Dan­ger­ous Minds: “The first COS show with Dave Gahan on vocals hap­pened on June 14, 1980 at Nicholas Com­pre­hen­sive in Basil­don.” The gig went well, accord­ing to Clarke, “because Gahan ‘had all his trendy mates there.’” Their last show in this incar­na­tion “sounds like some­thing out of This is Spinal Tap.” 

They played at a youth club at Wood­lands School in their home­town of Basil­don. “Their audi­ence con­sist­ed of a bunch of nine-year-olds. ‘They loved the synths, which were a nov­el­ty then,’ remem­bers Fletch­er. ‘The kids were onstage twid­dling the knobs while we played!”  One won­ders if any of those kids went on to start their own fash­ion­ably min­i­mal­ist syn­th­pop bands….

via Dan­ger­ous Minds/Post-Punk

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lost Depeche Mode Doc­u­men­tary Is Now Online: Watch Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode Releas­es a Goose­bump-Induc­ing Cov­er of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

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

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.