Music Is Truly a Universal Language: New Research Shows That Music Worldwide Has Important Commonalities

Pho­to by Jo Duse­po, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfellow’s descrip­tion of music as a uni­ver­sal lan­guage has become a well-worn cliché, usu­al­ly uttered in a sen­ti­men­tal and not par­tic­u­lar­ly seri­ous way. Maybe this is why it does­n’t inspire a cor­re­spond­ing breadth of appre­ci­a­tion for the music of the world. We are con­di­tioned and accul­tur­at­ed, it can seem, by for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence to grav­i­tate toward cer­tain kinds of music. We can expand our tastes but that usu­al­ly requires some care­ful study and accul­tur­a­tion.

In the sci­ences, the “uni­ver­sal lan­guage” hypoth­e­sis in music has been tak­en far more seri­ous­ly, and, more recent­ly, so has its cri­tique. “In eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gy,” notes the Uni­ver­si­tat Wien’s Medi­en­por­tal, “uni­ver­sal­i­ty became some­thing of a dirty word.” The diver­si­ty of world music is pro­found, as Kevin Dick­in­son writes at Big Think.

Kata­j­jaq, or Inu­it throat singing, express­es play­ful­ness in strong, throaty expres­sions. Japan’s nogaku punc­tu­ates haunt­ing bam­boo flutes with the stiff punc­tu­a­tion of per­cus­sion. South of Japan, the Aus­tralian Abo­rig­ines also used winds and per­cus­sions, yet their didgeri­doos and clap­sticks birthed a dis­tinct sound. And the staid echoes of medieval Gre­go­ri­an chant could hard­ly be con­fused for a rous­ing track of thrash met­al.

The idea that all of these kinds of music and thou­sands more are all the same in some way strikes many as “ground­less or even offen­sive.” But even hard­core skep­tics might be per­suad­ed by papers pub­lished just last month in Sci­ence.

Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na Cog­ni­tive Biol­o­gists W. Tecum­seh Fitch and Tudor Popes­cu begin their arti­cle “The World in a Song” with a brief sketch of the his­to­ry of “the empir­i­cal quest for musi­cal uni­ver­sals.” The search began in Berlin in 1900, almost as soon as phono­graphs could be used to record music. The Nazis stamped out this research in Ger­many in the 1930s, though it flour­ished in the U.S.—in the work of Alan Lomax, for exam­ple. Yet “by the 1970s eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gists were dis­cour­aged from even dis­cussing musi­cal ‘uni­ver­sals.’ ”

Nonethe­less, as a team of researchers led by Harvard’s Samuel Mehr show in their paper “Uni­ver­sal­i­ty and Diver­si­ty in Human Song,” there are indeed uni­ver­sal musi­cal qual­i­ties, though they man­i­fest in some spe­cif­ic ways. Using the “tools of com­pu­ta­tion­al social sci­ence” to ana­lyze a huge archive of audio record­ings of world music, the researchers found that “iden­ti­fi­able acoustic fea­tures of songs (accent, tem­po, pitch range, etc.) pre­dict their pri­ma­ry behav­ioral con­text (love, heal­ing, etc.).” Soci­eties around the world use sim­i­lar musi­cal prop­er­ties to accom­pa­ny sim­i­lar emo­tion­al con­texts, in oth­er words.

More­over, the meta-analy­sis found that “melod­ic and rhyth­mic bigrams fall into pow­er-law dis­tri­b­u­tions” and “tonal­i­ty is wide­spread, per­haps uni­ver­sal.” Focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on vocal song, since instru­men­ta­tion var­ied too wide­ly, the sci­en­tists test­ed “five sets of hypothe­ses about uni­ver­sal­i­ty and vari­abil­i­ty in musi­cal behav­ior and musi­cal forms.” All of these analy­ses make use of ethno­graph­ic data. Crit­ics might point out that such data is rid­dled with bias.

Ethno­g­ra­phers, from the pure­ly aca­d­e­m­ic to pop­u­lar cura­tors like Lomax, applied their own fil­ters, choos­ing what to record and what to ignore based on their own assump­tions about what mat­ters in music. Nonethe­less, Mehr and his co-authors write that they have adjust­ed for “sam­pling error and ethno­g­ra­ph­er bias, prob­lems that have bedev­iled pri­or tests.” Their method­ol­o­gy is rig­or­ous, and their con­clu­sions are backed by some dense ana­lyt­ics.

It would indeed seem from their exhaus­tive research that, in many respects, music is gen­uine­ly uni­ver­sal. The find­ings should not sur­prise us. Humans, after all, are bio­log­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar across the globe, with gen­er­al­ly the same propen­si­ties for lan­guage learn­ing and all the oth­er things that humans uni­ver­sal­ly do. Many pre­vi­ous com­par­a­tive projects in his­to­ry have used gen­er­al­iza­tions to cre­ate racial hier­ar­chies and attempt to show the supe­ri­or­i­ty of one cul­ture or anoth­er. “Uni­ver­sal­i­ty is a big word,” said Leonard Bern­stein, “and a dan­ger­ous one”—a word beloved by empires through­out time.

But the data-dri­ven approach used by the most recent stud­ies adheres more close­ly to the sci­ence. Wide vari­a­tion is a giv­en, and sev­er­al indi­ca­tors show great “vari­abil­i­ty across cul­tures” when it comes to music, as the intro­duc­tion to “Uni­ver­sal­i­ty and Diver­si­ty in Human Song” acknowl­edges. Nonethe­less, forms of music appear in every human soci­ety, accom­pa­ny­ing cer­e­monies, rit­u­als, and rites. Echo­ing the con­clu­sions of mod­ern genet­ics, the authors point out that “there is more vari­a­tion in musi­cal behav­ior with­in soci­eties than between soci­eties.” Read Mehr and his team’s study here.

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ther­a­peu­tic Ben­e­fits of Ambi­ent Music: Sci­ence Shows How It Eas­es Chron­ic Anx­i­ety, Phys­i­cal Pain, and ICU-Relat­ed Trau­ma

Why Catchy Songs Get Stuck in Our Brains: New Study Explains the Sci­ence of Ear­worms

A Playlist of Music Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven to Increase Cows’ Milk Pro­duc­tion: REM, Lou Reed & More

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

David Sedaris Teaches Storytelling & Humor His New Masterclass

For more than 25 years, the hol­i­day sea­son has brought to the radio not just Christ­mas car­ols but a diaris­tic mono­logue by a writer with, in every sense, a dis­tinc­tive voice. When it first aired on Morn­ing Edi­tion, “San­ta­land Diaries” made David Sedaris’ name, not that he holds the piece in esteem as high as some of his fans do. “Peo­ple will say, ‘Oh, I loved that San­ta­land thing,’ ” Sedaris said in a recent inter­view, but “that thing is so clunki­ly writ­ten. I mean, it’s just hor­ri­bly writ­ten, and peo­ple can’t even see it.” Most are “lis­ten­ing to the sto­ry, but they’re not pay­ing atten­tion to how it’s con­struct­ed, or they’re not pay­ing atten­tion to the words that you used. They’re not hear­ing the craft of it.” Sedaris fans who do hear the craft of it may well be in the tar­get audi­ence for a new Mas­ter­class taught by the man him­self.

Here on Open Cul­ture we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Mas­ter­class­es by writ­ers as intel­lec­tu­al­ly and styl­is­ti­cal­ly var­i­ous as Joyce Car­ol Oates, Mal­colm Glad­well, Mar­garet Atwood, and Dan Brown. But we’ve nev­er con­duct­ed inves­ti­ga­tions into any of their writ­ing process­es in the same way we have into Sedaris’ writ­ing process, his own view of which con­sti­tutes the core of his Mas­ter­class’ con­tent. “If you write about peo­ple, you have to be inter­est­ed in peo­ple,” he says in the trail­er above. For him that means ask­ing unex­pect­ed ques­tions, like “Do your chil­dren show­er?” or “Who’s the drunk­est cus­tomer you’ve had today?” It also means keep­ing a diary in which to record the answers, and with which, even more impor­tant­ly, to main­tain a dai­ly writ­ing habit.

Even now, with a full sched­ule of read­ings to give around the world, Sedaris writes every day with­out fail. But he also did it for fif­teen years before “The San­ta­land Diaries” brought him the atten­tion that got his first book pub­lished. “I meet a lot of young writ­ers and I say, ‘Do you write every day?’ ” he men­tions in one les­son. “They say, ‘No, but just — you know, I write when it strikes me.’ I don’t know. I sup­pose that might work for some peo­ple.” But it cer­tain­ly would­n’t work for him, nor would doing few­er than his cus­tom­ary twelve to eigh­teen rewrites of each piece. In oth­er lessons he cov­ers such aspects of the craft as “observ­ing the world,” “con­nect­ing with the read­er,” “end­ing with weight,” and “writ­ing about loved ones.”

For that last les­son Sedaris brings in a spe­cial guest: his sis­ter Lisa, there to talk about what it feels like to be writ­ten about by her famous­ly obser­vant broth­er. That will come as a spe­cial treat for any­one who rec­og­nizes her from all her appear­ances in Sedaris’ fam­i­ly sto­ries, but each les­son seems to play to Sedaris’ strengths as a writer as well as a per­former: he gives read­ings of diary entries and pub­lished pieces, but also gives his stu­dents advice on how to han­dle read­ings of their own in the future. Sedaris makes no promis­es that the course will bestow upon all who take it a world­view as dis­tinc­tive as his, to say noth­ing of a fan base as lucra­tive as his, but it will sure­ly make them bet­ter at “hear­ing the craft of it,” a skill as wor­thy of cul­ti­va­tion as it is rare. You can sign up for Sedaris’ course here.

You can take this class by sign­ing up for a Mas­ter­Class’ All Access Pass. The All Access Pass will give you instant access to this course and 85 oth­ers for a 12-month peri­od.

Note: 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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Sedaris: A Sam­pling of His Inim­itable Humor

David Sedaris Breaks Down His Writ­ing Process: Keep a Diary, Car­ry a Note­book, Read Out Loud, Aban­don Hope

Why David Sedaris Hates America’s Favorite Word, “Awe­some”

David Sedaris Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Jazz Tracks: Stream Them Online

Steve Mar­tin Teach­es His First Online Course on Com­e­dy

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.

What the Great Pyramid of Giza Would’ve Looked Like When First Built: It Was Gleaming, Reflective White

The Great Pyra­mid at Giza—the old­est and most intact of the sev­en ancient won­ders of the ancient world—became a potent sym­bol of the sub­lime in the 19th cen­tu­ry, a sym­bol of pow­er so absolute as to eclipse human under­stand­ing. After Napoleon’s first expe­di­tion to Giza, “Egy­to­ma­nia… swept through Euro­pean cul­ture and influ­enced the plas­tic arts, fash­ion, and design,” writes Miroslav Vern­er in The Pyra­mids: The Mys­tery, Cul­ture, and Sci­ence of Egypt’s Great Mon­u­ments.

At the end of the cen­tu­ry, Her­man Melville sat­i­rized the trend that would even­tu­al­ly give rise to Ancient Aliens, ask­ing in an 1891 poem, “Your masonry—and is it man’s? More like some Cos­mic artisan’s.” Egyp­to­ma­ni­acs saw oth­er­world­ly mag­ic in the pyra­mid. For Melville, it “usurped” nature’s great­ness, stand­ing as “evi­dence of humankind’s mon­u­men­tal will to pow­er,” as Daw­id W. de Vil­liers writes.

The ancient Greeks believed the pyra­mids were built with a mas­sive slave labor force, a the­o­ry that has per­sist­ed. As Vern­er exhaus­tive­ly argues in his book, how­ev­er, they were not only built by humans—instead of aliens or gods—but they were con­struct­ed by trades­men and arti­sans whose skills were in high demand and who were paid wages and orga­nized under a com­plex bureau­cra­cy.

And as you can see recon­struct­ed in the Smith­son­ian video at the top, one of those arti­sanal tasks was to pol­ish the monument’s out­er lime­stone to a gleam­ing white fin­ish that reflect­ed “the pow­er­ful Egypt­ian sun with a daz­zling glare.” Once the pyra­mid was com­plet­ed, “it must have tru­ly added to the impres­sion of Giza as a mag­i­cal port city, bathed in sun­light,” says archae­ol­o­gist Mark Lehn­er in the clip.

In addi­tion to its glow­ing, pol­ished lime­stone sides, “the struc­ture would have like­ly been topped with a pyra­mid­ion, a cap­stone made of sol­id gran­ite and cov­ered in a pre­cious met­al like gold,” writes Kot­tke. “No won­der they thought their rulers were gods.” Or did ancient Egyp­tians see the Great Pyra­mid as a mas­ter­piece of human engi­neer­ing, built with the skill and sweat of thou­sands of their com­pa­tri­ots?

Who can say. But it’s like­ly that 19th-cen­tu­ry Euro­pean explor­ers and artists might have char­ac­ter­ized things dif­fer­ent­ly had the Great Pyra­mid still scat­tered the sun over the desert like an ancient bea­con of light instead of sit­ting “dumb,” as Melville wrote, stripped of its facade, wait­ing to have all sorts of mys­te­ri­ous mean­ings wrapped around it.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

Human All Too Human: A Roman Woman Vis­its the Great Pyra­mid in 120 AD, and Carves a Poem in Mem­o­ry of Her Deceased Broth­er

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

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

For the First Time, Studio Ghibli’s Entire Catalog Will Soon Be Available for Digital Purchase

Some describe Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, the ani­ma­tion com­pa­ny found­ed by Hayao Miyaza­ki and Isao Taka­ha­ta, as “the Japan­ese Dis­ney.” That does jus­tice to the true nature of nei­ther Ghi­b­li nor Dis­ney, though both ven­tures have dis­played an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to pro­duce beloved ani­mat­ed films — and beloved ani­mat­ed films that haven’t always been easy to see on demand. Just this past sum­mer we fea­tured the release of Ghi­b­li’s Spir­it­ed Away in Chi­na, eigh­teen years after its pre­miere, but even in less polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive ter­ri­to­ries, fans have had their chal­lenges: find­ing a way to stream Ghi­b­li movies, for instance, which (at least in North Amer­i­ca) will become much eas­i­er on Decem­ber 17th.

On that date, reports Vari­ety’s Dave McNary, “GKids will release the entire Stu­dio Ghi­b­li cat­a­log of ani­mat­ed films for dig­i­tal pur­chase.” From Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind and My Neigh­bor Totoro to From Up on Pop­py Hill and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Ghi­b­li’s films “will be avail­able to pur­chase in both Eng­lish and Japan­ese lan­guages on all major dig­i­tal trans­ac­tion­al plat­forms.”

This marks “the first time the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li films will be avail­able for dig­i­tal pur­chase any­where in the world,” includ­ing the stu­dio’s home­land of Japan — a coun­try, in any case, with a slight­ly dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ship to the inter­net than most, and one that tends to result in a pref­er­ence for phys­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion over dig­i­tal.

If you’ve nev­er seri­ous­ly watched Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s films, don’t be fooled by the name GKids: the Amer­i­can dis­trib­u­tor spe­cial­izes in arti­sanal ani­ma­tion, most­ly but not entire­ly Japan­ese (its cat­a­log also includes Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues), and those in charge there know full well the draw of Ghi­b­li for demo­graph­ics far beyond those still in child­hood. One can fair­ly argue, in fact, that young­sters aren’t Ghi­b­li’s pri­ma­ry audi­ence; where­as Dis­ney makes ani­ma­tion for kids that many grown-ups can enjoy, Ghi­b­li in some sense does the oppo­site. The films of Miyaza­ki, Taka­ha­ta, and Ghi­b­li’s oth­er stal­warts will thus make ide­al mate­r­i­al for the all-ages at-home movie marathons with­out which no hol­i­day sea­son is com­plete, see­ing as their ani­mat­ed mag­ic will arrive in the realm of on-demand not a moment too soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Work Their Ani­mat­ed Mag­ic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Enter the Real World

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

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.

Kabuki Star Wars: Watch The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi Reinterpreted by Japan’s Most Famous Kabuki Actor

The appeal of Star Wars tran­scends gen­er­a­tion, place, and cul­ture. Any­one can tell by the undi­min­ish­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the ever more fre­quent expan­sions of the Star Wars uni­verse more than 40 years after the movie that start­ed it all — and not just in the Eng­lish-speak­ing West, but all the world over. The vast fran­chise has pro­duced “cin­e­mat­ic sequels, TV spe­cials, ani­mat­ed spin-offs, nov­els, com­ic books, video games, but it wasn’t until Novem­ber 28 that there was a Star Wars kabu­ki play,” writes Sora News 24’s Casey Baseel. Staged one time only last Fri­day at Toky­o’s Meguro Per­sim­mon Hall, Kairen­no­suke and the Three Shin­ing Swords retells the events of recent films The Force Awak­ens and The Last Jedi in Japan’s best-known tra­di­tion­al the­ater form.

To even the hard­est-core Star Wars exegete, Kairen­no­suke may be an unfa­mil­iar name — though not entire­ly unfa­mil­iar. It turns out to be the Japan­ese name giv­en to the char­ac­ter of Kylo Ren, the pow­er-hun­gry nephew of Luke Sky­walk­er por­trayed by Adam Dri­ver in The Force Awak­ensThe Last Jedi, and the upcom­ing The Rise of Sky­walk­er.

In Kairen­no­suke and the Three Shin­ing Swords he’s played by Ichikawa Ebizō XI, not just the most pop­u­lar kabu­ki actor alive but an avowed Star Wars enthu­si­ast as well. “I like the con­flict between the Jedi and the Dark Side of the Force,” Baseel quotes Ichikawa as say­ing. “In kabu­ki too, there are many sto­ries of good and evil oppos­ing each oth­er, and it’s inter­est­ing to see how even good Jedi can be pulled towards the Dark Side by fear and wor­ry.”

The the­mat­ic res­o­nances between kabu­ki and Star Wars should come as no sur­prise, giv­en all Star Wars cre­ator George Lucas has said about the series’ ground­ing in ele­ments of uni­ver­sal myth. Lucas also active­ly drew from works of Japan­ese art, includ­ing, as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the samu­rai films of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa. And so in Kairen­no­suke and the Three Shin­ing Swords, which you can watch on Youtube and fol­low along in Baseel’s play-by-play descrip­tion in Eng­lish, we have the kind of elab­o­rate cul­tur­al rein­ter­pre­ta­tion — bring­ing dif­fer­ent eras of West­ern and Japan­ese art togeth­er in one strange­ly coher­ent mix­ture — in which mod­ern Japan has long excelled. No mat­ter what coun­try they hail from, Star Wars fans can appre­ci­ate the high­ly styl­ized adven­tures of Kairen­no­suke, Han­zo, Reino, Sunokaku, Ruku and Reian — and of course, R2-D2 and C‑3PO.

via Neatora­ma

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a New Star Wars Ani­ma­tion, Drawn in a Clas­sic 80s Japan­ese Ani­me Style

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Japan­ese Kabu­ki Actors Cap­tured in 18th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints by the Mys­te­ri­ous & Mas­ter­ful Artist Sharaku

The Cast of Avengers: Endgame Ren­dered in Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Ukiyo‑e Style

High School Kids Stage Alien: The Play and You Can Now Watch It 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.

Interactive Periodic Table of Elements Shows How the Elements Get Used in Making Everyday Things

“The dis­cov­ery of the peri­od­ic sys­tem for clas­si­fy­ing the ele­ments rep­re­sents the cul­mi­na­tion of a num­ber of sci­en­tif­ic devel­op­ments, rather than a sud­den brain­storm on the part of one indi­vid­ual,” writes Eric Scer­ri at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can. And yet, while sev­er­al sci­en­tists over the course of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry invent­ed sys­tems for clas­si­fy­ing the ele­ments, “ask most chemists who dis­cov­ered the peri­od­ic table and you will almost cer­tain­ly get the answer Dmitri Mendeleev,” notes the Roy­al Soci­ety of Chem­istry.  That’s for good rea­son, since the basis of the table we know today came from the design Mendeleev cre­at­ed in 1869.

This past March saw the 150th anniver­sary of his achieve­ment, which has hard­ly remained a his­tor­i­cal arti­fact. Every gen­er­a­tion has its table. Mendeleev’s rudi­men­ta­ry begin­nings have tak­en on new shape and have been sup­ple­ment­ed with anno­ta­tions and illus­tra­tions in eye-catch­ing col­or in text­books and on class­room walls around the world. It’s only fit­ting, then, that the 21st cen­tu­ry has its dig­i­tal ver­sions of the table, like the inter­ac­tive design by Boe­ing soft­ware engi­neer Kei­th Enevold­sen.

The Inter­ac­tive Peri­od­ic Table of the Ele­ments, in Pic­tures and Words, adapts itself to dif­fer­ent learn­ing styles while pro­vid­ing stu­dents of chem­istry, of all ages and lev­els, instant facts about each of the ele­ments it illus­trates. Click on Pal­la­di­um, for exam­ple, and you’ll learn about its role in pol­lu­tion con­trol. The non-cor­rod­ing hard met­al absorbs hydro­gen and is used in lab­ware, elec­tric con­tacts, and den­tistry. Rhe­ni­um, we learn, is a dense met­al used in rock­et engines, heater coils, and elec­tric con­tacts, among oth­er things.

Oth­er “seem­ing­ly obscure” ele­ments we may nev­er have heard of, like Gal­li­um and Tan­ta­lum, influ­ence our dai­ly lives “quite a bit, it turns out,” as Lacy Cooke writes at Inhab­it, serv­ing as com­po­nents in LEDs and mobile phones. We gath­er such facts at a glance, as well as the oth­er end­less­ly use­ful func­tions of the table. Enevold­sen fur­ther adapts his designs for home or class­room use with print­able PDFs, includ­ing a ver­sion with only words and a sim­pli­fied table with only pic­tures. Begin­ning stu­dents may be thrilled to find print-your-own ele­ments cards, as well as oth­er peri­od­ic-table-relat­ed visu­al aids like Atom­ic Orbitals, a col­or-cod­ed chart that “shows what atoms look like.”

The group­ings on the peri­od­ic chart so famil­iar to us today came about when Mendeleev “real­ized that, by putting [the ele­ments] in order of increas­ing atom­ic weight, cer­tain types of ele­ment reg­u­lar­ly occurred,” the Roy­al Soci­ety points out. But his “real genius… was to leave gaps for undis­cov­ered ele­ments. He even pre­dict­ed the prop­er­ties of five of these ele­ments and their com­pounds.” Enevoldsen’s inter­ac­tive table makes for an easy for­mat to update. When new ele­ments are named, he adds them to his charts imme­di­ate­ly.

Peri­od­ic tables like Enevoldsen’s may only bare­ly resem­ble Mendeleev’s spare orig­i­nal, but the Russ­ian chemist’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem still pro­vides the orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples by which we under­stand the fun­da­men­tal ele­ments that make up the mate­r­i­al world. View and down­load PDF copies of all of these high­ly infor­ma­tive, and up-to-date peri­od­ic tables here. Or pur­chase posters/prints here.

via Inhab­it

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Map of Chem­istry: New Ani­ma­tion Sum­ma­rizes the Entire Field of Chem­istry in 12 Min­utes

A Peri­od­ic Table Visu­al­iz­ing the Year & Coun­try in Which Each Ele­ment Was Dis­cov­ered

The Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Pre­sent­ed as Inter­ac­tive Haikus

The Peri­od­ic Table of Endan­gered Ele­ments: Visu­al­iz­ing the Chem­i­cal Ele­ments That Could Van­ish Before You Know It

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

A New Digitized Menu Collection Lets You Revisit the Cuisine from the “Golden Age of Railroad Dining”

The com­ing of the rail­road in the U.S. of the 19th cen­tu­ry meant unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for millions—a tri­umph of trans­porta­tion and com­merce that changed the coun­try for­ev­er. For many more—including mil­lions of Amer­i­can bison—it meant cat­a­stro­phe and near extinc­tion. This com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry has pro­vid­ed a rich field of study for schol­ars of the period—who can tie the rail­road to near­ly every major his­tor­i­cal devel­op­ment, from the Civ­il War to pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns to the spread of the Sears mer­chan­dis­ing empire from coast to coast.

But as time wore on, pas­sen­ger trains became both more com­mon­place and more lux­u­ri­ous, as they com­pet­ed with air and auto trav­el in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. It is this peri­od of rail­road his­to­ry that most attract­ed Ira Sil­ver­man as a grad­u­ate stu­dent at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty in the 1960s. While enrolled at Northwestern’s Trans­porta­tion Cen­ter in Evanston, Illi­nois, Sil­ver­man and his class­mates found end­less “oppor­tu­ni­ties for research, adven­ture, and unpar­al­leled feast­ing,” writes Claire Voon at Atlas Obscu­ra.

Sil­ver­man espe­cial­ly took to the din­ing cars—and more to the point, to the menus, which he col­lect­ed by the dozens, “even­tu­al­ly amass­ing an archive of 238 menus and relat­ed pam­phlets. After a long career in tran­sit, he donat­ed the col­lec­tion to his alma mater’s Trans­porta­tion Library, which recent­ly dig­i­tized it in its entire­ty.” Silverman’s col­lec­tion rep­re­sents “35 Unit­ed States and Cana­di­an rail­roads,” points out North­west­ern, and its con­tents most­ly date from the ear­ly 60s to the 1980s—from his most active years rid­ing the rails in style, that is.

But Sil­ver­man was also able to acquire ear­li­er exam­ples, such as a 1939 menu “once perused by pas­sen­gers aboard the famed 20th Cen­tu­ry Lim­it­ed train,” Voon writes, “which trav­eled between New York City and Chica­go.” Twen­ty years after this menu’s appear­ance, Cary Grant, “play­ing an adman in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by North­west, orders a brook trout with his Gib­son” while rid­ing the same line. The Art Deco menu for the “new stream­lined” line fea­tures such del­i­ca­cies as “gen­uine Russ­ian caviar on toast and grilled French sar­dines.”

Even kids’ menus—now reli­ably dom­i­nat­ed by chick­en fin­gers, piz­za, PB&Js, and mac & cheese—offered far more sophis­ti­cat­ed din­ing than we might expect to find, with “items such as grilled lamb chops, roast beef, and sea­son­al fish” on the North Coast Lim­it­ed menu below. “The mid-20th cen­tu­ry seems to have been a gold­en age of rail­road din­ing,” remarks North­west­ern Trans­porta­tion Librar­i­an Rachel Cole. “It was nev­er some­thing that rail­roads prof­it­ed on, but they used it to com­pete against each oth­er and attract pas­sen­gers,” tak­ing pride in “selec­tions that would be rivaled in restau­rants.”

The fine din­ing-car expe­ri­ence might also include nov­el­ty items pas­sen­gers would be unlike­ly to find any­where else, such as North­west­ern Pacific’s Great Baked Pota­to, “a mon­strous spud,” Voon explains, “that could weigh any­where between two to five pounds” and came served with “an appro­pri­ate­ly sized but­ter pat.” One can see the appeal for a food and trav­el enthu­si­ast like Sil­ver­man, who had the priv­i­lege of try­ing dish­es on most of these menus for him­self.

The rest of us will have to rely on our gus­ta­to­ry imag­i­na­tions to con­jure what it might have been like to eat prime rib on the West­ern Star in the Pacif­ic North­west in the ear­ly 60s, or braised smoked pork loin on an Amtrak train in 1972. If your mem­o­ries of din­ing on a train most­ly con­sist of pulling sog­gy, microwaved “food” from steam­ing hot plas­tic bags, or munch­ing on pack­aged, processed salty snacks, expand your sense of what rail­road din­ing could be at the Ira Sil­ver­man Rail­road Menu Col­lec­tion here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Food­ie Alert: New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restau­rant Menus (1851–2008)

Mark Twain Makes a List of 60 Amer­i­can Com­fort Foods He Missed While Trav­el­ing Abroad (1880)

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

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

Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #21 Considers Role-Playing Video Games

What con­sti­tutes a video RPG? Is there any actu­al role-play­ing involved?

Our audio edi­tor Tyler His­lop rejoins hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss those video games that are sup­posed to make you feel like you’re con­tribut­ing to the sto­ry, that your choic­es mat­ter, in which you can maybe, you know, choose to wear a fun­ny hat or just craft potions all day instead of advanc­ing the plot. We com­pare solo vs. social games, com­pare video to table-top role play­ing, think about how we relate to the char­ac­ter we’re play­ing, and more.

We touch on Ulti­ma, Final Fan­ta­sy, World of War­craft, Hori­zon Zero Dawn, Skyrim, Fall­out, Out­ward, Death Strand­ing, Eri­ca, Hell­blade: Sakura’s Sac­ri­fice, The Witch­er, and more. Also from TV: Ban­der­snatch, The Guild, and that D&D Key & Peele sketch.

Some sources we looked at includ­ed:

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.