Ray Dalio Is Giving Away Free Copies of His New Book Principles for Dealing with the Changing World to High School & College Teachers and Their Students

in Books, Current Affairs, History | May 5th, 2022

As we not­ed back in March, investor Ray Dalio has pub­lished his lat­est best­seller, Prin­ci­ples for Deal­ing with the Chang­ing World: Why Nations Suc­ceed and Fail. A his­to­ry of the rise and fall of empires over the last 500 years, the book uses the past to con­tem­plate the future, par­tic­u­lar­ly the fate of the Unit­ed States and Chi­na. Today, for Teacher Appre­ci­a­tion Week, Dalio has announced that he’s will­ing to give a copy of the book “to any high school or col­lege edu­ca­tor who wants it—and to all of their stu­dents if they intend to have them read it.” He writes:

Since releas­ing my book and ani­mat­ed video [above], Prin­ci­ples for Deal­ing with the Chang­ing World Order, many peo­ple have told me that both would be help­ful for teach­ing his­to­ry in schools and asked me if I would help make that hap­pen. So, dur­ing this Teacher Appre­ci­a­tion Week I will give a copy of the book to any high school or col­lege edu­ca­tor who wants it—and to all of their stu­dents if they intend to have them read it. And if there’s a lot of inter­est, I’d be hap­py to extend the offer past this week. Of course, the Youtube video is already free and eas­i­ly avail­able and I encour­age you to check that out if you want an overview of what’s in the book.

When you sign up, let me know if you’re inter­est­ed in me host­ing a live online ses­sion for class­rooms, which I’ll do if peo­ple would like it. If you are not an edu­ca­tor but know some who might be inter­est­ed in this offer, please share this link with them.

To access the offer, click 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 

Prin­ci­ples for Deal­ing with the Chang­ing World Order: An Ani­mat­ed Video Explain­ing Key Ideas in Ray Dalio’s New Best­selling Book

The Prin­ci­ples for Suc­cess by Entre­pre­neur & Investor Ray Dalio: A 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Primer

Eco­nom­ics 101: Hedge Fund Investor Ray Dalio Explains How the Econ­o­my Works in a 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Video

Ray Dalio & Adam Grant Launch Free Online Per­son­al­i­ty Assess­ment to Help You Under­stand Your­self (and Oth­ers Under­stand You)

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The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea Presents a Bass Lesson, and Essential Advice That Every Bass Player Should Know

in Music | May 5th, 2022

“What do you call some­one who hangs out with musi­cians?” goes the hoary old musi­cians’ joke. Answer: “a bass play­er.” Haha­ha. Very fun­ny. And just plain untrue. Maybe the bass has few­er strings to mas­ter than the gui­tar, but it requires bet­ter tim­ing, and — most impor­tant­ly — more lis­ten­ing than any oth­er instru­ment in a band set­ting. Or so says Flea of the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, a band I some­times think of as a bunch of guys who hang out with a bass play­er.

All musi­cians need to lis­ten care­ful­ly to oth­er play­ers on stage, but the bass play­er’s role is spe­cial, Flea says in the video above, excerpt­ed from the hour-long bass les­son you can watch in full below. Bassists need to lis­ten to melody play­ers and soloists, sup­port­ing their parts with sub­tle­ty and nuance, with­out (says Flea of all peo­ple) doing the kind of show­boat­ing that pulls focus from the leads. Bass play­ers also need to lock in with the drum­mer, lis­ten­ing so intent­ly they can fit their notes right in the cen­ter of each drum hit.

This hard­ly sounds like unskilled musi­cal labor, even if most bassists can’t — and don’t need to — play with the speed and feroc­i­ty as our instruc­tor above. But Flea as teacher isn’t try­ing to teach oth­ers how to play the way he does, a style inspired by leg­ends like slap bass pio­neer Lar­ry Gra­ham and Motown stal­wart James Jamer­son. He’s giv­ing stu­dents his take on the basics — first learn to walk, then learn to walk real­ly, real­ly well, with lots of prac­tice. These basics include going over the parts of a bass gui­tar, talk­ing about tun­ing, and learn­ing dif­fer­ent ways of hit­ting the strings, from pluck­ing to pick­ing to, yes, slap­ping, with­in rea­son.

Com­ing from a play­er who so com­mands the spot­light with his bass the­atrics, Flea’s advice to aspir­ing play­ers might seem odd­ly con­ser­v­a­tive. But it’s the bass play­er’s job, he says, to make every­one else in the band sound good. And the bet­ter a bassist is at help­ing oth­er play­ers shine, the more they stand out as a great musi­cian in their own right.

See time­stamps for the dif­fer­ent top­ics in Flea’s les­son just below:

0:01 Flea Bass
7:27 Restring and Tun­ing
12:51 Pluck­ing
16:36 Slap­ping
22:53 Pick­ing
23:53 Fin­ger Prac­tice
30:24 Major Scale
44:34 Final Thoughts

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Flea Rocks “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner” on the Bass

What Makes Flea Such an Amaz­ing Bass Play­er? A Video Essay Breaks Down His Style

Watch Some of the Most Pow­er­ful Bass Gui­tar Solos Ever: Ged­dy Lee, Flea, Boot­sy Collins, John Dea­con & More

Visu­al­iz­ing the Bass Play­ing Style of Motown’s Icon­ic Bassist James Jamer­son: “Ain’t No Moun­tain High Enough,” “For Once in My Life” & More

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

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How Postwar Italian Cinema Created La Dolce Vita and Then the Paparazzi

in Film, History, Media | May 4th, 2022

Those who love the work of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni must envy any­one who sees La Dolce Vita for the first time. But today such a view­er, how­ev­er over­whelmed by the lav­ish cin­e­mat­ic feast laid before his eyes, will won­der if giv­ing the intru­sive tabloid pho­tog­ra­ph­er friend of Mar­cel­lo Mas­troian­ni’s pro­tag­o­nist the name “Paparaz­zo” isn’t a bit on the nose. Unlike La Dolce Vita’s first audi­ences in 1960, we’ve been hear­ing about real-life paparazzi through­out most all of our lives, and thus may not real­ize that the word itself orig­i­nal­ly derives from Fellini’s mas­ter­piece. Each time we refer to the paparazzi, we pay trib­ute to Paparaz­zo.

In the video essay above, Evan Puschak (bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer) traces the ori­gins of paparazzi: not just the word, but the often both­er­some pro­fes­sion­als denot­ed by the word. The sto­ry begins with the dic­ta­tor Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, an “avid movie fan and fan­boy of film stars” who wrote “more than 100 fawn­ing let­ters to Amer­i­can actress Ani­ta Page, includ­ing sev­er­al mar­riage pro­pos­als.” Know­ing full well “the emo­tion­al pow­er of cin­e­ma as a tool for pro­pa­gan­da and build­ing cul­tur­al pres­tige,” Mus­soli­ni com­mis­sioned the con­struc­tion of Rome’s Cinecit­tà, the largest film-stu­dio com­plex in Europe when it opened in 1937 — six years before his fall from pow­er.

Dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, Cinecit­tà became a vast refugee camp. When peace­time returned, with “the stu­dio space being used and Mus­solin­i’s thumb removed, a new wave of film­mak­ers took to the streets of Rome to make movies about real life in post­war Italy.” Thus began the age of Ital­ian Neo­re­al­ism, which brought forth such now-clas­sic pic­tures as Rober­to Rossellini’s Rome, Open City and Vit­to­rio De Sica’s Bicy­cle Thieves. In the nine­teen-fifties, major Amer­i­can pro­duc­tions start­ed com­ing to Rome: Quo Vadis, Roman Hol­i­day, Ben-Hur, Cleopa­tra. (It was this era, sure­ly, that inspired an eleven-year-old named Mar­tin Scors­ese to sto­ry­board a Roman epic of his own.) All of this cre­at­ed an era known as “Hol­ly­wood on the Tiber.”

For a few years, says Puschak, “the Via Vene­to was the coolest place in the world.” Yet “while the glit­terati cavort­ed in chic bars and clubs, thou­sands of oth­ers strug­gled to find their place in the post­war econ­o­my.” Some turned to tourist pho­tog­ra­phy, and “soon found they could make even more mon­ey snap­ping pho­tos of celebri­ties.” It was the most noto­ri­ous of these, the “Volpe di via Vene­to” Tazio Sec­chiaroli, to whom Felli­ni reached out ask­ing for sto­ries he could include in the film that would become La Dolce Vita. The new­ly chris­tened paparazzi were soon seen as the only ones who could bring “the gods of our cul­ture down to the messy earth.” These six decades lat­er, of course, celebri­ties do it to them­selves, social media hav­ing turned each of us — famous or oth­er­wise — into our own Paparaz­zo.

Relat­ed con­tent:

“The Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse”: A Video Essay on How Films Cin­e­ma­tize Cities & Places, from Man­hat­tan to Nashville, Rome, Open City to Taipei Sto­ry

Fed­eri­co Felli­ni Intro­duces Him­self to Amer­i­ca in Exper­i­men­tal 1969 Doc­u­men­tary

Cin­e­mat­ic Exper­i­ment: What Hap­pens When The Bicy­cle Thief’s Direc­tor and Gone With the Wind’s Pro­duc­er Edit the Same Film

Cinecit­tà Luce and Google to Bring Italy’s Largest Film Archive to YouTube

Mus­soli­ni Sends to Amer­i­ca a Hap­py Mes­sage, Full of Friend­ly Feel­ings, in Eng­lish (1927)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Footage of Flappers from 1929 Restored & Colorized with AI

in Fashion, Film, History, Technology, Video - Politics/Society | May 4th, 2022

The flap­per is the Roar­ing 20s’ endur­ing emblem — a lib­er­at­ed, young woman with bobbed hair, rolled down stock­ings, and a pub­lic thirst for cock­tails.

(My grand­moth­er longed to be one, and suc­ceed­ed, as best one could in Cairo, Illi­nois, only to mar­ry an old­er man at the age of 17, and give birth to my father a few months before the stock mar­ket crashed, bring­ing the friv­o­li­ty of the decade to an abrupt halt.)

Our abid­ing affec­tion for the flap­per is stoked on F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s Jazz Age novel­la, The Great Gats­by, and its many stage and screen adap­ta­tions, with their depic­tions of wild par­ties fea­tur­ing guests like Miss Baedeck­er (“When she’s had five or six cock­tails she always starts scream­ing like that”) and Lucille (“I nev­er care what I do, so I always have a good time.”)


The vin­tage fash­ion blog Glam­our Daze’s new­ly col­orized footage of a 1929  fash­ion show in Buf­fa­lo, New York, at the top of this post, presents a vast­ly more sedate image than Fitzger­ald, or Ethel Hays, whose sin­gle-pan­el dai­ly car­toon Flap­per Fan­ny was wild­ly pop­u­lar with both young women and men of the time.

 

 

The scene it presents seems more whole­some than one might have found in New York City, with what Fitzger­ald dubbed its “wild promise of all the mys­tery and the beau­ty in the world”. The mod­els seem more eager ama­teurs than run­way pro­fes­sion­als, though lined up jaun­ti­ly on a wall, all exhib­it “nice stems.”

My young grand­moth­er would have gone ga ga for the cloche hats, tea dress­es, bathing suits, loung­ing paja­mas, golf and ten­nis ensem­bles, and evening gowns, though the Deep Exem­plar-based Video Col­oriza­tion process seems to have stained some mod­els’ skin and teeth by mis­take.

The orig­i­nal black and white footage is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Carolina’s Fox Movi­etone News col­lec­tion, whose oth­er fash­ion-relat­ed clips from 1929 include pre­sen­ta­tions fea­tur­ing Wash­ing­ton debu­tantes and col­lege coeds.

Added sound brings the peri­od to life with nary a men­tion of the Charleston or gin, though if you want a feel for 20s fash­ion, check out the col­lec­tion’s non-silent Movi­etone clip devot­ed to the lat­est in 1929 swimwear — this is a mod­ernistic beach ensem­ble of ray­on jer­sey with diag­o­nal stripes and a sun back cut…

It’s the cat’s paja­mas. As is this playlist of hits from 1929.


Explore Glam­our Daze’s guide to 1920s fash­ion his­to­ry here.

Watch the orig­i­nal black and white footage of the Buf­fa­lo, New York fash­ion show here.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How People Imagined in 1948 What Cars Would Look Like in the Future

in Technology | May 3rd, 2022

With a few excep­tions, car design of the last two decades has been stuck in a rut, with a same­ness on the outside—-aerodynamic, sleek, rounded—-hiding the advance­ments under the hood and in the con­trol pan­el. That’s why it’s always a hoot to check out mock designs from the past, espe­cial­ly when they are being used to fore­cast the future.

This short 1948 film from Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics shows three pos­si­ble cars of the future, all of which for var­i­ous rea­sons, nev­er real­ly caught on. But films like this offer a tan­ta­liz­ing thought-—what if they had? It’s a tiny glimpse of an alter­na­tive real­i­ty, and we all seem to be lov­ing that mul­ti­verse vibe these days.

The first is the Davis Divan, which is per­fect for par­al­lel park­ing with its sin­gle front tire and tight maneu­ver­abil­i­ty. It cer­tain­ly looks cool but I will dis­agree with the nar­ra­tor: no amount of space-age oomph is going to make chang­ing a tire an “exhil­a­rat­ing expe­ri­ence.” The Divan was built by the Davis Motor­car Com­pa­ny of Van Nuys, CA, designed by used-car sales­man Gary Davis, and includ­ed ideas tak­en from the aero­nau­ti­cal indus­try. This film appear­ance was part of a major pub­lic­i­ty push from 1947–1949, but in the end only 13 Divans were pro­duced, and a dozen sur­vive. Not so the com­pa­ny, which was sued into liq­ui­da­tion after it failed to deliv­er prod­uct.

The sec­ond has an even stranger his­to­ry. If this is a “car from the future”, then the film­mak­ers neglect­ed to note it’s actu­al­ly from 1935. The Hoppe & Streur Stream­lin­er pro­to­type was designed and built by Allyn Streur and Allen Hoppe as part of Con­sol­i­dat­ed Air­craft San Diego, and based on a Chrysler 66 chas­sis. It seat­ed five peo­ple. If it looks like flim­sy met­al on top of a skele­tal frame, then you’ve guessed cor­rect­ly.

You can see how South­ern California’s aero­space indus­try has start­ed to influ­ence every­thing after the war, which accounts for the air­plane obses­sion with these autos, espe­cial­ly what comes next. The final selec­tion is Gor­don Buehrig’s TACSO pro­to­type from 1948. Sev­er­al of the con­trols in the dri­ver’s seat imi­tate those found in the cock­pit of a plane, and the four wheels are cov­ered in fiber­glass direc­tion­al fend­ers. Not not­ed in the film: the car had “a trans­par­ent roof that could be removed to let the wind in,” a fea­ture way ahead of its time. But it would have been too expen­sive to mass pro­duce (Auto­Blog fig­ures one of these would have cost the equiv­a­lent of $80,000 back in the day) so the one in the video is the only one in exis­tence.

As peo­ple are still try­ing (and fail­ing) to suc­cess­ful­ly par­al­lel park, safe to say none of these pre­dic­tions came true. Part­ly, that’s sad. On the oth­er hand, next time you hear some doom-n-gloom pre­dic­tion of our cur­rent moment, think on this video and how thank­ful­ly wrong they were.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee & More (1926/35)

How Pre­vi­ous Decades Pre­dict­ed the Future: The 21st Cen­tu­ry as Imag­ined in the 1900s, 1950s, 1980s, and Oth­er Eras

Buck­min­ster Fuller, Isaac Asi­mov & Oth­er Futur­ists Make Pre­dic­tions About the 21st Cen­tu­ry in 1967: What They Got Right & Wrong

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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The Last Morning in Pompeii & The Night Pompeii Died: A New Video Series Explores the End of the Doomed Roman City

in History | May 3rd, 2022

We’re still learn­ing what hap­pened in Pom­peii in 79 AD. In the broad sense, of course, we know exact­ly what hap­pened: the vol­cano Mount Vesu­vius erupt­ed, over­whelm­ing the city (as well as Her­cu­la­neum) with heat and entomb­ing it in ash. But what exact­ly was going on in Pom­pei­i’s last days? Absent the pow­er of time trav­el, we can nev­er know for sure. But the dis­as­ter that end­ed the life of Pom­peii also pre­served that life more or less as it was, result­ing in a har­row­ing snap­shot made of ruins and remains uncom­mon­ly intact by the stan­dards of ancient Rome. It is to Mount Vesu­vius that we thus owe a good deal of our knowl­edge about the tex­ture of every­day life in the Roman Empire.

His­to­ry Youtu­ber Gar­rett Ryan explains all this in a new three-part minis­eries, which con­sists of the videos “The Last Morn­ing in Pom­peii,” “The Night Pom­peii Died,” and “The Vic­tims of Vesu­vius.” We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Ryan’s chan­nel Told in Stone here on Open Cul­ture for its episodes on sub­jects like ancient Roman aque­ducts and ancient Roman drugs.

Here, he uses his for­mi­da­ble all-around knowl­edge of ancient Roman life to paint a ver­bal pic­ture of how aver­age Pom­pei­ians might have lived out their final day in the city. Dur­ing its course, what in the morn­ing would have felt like noth­ing more than odd rum­blings would — in accor­dance with the arche­typ­al tale of dis­as­ter — turn into an infer­no by night­fall.

As in his oth­er videos, Ryan shows as much con­cern with what we know as how we know it. In the case of Pom­peii and Her­cu­la­neum, the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence includes no few­er than 1,500 recov­ered bod­ies, with hun­dreds or even thou­sands still buried. The vivid­ness of the image con­sti­tut­ed by these cit­i­zens and their sur­round­ings — a vivid­ness enhanced by the prac­tice of mak­ing real­is­tic plas­ter casts from their impres­sions in the ash — would lead any vis­i­tor at the ruins to imag­ine for him­self sto­ries of the lives of Pom­pei­ians. So it seems to have gone with Ryan, who after gaz­ing into Vesu­vius’ crater beheld the sprawl of mod­ern-day Naples, which has “crept up to the very foot of the vol­cano, await­ing the next erup­tion.” The under­ly­ing sto­ry, told in geo­log­i­cal time, is still nowhere near its end.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

Behold 3D Recre­ations of Pompeii’s Lav­ish Homes–As They Exist­ed Before the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius

How the Sur­vivors of Pom­peii Escaped Mount Vesu­vius’ Dead­ly Erup­tion: A TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion Tells the Sto­ry

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pom­peii

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ruins of Pom­peii

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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David Byrne’s New Illustrated Book Playfully Presents A History of the World (in Dingbats)

in Books | May 3rd, 2022

What does David Byrne know about the his­to­ry of the world in his new book A His­to­ry of the World (in Ding­bats)? As much as he knows about psy­cho killers, burn­ing down hous­es, and “non-ratio­nal log­ic,” the sub­ject of a show at New York’s Pace Gallery this past Feb­ru­ary fea­tur­ing elab­o­rate doo­dles Byrne calls “ding­bats.” That is to say, he knows quite a lot about the his­to­ry of the world. Or maybe, it hard­ly mat­ters. “Burn­ing Down the House” is not real­ly about arson.

The new book presents us, instead of his­to­ry, with a “cross between Codex Seraphini­anus and E.E. Cum­ming’s lit­tle-known philo­soph­i­cal line draw­ings,” Maria Popo­va writes at The Mar­gin­a­lian. It is a work of the hope­ful­ness of imag­i­na­tion; a state­ment about how “non-ratio­nal log­ic” can shape real­i­ty.

“The way things were,” Byrne writes, “the way we made things, it turns out, none of it was inevitable — none of it is the way things have to be.” Popo­va calls the project an “illus­trat­ed his­to­ry of the pos­si­ble future.”

“Cre­at­ed while under quar­an­tine,” notes pub­lish­er Phaidon — the draw­ings “expand on the ding­bat, a typo­graph­ic orna­ment used to illu­mi­nate or break up blocks of text.” Byrne says he was inspired by the lit­tle illus­tra­tions in The New York­er, though he took the con­cept much fur­ther. He writes text in each themed sec­tion that echoes the anx­i­ety, con­tem­pla­tion, and strange excite­ment of life in lock­down: thoughts on what has been lost to us and on the life that might emerge in a world remade by a virus.

Byrne reminds us that his­to­ry is “a sto­ry we tell our­selves.… These sto­ries we tell our­selves about the world are not fixed.” Nor are the sto­ries we each tell our­selves about who we are as indi­vid­u­als. These are ideas the artist has explored in projects rang­ing from his first book, 1995’s Strange Rit­u­al, to his work with Lua­ka Bop, his world music label, to the album/Broadway show/feature film/pic­ture book Amer­i­can Utopia — all projects con­cerned with expand­ing the bound­aries of our shared human nar­ra­tive.

Sto­ries are lessons we send to our­selves — some remain vibrant and rel­e­vant while oth­ers are only use­ful for a moment. They serve myr­i­ad pur­pos­es that are often beyond our ken, for bet­ter or worse, and some­times both at the same time.

How can we know when it’s time to let go, to move into a his­to­ry of the future rather than the past? “Only you can find the way,” he writes, “in the city in your head.” It is our task to sift the sto­ries that serve us from those that don’t, through crit­i­cal reflec­tion, the play of the imag­i­na­tion, and mak­ing new con­nec­tions between our minds and bod­ies:

In the new world the rules have changed — or at least there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of change.

We can be dif­fer­ent.

Order A His­to­ry of the World (in Ding­bats) here and see more of Byrne’s draw­ings at The Mar­gin­a­lian.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

David Byrne Turns His Acclaimed Musi­cal Amer­i­can Utopia into a Pic­ture Book for Grown-Ups, with Vivid Illus­tra­tions by Maira Kalman

Watch a Very Ner­vous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talk­ing Heads Per­form­ing Live in NYC (1976)

David Byrne Answers the Internet’s Burn­ing Ques­tions About David Byrne

David Byrne Launch­es Rea­sons to Be Cheer­ful, an Online Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Arti­cles by Byrne, Bri­an Eno & More

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

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Experience Seinfeld’s Famous “Soup Nazi” Scenes With & Without Laugh Tracks

in History, Television | May 2nd, 2022

For a twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry tele­vi­sion fan, watch­ing old net­work sit­coms can take some get­ting used to. Noth­ing about them takes more get­ting used to than their laugh tracks, which must strike any­one who did­n’t grow up hear­ing them as utter­ly bizarre. But was it real­ly so long ago that we took for grant­ed — nay, expect­ed — an erup­tion of pre-record­ed laugh­ter after each and every punch line? As late as the nine­teen-nineties, even sit­coms well-regard­ed for their sophis­ti­ca­tion and sub­ver­sive­ness added “canned laugh­ter” to their sound­tracks. Take Sein­feld, the show famous­ly “about noth­ing,” scenes from one of whose episodes you can watch with­out a laugh track in the video above.

The episode in ques­tion is one of Sein­feld’s best-known: “The Soup Nazi,” orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast on NBC on Novem­ber 2, 1995. These scenes por­tray Jer­ry, George and Elaine’s encoun­ters with the title fig­ure, a harsh soup-restau­rant pro­pri­etor based on Ali “Al” Yeganeh, own­er of Soup Kitchen Inter­na­tion­al in New York. (Unaware of the char­ac­ter’s real-life coun­ter­part, actor Lar­ry Thomas based his per­for­mance on that of Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Ara­bia.)

With the laugh track cut out, the main char­ac­ters’ inter­ac­tions with each oth­er reach heights of near-sur­re­al awk­ward­ness, to say noth­ing of their con­fronta­tions with the Soup Nazi and his rigid order­ing rules.

The resul­tant ten­sion, unbro­ken by the trans­plant­ed guf­faws heard in the orig­i­nal scenes above, would become the stock in trade of lat­er sit­coms like the impro­vi­sa­tion-based Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, star­ring Sein­feld co-cre­ator Lar­ry David. But that show could only have exist­ed under the per­mis­sive­ness of a pre­mi­um cable chan­nel like HBO; on NBC, the lega­cy of the laugh track would be upheld for some years. After all, laugh tracks had been in use since the ear­ly nine­teen-fifties, dur­ing tele­vi­sion’s tran­si­tion away from all-live broad­cast­ing to the meth­ods of pre-pro­duc­tion used for prac­ti­cal­ly all dra­ma and com­e­dy still today. Even then, live stu­dio audi­ences were becom­ing a thing of the past — but the exploita­tion of tele­vi­sion’s pow­er to gen­er­ate arti­fi­cial feel­ings of com­mu­ni­ty had only just begun.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sein­feld & Noth­ing­ness: A Super­cut of the Show’s Emp­ti­est Moments

How Sein­feld, the Sit­com Famous­ly “About Noth­ing,” Is Like Gus­tave Flaubert’s Nov­els About Noth­ing

Jacques Der­ri­da on Sein­feld: “Decon­struc­tion Doesn’t Pro­duce Any Sit­com”

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Theme Song Gets the Sein­feld Treat­ment

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called Rab­bits: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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