Pink Floyd Releases Its First New Song in 28 Years to Help Support Ukraine

in Current Affairs, Music | April 8th, 2022

“I rang Nick up and said: ‘lis­ten, I want to do this thing for Ukraine. I’d be real­ly hap­py if you played on it and I’d also be real­ly hap­py if you’d agree to us putting it out as Pink Floyd.’ And he was absolute­ly on for that.

In 2015, David Gilmour was sched­uled to play a con­cert in Lon­don with the Ukrain­ian band Boom­Box. As he explained in a recent state­ment, the band’s lead singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk had trou­ble with his visa, leav­ing the rest of the Boom­box to back Gilmour on a ver­sion of “Wish You Were Here.” That song’s sen­ti­ments took on an entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind of urgency last month after Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine.

“Recent­ly I read that Andriy had left his Amer­i­can tour with Boom­Box, had gone back to Ukraine, and joined up with the Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Defense,” said Gilmour. “Then I saw this incred­i­ble video on Insta­gram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beau­ti­ful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traf­fic or back­ground noise because of the war. It was a pow­er­ful moment that made me want to put it to music.”

The song Khlyvnyuk sings is “Oh, the Red Vibur­num in the Mead­ow,” a “1914 protest song,” The Guardian reports, “writ­ten in hon­or of the Sich Rifle­men who fought both in the first world war and the Ukrain­ian war of inde­pen­dence.” Gilmour decid­ed to go fur­ther and use the “big plat­form” of Pink Floyd to release a sin­gle by the band – their first orig­i­nal song in 28 years. He called drum­mer Nick Mason and they record­ed the track in Gilmour’s barn with bassist Guy Pratt and key­boardist Nitin Sawh­ney.

Released as “Hey, Hey, Rise Up” – with Khlyvnyuk’s approval (Gilmour says it took some doing to track him down) – the track’s pro­ceeds will be donat­ed to the Ukraine Human­i­tar­i­an Relief Fund. It’s prob­a­bly safe to say that this is not a Pink Floyd reunion. Gilmour insist­ed the band was done when key­boardist Richard Wright died in 2008. “This is the end,” he told the BBC, and there’s lit­tle rea­son to think he’s gear­ing up for a tour or a new Pink Floyd album now.

Instead, “Hey, Hey, Rise Up” is part of a larg­er protest by Gilmour, who writes of his Ukrain­ian daugh­ter-in-law Jan­i­na, his grand­chil­dren, and his “extend­ed Ukrain­ian fam­i­ly” as a very per­son­al con­nec­tion to the news of the inva­sion. But he also wants to give young Ukraini­ans like Khlyvnyuk – who had no idea the world was watch­ing – a larg­er voice and give voice to the shock and hor­ror felt the world over as civil­ian deaths and atroc­i­ties mount. As he wrote in his state­ment:

We, like so many, have been feel­ing the fury and the frus­tra­tion of this vile act of an inde­pen­dent, peace­ful demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try being invad­ed and hav­ing its peo­ple mur­dered by one of the world’s major pow­ers… We want to express our sup­port for Ukraine and in that way, show that most of the world thinks that it is total­ly wrong for a super­pow­er to invade the inde­pen­dent demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try that Ukraine has become.

Gilmour has pulled all his solo records and Pink Floyd’s cat­a­logue post-1987 from stream­ing ser­vices in Rus­sia. As for spec­u­la­tion that Roger Waters blocked the removal of ear­li­er Pink Floyd mate­r­i­al, or con­tro­ver­sies over Waters’ state­ments to Rus­sia Today and oth­er out­lets – “Let’s just say I was dis­ap­point­ed and let’s move on,” says Gilmour.

He’s more inter­est­ed in talk­ing about the war and Khlyvnyuk’s expe­ri­ences. “He said he had the most hell­ish day you could imag­ine,” when Gilmour spoke to him and sent him the song — a day spent “pick­ing up bod­ies of Ukraini­ans, Ukrain­ian chil­dren, help­ing with the clear­ing up. You know, our lit­tle prob­lems become pathet­ic and tiny,” he says, “in the con­text of what you see him doing.”

See the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the song just below:

In the mead­ow a red vibur­num has bent down low
Our glo­ri­ous Ukraine has been trou­bled so
And we’ll take that red vibur­num and we will raise it up
And we, our glo­ri­ous Ukraine shall, hey—hey, rise up—and rejoice!
And we’ll take that red vibur­num and we will raise it up
And we, our glo­ri­ous Ukraine shall, hey—hey, rise up and rejoice!

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Pink Floyd’s First Mas­ter­piece: An Audio/Video Explo­ration of the 23-Minute Track, “Echoes” (1971)

Watch the Last, Tran­scen­dent Per­for­mance of “Echoes” by Pink Floyd Key­boardist Richard Wright & David Gilmour (2006)

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

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

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

in Current Affairs, Economics, History | March 31st, 2022

Over the past five years, Ray Dalio, one of Amer­i­ca’s most suc­cess­ful investors, has pub­lished a series of books, each meant to impart wis­dom to a younger gen­er­a­tion. The first book, Prin­ci­ples: Life and Work, shared the uncon­ven­tion­al prin­ci­ples that have guid­ed his life and career. It became a best­seller, sell­ing well over one mil­lion copies. Next came Big Debt Crises, a study of finan­cial crises and how nations nav­i­gate them. Final­ly, he has just 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. As was the case with Prin­ci­ples, Dalio has pro­duced an ani­mat­ed video that explains key ideas in the book. Released in ear­ly March, the video has already been viewed 8.6 mil­lion times. Watch it above, and con­sid­er pair­ing it with his oth­er ani­mat­ed video, How the Eco­nom­ic Machine Works.

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 

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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When Stalin Starved Ukraine

in Current Affairs, History | March 29th, 2022

Since its launch last month, Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine has sent observers around the world scram­bling for con­text. It is a fact, for exam­ple, that Rus­sia and Ukraine were once “togeth­er” in the com­mu­nist mega-state that was the Union of Sovi­et Social­ist Republics. But it is also a fact that such Sovi­et togeth­er­ness hard­ly ensured warm feel­ings between the two lands. An espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant chap­ter of their his­to­ry is known in Ukraine as the Holodomor, or “death by star­va­tion.” Span­ning the years 1932 and 1933, this peri­od of famine result­ed in three to six mil­lion lives lost — and that accord­ing to the low­er accept­ed esti­mates.

“It was geno­cide,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Vox “Miss­ing Chap­ter’ video above, “car­ried out by a dic­ta­tor who want­ed to keep Ukraine under his con­trol, and would do every­thing in his pow­er to cov­er it up for decades. That dic­ta­tor was, of course, Joseph Stal­in, who accom­pa­nied bru­tal meth­ods of rule with tight con­trol of infor­ma­tion. “In 1917, after the fall of the Russ­ian Empire, Ukraine briefly gained free­dom,” the video explains. “But by 1922, it was forcibly inte­grat­ed into the new­ly formed Sovi­et Union.” A rur­al and high­ly fer­tile land, Ukraine was known as “the bread­bas­ket of the Sovi­et Union” — hence Stal­in’s desire to nip any poten­tial rev­o­lu­tion there in the bud.

First came a “wide­spread, vio­lent purge of Ukrain­ian intel­lec­tu­als along with priests and reli­gious struc­tures.” At the same time as they advanced this attempt­ed dis­man­tling of Ukrain­ian cul­ture, Sovi­et high­er-ups were also imple­ment­ing Stal­in’s five-year plan of indus­tri­al­iza­tion, con­sol­i­da­tion, and col­lec­tiviza­tion, includ­ing that of all agri­cul­ture. This was the time of the kulak, or “wealthy peas­ant,” the label invent­ed to dis­grace any­one resis­tant to this process. Any kulaks known to Stal­in faced a ter­ri­ble fate indeed, includ­ing exile, impris­on­ment, and even exe­cu­tion; those farm­ers who remained then fell vic­tim to the dic­ta­tor’s engi­neered famine.

Under the pre­text of enforc­ing delib­er­ate­ly unre­al­is­tic grain-pro­duc­tion quo­tas, Stal­in’s enforcers seized farms across Ukraine in order to sell their prod­ucts to the West. Before long, “Sovi­et police began seiz­ing not just grain, but any­thing edi­ble.” Farm­ers were stopped from leav­ing their home­land, where Stal­in intend­ed them to starve, “but even in this unimag­in­able suf­fer­ing, Ukraini­ans fought for their lives and each oth­er.” This video incor­po­rates inter­views with a grand­son and grand­daugh­ter of two such Ukraini­ans who left behind per­son­al records of the Holodomor. A sto­ry of endurance and sur­vival under the very worst cir­cum­stances, and ulti­mate­ly a return to nation­al inde­pen­dence, it goes some way to explain­ing how and why Ukraine con­tin­ues to put up such a valiant fight against the forces that have descend­ed upon it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer

Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine Teach-Out: A Free Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan

Joseph Stal­in, a Life­long Edi­tor, Wield­ed a Big, Blue, Dan­ger­ous Pen­cil

H.G. Wells Inter­views Joseph Stal­in in 1934; Declares “I Am More to The Left Than You, Mr. Stal­in”

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 or on Face­book.

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Marina Abramović Brings Back Her Iconic Performance Art Piece, The Artist Is Present, to Raise Money for Ukraine

in Art, Current Affairs | March 23rd, 2022

For a cou­ple of months in 2010, Mari­na Abramović spent her days word­less­ly and motion­less­ly sit­ting at a table in the atri­um of the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. Any vis­i­tor could sit in the chair oppo­site her, for as long as they liked. In response, Abramović said noth­ing and did almost noth­ing (even dur­ing vis­its from Lou Reed, Bjork, or her long-ago lover and col­lab­o­ra­tor, the late Ulay). The whole expe­ri­ence con­sti­tut­ed a piece of per­for­mance art, titled The Artist Is Present. As with many works of that form, to ask why Abramović did it is to miss the point. Noth­ing like it had been done before, and it thus promised to enter unchart­ed artis­tic, social, and emo­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry.

A dozen years lat­er, the artist will be present again, but this time with a high­ly spe­cif­ic motive in mind: to raise mon­ey for the besieged nation of Ukraine. “Abramović has part­nered with New York’s Sean Kel­ly Gallery and Art­sy to offer a per­for­mance art meet-and-greet… or at least meet-and-silent­ly-stare,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Sarah Rose Sharp.

“Through March 25, inter­est­ed par­ties can bid on one of two oppor­tu­ni­ties for a lim­it­ed restag­ing of Abramović’s epic per­for­mance The Artist Is Present.” These meet-and-silent­ly-stares “will be cap­tured by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mar­co Anel­li, who doc­u­ment­ed almost all of the 1,500 par­tic­i­pants in the orig­i­nal per­for­mance.”

Pro­ceeds “will go to Direct Relief, which is work­ing with Ukraine’s Min­istry of Health to pro­vide urgent med­ical assis­tance as well as long-term aid to the many lives dev­as­tat­ed by the war.” Last month, when Rus­sia launched its inva­sion, Abramović released the video state­ment above. In it she explains hav­ing done some work in Ukraine last year, which afford­ed her an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get to know some of its peo­ple. “They’re proud, they’re strong, and they’re dig­ni­fied,” she says, and an attack on their coun­try “is an attack to all of us,” an “attack to human­i­ty.” If you feel the same way, have some mon­ey to spend, and missed out on the first The Artist Is Present — and if you think you can hold your own across from the for­mi­da­ble pres­ence glimpsed in the video — con­sid­er mak­ing a bid of your own.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed con­tent:

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

Mari­na Abramović and Ulay’s Adven­tur­ous 1970s Per­for­mance Art Pieces

Mari­na Abramović’s Method for Over­com­ing Trau­ma: Go to a Park, Hug a Tree Tight, and Tell It Your Com­plaints for 15 Min­utes

Per­for­mance Artist Mari­na Abramović Describes Her “Real­ly Good Plan” to Lose Her Vir­gin­i­ty

Advice to Young Aspir­ing Artists from Pat­ti Smith, David Byrne & Mari­na Abramović

Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online: 1,000+ Librar­i­ans Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­serve Arti­facts of Ukrain­ian Civ­i­liza­tion Before Rus­sia Can Destroy Them

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 or on Face­book.

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‘Kyiv Calling:’ Ukrainian Punk Band Rerecords The Clash’s Anthem as a Call to Arms

in Current Affairs, Music | March 20th, 2022

Accord­ing to The Guardian, the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of The Clash have giv­en their bless­ing to the Ukrain­ian punk band, Beton, to record a new ver­sion of their 1979 clas­sic Lon­don Call­ing. Record­ed near the front­line of the bat­tle in Ukraine, Kyiv Call­ing (above) “has lyrics that call upon the rest of the world to sup­port the defence of the coun­try from Russ­ian invaders. All pro­ceeds of what is now billed as a ‘war anthem’ will go to the Free Ukraine Resis­tance Move­ment (FURM) to help fund a shared com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem that will alert the pop­u­la­tion to threats and lob­by for inter­na­tion­al sup­port.”

You can donate to the Free Ukraine Resis­tance Move­ment 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!

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Bass-Smash­ing Pho­to on the Clash’s Lon­don Call­ing

“Joe Strummer’s Lon­don Call­ing”: All 8 Episodes of Strummer’s UK Radio Show Free Online

Mick Jones Plays Three Clas­sics by The Clash at the Pub­lic Library

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Arnold Schwarzenegger Tells the Russian People (With Love) About Putin’s War in Ukraine

in Current Affairs | March 17th, 2022

On social media chan­nels, Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger deliv­ered a mes­sage (with love) to the Russ­ian peo­ple, telling them what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing with Putin’s war in Ukraine, and expos­ing a truth that the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment has tried to cen­sor at home. You can find his video on Telegram, YouTube, Twit­ter, and Face­book. And as he says: “Please watch and share,” espe­cial­ly with any friends in Rus­sia.

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When Oliver Stone & Vladimir Putin Chillingly Watched Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove Together

in Current Affairs, Film, Television | March 16th, 2022

Hav­ing by now seen Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb (1964) more times than I can remem­ber, it sur­pris­es me to meet some­one who’s nev­er seen it at all. When I do, my first impulse is always to sug­gest a screen­ing right then and there. This would seem to put me in com­pa­ny with Oliv­er Stone, who in recent years has been doc­u­ment­ed engag­ing in at least one instance of high-pro­file Strangelove evan­ge­lism. As for the new inductee into the Strangelove view­er­ship, he went more than 60 years with­out hav­ing seen the film, but for the last cou­ple of decades had the cred­i­ble excuse of busy­ness: it isn’t just a part-time gig, after all, being the pres­i­dent of Rus­sia.

Stone seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to watch Dr. Strangelove with Vladimir Putin in the course of film­ing The Putin Inter­views, a four-part doc­u­men­tary series broad­cast on Show­time in 2017. This was­n’t the first time Stone had made a sub­ject of his own inter­ac­tions with a head of state whom many Amer­i­cans con­sid­er malev­o­lent: in 2008’s South of the Bor­der, for exam­ple, he attempt­ed a human­iz­ing cin­e­mat­ic por­trait of Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez. At Show­time’s Youtube chan­nel, you can watch a vari­ety of clips from The Putin Inter­views, includ­ing Putin giv­ing Stone a tour of his offices, Putin’s reac­tion to the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump, and Putin check­ing in with Stone before skat­ing out onto the ice for a game of hock­ey.

The view­ing of Dr. Strangelove comes at the series’ very end, which is pre­sum­ably an effort on Stone’s part to save the “best” for last — and as Cold War Amer­i­can cin­e­ma goes, one could hard­ly hope for a bet­ter selec­tion. Based on Peter George’s Red Alert, a straight­for­ward thriller nov­el about Amer­i­can and Sovi­et pro­to­cols of nuclear-defense man­age­ment gone dis­as­trous­ly wrong, the film only took shape when Kubrick real­ized it had to be a com­e­dy. As he lat­er recalled, “I found that in try­ing to put meat on the bones and to imag­ine the scenes ful­ly, one had to keep leav­ing out of it things which were either absurd or para­dox­i­cal, in order to keep it from being fun­ny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in ques­tion.”

As Joseph Heller real­ized while writ­ing Catch-22, cer­tain ridicu­lous truths about war sim­ply can’t be por­trayed non-comed­ical­ly. As real­ized through the painstak­ing­ly exact film­mak­ing of Kubrick and his col­lab­o­ra­tors, Dr. Strangelove is the black­est of black come­dies. “There are cer­tain things in this film that indeed make us think,” Putin says to Stone after the clos­ing mon­tage of mush­room clouds. He even cred­its Kubrick with tech­ni­cal fore­sight: “Mod­ern weapon sys­tems have become more sophis­ti­cat­ed, more com­plex. But this idea of a retal­ia­to­ry weapon and the inabil­i­ty to con­trol such weapon sys­tems still hold true today.” Not much has changed since the days of Dr. Strangelove, he admits, and now that he’s under­gone his own bout of geopo­lit­i­cal brazen­ness, let’s hope that he remem­bers how the movie ends.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

Inside the Mak­ing of Dr. Strangelove: Doc­u­men­tary Reveals How a Cold War Sto­ry Became a Kubrick Clas­sic

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Title Sequences and Trail­ers Cre­at­ed by Pablo Fer­ro: Dr. Strangelove, A Clock­work Orange, Stop Mak­ing Sense, Bul­litt & Oth­er Films

Two Scenes from Stan­ley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Recre­at­ed in Lego

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 or on Face­book.

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The Iconic Design of the Doomsday Clock Was Created 75 Years Ago: It Now Says We’re 100 Seconds to Midnight

in Current Affairs, Design, History | March 15th, 2022

Image via The Bul­letin of the Atom­ic Sci­en­tists

Last year, the fates hand­ed the New York Times’ Maria Cramer an envi­ably strik­ing lede: “Human­i­ty is 100 sec­onds away from total anni­hi­la­tion. Again.” That we all know imme­di­ate­ly what she was writ­ing about speaks to the pow­er of graph­ic design. Specif­i­cal­ly, it speaks to the pow­er of graph­ic design as prac­ticed by Martyl Langs­dorf, who hap­pened to be mar­ried to ex-Man­hat­tan Project physi­cist Alexan­der Langs­dorf. This con­nec­tion got her the gig of cre­at­ing a cov­er for the June 1947 issue of the Bul­letin of the Atom­ic Sci­en­tists. She came up with a sim­ple image: the upper-left cor­ner of a clock, its hands at sev­en min­utes to mid­night.

Asked lat­er why she set the clock to that time in par­tic­u­lar, Langs­dorf explained that “it looked good to my eye.” That quote appears in a post at the Bul­letin address­ing fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions about what’s now known as the Dooms­day Clock, “a design that warns the pub­lic about how close we are to destroy­ing our world with dan­ger­ous tech­nolo­gies of our own mak­ing. It is a metaphor, a reminder of the per­ils we must address if we are to sur­vive on the plan­et.” In the 75 years since its intro­duc­tion, its minute hand has been moved back­ward eight times and for­ward six­teen times; cur­rent­ly it still stands where Cramer report­ed it as hav­ing remained last Jan­u­ary, at 100 sec­onds to mid­night. 

To the pub­lic of 1947, “mid­night” sig­ni­fied above all the prospect of human­i­ty’s self-destruc­tion through the use of nuclear weapons. But as tech­nol­o­gy itself has advanced and pro­lif­er­at­ed, the means of auto-anni­hi­la­tion have grown more diverse. This year’s Dooms­day Clock state­ment cites not just nukes but car­bon emis­sions, infec­tious dis­eases, and “inter­net-enabled mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion.” Ear­li­er this month, the Bul­letin remind­ed us that even as 2022 began, “we called out Ukraine as a poten­tial flash­point in an increas­ing­ly tense inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty land­scape. For many years, we and oth­ers have warned that the most like­ly way nuclear weapons might be used is through an unwant­ed or unin­tend­ed esca­la­tion from a con­ven­tion­al con­flict.”

Now that “Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine has brought this night­mare sce­nario to life,” many have found them­selves glanc­ing ner­vous­ly at the Dooms­day Clock once again. This also hap­pened after the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump, which prompt­ed the Vox video above on the Clock­’s his­to­ry and pur­pose. Its icon­ic sta­tus, as cel­e­brat­ed in the new book The Dooms­day Clock at 75, has long out­last­ed the Cold War, but the device itself isn’t with­out its crit­ics. Bul­letin co-founder Eugene Rabi­now­itch once artic­u­lat­ed the lat­ter as meant “to pre­serve civ­i­liza­tion by scar­ing men into ratio­nal­i­ty,” a some­what con­tro­ver­sial inten­tion. One could also raise objec­tions to using an inher­ent­ly lin­ear and uni­di­rec­tion­al con­cept like time to rep­re­sent a prob­a­bil­i­ty result­ing from human action. Yet some­how more tech­ni­cal­ly suit­able images — “100 cen­time­ters from the edge,” say — don’t have quite the same ring.

Relat­ed con­tent:

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

J. Robert Oppen­heimer Explains How He Recit­ed a Line from Bha­gavad Gita — “Now I Am Become Death, the Destroy­er of Worlds” — Upon Wit­ness­ing the First Nuclear Explo­sion

The Night Ed Sul­li­van Scared a Nation with the Apoc­a­lyp­tic Ani­mat­ed Short, A Short Vision (1956)

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

Pro­tect and Sur­vive: 1970s British Instruc­tion­al Films on How to Live Through a Nuclear Attack

How Clocks Changed Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

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 or on Face­book.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.