How Our Depiction of Jesus Changed Over 2,000 Years and What He May Have Actually Looked Like

in History, Religion | May 12th, 2025

Whether or not you believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, you prob­a­bly envi­sion him (or, if you pre­fer, Him) in much the same way as most every­one else does. The long hair and beard, the robe, the san­dals, the beatif­ic gaze: these traits have all man­i­fest­ed across two mil­len­nia of Chris­t­ian art. “How­ev­er, these depic­tions don’t exact­ly match the pro­file of a first-cen­tu­ry Jew­ish car­pen­ter from the Mid­dle East,” says Hochela­ga host Tom­mie Trelawny in the new video above, an inves­ti­ga­tion into how our mod­ern con­cept of how Jesus looked came to be — and into what we can know about his real appear­ance.

First, we must turn to the Bible. In the King James Ver­sion, Rev­e­la­tion describes Jesus thus: “His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a fur­nace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. He had in His right hand sev­en stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His coun­te­nance was like the sun shin­ing in its strength.” That’s it for the New Tes­ta­ment. As for the Old Tes­ta­ment, Isa­iah describes a fig­ure that could pos­si­bly be Jesus by cred­it­ing him with “no form nor come­li­ness; and when we shall see him, there is no beau­ty that we should desire him.”

This scant Bib­li­cal evi­dence hard­ly aligns with the high-pro­file depic­tions of Jesus we’ve all seen. For many around the world today, the “default rep­re­sen­ta­tion” is the down­right glam­orous 1940 por­trait Head of Christ by the Amer­i­can painter Warn­er Sall­man (a Chicagoan, inci­den­tal­ly, much like the new­ly elect­ed Pope Leo XIV). One could see that art­work as the cul­mi­na­tion of a fair­ly long his­to­ry of visu­al depic­tions of Jesus, which first became abun­dant in the Roman Empire of the fourth cen­tu­ry under Con­stan­tine. Accord­ing to Gre­co-Roman mythol­o­gy, “hav­ing long hair and a beard were sym­bols of divine pow­er.” Ear­ly Chris­tians thus “want­ed to present their god using sim­i­lar artis­tic con­ven­tions,” plac­ing Jesus in a league with the likes of Zeus.

That’s the basic look Jesus has in most rep­re­sen­ta­tions, from the botched Span­ish fres­co that became a meme to the cru­ci­fied Mr. Uni­verse in South Korea, where I live, to Andy Warhol’s Christ $9.98. And yet, accord­ing to the dic­tates of Leviti­cus, “you shall not round the cor­ners of your heads, nei­ther shalt thou mar the cor­ners of thy beard.” Trelawny takes this into account when attempt­ing to recon­struct the his­tor­i­cal Jesus, also not­ing that, since Jesus could only be iden­ti­fied by Judas’ kiss of betray­al, he must have looked much like all the oth­er men around him. The result, when all of this is fed into an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence image gen­er­a­tor, is very much an every­man, which may be as his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate as we can get. But then, each time and place cre­ates its own Jesus — and now, with AI, each of us can do the same for our­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ten Ear­li­est Depic­tions of Jesus: How Art Visu­al­ized Jesus in the First Cen­turies After His Death

What Makes Caravaggio’s The Tak­ing of Christ a Time­less, Great Paint­ing?

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint­ed The Last Sup­per: A Deep Dive Into a Mas­ter­piece

The Real Sto­ry of East­er: How We Got from the First East­er in the Bible to Bun­nies, Eggs & Choco­late

Intro­duc­tion to New Tes­ta­ment His­to­ry and Lit­er­a­ture: A Free Yale Course

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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John Nash’s Super Short PhD Thesis: 26 Pages & Two Citations

in Math | May 12th, 2025

When John Nash wrote “Non-Coop­er­a­tive Games,” his Ph.D. dis­ser­ta­tion at Prince­ton in 1950, the text of his the­sis (read it online) was brief. It ran only 26 pages. And more par­tic­u­lar­ly, it was light on cita­tions. Nash’s diss cit­ed two texts: John von Neu­mann and Oskar Mor­gen­stern’s The­o­ry of Games and Eco­nom­ic Behav­ior (1944), which essen­tial­ly cre­at­ed game the­o­ry and rev­o­lu­tion­ized the field of eco­nom­ics; the oth­er cit­ed text, “Equi­lib­ri­um Points in n‑Person Games,” was an arti­cle writ­ten by Nash him­self. And it laid the foun­da­tion for his dis­ser­ta­tion, anoth­er sem­i­nal work in the devel­op­ment of game the­o­ry, for which Nash was award­ed the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ic Sci­ences in 1994.

The reward of invent­ing a new field is hav­ing a slim bib­li­og­ra­phy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in June, 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Short­est-Known Paper Pub­lished in a Seri­ous Math Jour­nal: Two Suc­cinct Sen­tences

The World Record for the Short­est Math Arti­cle: 2 Words

Doc­tor­al Dis­ser­ta­tion as a Graph­ic Nov­el: Read a Free Excerpt of Nick Sou­sa­nis’ Unflat­ten­ing

How to Dance Your Dis­ser­ta­tion: See the Win­ning Video in the 2014 “Dance Your PhD” Con­test

Umber­to Eco’s How To Write a The­sis: A Wit­ty, Irrev­er­ent & High­ly Prac­ti­cal Guide Now Out in Eng­lish

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How a Student’s Phone Call Averted a Skyscraper Collapse: The Tale of the Citicorp Center

in Architecture, History | May 9th, 2025

The Cit­i­group Cen­ter in Mid­town Man­hat­tan is also known by its address, 601 Lex­ing­ton Avenue, at which it’s been stand­ing for 47 years, longer than the medi­an New York­er has been alive. Though still a fair­ly hand­some build­ing, in a sev­en­ties-cor­po­rate sort of way, it now pops out only mild­ly on the sky­line. At street lev­el, though, the build­ing con­tin­ues to turn heads, placed as it is on a series of stilt-look­ing columns placed not at the cor­ners, but in the mid­dle of the walls. A vis­i­tor with no knowl­edge of struc­tur­al engi­neer­ing pass­ing the Cit­i­group Cen­ter for the first time may won­der why it does­n’t fall down — which, for a few months in 1978, was a gen­uine­ly seri­ous con­cern.

This sto­ry, told with a spe­cial explana­to­ry vivid­ness in the new Ver­i­ta­si­um video above, usu­al­ly begins with a phone call. An uniden­ti­fied archi­tec­ture stu­dent got ahold of William LeMes­suri­er, the struc­tur­al engi­neer of the Citi­corp Cen­ter, as it was then known, to relay con­cerns he’d heard a pro­fes­sor express about the still-new sky­scrap­er’s abil­i­ty to with­stand “quar­ter­ing winds,” which blow diag­o­nal­ly at its cor­ners. LeMes­suri­er took the time to walk the stu­dent through the ele­ments of his then-ground­break­ing light­weight design, which includ­ed chevron-shaped braces that direct­ed ten­sion loads down to the columns and a 400-ton con­crete tuned mass damper (or “great block of cheese,” as it got to be called) meant to coun­ter­act oscil­la­tion move­ments.

LeMes­suri­er was a proud pro­fes­sion­al, but his pro­fes­sion­al­ism out­weighed his pride. When he went back to check the Citi­corp Cen­ter’s plans, he received an unpleas­ant sur­prise: the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny had swapped out the weld­ed joints in those chevron braces for cheap­er bolt­ed ones. His office had approved the change, which made sense at the time, and had also tak­en into account only per­pen­dic­u­lar winds, not quar­ter­ing winds, as was then stan­dard indus­try prac­tice. Per­form­ing the rel­e­vant cal­cu­la­tions him­self, he deter­mined that the whole tow­er could be brought down — and much in the sur­round­ing area destroyed with it — by the kind of winds that have a one-in-six­teen chance of blow­ing in any giv­en year.

It did­n’t take LeMes­suri­er long to real­ize that he had no choice but to reveal what he’d dis­cov­ered to Citi­corp, whose lead­er­ship coop­er­at­ed with the accel­er­at­ed, semi-clan­des­tine project of shoring up their gleam­ing emblem’s struc­tur­al joints by night. The work could hard­ly fail to draw the atten­tion of the New York press, of course, but it received scant cov­er­age thanks to an impec­ca­bly timed news­pa­per strike, and on its com­ple­tion made the sky­scraper per­haps the safest in the city. In fact, the sto­ry of the Citi­corp Cen­ter dis­as­ter that was­n’t only came out pub­licly in a 1995 New York­er piece by Joseph Mor­gen­stern, which made LeMes­suri­er a kind of hero among struc­tur­al engi­neers. But it was the stu­dents who’d iden­ti­fied the build­ing’s faults, not just one but two of whom came for­ward there­after, who per­son­i­fied the life-sav­ing pow­er of ask­ing the right ques­tions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How This Chica­go Sky­scraper Bare­ly Touch­es the Ground

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton & Harold Lloyd Pulled Off Their Spectacular Stunts During Silent Film’s Golden Age

in Film, History | May 8th, 2025

It can be tempt­ing to view the box office’s dom­i­na­tion by visu­al-effects-laden Hol­ly­wood spec­ta­cle as a recent phe­nom­e­non. And indeed, there have been peri­ods dur­ing which that was­n’t the case: the “New Hol­ly­wood” that began in the late nine­teen six­ties, for instance, when the old stu­dio sys­tem hand­ed the reins to inven­tive young guns like Peter Bog­danovich, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, and Mar­tin Scors­ese. But lest we for­get, that move­ment met its end in the face of com­pe­ti­tion from late-1970s block­busters like Jaws and Star Wars, a new kind of block­buster that sig­naled a return to the sim­ple thrills of silent cin­e­ma.

Even a cen­tu­ry ago, many movie­go­ers expect­ed two expe­ri­ences above all: to be wowed, and to be made to laugh. No won­der that era saw visu­al come­di­ans like Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Char­lie Chap­lin become not just the most famous actors in the world, but some of the most famous human beings in the world.

Stay­ing on top required not just seri­ous per­for­ma­tive skill, but also equal­ly seri­ous tech­ni­cal inge­nu­ity, as explained in the new Lost in Time video above. It breaks down just how Lloyd, Keaton, and Chap­lin pulled off some of their career-defin­ing stunts on film, putting the actu­al clips along­side CGI recon­struc­tions of the sets as they would have looked dur­ing shoot­ing.

When Lloyd hangs from the arms of a clock high above down­town Los Ange­les in Safe­ty Last! (1923), he’s real­ly hang­ing high above down­town Los Ange­les — albeit on a set con­struct­ed atop a build­ing, shot from a care­ful­ly cho­sen angle. When the entire façade of a house falls around Keaton in Steam­boat Bill, Jr. (1928), leav­ing him stand­ing unharmed in a win­dow frame, the façade actu­al­ly fell around him — in a pre­cise­ly chore­o­graphed man­ner, but with only a cou­ple of inch­es of clear­ance on each side. When a blind­fold­ed Chap­lin skates per­ilous­ly close to a mul­ti­sto­ry drop in Mod­ern Times (1936), he’s per­fect­ly safe, the edge of the floor being noth­ing more than a mat­te paint­ing: one of those ana­log tech­nolo­gies of movie mag­ic whose obso­les­cence is still bemoaned by clas­sic-film enthu­si­asts, from whom CGI, no mat­ter how expen­sive, nev­er quite thrills or amus­es in the same way.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art of Cre­at­ing Spe­cial Effects in Silent Movies: Inge­nu­ity Before the Age of CGI

Watch the Only Time Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Per­formed Togeth­er On-Screen (1952)

Safe­ty Last!, the 1923 Movie Fea­tur­ing the Most Icon­ic Scene from Silent Film Era, Just Went Into the Pub­lic Domain

30 Buster Keaton Films: “The Great­est of All Com­ic Actors,” “One of the Great­est Film­mak­ers of All Time”

How Char­lie Chap­lin Used Ground­break­ing Visu­al Effects to Shoot the Death-Defy­ing Roller Skate Scene in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Char­lie Chap­lin Does Cocaine and Saves the Day in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How a Papal Conclave Works, and Who Might Be the Next Pope

in History, Religion | May 7th, 2025

On Tues­day, the car­di­nals locked them­selves into the Sis­tine Chapel, offi­cial­ly begin­ning the con­clave to elect the 267th pope. First for­mal­ized by Pope Gre­go­ry X in 1274, the con­clave (a word derived from the Latin words cum clave, mean­ing “with a key”) fol­lows a high­ly script­ed process honed over the past 800 years. How the con­clave works, and how it came into being—all of that gets cov­ered in the Reli­gion for Break­fast video above. It’s host­ed by the reli­gious stud­ies schol­ar Dr. Andrew M. Hen­ry.

Below, you can also delve into the more recent his­to­ry of papal elec­tions. Cre­at­ed by Use­ful Charts, this video cov­ers every papal con­clave since 1958 and includes a pre­dic­tion for who the next pope will be once the white smoke ris­es. Who is the next like­ly pon­tiff? No spoil­ers here. You’ll have to watch the video to find out.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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 

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Mas­ter­pieces Up Close

When There Were Three Popes at Once: An Ani­mat­ed Video Drawn in the Style of Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script

Pope Fran­cis Set to Release a Rock/Pop Album: Lis­ten to the First Sin­gle

Pope John Paul II Takes Bat­ting Prac­tice in Cal­i­for­nia, 1987

 

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Take a 3D Virtual Tour of the Sistine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Masterpieces Up Close

in Art, History, Religion | May 7th, 2025

Today, 133 car­di­nals from around the world enter the con­clave to deter­mine the next pope, dur­ing which they’ll cast their votes in the Sis­tine Chapel. Despite being one of the most famous tourist attrac­tions in Europe, the Sis­tine Chapel still serves as a venue for such impor­tant offi­cial func­tions, just as it has since its com­ple­tion in 1481. When its name­sake Pope Six­tus IV com­mis­sioned it, he also ordered its walls cov­ered in fres­coes by some of the finest artists of that peri­od of the Renais­sance, includ­ing San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li, Domeni­co Ghirlandaio, and Cosi­mo Rossel­li. He also made the unusu­al choice of hav­ing the cross-vault ceil­ing cov­ered by a blue-and-gold paint­ing of the night sky, ably exe­cut­ed by Pier­mat­teo Lau­ro de’ Man­fre­di da Amelia.

No longer do the car­di­nals vote for their next leader under the stars, nor have they for about half a mil­len­ni­um. Even if you’ve nev­er set foot in the Sis­tine Chapel, you sure­ly know it as the build­ing whose ceil­ing was paint­ed by Michelan­ge­lo, lying flat on a scaf­fold all the while (a pleas­ing but high­ly doubt­ful image in the col­lec­tive cul­tur­al mem­o­ry).

In fact, that mas­ter of Renais­sance mas­ters did­n’t touch his brush to the place until 1508. He’d been brought in by a lat­er pope, Julius II, after hav­ing first resist­ed the com­mis­sion, insist­ing that he was a sculp­tor first, not a painter. For­tu­nate­ly for Renais­sance art enthu­si­asts, not only did Julius II pre­vail upon Michelan­ge­lo, so, near­ly thir­ty years lat­er, did Paul III, who had him paint over the altar the work that turned out to be the Last Judg­ment.

In the video at the top of the post, his­to­ry-and-archi­tec­ture YouTu­ber Manuel Bra­vo (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his expla­na­tions of his­toric places like Venice, Pom­peii, the Cathe­dral of San­ta Maria del Fiore, and St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, which was also touched by the hand of Michelan­ge­lo) nar­rates a 3D vir­tu­al tour of the Sis­tine Chapel. That for­mat makes it pos­si­ble to see not only its numer­ous works of Bib­li­cal art, by Michelan­ge­lo and a host of oth­er painters besides, from every pos­si­ble angle, but also the build­ing itself just as it would have looked in eras past, even before Michelan­ge­lo made his con­tri­bu­tion. The more you under­stand each indi­vid­ual ele­ment, the bet­ter you can appre­ci­ate this “ver­i­ta­ble Div­ina Com­me­dia of the Renais­sance,” as Bra­vo calls it, when next you can see it in per­son. That, of course, will only be after the con­clave fin­ish­es up: in a few hours, or days, or weeks, or maybe — a phe­nom­e­non not unex­am­pled in the his­to­ry of the church — a few years.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sis­tine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Col­lec­tion Fea­tures Remark­able High-Res­o­lu­tion Views of the Murals of Michelan­ge­lo, Bot­ti­cel­li & Oth­er Renais­sance Mas­ters

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

The Vat­i­can Library Goes Online and Dig­i­tizes Tens of Thou­sands of Man­u­scripts, Books, Coins, and More

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

A Secret Room with Draw­ings Attrib­uted to Michelan­ge­lo Opens to Vis­i­tors in Flo­rence

Michelangelo’s Illus­trat­ed Gro­cery List

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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George Orwell’s Rules for Making the Perfect Cup of Tea: A Short Animation

in Food & Drink, Literature | May 6th, 2025

Sev­er­al years back, Col­in Mar­shall high­light­ed George Orwell’s essay, “A Nice Cup of Tea,” which first ran in the Evening Stan­dard on Jan­u­ary 12, 1946. In that arti­cle, Orwell weighed in on a sub­ject the Eng­lish take seriously–how to make the per­fect cup of tea. (Accord­ing to Orwell, “tea is one of the main­stays of civ­i­liza­tion.”) And he pro­ceed­ed to offer 11 rules for mak­ing that per­fect cup. Above, Luís Sá con­dens­es Orwell’s sug­ges­tions into a short ani­ma­tion, made with kinet­ic typog­ra­phy. Below, you can read the first three of Orwell’s 11 rules, and find the remain­ing eight here.

  • First of all, one should use Indi­an or Cey­lonese tea. Chi­na tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowa­days — it is eco­nom­i­cal, and one can drink it with­out milk — but there is not much stim­u­la­tion in it.…
  • Sec­ond­ly, tea should be made in small quan­ti­ties — that is, in a teapot.… The teapot should be made of chi­na or earth­en­ware. Sil­ver or Bri­tan­ni­aware teapots pro­duce infe­ri­or tea and enam­el pots are worse.…
  • Third­ly, the pot should be warmed before­hand. This is bet­ter done by plac­ing it on the hob than by the usu­al method of swill­ing it out with hot water.

Enjoy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

George Orwell and Christo­pher Hitchens’ Iron­clad Rules for Mak­ing a Good Cup of Tea

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Tea

10 Gold­en Rules for Mak­ing the Per­fect Cup of Tea (1941)

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

The Art of the Japan­ese Teapot: Watch a Mas­ter Crafts­man at Work, from the Begin­ning Until the Star­tling End

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A Japanese Zen Monk Explains What Zen Is Really About

in Life, Religion | May 6th, 2025

Despite devel­op­ing in Asia, as the Chi­nese form of a reli­gion orig­i­nal­ly brought over from India and lat­er refined in Japan, Zen Bud­dhism has long appealed to West­ern­ers as well. Some of that owes to the spare, ele­gant aes­thet­ics with which pop­u­lar cul­ture asso­ciates it, and more to the promise it holds out: free­dom from stress, anx­i­ety, and indeed suf­fer­ing of all kinds. In the­o­ry, the Zen prac­ti­tion­er attains that free­dom not through mas­ter­ing a body of knowl­edge or ascend­ing a hier­ar­chy, but through direct expe­ri­ence of real­i­ty, unmedi­at­ed by thoughts, unwarped by desires, and undi­vid­ed by the clas­si­fi­ca­tion schemes that sep­a­rate one thing from anoth­er. That’s eas­i­er said than done, of course, and for some, not even a life­time of med­i­ta­tion does the trick.

In the inter­view clip above, Rin­zai zen monk Yodo Kono explains how he arrived in the world of Zen. Hav­ing come from a line of monks, he inher­it­ed the role after the deaths of his grand­fa­ther and his father. Already in his late twen­ties, he’d been work­ing as a physics teacher, an occu­pa­tion that — how­ev­er fash­ion­able the sup­posed con­cor­dances between advanced phys­i­cal and Bud­dhist truths — hard­ly pre­pared him for the rig­ors of the tem­ple.

“I entered a role com­plete­ly oppo­site to log­ic,” he remem­bers, “a world where log­ic does­n’t exist.” Think of the Zen kōans we’ve all heard, which demand seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble answers about the sound of one hand clap­ping, or the appear­ance of your face before your par­ents were born.

Advised by his mas­ter to stop try­ing to gain knowl­edge, skills, and under­stand­ing, the frus­trat­ed Yodo Kono began to real­ize that “Zen is every­thing,” the key ques­tion being “how to live with­out wor­ries with­in Zen.” That can’t be learned from any amount of study, but expe­ri­ence alone. Only direct­ly can one feel how we cre­ate our own suf­fer­ing in our minds, and also that we can’t help but do so. This leaves us no choice but to relin­quish our notions of con­trol over real­i­ty. In dai­ly life, he explains in the clip just above (also from the doc­u­men­tary Free­dom From Suf­fer­ing, about the vari­eties of Bud­dhism), one must be able to move freely between “the undi­vid­ed Zen world and the divid­ed world,” the lat­ter being where near­ly all of us already spend our days: not with­out our plea­sures, of course, but also not with­out won­der­ing, every so often, if we can ever know per­ma­nent sat­is­fac­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 6‑Step Guide to Zen Bud­dhism, Pre­sent­ed by Psy­chi­a­trist-Zen Mas­ter Robert Waldinger

What Is a Zen Koan? An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to East­ern Philo­soph­i­cal Thought Exper­i­ments

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

Exer­cise Extreme Mind­ful­ness with These Calm­ing Zen Rock Gar­den Videos

A Beat­box­ing Bud­dhist Monk Cre­ates Music for Med­i­ta­tion

Bud­dhism 101: A Short Intro­duc­to­ry Lec­ture by Jorge Luis Borges

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Hobo Ethical Code of 1889: 15 Rules for Living a Self-Reliant, Honest & Compassionate Life

in History | May 5th, 2025

Who wants to be a bil­lion­aire?

A few years ago, Forbes pub­lished author Rober­ta Chin­sky Matuson’s sen­si­ble advice to busi­ness­peo­ple seek­ing to shoot up that gold­en lad­der. These law­ful tips espoused such famil­iar virtues as hard work and com­mu­ni­ty involve­ment, and as such, were eas­i­ly adapt­able to the rabble—artists, teach­ers, any­one in the ser­vice indus­try or non-prof­it sec­tor…

It must pain her that so many bil­lion­aires have been behav­ing so bad­ly of late. Let’s hope so, any­way.

While there’s noth­ing inher­ent­ly wrong with aspir­ing to amass lots of mon­ey, the next gen­er­a­tion of bil­lion­aires is play­ing fast and loose with their souls if their pri­ma­ry role mod­els are the ones dom­i­nat­ing today’s head­lines.

Wouldn’t it be grand if they looked instead to the Hobo Eth­i­cal Code, a seri­ous stan­dard of behav­ior estab­lished at the Hobo Nation­al Con­ven­tion of 1889?

Giv­en the peri­patet­ic lifestyle of these migra­to­ry work­ers, it was up to the indi­vid­ual to hold him­self or her­self to this knight­ly stan­dard. Hoboes prid­ed them­selves on their self-reliance and hon­esty, as well as their com­pas­sion for their fel­low humans.

The envi­ron­ment and the most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of our soci­ety stand to ben­e­fit if tomorrow’s bil­lion­aires take it to heart.

The Hobo Eth­i­cal Code

1. Decide your own life; don’t let anoth­er per­son run or rule you.

2. When in town, always respect the local law and offi­cials, and try to be a gen­tle­man at all times.

3. Don’t take advan­tage of some­one who is in a vul­ner­a­ble sit­u­a­tion, locals or oth­er hobos.

4. Always try to find work, even if tem­po­rary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. By doing so you not only help a busi­ness along, but ensure employ­ment should you return to that town again.

5. When no employ­ment is avail­able, make your own work by using your added tal­ents at crafts.

6. Do not allow your­self to become a stu­pid drunk and set a bad exam­ple for locals’ treat­ment of oth­er hobos.

7. When jungling in town, respect hand­outs, do not wear them out, anoth­er hobo will be com­ing along who will need them as bad­ly, if not worse than you.

8. Always respect nature, do not leave garbage where you are jungling.

9. If in a com­mu­ni­ty jun­gle, always pitch in and help.

10. Try to stay clean, and boil up wher­ev­er pos­si­ble.

11. When trav­el­ing, ride your train respect­ful­ly, take no per­son­al chances, cause no prob­lems with the oper­at­ing crew or host rail­road, act like an extra crew mem­ber.

12. Do not cause prob­lems in a train yard, anoth­er hobo will be com­ing along who will need pas­sage through that yard.

13. Do not allow oth­er hobos to molest chil­dren; expose all moles­ters to authorities…they are the worst garbage to infest any soci­ety.

14. Help all run­away chil­dren, and try to induce them to return home.

15. Help your fel­low hobos when­ev­er and wher­ev­er need­ed, you may need their help some­day.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hobo Code: An Intro­duc­tion to the Hiero­glyph­ic Lan­guage of Ear­ly 1900s Train-Hop­pers

Rules for Teach­ers in 1872 & 1915: No Drink­ing, Smok­ing, or Trips to Bar­ber Shops and Ice Cream Par­lors

How to Live a Good Life? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry on Aris­to­tle, Ayn Rand, Max Weber & More

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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See Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 3D in a New 108-Gigapixel Scan

in Art, History | May 5th, 2025

You may believe that you’ve had a close enough view of Johannes Ver­meer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring. You may have gone to The Hague and seen the paint­ing in per­son at the Mau­rit­shuis. You may have zoomed into the ten bil­lion-pix­el scan we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture in 2021. But if you haven’t spent time with the new 108 bil­lion-pix­el scan, can you real­ly claim to have seen Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring at all?

At that 108-gigapix­el res­o­lu­tion, notes Jason Kot­tke, “each pix­el is 1.3 microns in size — 1000 microns is 1 mil­lime­ter.” You can learn more about the tech­nol­o­gy behind the project in this mak­ing-of video pro­duced by Hirox Europe, the local branch of the Japan­ese dig­i­tal micro­scope com­pa­ny respon­si­ble for both the ten bil­lion-pix­el scan and this 108 bil­lion-pix­el one, which neces­si­tat­ed 88 hours of non-stop scan­ning this rel­a­tive­ly small can­vas of 15 inch­es by 17.5 inch­es, a process that result­ed in 41,000 3D images.

Yes, 3D images: though Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, known as “the Mona Lisa of the North,” may be known far and wide in flat rep­re­sen­ta­tions on pages, screens, posters, and T‑shirts, it is, after all, a work of oil on can­vas.

Ver­meer achieved his ultra-real­is­tic effects not just by putting the right col­ors in the right places, but apply­ing them at the right thick­ness­es and with the right tex­tures — all of which have been repli­cat­ed in a “mega-sized” phys­i­cal 3D print, 100 times larg­er than the orig­i­nal work, com­mis­sioned by the Mau­rit­shuis for its Who’s that Girl? exhi­bi­tion.

You can per­form your own topo­graph­i­cal exam­i­na­tion of sec­tions of the paint­ing — the eyes, the lips, a fold of the tur­ban, the ear­ring, and even the reflec­tion on the ear­ring — by click­ing the “3D” but­ton at the bot­tom of the scan’s view­ing inter­face.  A look this close reveals much about how Ver­meer cre­at­ed this world-famous image, as well as how it’s weath­ered the past 360 years. It does not reveal, of course, the answers to such long-stand­ing mys­ter­ies as the iden­ti­ty of the sub­ject or the moti­va­tions behind her strik­ing pre­sen­ta­tion. Whether or not the girl with the pearl ear­ring even exist­ed, we can, at this point, be sure of one thing: she must feel seen. Enter the new 108 bil­lion-pix­el scan here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hear the First Recording of the Human Voice (1860)

in History, Music | May 4th, 2025

When inven­tor Édouard-Léon Scott de Mar­t­inville sang a nurs­ery rhyme into his phonoau­to­gram in 1860, he had no plans to ever play back this record­ing. A pre­cur­sor to the wax cylin­der, the phonoau­to­gram took inputs for the study of sound waves, but could not be turned into an out­put device. How amaz­ing then, that 150 or so years lat­er, we can hear the voice of Scott in what is now con­sid­ered the first ever record­ing of human sound.

What you will hear in the above video are the var­i­ous stages of recon­struct­ing and reverse engi­neer­ing the voice that sang on that April day in 1860, until, like wip­ing away decades of dirt and soot, the orig­i­nal art is revealed.

Scott had looked to the inven­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy and won­dered if some­thing sim­i­lar could be done with sound waves, focused as he was on improv­ing stenog­ra­phy. And so the phonoau­to­gram took in sound vibra­tions through a diaphragm, which moved a sty­lus against a rotat­ing cylin­der cov­ered in lamp­black. What was left was a wig­gly line in a con­cen­tric cir­cle.

But how to play them back? That was the prob­lem. Scott’s inven­tion nev­er turned a prof­it and he went back to book­selling. The inven­tion and some of the paper cylin­ders went into muse­ums.

In 2008, Amer­i­can audio his­to­ri­ans dis­cov­ered the scrib­bles and turned to the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry and a soft­ware called IRENE. The soft­ware was designed to extract sounds from wax cylin­ders with­out touch­ing the del­i­cate sur­faces, and the first pass revealed what they thought at first was a young woman or child singing “Au Clair de la lune,” the French nurs­ery rhyme (not the Debussy piano work).

How­ev­er, a fur­ther exam­i­na­tion of Scott’s notes revealed that the record­ing was at a much slow­er speed, and it was a man—most prob­a­bly Scott—singing the lul­la­by.

The video shows the stages that brought Scott back to life: Denois­ing a lot of extra­ne­ous sound; stretch­ing the record­ing back to nat­ur­al time; “tun­ing and quantizing”–correcting for imper­fec­tions in the human-turned cylin­der; clean­ing up har­mon­ics; and final­ly adding fur­ther har­mon­ics, reverb and a stereo effect.

The result is less an unrec­og­niz­able ghost sig­nal and more a touch­ing sound of human­i­ty, desir­ing some­how to have their voice live on.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Old­est Voic­es That We Can Still Hear: Hear Audio Record­ings of Ghost­ly Voic­es from the 1800s

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-San­ta Bar­bara 

Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings

Hear Singers from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera Record Their Voic­es on Tra­di­tion­al Wax Cylin­ders

400,000+ Sound Record­ings Made Before 1923 Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts. You can read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

 

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