Did the Tower of Babel Actually Exist?: A Look at the Archaeological Evidence

in Architecture, History | March 31st, 2025

For all the means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and exchange we’ve estab­lished between the cul­tures of the world, no mat­ter how dis­tant they may be from one anoth­er, we still have no tru­ly uni­ver­sal sin­gle human lan­guage. The rea­son could date back to antiq­ui­ty, when we first attempt­ed a grand col­lec­tive project: that of build­ing a tow­er that would reach the heav­ens. Deter­mined to pun­ish our effron­tery, God not only destroyed the work in progress, but ren­dered our lan­guages mutu­al­ly unin­tel­li­gi­ble in order to hin­der any fur­ther attempts to do it again. Or at least that’s how one sto­ry goes.

You may not sub­scribe to a lit­er­al read­ing of the account of the Tow­er of Babel as it appears in the Bible’s Book of Gen­e­sis, but accord­ing to the Hochela­ga video above, the struc­ture does have a fair­ly plau­si­ble basis in his­to­ry.

It could be a leg­endary ver­sion of Ete­me­nan­ki, a Mesopotami­an zig­gu­rat built to hon­or the god Mar­duk at such a scale that it inspired tall tales, as it were, spread far and wide in the ancient world, such as the rumor that its con­struc­tion required mobi­liz­ing the man­pow­er of all human­i­ty. But it real­ly did exist, as evi­denced by its ruins dis­cov­ered at the site of the ancient city of Baby­lon — which, in Hebrew, was called Babel.

A cuneiform-cov­ered tablet con­ve­nient­ly found at the same loca­tion describes a con­struc­tion project of Ete­me­nanki’s size as using mate­ri­als like bitu­men and baked brick, which aligns with bib­li­cal details of the Tow­er of Babel, as do the Greek his­to­ri­an Herodotus’s ref­er­ences to its lay­out and struc­ture. Also rel­e­vant is the Baby­lo­ni­ans’ 587 BC inva­sion of Jerusalem, which brought cap­tives to the cap­i­tal. It’s hard­ly impos­si­ble that some of those dis­placed Jews would have the loom­ing Ete­me­nan­ki in mind when they went on to write the his­to­ries that would ulti­mate­ly find their way into the Hebrew Bible. They may have had no hope of return­ing to their home­land, but they must, at least, have felt rea­son­ably cer­tain that Mar­duk’s days were num­bered.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Map of All the Coun­tries Men­tioned in the Bible: What The Coun­tries Were Called Then, and Now

Lit­er­ary Crit­ic Northrop Frye Teach­es “The Bible and Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture”: All 25 Lec­tures Free Online

A Sur­vival Guide to the Bib­li­cal Apoc­a­lypse

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Wit­ty, Eru­dite Atheist’s Guide to the World’s Most Famous Book

Did Psy­che­del­ic Mush­rooms Appear in Medieval Chris­t­ian Art?: A Video Essay

Vis­it the Online Library of Babel: New Web Site Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Into a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

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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A Rare Smile Captured in a 19th Century Photograph

in Photography | March 30th, 2025

Just look at this pho­to. Just look at this young girl’s smile. We know her name: O‑o-be’, accord­ing to the Smith­son­ian. And we know that she was a mem­ber of the Kiowa tribe in the Okla­homa Ter­ri­to­ry. And we know that the pho­to was tak­en in 1894. But that smile is like a time machine. O‑o-be’ might just as well have donned some traditional/historical garb, posed for her friends, and had them put on the ol’ sepia fil­ter on her cam­era app.

But why? What is it about the smile?

For one thing, we are not used to see­ing them in old pho­tographs, espe­cial­ly ones from the 19th cen­tu­ry. When pho­tog­ra­phy was first invent­ed, expo­sures could take 45 min­utes. Hav­ing a por­trait tak­en meant sit­ting stock still for a very long time, so smil­ing was right out. It was only near the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry that shut­ter speeds improved, as did emul­sions, mean­ing that spon­ta­neous moments could be cap­tured. Still, smil­ing was not part of many cul­tures. It could be seen as unseem­ly or undig­ni­fied, and many peo­ple rarely sat for pho­tos any­way. Pho­tographs were seen by many peo­ple as a “pas­sage to immor­tal­i­ty” and seri­ous­ness was seen as less ephemer­al.

Pres­i­dents didn’t offi­cial­ly smile until Franklin D. Roo­sevelt, which came at a time of great sor­row and uncer­tain­ty for a nation in the grips of the Great Depres­sion. The pres­i­dent did it because Amer­i­cans couldn’t.

Smil­ing seems so nat­ur­al to us, it’s hard to think it hasn’t always been a part of art. One of the first things babies learn is the pow­er of a smile, and how it can melt hearts all around. So why hasn’t the smile been com­mon­place in art?

His­to­ri­an Col­in Jones wrote a whole book about this, called The Smile Rev­o­lu­tion in Eigh­teenth Cen­tu­ry Paris, start­ing with a 1787 self-por­trait by Élis­a­beth Vigée Le Brun that depict­ed her and her infant. Unlike the coy half-smiles as seen in the Mona Lisa, Madame Le Brun’s paint­ing showed the first white, toothy smile. Jones says it caused a scandal–smiles like this one were undig­ni­fied. The only broad smiles seen in Renais­sance paint­ing were from chil­dren (who didn’t know bet­ter), the “filthy” ple­beians, or the insane. What had hap­pened? Jones cred­its the change to two things: the emer­gence of den­tistry over the pre­vi­ous hun­dred years (includ­ing the inven­tion of the tooth­brush), and the emer­gence of a “cult of sen­si­bil­i­ty and polite­ness.” Jones explains this by look­ing at the hero­ines of the 18th cen­tu­ry nov­el, where a smile meant an open heart, not a sar­cas­tic smirk:

Now, O‑o-be’ and Jane Austen’s Emma might have been worlds apart, but so are we–creatures of tech­nol­o­gy, smil­ing at our iPhones as we take anoth­er selfie–from that Kiowan girl in the Fort Sill, Okla­homa stu­dio of George W. Bretz.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Nobody Smiles in Old Pho­tos: The Tech­no­log­i­cal & Cul­tur­al Rea­sons Behind All those Black-and-White Frowns

Eerie 19th Cen­tu­ry Pho­tographs of Ghosts: See Images from the Long, Strange Tra­di­tion of “Spir­it Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Vis­it a New Dig­i­tal Archive of 2.2 Mil­lion Images from the First Hun­dred Years of Pho­tog­ra­phy

Arab Pho­tog­ra­phy Archive Puts 22,000 His­toric Images Online: Get a Rare Glimpse into Life and Art in the Arab World

Take a Visu­al Jour­ney Through 181 Years of Street Pho­tog­ra­phy (1838–2019)

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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Superman vs. the KKK: Hear the 1946 Superman Radio Show That Weakened the Klan

in Comics/Cartoons, History | March 28th, 2025

Years ago, back in 2016, we fea­tured a 1950 Super­man poster that urged stu­dents to defend the Amer­i­can way and fight dis­crim­i­na­tion every­where. Today, we present anoth­er chap­ter from Super­man’s lit­tle-known his­to­ry as a Civ­il Rights defend­er.

The year is 1946. World War II has come to an end. And now mem­ber­ship in the Ku Klux Klan starts to rise again. Enter Stet­son Kennedy, a human rights activist, who man­ages to infil­trate the KKK and then fig­ures out an inge­nious way to take them down. He con­tacts the pro­duc­ers of the pop­u­lar Adven­tures of Super­man radio show, and pitch­es them on a new sto­ry­line: Super­man meets and defeats the KKK. Need­ing a new ene­my to van­quish, the pro­duc­ers green­light the idea.

The 16-episode series, “The Clan of the Fiery Cross,” aired in June 1946 and effec­tive­ly chipped away at the Klan’s mys­tique, grad­u­al­ly reveal­ing their secret code­words and rit­u­als. Lis­ten to the episodes above. And take heart in know­ing this: Accord­ing to Stephen J. Dub­n­er and Steven Levitt, the authors of Freako­nom­ics, The Clan of the Fiery Cross was “the great­est sin­gle con­trib­u­tor to the weak­en­ing of the Ku Klux Klan.” Mocked and triv­i­al­ized, the Klan’s num­bers went back into decline.

For more infor­ma­tion on this chap­ter in super­hero his­to­ry, read the well-reviewed YA book, Super­man Ver­sus the Ku Klux Klan: The True Sto­ry of How the Icon­ic Super­hero Bat­tled the Men of Hate. Also find more infor­ma­tion on these episodes at the Super­man Home­page.

To hear more orig­i­nal Super­man radio shows, head over to Archive.org.

Note: There is a lit­tle bit of a con­tro­ver­sy about the exact role Stet­son Kennedy played in infil­trat­ing the Klan. You can read up on that here.

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:

The Orig­i­nal 1940s Super­man Car­toon: Watch 17 Clas­sic Episodes Free Online

1950 Super­man Poster Urged Kids to Defend All Amer­i­cans, Regard­less of Their Race, Reli­gion or Nation­al Ori­gin

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

75 Years of Super­man in 2 Min­utes

Nine Clas­sic Super­man Car­toons Restored and Now on YouTube

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This Is What a Nuclear Strike Would Feel Like: A Precise Simulation

in Current Affairs, Science, Technology | March 28th, 2025

Though cer­tain gen­er­a­tions may have grown up trained to take cov­er under their class­room desks in the case of a nuclear show­down between the Unit­ed States and the Sovi­et Union, few of us today can believe that we’d stand much chance if we found our­selves any­where near a det­o­nat­ed mis­sile. Still, the prob­a­ble effects of a nuclear blast do bear repeat­ing, which the New York Times video above does not just con­vey ver­bal­ly but also visu­al­ly, deriv­ing its infor­ma­tion “from inter­views of mil­i­tary offi­cials and com­put­er sci­en­tists who say we’re speed­ing toward the next nuclear arms race.”

The last nuclear arms race may have been bad enough, but the rel­e­vant tech­nolo­gies have great­ly advanced since the Cold War — which, with the last major arms treaty between the U.S. and Rus­sia set to expire with­in a year, looks set to re-open. Don’t both­er wor­ry­ing about a whole arse­nal: just one mis­sile is enough to do much more dam­age than you’re prob­a­bly imag­in­ing. That’s the sce­nario envi­sioned in the video: “trav­el­ing at blis­ter­ing speeds,” the nuke det­o­nates over its tar­get city, and “every­one in range is briefly blind­ed. Then comes the roar of 9,000 tons of TNT,” pro­duc­ing a fire­ball “hot­ter than the sur­face of the sun.” And that’s just the begin­ning of the trou­ble.

A destruc­tive “blast wave” emanates from the site of the explo­sion, “and then… dark­ness.” The air is full of “dust and glass frag­ments,” mak­ing it dif­fi­cult, even dead­ly, to breathe. What’s worse, “no help is on the way: med­ical work­ers in the imme­di­ate area are dead or injured.” For sur­vivors, there begins the “radi­a­tion sick­ness, nau­sea, vom­it­ing, and diar­rhea”; some of the dead­liest effects don’t even man­i­fest for weeks. “The imme­di­ate toll of this one war­head: thou­sands dead, expo­nen­tial­ly more wound­ed. Dam­age to the ecosys­tem will linger for years.” Indeed, the extent of the dam­age is too great to pon­der with­out resort to gal­lows humor, as evi­denced by the video’s cur­rent top com­ment: “My boss would still force me to come into the office the next day.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Would Hap­pen If a Nuclear Bomb Hit a Major City Today: A Visu­al­iza­tion of the Destruc­tion

See Every Nuclear Explo­sion in His­to­ry: 2153 Blasts from 1945–2015

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

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

Every Nuclear Bomb Explo­sion in His­to­ry, Ani­mat­ed

When the Wind Blows: An Ani­mat­ed Tale of Nuclear Apoc­a­lypse With Music by Roger Waters & David Bowie (1986)

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 Best Photographer You’ve Never Heard Of: An Introduction to Tseng Kwong Chi

in History, Photography | March 27th, 2025

Once, the Unit­ed States was known for send­ing forth the world’s most com­plained-about inter­na­tion­al tourists; today, that dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion arguably belongs to Chi­na. But it was­n’t so long ago that the Chi­nese tourist was a prac­ti­cal­ly unheard-of phe­nom­e­non, espe­cial­ly in the West. That’s an impor­tant con­tex­tu­al ele­ment to under­stand when con­sid­er­ing the work of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tseng Kwong Chi, who trav­eled around Amer­i­ca tak­ing pic­tures of him­self at var­i­ous rec­og­niz­able mon­u­ments and land­marks while wear­ing a suit most com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Chair­man Mao. The fig­ure that emerged from this project is the sub­ject of the new Nerd­writer video above.

“He called this char­ac­ter ‘an ambigu­ous ambas­sador,’ and, in a series he called ‘East Meets West,’ posed him — posed him­self — in front of var­i­ous icons of touris­tic Amer­i­ca,” writes Bri­an Dil­lon in a New York­er piece on Tsen­g’s work. “He leaps into the air in front of the Brook­lyn Bridge, stands impas­sive beside Mick­ey Mouse at Dis­ney­land, gazes off into the dis­tance with Nia­gara Falls behind him.”

Inspired by Richard Nixon’s 1972 vis­it to Chi­na and Deng Xiaop­ing’s 1979 vis­it to the U.S., Tseng pro­duced most of these pho­tos in the late sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies, and even “took the ambigu­ous ambas­sador to Europe, where he appears hero­ic before the Arc de Tri­om­phe, and diminu­tive between two police­men at the Tow­er of Lon­don.”

Born in British Hong Kong, then par­tial­ly raised in Cana­da and edu­cat­ed in Paris, Tseng arrived in New York in 1979, ready to join the down­town scene that includ­ed Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ann Mag­nu­son, Cindy Sher­man, and Kei­th Har­ing. It’s for his doc­u­men­ta­tion of Har­ing’s work, in fact, that he remains most wide­ly known, 35 years after his own AIDS-relat­ed death. But now, as tak­ing pic­tures of one­self in famous places around the world becomes an increas­ing­ly uni­ver­sal prac­tice, “East Meets West” draws more and more atten­tion. Maybe, in an art world where cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty is so fierce­ly declared and defend­ed, the very ambi­gu­i­ty of the ambas­sador por­trayed by Tseng — who, as Evan “Nerd­writer” Puschak empha­sizes, “did­n’t want to be known as a Chi­nese artist, or an Asian-Amer­i­can artist, or a gay artist; he just want­ed to be an artist” — has become that much more com­pelling.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Icon­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of Gor­don Parks: An Intro­duc­tion to the Renais­sance Amer­i­can Artist

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ings of Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Video Essay

How Dorothea Lange Shot Migrant Moth­er Per­haps the Most Icon­ic Pho­to in Amer­i­can His­to­ry

Demys­ti­fy­ing the Activist Graf­fi­ti Art of Kei­th Har­ing: A Video Essay

The Pho­to That Trig­gered China’s Dis­as­trous Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion (1966)

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Bill Cun­ning­ham (RIP) on Liv­ing La Vie Boheme Above Carnegie Hall

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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Man Ray’s Surrealist Cinema: Watch Four Pioneering Films From the 1920s

in Art, Film | March 27th, 2025

Man Ray was one of the lead­ing artists of the avant-garde of 1920s and 1930s Paris. A key fig­ure in the Dada and Sur­re­al­ist move­ments, his works spanned var­i­ous media, includ­ing film. He was a lead­ing expo­nent of the Ciné­ma Pur, or “Pure Cin­e­ma,” which reject­ed such “bour­geois” con­ceits as char­ac­ter, set­ting, and plot. Today we present Man Ray’s four influ­en­tial films of the 1920s.

Le Retour à la Rai­son (above) was com­plet­ed in 1923. The title means “Return to Rea­son,” and it’s basi­cal­ly a kinet­ic exten­sion of Man Ray’s still pho­tog­ra­phy. Many of the images in Le Retour are ani­mat­ed pho­tograms, a tech­nique in which opaque, or par­tial­ly opaque, objects are arranged direct­ly on top of a sheet of pho­to­graph­ic paper and exposed to light. The tech­nique is as old as pho­tog­ra­phy itself, but Man Ray had a gift for self-pro­mo­tion, so he called them “rayo­graphs.” For Le Retour, Man Ray sprin­kled objects like salt and pep­per and pins onto the pho­to­graph­ic paper. He also filmed live-action sequences of an amuse­ment park carousel and oth­er sub­jects, includ­ing the nude tor­so of his mod­el and lover, Kiki of Mont­par­nasse.

Emak-Bakia (1926):

The 16-minute Emak-Bakia con­tains some of the same images and visu­al tech­niques as Le Retour à la Rai­son, includ­ing rayo­graphs, dou­ble images, and neg­a­tive images. But the live-action sequences are more inven­tive, with dream-like dis­tor­tions and tilt­ed cam­era angles. The effect is sur­re­al. “In reply to crit­ics who would like to linger on the mer­its or defects of the film,” wrote Man Ray in the pro­gram notes, “one can reply sim­ply by trans­lat­ing the title ‘Emak Bakia,’ an old Basque expres­sion, which was cho­sen because it sounds pret­ty and means: ‘Give us a rest.’ ”

L’E­toile de Mer (1928):

L’E­toile de Mer (“The Sea Star”) was a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Man Ray and the sur­re­al­ist poet Robert Desnos. It fea­tures Kiki de Mont­par­nasse (Alice Prin) and André de la Riv­ière. The dis­tort­ed, out-of-focus images were made by shoot­ing into mir­rors and through rough glass. The film is more sen­su­al than Man Ray’s ear­li­er works. As Don­ald Faulkn­er writes:

In the mod­ernist high tide of 1920s exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ing, L’E­toile de Mer is a per­verse moment of grace, a demon­stra­tion that the cin­e­ma went far­ther in its great silent decade than most film­mak­ers today could ever imag­ine. Sur­re­al­ist pho­tog­ra­ph­er Man Ray’s film col­lides words with images (the inter­ti­tles are from an oth­er­wise lost work by poet Robert Desnos) to make us psy­cho­log­i­cal wit­ness­es, voyeurs of a kind, to a sex­u­al encounter. A char­ac­ter picks up a woman who is sell­ing news­pa­pers. She undress­es for him, but then he seems to leave her. Less inter­est­ed in her than in the weight she uses to keep her news­pa­pers from blow­ing away, the man lov­ing­ly explores the per­cep­tions gen­er­at­ed by her paper­weight, a starfish in a glass tube. As the man looks at the starfish, we become aware through his gaze of metaphors for cin­e­ma, and for vision itself, in lyri­cal shots of dis­tort­ed per­cep­tion that imply hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry, almost mas­tur­ba­to­ry sex­u­al­i­ty.

Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé (1929):

The longest of Man Ray’s films, Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé (the ver­sion above has appar­ent­ly been short­ened by sev­en min­utes) fol­lows a pair of trav­el­ers on a jour­ney from Paris to the Vil­la Noailles in Hyères, which fea­tures a tri­an­gu­lar Cubist gar­den designed by Gabriel Guevrekian. “Made as an archi­tec­tur­al doc­u­ment and inspired by the poet­ry of Mal­lar­mé,” writes Kim Knowles in A Cin­e­mat­ic Artist: The Films of Man Ray, “Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé is the film in which Man Ray most clear­ly demon­strates his inter­dis­ci­pli­nary atti­tude, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its ref­er­ence to Stéphane Mal­lar­mé’s poem Un coup de dés jamais n’aboli­ra le hasard.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in April, 2012.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Man Ray Designs a Supreme­ly Ele­gant, Geo­met­ric Chess Set in 1920 (and It’s Now Re-Issued for the Rest of Us)

Man Ray Cre­ates a “Sur­re­al­ist Chess­board,” Fea­tur­ing Por­traits of Sur­re­al­ist Icons: Dalí, Bre­ton, Picas­so, Magritte, Miró & Oth­ers (1934)

Man Ray’s Por­traits of Ernest Hem­ing­way, Ezra Pound, Mar­cel Duchamp & Many Oth­er 1920s Icons

Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

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When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Pastor, Theorized How Stupidity Enabled the Rise of the Nazis (1942)

in History, Politics | March 26th, 2025

Two days after Adolf Hitler became Chan­cel­lor of Ger­many, the Luther­an pas­tor Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer took to the air­waves. Before his radio broad­cast was cut off, he warned his coun­try­men that their führer could well be a ver­führer, or mis­leader. Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s anti-Nazism last­ed until the end of his life in 1945, when he was exe­cut­ed by the regime for asso­ci­a­tion with the 20 July plot to assas­si­nate Hitler. Even while impris­oned, he kept think­ing about the ori­gins of the polit­i­cal mania that had over­tak­en Ger­many. The force of cen­tral impor­tance to Hitler’s rise was not evil, he con­clud­ed, but stu­pid­i­ty.

“Stu­pid­i­ty is a more dan­ger­ous ene­my of the good than mal­ice,” Bon­ho­ef­fer wrote in a let­ter to his co-con­spir­a­tors on the tenth anniver­sary of Hitler’s acces­sion to the chan­cel­lor­ship. “One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, pre­vent­ed by use of force. Evil always car­ries with­in itself the germ of its own sub­ver­sion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stu­pid­i­ty we are defense­less.” When pro­voked, “the stu­pid per­son, in con­trast to the mali­cious one, is utter­ly self-sat­is­fied and, being eas­i­ly irri­tat­ed, becomes dan­ger­ous by going on the attack.”

Fight­ing stu­pid­i­ty, to Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s mind, first neces­si­tates under­stand­ing it. “In essence not an intel­lec­tu­al defect but a human one,” stu­pid­i­ty can descend upon prac­ti­cal­ly any­one: “under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, peo­ple are made stu­pid or that they allow this to hap­pen to them.” And it hap­pens most notice­ably when a par­tic­u­lar fig­ure or move­ment seizes the atten­tion of the pub­lic. “Every strong upsurge of pow­er in the pub­lic sphere, be it of a polit­i­cal or of a reli­gious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stu­pid­i­ty,” he writes. Since such phe­nom­e­na could hard­ly arise with­out blind­ly obe­di­ent mass­es, it seems that “the pow­er of the one needs the stu­pid­i­ty of the oth­er.”

You can see Bon­ho­ef­fer­’s the­o­ry of stu­pid­i­ty explained in the illus­trat­ed Sprouts video above, and you can learn more about the man him­self from the doc­u­men­tary Bon­ho­ef­fer. Or, bet­ter yet, read his col­lec­tion, Let­ters and Papers from Prison. Though root­ed in his time, cul­ture, and reli­gion, his thought remains rel­e­vant wher­ev­er humans fol­low the crowd. “The fact that the stu­pid per­son is often stub­born must not blind us to the fact that he is not inde­pen­dent,” he writes, which held as true in the pub­lic squares of wartime Europe as it does on the social-media plat­forms of today. “In con­ver­sa­tion with him, one vir­tu­al­ly feels that one is deal­ing not at all with a per­son, but with slo­gans, catch­words and the like, that have tak­en pos­ses­sion of him.” What­ev­er would sur­prise Bon­ho­ef­fer about our time, he would know exact­ly what we mean when we call stu­pid peo­ple “tools.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Nature of Human Stu­pid­i­ty Explained by The 48 Laws of Pow­er Author Robert Greene

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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Spike Jonze Creates a New Short Film (aka Commercial) for Apple

in Apple, Film | March 26th, 2025

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With his icon­ic Super Bowl ad in 1984, Rid­ley Scott began a tra­di­tion of accom­plished film­mak­ers cre­at­ing adver­tise­ments for Apple. In the years since, we’ve seen David Finch­er shoot an ad pro­mot­ing the iPhone 3GS, Michel Gondry direct a spot show­cas­ing the iPhone’s cin­e­mat­ic fea­tures, and Spike Jonze craft a mem­o­rable ad for the Home­Pod. Now, Jonze returns with a new com­mer­cial (above) for the Air­Pods 4 with Active Noise Can­cel­la­tion. The five-and-a-half-minute film, titled “Some­day,” stars Pedro Pas­cal and it fol­lows–writes Vari­ety–his char­ac­ter as he “nav­i­gates an emo­tion­al jour­ney of mov­ing on after a breakup. When the grief-strick­en man ini­ti­ates Active Noise Can­cel­la­tion on his Air­Pods 4, his world trans­forms: The cold, win­try palette flips into a vibrant dream­scape, and every­thing and every­one becomes part of the music.”

With a few clicks of the mouse and for $149.99, you, too, can trans­port your­self to your own sound-and-col­or filled world. It’s that easy.…


Relat­ed Con­tent 

Rid­ley Scott on the Mak­ing of Apple’s Icon­ic “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired on Super Bowl Sun­day in 1984

Direc­tor Michel Gondry Makes a Charm­ing Film on His iPhone, Prov­ing That We Could Be Mak­ing Movies, Not Tak­ing Self­ies

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Edgy 1990s Com­mer­cial for Apple’s Mac­in­tosh Com­put­er: A Med­i­ta­tion on Pow­er

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When The Twilight Zone Imagined Fascism in America in a 1963 Episode Starring Dennis Hopper

in History, Television | March 25th, 2025

Watch through The Twi­light Zone, and you’ll find your­self spot­ting no end of famil­iar faces: Julie New­mar, Burt Reynolds, Robert Red­ford, Eliz­a­beth Mont­gomery, William Shat­ner, even Buster Keaton. The 1963 episode “He’s Alive” is at least dou­bly notable in that respect, fea­tur­ing as it does a young (but in act­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty, almost ful­ly formed) Den­nis Hop­per as Peter Vollmer, a ne’er-do-well made into an aspir­ing dic­ta­tor by none oth­er than Adolf Hitler. Played by Curt Con­way, a spe­cial­ist in doc­tors, judges, and oth­er author­i­ty fig­ures, the undead Führer offers his young dis­ci­ple instruc­tions like the above, from an ear­ly scene before his iden­ti­ty is revealed.

“How do you move a mob, Mr. Vollmer? How do you excite them? How do you make them feel as one with you?” Hitler asks. The answer, which he then pro­vides, is first to join them: “When you speak to them, speak to them as if you were a mem­ber of the mob. Speak to them in their lan­guage, on their lev­el. Make their hate your hate. If they are poor, talk to them of pover­ty. If they are afraid, talk to them of their fears. And if they are angry, Mr. Vollmer… if they are angry, give them objects for their anger. But most of all, the thing that is most of the essence, Mr. Vollmer, is that you make this mob an exten­sion of your­self.”

If accused of scape­goat­ing minori­ties, he should address the throng thus: “Should I tell you who are the minori­ties? Should I tell you? We! We are the minori­ties.” Soon, we see Peter in full neo-Nazi gear deliv­er­ing just such a harangue, thor­ough­ly Hop­per-ized in dic­tion, to a mod­est­ly attend­ed ral­ly. How could these ordi­nary-look­ing atten­dees be a minor­i­ty? “Because patri­o­tism is a minor­i­ty. Because love of coun­try is the minor­i­ty. Because to live in a free, white Amer­i­ca seems to be of a minor­i­ty opin­ion!” Though hard­ly art­ful, this rhetoric even­tu­al­ly makes him into a pop­u­lar fig­ure, albeit one whose rise is cut short when he turns to con­spir­a­cy to accel­er­ate his rise to pow­er.

And what of the spir­it of Hitler? “Where will he go next, this phan­tom from anoth­er time, this res­ur­rect­ed ghost of a pre­vi­ous night­mare?” Twi­light Zone cre­ator Rod Ser­ling asks in his episode-clos­ing mono­logue. “Any place, every place where there’s hate, where there’s prej­u­dice, where there’s big­otry.” It was against such broad social phe­nom­e­na that Ser­ling so often used his scripts to argue, and with “He’s Alive,” he made use of an unusu­al­ly vivid ide­o­log­i­cal exam­ple. A vet­er­an of the Sec­ond World War, which had end­ed less than twen­ty years ear­li­er, Ser­ling sure­ly had even fresh­er mem­o­ries of the threat of Hitler than did the gen­er­al Amer­i­can pub­lic — and under­stood even more clear­ly what could hap­pen if those mem­o­ries were to fade away.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Rod Ser­ling Turned TV Pitch­man: See His Post-Twi­light Zone Ads for Ford, Maz­da, Gulf Oil & Smokey Bear

When 20,000 Amer­i­cans Held a Pro-Nazi Ral­ly in Madi­son Square Gar­den

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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NASA Visualizes the Ocean Currents in Motion: A Mesmerizing View of Earth’s Underwater Highways

in Environment, Nature, Science | March 25th, 2025

The mes­mer­iz­ing video above lets you visu­al­ize the ocean cur­rents around the world. Using data from space­craft, buoys, and oth­er mea­sure­ments, the visu­al­iza­tion shows the ocean in motion, with the cur­rents cre­at­ing Van Gogh-like swirls around the globe.

Accord­ing to NASA, “the ocean has been [his­tor­i­cal­ly] dif­fi­cult to mod­el. Sci­en­tists strug­gled in years past to sim­u­late ocean cur­rents or accu­rate­ly pre­dict fluc­tu­a­tions in tem­per­a­ture, salin­i­ty, and oth­er prop­er­ties. As a result, mod­els of ocean dynam­ics rapid­ly diverged from real­i­ty, which meant they could only pro­vide use­ful infor­ma­tion for brief peri­ods.” This all changed, how­ev­er, when NASA and oth­er part­ners devel­oped ECCO, short for “Esti­mat­ing the Cir­cu­la­tion and Cli­mate of the Ocean.” “By apply­ing the laws of physics to data from mul­ti­ple satel­lites and thou­sands of float­ing sen­sors, NASA sci­en­tists and their col­lab­o­ra­tors built ECCO to be a real­is­tic, detailed, and con­tin­u­ous ocean mod­el that spans decades.” “The project pro­vides mod­els that are the best pos­si­ble recon­struc­tion of the past 30 years of the glob­al ocean. It allows us to under­stand the ocean’s phys­i­cal process­es at scales that are not nor­mal­ly observ­able.” Watch above as years of ocean data come to life in a crisp, com­pelling visu­al­iza­tion.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

What the Earth Would Look Like If We Drained the Water from the Oceans

A Fas­ci­nat­ing 3D Ani­ma­tion Shows the Depths of the Ocean

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How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz

in Music | March 24th, 2025

Music video essay mae­stro Poly­phon­ic is back. What I dig about his videos is that he takes on some of the true warhors­es of mod­ern pop­u­lar music and man­ages to find some­thing new to say. Or at least he presents famil­iar sto­ries in a new and mod­ern way to an audi­ence who may be hear­ing ELO, Queen, or Neil Young for the first time.

His upload explores Dave Brubeck’s ground­break­ing jazz album Time Out. This is an album that reg­u­lar­ly tops best-of lists, gets reis­sued con­stant­ly, and is so ubiq­ui­tous in some cir­cles that it’s hard, like Led Zeppelin’s fourth album, to hear the album with fresh ears.

Poly­phon­ic touch­es on some­thing right at the begin­ning of the video that deserves a full video essay of its own–the State Department’s mis­sion to send Amer­i­can jazz musi­cians around the world as cul­tur­al ambas­sadors. This is a part of his­to­ry that has reced­ed from mem­o­ry, but had a major influ­ence not just on Brubeck, but so many records at that time. Brubeck joined Ben­ny Good­man, Louis Arm­strong, and Dizzy Gille­spie on a musi­cal tour that reached many coun­tries behind the Iron Cur­tain, and were able to cri­tique America’s racist his­to­ry while also pro­mot­ing its musi­cal cul­ture. (PBS made a fine doc­u­men­tary on the mis­sion in 2018.) But for the pur­pos­es of this video essay, and regard­ing Brubeck’s career, it was the polyrhythms and folk music that he heard while trav­el­ing through coun­tries like Turkey (from which he devel­oped “Blue Ron­do a la Turk”) that remained with him on his return.

Time Out was Brubeck’s four­teenth album for Colum­bia Records, but his break­through. Up to that point he and his quar­tet had released a num­ber of live albums record­ed at col­leges (which pro­mot­ed a safe but hip stu­dious kind of jazz) and sev­er­al albums of jazz cov­ers, such as Dave Digs Dis­ney. But Time Out was a ful­ly formed con­cept album of sorts: an explo­ration into time sig­na­tures that jazz hadn’t real­ly touched yet.

As Poly­phon­ic points out, Joe Morel­lo, Brubeck’s drum­mer, was indeed well versed in com­pli­cat­ed time sig­na­tures from his clas­si­cal back­ground as a vio­lin­ist. It was Morel­lo who exper­i­ment­ed with a groove in 5/4 time that became the back­bone of “Take Five.” Brubeck knew a good thing when he heard it and gives Morel­lo one of the best solos of the entire LP.

Best of all, Time Out is one those clas­sic albums because of how it mix­es the exper­i­men­tal with the com­mer­cial, a hard feat in any era, but even more impres­sive in that best of all jazz years, 1959. Brubeck con­tin­ued to explore time sig­na­tures on this album’s sequel Time Fur­ther Out, which is also rec­om­mend­ed.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play an Enchant­i­ng Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

Dave Brubeck’s Sur­prise Duet: A Mag­i­cal Moment at the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry (1997)

Watch an Incred­i­ble Per­for­mance of “Take Five” by the Dave Brubeck Quar­tet (1964)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

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