A Fascinating 3D Animation Shows the Depths of the Ocean

in Animation, Nature, Science | November 9th, 2021

Deep sea explo­ration and the sci­ence of oceanog­ra­phy began 150 years ago when British sur­vey ship HMS Chal­lenger set off from Portsmouth with 181 miles of rope. The Roy­al Soci­ety tasked the expe­di­tion, among oth­er things, with “investigat[ing] the phys­i­cal con­di­tions of the deep sea… in regard to depth, tem­per­a­ture cir­cu­la­tion, spe­cif­ic grav­i­ty and pen­e­tra­tion of light.” It was the first such voy­age of its kind.

To accom­plish its objec­tives, Chal­lenger swapped all but two of its guns for spe­cial­ized equip­ment, includ­ing — as assis­tant ship’s stew­ard Joseph Matkin described in a let­ter home — “thou­sands of small air tight bot­tles and lit­tle box­es about the size of Valen­tine box­es packed in Iron Tanks for keep­ing spec­i­mens in, insects, but­ter­flies, moss­es, plants, etc… a pho­to­graph­ic room on the main deck, also a dis­sect­ing room for carv­ing up Bears, Whales, etc.”

Find­ings from the four-year voy­age totaled almost thir­ty-thou­sand pages when pub­lished in a report. But the Chal­lenger’s most famous lega­cy may be its dis­cov­ery of the Mar­i­ana Trench. The ship record­ed a sound­ing of 4,475 fath­oms (26,850 ft.) in a south­ern part of the trench sub­se­quent­ly called Chal­lenger Deep, and now known as the deep­est part of the ocean and the “low­est point on Earth.” The most recent sound­ings using advanced sonar have mea­sured its depth at some­where between 35,768 to 36,037 feet, or almost 7 miles (11 kilo­me­ters).

Chal­lenger Deep is so deep that if Ever­est were sub­merged into its depths, the moun­tain’s peak would still be rough­ly a mile and a half under­wa­ter. In 1960, a manned crew of two descend­ed into the trench. Dozens of remote oper­at­ed vehi­cles (ROVs) have explored its depths since, but it would­n’t be until 2012 that anoth­er human made the 2.5 hour descent, when Avatar and The Abyss direc­tor James Cameron financed his own expe­di­tion. Then in 2019, explor­er Vic­tor Vescoso made the jour­ney, set­ting the Guin­ness world record for deep­est manned sub­ma­rine dive when he reached the East­ern Pool, a depres­sion with­in Chal­lenger Deep. Just last year, he best­ed the record with his mis­sion spe­cial­ist John Rost, explor­ing the East­ern Pool for over four hours.

Last year’s descent brings the total num­ber of peo­ple to vis­it Chal­lenger Deep to five. How can the rest of us wrap our heads around a point so deep beneath us it can swal­low up Mount Ever­est? The beau­ti­ful­ly detailed, 3D ani­ma­tion at the top of the post does a great job of con­vey­ing the rel­a­tive depths of oceans, seas, and major lakes, show­ing under­sea tun­nels and ship­wrecks along the way, with man­made objects like the Eif­fel Tow­er (which marks, with­in a few meters, the deep­est scu­ba dive) and Burj Khal­i­fa placed at inter­vals for scale.

By the time the ani­ma­tion — cre­at­ed by Meta­Ball­Stu­dios’ Alvaro Gra­cia Mon­toya– sub­merges us ful­ly (with boom­ing, echo­ing musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment) in the Mar­i­ana Trench, we may feel that we have had a lit­tle taste of the awe that lies at the deep­est ocean depths.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Rad­i­cal Map Puts the Oceans–Not Land–at the Cen­ter of Plan­et Earth (1942)

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

Cli­mate Change Gets Strik­ing­ly Visu­al­ized by a Scot­tish Art Instal­la­tion

Film­mak­er James Cameron Going 36,000 Feet Under the Sea

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How Martin Luther King, Jr. Wrote His Momentous “I Have a Dream” Speech (1963)

in History, Politics | November 9th, 2021

Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech ranks as one of the most famous of Amer­i­can speech­es. As Evan Puschak, the Nerd­writer, says in his video above, it’s “arguably the most impor­tant and well-known speech of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” King’s pop­u­lar vision of a peace­ful, har­mo­nious, mul­tira­cial democ­ra­cy might explain why nine out of ten Amer­i­cans have a pos­i­tive atti­tude toward King now. That polling looks very dif­fer­ent by par­ty affil­i­a­tion. Even so, many more Amer­i­cans look fond­ly on King’s mem­o­ry than sup­port­ed (or now sup­port) the racial and eco­nom­ic jus­tice for which he fought. The cur­rent use of King as a white­washed mar­tyr fig­ure, Michael Har­riot argues, obscures the real­i­ty of “a dream yet unful­filled,” as King once called the U.S.

Even after King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Wash­ing­ton and his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize win, only about 37% of Amer­i­cans approved of his mes­sage in 1966 Gallup polling, a num­ber that dropped even low­er when he came out against the Viet­nam war in 1967. Approval for MLK “only start­ed to shift after his assas­si­na­tion in 1968,” writes Senior Data Sci­en­tist Lin­ley Sanders at YouGov.  King’s “Dream” speech at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al may be posthu­mous­ly remem­bered as his finest hour by those who weren’t there. For thou­sands of peo­ple who were, his address was also a fiery sum­ma­tion of the major themes up to that point in dozens of speech­es and ser­mons.

“Rid­dled with big dif­fi­cult terms and full of rhetor­i­cal devices that are inten­tion­al and prac­ticed,” Puschak says, the speech elo­quent­ly explained “why ful­ly 100 years after… the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion,” Black Amer­i­cans were still polit­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised and eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged. It did so through a series of dense allu­sions to the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion, the coun­try’s found­ing doc­u­ments, the song “My Coun­try ‘Tis of Thee,” and oth­er arti­facts of Amer­i­can nation­al iden­ti­ty, in an attempt to “frame civ­il rights in the larg­er Amer­i­can mythol­o­gy so that those who iden­ti­fy with that mythol­o­gy might incor­po­rate this strug­gle into that sto­ry.”

The Amer­i­can sto­ry has jus­ti­fied oppres­sion and fear of the same peo­ple fight­ing for full inte­gra­tion into the nation­al poli­ty dur­ing the Civ­il Rights move­ment, a prob­lem­at­ic irony of which King was hard­ly unaware. He also drew from tra­di­tions old­er than the U.S. found­ing — the human­ism of Shake­speare and the prophet­ic voic­es of the Old Tes­ta­ment, for exam­ple. These were indeed prac­ticed maneu­vers. (King very much lived down the C he once got in a pub­lic speak­ing class.) But the rous­ing refrains in his speech’s con­clu­sion — which gave the speech its title and spread its fame around the world — were ad-libbed.

“I start­ed out read­ing the speech, and I read it down to a point… the audi­ence response was won­der­ful that day” King lat­er remem­bered. “And all of a sud­den this thing came to me that… I’d used many times before… ‘I have a dream.’ ” The ref­er­ence did­n’t come out of nowhere, says Clarence Jones, who helped King write the speech’s text just hours before it was deliv­ered. Jones recalled that King’s favorite gospel singer Mahalia Jack­son called out for the then-famil­iar (to her) theme:

As he was read­ing from the text of his pre­pared remarks, there came a point when Mahalia Jack­son, who was sit­ting on the plat­form, said, “Tell them about the dream, Mar­tin! Tell them about the dream.”

Now I have often spec­u­lat­ed that she had heard him talk in oth­er places… and make ref­er­ence to the dream. On June 23, 1963, in Detroit, he had made very express ref­er­ence to the dream.

When Mahalia shout­ed to him, I was stand­ing about 50 feet behind him… and I saw it hap­pen­ing in real time. He just took the text of his speech and moved it to the left side of the lectern. … And I said to some­body stand­ing next to me: “These peo­ple don’t know it, but they’re about to go to church.”

Before cel­e­brat­ing a redeemed inter­pre­ta­tion of the Amer­i­can dream in his extem­po­ra­ne­ous finale, King’s speech con­demned the nation’s real­i­ty as moral­ly cor­rupt and ille­git­i­mate. He urged restraint among his fol­low­ers through non­vi­o­lent “direct action,” but fore­saw worse to come before the coun­try could real­ize its poten­tial.

It would be fatal for the nation to over­look the urgency of the moment. This swel­ter­ing sum­mer of the Negro’s legit­i­mate dis­con­tent will not pass until there is an invig­o­rat­ing autumn of free­dom and equal­i­ty. 1963 is not an end, but a begin­ning. Those who hope that the Negro need­ed to blow off steam and will now be con­tent will have a rude awak­en­ing if the nation returns to busi­ness as usu­al.

“There will be nei­ther rest nor tran­quil­i­ty in Amer­i­ca until the Negro is grant­ed his cit­i­zen­ship rights,” King con­tin­ued. “The whirl­winds of revolt will con­tin­ue to shake the foun­da­tions of our nation until the bright day of jus­tice emerges.” Maybe it’s lit­tle won­der many white Amer­i­cans, hear­ing these remarks, turned away from King’s vision of racial jus­tice, which required reck­on­ing with “the unspeak­able hor­rors of police bru­tal­i­ty.” End­ing the “unearned suf­fer­ing” of Black Amer­i­cans, King knew, would come at too great a cost to unearned priv­i­lege. Indeed, the FBI heard King’s words as a direct threat to the coun­try’s his­toric pow­er struc­ture. After the “I Have Dream” speech, the Bureau seri­ous­ly inten­si­fied its pro­gram to sur­veil, dis­cred­it, and destroy him.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Got C’s in Pub­lic Speaking–Before Becom­ing a Straight‑A Stu­dent & a World Class Ora­tor

Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Explains the Impor­tance of Jazz: Hear the Speech He Gave at the First Berlin Jazz Fes­ti­val (1964)

Imag­in­ing the Mar­tin Luther King and Mal­colm X Debate That Nev­er Hap­pened

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

When Nikola Tesla Claimed to Have Invented a “Death Ray,” Capable of Destroying Enemies 250 Miles Away & Making War Obsolete

in History, Technology | November 8th, 2021

Just last week I vis­it­ed Nia­gara Falls and beheld the noble-look­ing stat­ue of Niko­la Tes­la installed there. It struck me as a fit­ting trib­ute to the inven­tor of the Death Ray. But then, its pres­ence prob­a­bly had more to do with Tes­la’s hav­ing advised the builders of the falls’ pow­er plant to use two-phase alter­nat­ing cur­rent, the form of elec­tric­i­ty of which he’s now remem­bered as a pio­neer. And in any case, Tes­la nev­er actu­al­ly invent­ed a death ray, or at least he nev­er demon­strat­ed one. He did, how­ev­er, claim to have been work­ing on a sys­tem he called “tele­force,” which shot what he described as a “death beam” — rays, he insist­ed, would nev­er be fea­si­ble — both “thin­ner than a hair” and pow­er­ful enough to “destroy any­thing approach­ing with­in 200 miles,” mak­ing war­fare effec­tive­ly obso­lete.

These pro­nounce­ments attract­ed spe­cial media atten­tion in the 1930s. “Hype about the weapon real­ly took off in the run-up to World War II as Nazi Ger­many assem­bled a fear­some air force,” writes Sam Kean at the Sci­ence His­to­ry Insti­tute. “Peo­ple in Tesla’s home­land, then called Yugoslavia, begged him to return home and install the rays to pro­tect them from the Nazi men­ace.” But no known evi­dence sug­gests that the elder­ly Tes­la had fig­ured out how to actu­al­ly make tele­force work.

At that point he had more press­ing prob­lems, not least the cost of the hotels in which he lived. “In 1915, his famous War­den­clyffe tow­er plant was sold to help pay off his $20,000 debt at the Wal­dorf-Asto­ria,” writes Men­tal Floss’ Sta­cy Con­radt, and lat­er he racked up a sim­i­lar­ly large bill at the Gov­er­nor Clin­ton. “He couldn’t afford the pay­ment, so instead, Tes­la offered the man­age­ment some­thing price­less: one of his inven­tions.”

That “inven­tion” may have been the box exam­ined after Tes­la’s death in 1943 by physi­cist John G. Trump (uncle of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump). Left in a hotel vault, it was rumored to be “a pro­to­type of his death ray.” Tes­la had includ­ed a note, writes Kean, that “claimed the pro­to­type inside was worth $10,000. More omi­nous­ly, it said the box would det­o­nate if opened incor­rect­ly.” But when “the physi­cist steeled him­self and began tear­ing off the brown paper,” he “must have laughed at what he saw under­neath: a Wheat­stone bridge, a tool for mea­sur­ing elec­tri­cal resis­tance. It was a com­mon, mun­dane device — some old junk, real­ly. It was cer­tain­ly not a death ray, not even close.”

Though it must have been as pow­er­ful a dis­ap­point­ment as it was a relief, did that dis­cov­ery prove that Tes­la nev­er invent­ed a death ray? The U.S. gov­ern­ment did­n’t take its chances on the mat­ter: as History.com’s Sarah Pruitt tells it, agents “swooped in and took pos­ses­sion of all the prop­er­ty and doc­u­ments from his room at the New York­er Hotel” right after Tes­la’s death. And “while the FBI orig­i­nal­ly record­ed some 80 trunks among Tesla’s effects, only 60 arrived in Bel­grade,” home of the Niko­la Tes­la Muse­um, near­ly a decade lat­er. The idea of death rays has long sur­vived Tes­la him­self, tak­ing on forms from the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion’s “Star Wars” nuclear defense pro­gram to the mil­i­tary laser weapons test­ed in recent years. Few such tech­nolo­gies seem capa­ble of end­ing all war, as Tes­la promised. But if one ever does, we could hon­or his mem­o­ry by refer­ring to it, in the man­ner he pre­ferred, as not a death ray but a death beam.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1926, Niko­la Tes­la Pre­dicts the World of 2026

The Elec­tric Rise and Fall of Niko­la Tes­la: As Told by Tech­noil­lu­sion­ist Mar­co Tem­pest

Niko­la Tes­la Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed the Rise of the Inter­net & Smart Phone in 1926

Mark Twain Plays With Elec­tric­i­ty in Niko­la Tesla’s Lab (Pho­to, 1894)

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

John Cleese Presents His 5‑Step Plan for Shorter, More Productive Meetings (1976)

in Business, Comedy, Education, Politics | November 8th, 2021

Let’s face it, meet­ings are bor­ing at best and at worst, chaot­ic, volatile, and poten­tial­ly vio­lent. And let’s also face it: to get through life as func­tion­ing adults, we’re going to have to sit through one or two of them — or even one or two of them a week.

Maybe we’re the one who calls the meet­ings, and maybe they all feel like a waste of time. One solu­tion is to have more infor­mal meet­ings. This can be espe­cial­ly tempt­ing in the age of work-from-home, when it’s impos­si­ble to know how many meet­ing atten­dees are wear­ing pants. Few­er rules can raise the spon­tane­ity quo­tient, but allow­ing for the unex­pect­ed can invite dis­as­ter as well as epiphany.

On the oth­er end of the scale, we have the for­mal­i­ty of par­lia­men­tary rules of order, such as those intro­duced by U.S. Army offi­cer Hen­ry Mar­tyn Robert in 1876. Robert, whose father was the first pres­i­dent of More­house Col­lege, gained a wealth of expe­ri­ence with unpro­duc­tive meet­ings as he trav­eled around the coun­try with the Army. One par­tic­u­lar meet­ing became a defin­ing expe­ri­ence, as one account has it:

While in San Fran­cis­co, the local leader of his com­mu­ni­ty didn’t show up for a church meet­ing. Hen­ry Robert was asked to pre­side over the town hall (with­out any pri­or notice). Let’s just say that on this par­tic­u­lar evening in 1876, he did a bad job. An hour into the meet­ing, peo­ple were scream­ing and the church actu­al­ly erupt­ed into open con­flict.

Sad­ly, this sort of thing has become almost rou­tine at town halls and school board meet­ings. But it needn’t be so at the office. Nor, says John Cleese in the brief video above, do meet­ings need to fol­low the for­mal­i­ty of par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure.

Cleese’s rules are sim­pler even than the sim­pli­fied Roberts or Rosen­berg’s Rules of Order, an even more sim­pli­fied ver­sion of Robert’s Rules. Fur­ther­more, Cleese avoids using words like “Rules” which can be a turn-off in our egal­i­tar­i­an times. Instead, he presents us with a “5‑Step Plan” for hold­ing bet­ter and short­er meet­ings.

1. Plan — Clear your mind about the pre­cise objec­tives of the meet­ing. Be clear why you need it and list the sub­jects.
2. Inform — Make sure every­one knows exact­ly what is being dis­cussed, why, and what you want from the dis­cus­sion. Antic­i­pate what infor­ma­tion and peo­ple may be need­ed and make sure they’re there.
3. Pre­pare — Pre­pare the log­i­cal sequence items. Pre­pare the time allo­ca­tion to each item on the basis of its impor­tance not its urgency.
4. Struc­ture and Con­trol — Take the evi­dence stage before the inter­pre­ta­tion stage and that before the action stage and stop peo­ple jump­ing ahead or going back over ground.
5. Sum­ma­rize all deci­sion and record them straight away with the name of the per­son respon­si­ble for any action

Easy, right? Well, maybe not so easy in prac­tice, but these steps can, at the very least, illu­mi­nate what’s wrong with your meet­ings, which may cur­rent­ly resem­ble one of Cleese’s many par­o­dies of busi­ness cul­ture. Nobody video­phoned it in at the time, but try­ing to fig­ure out who’s sup­posed to be doing what can still take up an after­noon. Let Cleese’s five steps bring order to the chaos.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

John Cleese Revis­its His 20 Years as an Ivy League Pro­fes­sor in His New Book, Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years

Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese Cre­ates Ads for the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion

John Cleese’s Very Favorite Com­e­dy Sketch­es

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch the Jackson 5’s First Appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (1969)

in Animation, Music, Television | November 8th, 2021

Who dis­cov­ered the Jack­son 5?

Motown founder Berry Gordy?

Empress of Soul Gladys Knight?

Diva Diana Ross?

Every­one in atten­dance for Ama­teur Night at the Apol­lo on August 13, 1967?

For many unsus­pect­ing Amer­i­cans, the answer may as well have been tele­vi­sion host Ed Sul­li­van, who intro­duced the “sen­sa­tion­al group” of five young broth­ers from Gary, Indi­ana to view­ers in Decem­ber 1969, two years after their Ama­teur Night tri­umph. Thir­teen years ear­li­er, a wall of sound ema­nat­ing from a live in-stu­dio audi­ence of teenage girls told Sullivan’s home view­ers that anoth­er young sen­sa­tion — Elvis Pres­ley — must be some­thing spe­cial.

The Jack­son 5 need­ed no such help.

While there are many close-ups of their fresh young faces, the con­trol room wise­ly chose to zoom out much of the time, in appre­ci­a­tion of the broth­ers’ pre­ci­sion chore­og­ra­phy.

The bright­est star was the youngest, eleven-year-old Michael, tak­ing lead vocals in pur­ple fedo­ra and fringed vest on a cov­er of Sly and the Fam­i­ly Stone’s “Stand.”

Jack­ie, Tito, Jer­maine, and Mar­lon pro­vide sup­port for a bit of hokum that posi­tions Michael at the cen­ter of an ele­men­tary school romance, by way of intro­duc­tion to a full throat­ed cov­er of Smokey Robinson’s “Who’s Lov­ing You”:

We toast­ed our love dur­ing milk break. I gave her my cook­ies! We fell out dur­ing fin­ger­paint­ing. 

Author Carvell Wal­lace reflects on this moment in his 2015 New York­er review of Steve Knopper’s biog­ra­phy MJ: The Genius of Michael Jack­son:

Halfway through, he for­gets his lines and freezes, look­ing back at his old­er broth­ers for help. It’s an alarm­ing­ly vul­ner­a­ble moment, one only pos­si­ble in the era of live tele­vi­sion. You feel bad for him. It sud­den­ly doesn’t seem right that a kid should be made to per­form live in front of an entire coun­try. Yet he some­how finds his way back and stum­bles through.

When the music starts, we see some­thing else entire­ly. The first note he sings is as con­fi­dent, sure, and pur­pose­ful as any adult could ever be. He trans­forms from ner­vous child at a tal­ent show into time­less embod­i­ment of long­ing. Not only does he sing exact­ly on key but he appears to sing from the very bot­tom of his heart. He stares into the cam­era, shakes his head, and blinks back tears in per­fect imi­ta­tion of a six­ties soul man. And it feels, for a moment, as though there are two dif­fer­ent beings here. One is a child—a smart kid, to be sure, and cute, but not more spe­cial than any oth­er child. He is sub­ject to the same laws of life—pain, age, con­fu­sion, fear—as we all are. The oth­er being seems to be a spir­it of sorts, one who knows only the truest expres­sion of human feel­ing. And this spir­it appears to have ran­dom­ly inhab­it­ed the body of this par­tic­u­lar mor­tal kid. In so doing, it has sen­tenced him to a life­time of inde­scrib­able enchant­ment and con­sum­mate suf­fer­ing.

Michael’s explo­sive per­for­mance of the Jack­son 5’s first nation­al sin­gle, “I Want You Back,” released just two months before their Sul­li­van Show appear­ance, gives us that “spir­it” in full force.

It’s also not hard to imag­ine that the broth­ers’ thrilling­ly exe­cut­ed chore­og­ra­phy is the result of a lit­er­al­ly pun­ish­ing rehearsal reg­i­men, a fac­tor of the King of Pop’s trou­bled lega­cy.

The Sul­li­van Show appear­ance ensured that there would be no stop­ping this train. Five months lat­er, when the Jack­sons returned to the Sul­li­van Show, “I Want You Back” had sold over a mil­lion copies, as had “ABC,” which they per­formed as a med­ley.

Boy­hood is fleet­ing, mak­ing Jack­son­ma­nia a carpe diem type sit­u­a­tion.

The peri­od from 1969 to 1972 saw an onslaught of Jack­son 5‑related merch and a funky Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon whose pilot tart­ed up the Diana Ross ori­gin sto­ry with an escaped pet snake.

It was good while it last­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Elvis’ Three Appear­ances on The Ed Sul­li­van Show: Watch His­to­ry in the Mak­ing and from the Waist Up (1956)

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

The Cho­rus Project Fea­tures Teenagers Per­form­ing Hits by the Kinks, David Byrne, the Jack­son 5 & More

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Board Game Ideology — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #108

in Games, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 8th, 2021

As board games are becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar with adults, we ask: What’s the rela­tion­ship between a board game’s mechan­ics and its nar­ra­tive? Does the “mes­sage” of a board game mat­ter?

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by game design­er Tom­my Maranges, edu­ca­tor Michelle Par­rinel­lo-Cason, and ex-philoso­pher Al Bak­er to talk about re-skin­ning games, design­ing play­er expe­ri­ences, play styles, game com­plex­i­ty, and more.

Some of the games we men­tion include Puer­to Rico, Monop­oly, Set­tlers of Catan, Sor­ry, Munchkin, Sushi Go, Wel­come To…, Code­names, Pan­dem­ic, Occam Hor­ror, Ter­ra Mys­ti­ca, chess, Tick­et to Ride, Splen­dor, Pho­to­syn­the­sis, Spir­it Island, Escape from the Dark Cas­tle, and Wingspan.

Some arti­cles that fed our dis­cus­sion includ­ed:

The two games Tom­my cre­at­ed that we bring up are Secret Hitler and Inhu­man Con­di­tions.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Wunderkind Musician Nandi Bushell Pays Tribute to Charlie Watts, Playing All of the Tracks on “Gimme Shelter”

in Music | November 7th, 2021

We’ve fea­tured 11-year-old Nan­di Bushell here before. Per­haps you’ll recall her epic drum bat­tle with Dave Grohl. Today she’s back, pay­ing trib­ute to Char­lie Watts and per­form­ing the indi­vid­ual tracks on the Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter.” First comes the gui­tar; then the bass, per­cus­sion and vocals; and next the drums–all the while she’s hav­ing fun. And you will too. Enjoy.

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 and BlueSky.

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 Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Watch an Epic Drum Bat­tle, Pit­ting a 9‑Year-Old Girl Against Foo Fight­er Dave Grohl

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

Mer­ry Clay­ton Tells the Sto­ry of Her Amaz­ing Back­ing Vocal on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter”

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Richard Pryor & George Carlin Appear Together on a Classic Episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

in Comedy | November 5th, 2021

George Car­lin and Richard Pry­or nev­er got to star in a film togeth­er, so this appear­ance of the two on this 1981 Tonight Show clip is a great, rare chance to see two giants togeth­er. Actu­al­ly, make that three, because host John­ny Car­son shows why he set the stan­dard in that very Amer­i­can genre, the late night talk show. It’s also an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see how much has changed in the world of late night.

Late night talk shows are almost exclu­sive­ly a polit­i­cal affair these days. For many Amer­i­cans, this is the place to get their satir­i­cal take on the news in the open­ing mono­logue, pos­si­bly their only take. Some nights you can watch the three main net­works and sev­er­al pre­mi­um cable/streaming chan­nels and find the same news item, riffed on a dozen dif­fer­ent ways.

The Tonight Show with John­ny Carson wasn’t a “sim­pler time,” but it was very dif­fer­ent. More casu­al, def­i­nite­ly, and more per­son­able. I think that’s what comes across in this clip. Car­son knows both Car­lin and Pry­or and their par­tic­u­lar tal­ents.

Carlin’s rou­tine is pure­ly obser­va­tion­al. Cur­rent­ly he is a meme on many a boomer’s feed, but always late-stage Car­lin, the angry, nihilis­tic polit­i­cal come­di­an. (That’s not a bad thing, and inter­est­ing that he’s being claimed these days by both the Left and the Right). Here he’s still Class Clown Car­lin, with an elas­tic face, deliv­er­ing a ver­sion of his “stuff vs. crap” rou­tine, capped off with an out-of-nowhere abor­tion joke. It’s polit­i­cal in the vaguest sense.

His sit down with Car­son is more of a chance to riff on char­i­ty orga­ni­za­tion names, and Car­son lets him at it.

Pry­or is on to pro­mote Bustin’ Loose, his odd­ly sen­ti­men­tal 1981 com­e­dy. But all that’s on Carson’s and the audience’s mind is the after­math of the free­bas­ing inci­dent, where he doused him­self with rum and set him­self on fire while high on cocaine. He near­ly died.

The del­i­cate inter­change between Carson—who legit­i­mate­ly wants to know how Pry­or is doing—and Pry­or, who both mocks him­self, admits too much, and retreats behind a wall of humor, makes this essen­tial view­ing. Pry­or rem­i­nisces about his father and his time com­ing up through standup with Car­lin at Green­wich Village’s Cafe au Go-Go. He even admits, because why not, to lift­ing his ear­ly jokes as a com­ic from Bill Cos­by and Dick Gre­go­ry. The lat­ter “used to have stuff in Jet Mag­a­zine, you know, and that’s how I start­ed, read­ing his mate­r­i­al. I’d do it on stage. And that was my first break­through. I got a lot of laughs with his mate­r­i­al.”

Pry­or rides that line between telling on your­self and telling a fib.

And that last fas­ci­nat­ing shot: cred­its rolling over Car­son, the guests, and Ed McMa­hon, stand­ing around, hav­ing a chat, as if they’re wait­ing for the coat check atten­dant in the lob­by.

Ram­sey Ess, who wrote about the whole episode—includ­ing Carson’s decid­ed­ly non-polit­i­cal mono­logue— on Vul­ture in 2012, not­ed about the Pry­or inter­view:

When John­ny asks Richard about his dreams, you for­get about the audi­ence, you for­get about George Car­lin sit­ting over there and you sud­den­ly are brought into a place where this is an impor­tant ques­tion and you need to hear that answer, even though you nev­er would have thought to won­der about such a thing on your own. This inti­ma­cy, for me, is what made Car­son dif­fer­ent.

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 and BlueSky.

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 Carlin’s “Mod­ern Man” Rap

New Dig­i­tal Archive, “Richard Pryor’s Peo­ria,” Takes You Inside the Dark, Live­ly World That Shaped the Pio­neer­ing Come­di­an

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

Carl Sagan Tells John­ny Car­son What’s Wrong with Star Wars: “They’re All White” & There’s a “Large Amount of Human Chau­vin­ism in It” (1978)

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

What Makes the Mona Lisa a Great Painting: A Deep Dive

in Art, History | November 5th, 2021

This past sum­mer we fea­tured a short video intro­duc­tion to the Mona Lisa here on Open Cul­ture. You’d think that if any paint­ing did­n’t need an intro­duc­tion, that would be the one. But the video’s cre­ator James Payne showed many of us just how much we still have to learn about Leonar­do’s most famous work of art — and indeed, per­haps the most famous work by any artist. On his Youtube chan­nel Great Art Explained, Payne offers clear and pow­er­ful analy­ses of paint­ings from van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night and Hop­per’s Nighthawks to Warhol’s Mar­i­lyn Dip­tych and Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca. But there are some images to which a fif­teen-minute video essay can’t hope to do jus­tice.

In those cas­es, Payne has been known to fol­low up with a deluxe expand­ed edi­tion. Tak­ing on Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, he fol­lowed up three indi­vid­ual fif­teen-minute videos — for a trip­tych, a neat union of form and sub­stance — with a full-length treat­ment of the whole work.

Payne’s full-length ver­sion of his Mona Lisa video more than dou­bles the length of the orig­i­nal. “This is the more com­pre­hen­sive ver­sion I always want­ed to do,” he notes, adding that it “uses some of the infor­ma­tion from the first film (but in high­er res­o­lu­tion with bet­ter sound and with clear­er graph­ics), as well as answer­ing the hun­dreds of ques­tions: Why does­n’t she have eye­brows? Is it a self-por­trait? Is she only famous because she was stolen? How do we know what he was think­ing?”

This time around, Payne has more to say about how Leonar­do cre­at­ed such a com­pelling por­trait on a tech­ni­cal lev­el, but also why he came to paint it in the first place. On top of that, the expand­ed for­mat gives him time to exam­ine the much more con­ven­tion­al por­traits Leonar­do’s con­tem­po­raries were paint­ing at the time, as well as what’s known as the Pra­do Mona Lisa. A depic­tion of the same sit­ter that may even have been paint­ed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly by one of Leonar­do’s stu­dents, it makes for an illu­mi­nat­ing object of com­par­i­son. Payne also gets into the 1911 theft and recov­ery that ulti­mate­ly did a great deal for the paint­ing’s rep­u­ta­tion, as well as its 1963 exhi­bi­tion in Amer­i­ca that, thanks to tele­vi­sion, turned it into a mass-media icon. By now we’ve all had more glimpses of the Mona Lisa more times than we can remem­ber, but it takes enthu­si­asm like Payne’s to remind us of all the ways we can tru­ly see it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing?: An Expla­na­tion in 15 Min­utes

Why Leonar­do da Vinci’s Great­est Paint­ing is Not the Mona Lisa

How the Mona Lisa Went From Being Bare­ly Known, to Sud­den­ly the Most Famous Paint­ing in the World (1911)

Orig­i­nal Por­trait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Lay­ers of da Vinci’s Mas­ter­piece

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

An Introduction to the Chrysler Building, New York’s Art Deco Masterpiece, by John Malkovich (1994)

in Architecture, Design, Film, History | November 5th, 2021

No old stuff for me, no bes­tial copy­ings of arch­es and columns and cor­nices. Me, I’m new.  
             — archi­tect William Van Alen, design­er of the Chrysler Build­ing

Many peo­ple claim the Chrysler Build­ing as their favorite New York City edi­fice and actor John Malkovich is one such:

It’s so crazy and vig­or­ous in its exe­cu­tion, so breath­tak­ing in its vision, so bril­liant­ly eccen­tric.

Malkovich, who’s not shy about tak­ing pot­shots at the city’s “vio­lence and filth” in the BBC doc­u­men­tary short above, rhap­sodizes over Detroit indus­tri­al­ist Wal­ter P. Chrysler’s “lat­ter day pyra­mid in Man­hat­tan.”

Malkovich’s unmis­tak­able voice, pegged by The Guardian as “waft­ing, whis­pery, and reedy” and which he him­self poo poos as sound­ing like it belongs to some­one who’s “labored under heavy nar­cotics for years,” pairs well with descrip­tions so plum­my, one has to imag­ine he penned them him­self. (No writer is cred­it­ed.)

After show­ing us the open-to-the-pub­lic lobby’s “deli­cious Art Deco fit­tings,” ceil­ing mur­al, and intri­cate, veneered ele­va­tor doors, Malkovich gives us a tour of some off-lim­its upper floors.

Unlike the Empire State Build­ing, which best­ed the Chrysler Building’s brief record as the world’s tallest build­ing (1046 feet, 77 sto­ries), you can’t pur­chase tick­ets to admire the view from the top.

But Malkovich has the star pow­er to gain access to Celes­tial, the sev­en­ty-first floor obser­va­to­ry that has been closed to the pub­lic since 1945 and is cur­rent­ly occu­pied by a pri­vate firm.

He also has a wan­der around the bar­ren Cloud Club, a sup­per club and speakeasy for gen­tle­man one per­centers. Its mish­mash of styles rep­re­sent­ed a con­ces­sion on archi­tect Van Alen’s part. The build­ing’s exte­ri­or was an ele­gant mod­ernist homage to Chrysler’s hub­caps and hood orna­ments, but between the 66th and 68th floor, the Cloud Club catered to the promis­cu­ous tastes of the rich and pow­er­ful — Tudor, Olde Eng­lish, Neo-Clas­si­cal…

The New York Times reports that it boast­ed what “was reput­ed to be the grand­est men’s room in all of New York.”

A Duke Elling­ton sound­track and vin­tage footage fea­tur­ing Van Alen cos­tumed to resem­ble his famous cre­ation sup­ply a taste of the excite­ment that her­ald­ed the building’s 1930 open­ing, even if those with a fear of heights may swoon at the sight of pret­ty young things reclin­ing on high beams and per­form­ing oth­er feats of der­ring-do.

Malkovich, ever the cool cus­tomer, dis­plays his lack of ver­ti­go by casu­al­ly prop­ping a foot on the rooftop’s edge to com­mune with the icon­ic eagle-head­ed gar­goyles.

The building’s unique flour­ish­es caused a sen­sa­tion, but not every­one was a fan.

Malkovich clear­ly savors his swipe at crit­ics who decried the new build­ing as too shiny:

For­tu­nate­ly these crit­ics are long dead so we can’t even call their offices and taunt them as they should be taunt­ed.

He’s more tem­per­ate when it comes to author and social philoso­pher Lewis Mum­ford, whose beef with the sky­scraper is under­stand­able, giv­en the his­toric con­text — the stock mar­ket crashed the day after the secret­ly con­struct­ed spire was riv­et­ed into place:

Such build­ings show one of the real dan­gers of a plu­toc­ra­cy: it gives the mas­ters of our civ­i­liza­tion an unusu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to exhib­it their bar­barous egos, with no sense of restraint or shame.

Near­ly one hun­dred years lat­er, bar­barous egos con­tin­ue to erect sky­scrap­ing tem­ples to their own van­i­ty, but as Malkovich points out, they’re far bland­er, if taller.

The Chrysler Build­ing is now wide­ly rec­og­nized as one of New York City’s most mag­nif­i­cent jew­els, and the Land­marks Preser­va­tion Com­mis­sion recent­ly approved plans to con­struct a pub­lic obser­va­tion deck on the Chrysler Building’s 61st floor, just above its icon­ic Art Deco eagles, though it’s too ear­ly to tell if it will be ready in time for a cen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion.

Until then, the gen­er­al pub­lic must con­tent itself with explor­ing the Chrysler Building’s lob­by dur­ing week­day busi­ness hours.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

Famous Archi­tects Dress as Their Famous New York City Build­ings (1931)

A New Inter­ac­tive Map Shows All Four Mil­lion Build­ings That Exist­ed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Michelangelo Entered a Competition to Put a Missing Arm Back on Laocoön and His Sons — and Lost

in Art, History | November 4th, 2021

Not many ancient stat­ues are as well-known as Lao­coön and His Sons. Mas­ter­ful­ly sculpt­ed some time between the first cen­tu­ry BC and the first cen­tu­ry AD, it depicts the epony­mous Tro­jan priest in an ago­niz­ing strug­gle with the ser­pents that will kill one or both of his sons. The details of the tale vary depend­ing on the teller: Vir­gil describes Lao­coön as a priest of Posei­don who dared to attempt expos­ing the famous Tro­jan Horse ruse, and Sopho­cles describes him as a priest of Apol­lo who vio­lat­ed his vow of celiba­cy. Whichev­er ver­sion of the sto­ry he heard, the sculp­tor clear­ly drew from it pow­er­ful enough inspi­ra­tion to impress Pliny the Elder, in whose Nat­ur­al His­to­ry the piece fig­ures.

Even among the more artis­ti­cal­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed behold­ers of the Renais­sance, Lao­coön and His Sons proved a cap­ti­vat­ing piece of work. Unearthed from a Roman vine­yard in 1506, it looked to have weath­ered the inter­ven­ing mil­len­ni­um and half with much less wear and tear than most large arti­facts from antiq­ui­ty — though Lao­coön him­self was, con­spic­u­ous­ly, miss­ing an arm. Com­mis­sioned by Pope Julius II, Vat­i­can archi­tect Dona­to Bra­mante “held a con­test to see who could come up with the best ver­sion of the arm restora­tion,” writes Kaushik Pato­wary at Amus­ing Plan­et. “Michelan­ge­lo sug­gest­ed that Laocoön’s miss­ing arm should be bent back as if the Tro­jan priest was try­ing to rip the ser­pent off his back.”

Michelan­ge­lo was­n’t the only Renais­sance man in com­pe­ti­tion: “Raphael, who was a dis­tant rel­a­tive of Bra­mante, favored an extend­ed arm. In the end, Jacopo Sanso­vi­no was declared the win­ner, whose ver­sion with an out­stretched arm aligned with Raphael’s own vision of how the stat­ue should look.” Lao­coön was thus even­tu­al­ly restored with his arm out­streched, and kept that way until, “in a strange twist of fate, an antique back­ward-bent arm was dis­cov­ered in a Roman work­shop in 1906, a few hun­dred meters from where the stat­ue group had been found four hun­dred years ear­li­er.” Posi­tioned just as Michelan­ge­lo had sug­gest­ed, this dis­em­bod­ied mar­ble limb turned out unmis­tak­ably to have come from Lao­coön and His Sons — but about three and a half cen­turies too late, alas, for Michelan­ge­lo to lord it over Raphael.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Creepy 19th Cen­tu­ry Re-Cre­ation of the Famous Ancient Roman Stat­ue, Lao­coön and His Sons

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

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculp­tures

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast
    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.