“It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” Michael Stipe Proclaims Again, and He Still Feels Fine

It has tak­en a viral pan­dem­ic, and a moun­tain of trag­ic fol­ly and more to come, but the inter­net has final­ly deliv­ered the qual­i­ty con­tent we deserve, at least when it comes to celebri­ties stuck at home. Night­ly bed­time sto­ries read by Dol­ly Par­ton? Inti­mate streamed per­for­mances from Neil Young, Ben Gib­bard, and many, many oth­ers, includ­ing stars of Broad­way and opera house stages? It can feel a lit­tle over­whelm­ing, espe­cial­ly for peo­ple work­ing, edu­cat­ing, and doing a hun­dred oth­er things in quar­an­tine. But if there’s some­one I real­ly want to hear from, it’s the guy who told us, thir­ty-some years ago, “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”

If you remem­ber the Rea­gan years, you remem­ber liv­ing under the threat of mass extinc­tion by nuclear win­ter and radi­a­tion poi­son­ing. The end of the world seemed immi­nent at the end of the Cold War. And Michael Stipe, in a man­i­cal­ly dance­able tune (depend­ing on your lev­el of sta­mi­na), pro­claimed a need for soli­tude after issu­ing his many griev­ances.

It is still the end of the world, he says in a recent video address about coro­n­avirus on his web­site (and a short­er ver­sion released on social media), and “I do feel fine. I feel okay. The impor­tant part of that lyric, that song title, is ‘As We Know It.’ We’re about to go through—we are going through some­thing that none of us have ever encoun­tered before….”

The moment is unique, of world­wide his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance as was the bel­liger­ent arms race of the late eight­ies, the ter­ri­ble A.I.D.S. epi­dem­ic, and oth­er cat­a­stroph­ic events occur­ring when R.E.M.  released Doc­u­ment, the 1987 album that intro­duced mil­lions of young fans to art-punk genius­es Wire—whose “Strange” Stipe and com­pa­ny cov­er; to blues­man Light­nin’ Hop­kins and red-bait­ing sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy, who lent their names to two songs; and to Lenny Bruce, pio­neer­ing 60s com­ic, who, like Stipe in the album’s Side One clos­er, is “not afraid” of earth­quakes, birds and snakes, aero­planes, and oth­er signs of the apoc­a­lypse. Things will change irrev­o­ca­bly, and life will prob­a­bly go on. In the mean­time, he says, “don’t mis-serve your own needs.”

You may not be sur­prised to learn the song re-entered the charts on March 13, 2020, as Poly­phon­ic informs us in their video at the top. “It’s easy to see why.” These days nuclear holo­caust seems low on the list of prob­a­ble caus­es for the world’s end, what with poten­tial eco­nom­ic col­lapse and more mas­sive cli­mate events fol­low­ing on COVID-19’s heels. Grim times indeed, as we know them, but they’re hard­ly the first we’ve faced in liv­ing mem­o­ry. Behind Stipe’s “glib irony” in “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” lies a fierce cri­tique of U.S. greed and vio­lence and, as always, an alter­na­tive ethos, one whose call we might espe­cial­ly heed in our days of iso­la­tion.

We’re eager to recon­nect in myr­i­ad ways, but time alone might not be such a bad idea. “Return, lis­ten to your­self churn,” Stipe sings, “lis­ten to your heart beat.” We can hear the final call for soli­tude as a dig at rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism, or a call to healthy intro­spec­tion. As the orig­i­nal video sug­gests, wad­ing through the clut­ter might help us reclaim the stuff that makes us our best selves. Along with issu­ing his PSA, Stipe has also released a video, above, of a new demo track, “No Time for Love Like Now.” Here, he ditch­es the arch­ness and anger of his fiery younger self for a plain­tive state­ment about what the world needs. You guessed it…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R.E.M. Reveals the Secrets Behind Their Emo­tion­al­ly-Charged Songs: “Los­ing My Reli­gion” and “Try Not to Breathe”

Why R.E.M.’s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Polit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Album” Ever

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

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

Customize Your Zoom Virtual Background with Free Works of Art

Lim­i­ta­tions stim­u­late cre­ativ­i­ty. While that phras­ing is cred­it­ed to busi­ness-man­age­ment schol­ar Hen­ry Mintzberg, the idea itself has a long his­to­ry. We know we work more fruit­ful­ly when we work with­in bound­aries, and we’ve known ever since our capa­bil­i­ties were lim­it­ed in ways bare­ly imag­in­able today. With the ongo­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic hav­ing tem­porar­i­ly redrawn the bound­aries of our lives, many of us have already begun to redis­cov­er our own cre­ativ­i­ty. Some have even done it on Zoom, the tele­con­fer­enc­ing soft­ware used by busi­ness­es and insti­tu­tions to keep their meet­ings and class­es going even in a time of social dis­tanc­ing.

Instead of their bed­rooms or offices, stu­dents and office work­ers have start­ed appear­ing in set­tings like a 1970s dis­co, the Taj Mahal, and the star­ship Enter­prise. The tech­nol­o­gy mak­ing this pos­si­ble is the “vir­tu­al back­ground,” explained in the offi­cial Zoom instruc­tion­al video down below.

Word of the vir­tu­al back­ground’s pos­si­bil­i­ties has spread through insti­tu­tions every­where. It cer­tain­ly has at the Get­ty, whose dig­i­tal edi­tor Caitlin Sham­berg notes that “the Getty’s Open Con­tent pro­gram includes over 100,000 images that are free and down­load­able. This means they’re also fair game to use as your own cus­tom back­ground.”

From the Get­ty’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion Sham­berg offers such works suit­able for Zoom as Van Gogh’s Iris­es, Turn­er’s Van Tromp, going about to please his Mas­ters, Ships a Sea, get­ting a Good Wet­ting, and oth­er can­vass­es of such reli­ably pleas­ing set­tings as 18th-cen­tu­ry Venice and a 16th-cen­tu­ry for­est with a rab­bit. The Verge’s Natt Garun recent­ly round­ed up a few resources where you can find more promis­ing vir­tu­al-back­ground mate­r­i­al, from bin­go cards to beach­es to “pop cul­ture homes” includ­ing “Car­rie Bradshaw’s apart­ment from Sex and the City, your favorite Friends lofts, Sein­feld liv­ing rooms, and more.”

Here at Open Cul­ture, we’ll point you to the thir­ty world-class muse­ums that have put two mil­lion works of art online, many of which insti­tu­tions have made them avail­able for down­load. In this post appears, from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai’s Under the Wave off Kana­gawa (whose evo­lu­tion to the sta­tus of an icon­ic ukiyo‑e print we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly cov­ered); from the Get­ty, an 18th-cen­tu­ry room “orig­i­nal­ly used as a bed­room or large cab­i­net in a pri­vate Parisian home at num­ber 18 place Vendôme”; and from the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, George Bel­lows’ The Com­ing Storm.

That last work, pic­tured above, has a cer­tain metaphor­i­cal res­o­nance with the sit­u­a­tion the world now finds itself in, hop­ing though we are that the storm of COVID-19 is now pass­ing rather than still com­ing. But while we’re shel­ter­ing from it — and con­tin­u­ing to car­ry on busi­ness as usu­al as best we can — we might as well get take every oppor­tu­ni­ty to get artis­tic. Find many more artis­tic images to down­load here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Get­ty Dig­i­tal Archive Expands to 135,000 Free Images: Down­load High Res­o­lu­tion Scans of Paint­ings, Sculp­tures, Pho­tographs & Much Much More

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

HBO Is Streaming 500 Hours of Shows for Free: The Sopranos, The Wire, and More

We live, one often hears, in a gold­en age of tele­vi­sion. But when did this age begin? Schol­ars of pres­tige TV dra­ma — a field that, for both pro­fes­sion­als and ama­teurs, has expand­ed in recent years — tend to point to The Sopra­nos, which pre­miered in 1999. In its eight-year run, David Chase’s series about a depressed New Jer­sey mafia boss, a pro­tag­o­nist ana­lyzed in the Behind the Cur­tain video essay above, set new stan­dards in its medi­um for craft and com­plex­i­ty. To under­stand how much of a depar­ture The Sopra­nos marked from every­thing else on tele­vi­sion, sim­ply com­pare it to what was air­ing on major broad­cast net­works in the 1990s, most of which now looks unwatch­ably sim­plis­tic and repet­i­tive.

Of course, The Sopra­nos did­n’t air on a major broad­cast net­work: it aired on HBO. Orig­i­nal­ly launched as “Home Box Office” in 1972, the old­est pre­mi­um cable chan­nel of them all has long since expand­ed its man­date from air­ing sec­ond-run movies to cre­at­ing orig­i­nal pro­gram­ming of its own.

Its mid-1990s slo­gan “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO” reflects an intent to go beyond what was pos­si­ble on con­ven­tion­al tele­vi­sion net­works, an enter­prise whose promise The Sopra­nos sig­naled to the world. Crit­ics lav­ished even more praise on The Wire, David Simon’s dra­mat­ic exam­i­na­tion and indict­ment of Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions that ran on HBO from 2002 to 2008. In the video essay just above, Thomas Flight explains what makes The Wire, whose fans include every­one from Barack Oba­ma to Slavoj Žižek, “one of the most bril­liant TV shows ever.”

If you haven’t seen these or the oth­er acclaimed HBO shows that have done so much to gild this tele­vi­su­al age, now’s your chance to catch up. That’s true not just for the obvi­ous rea­son — the threat of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic keep­ing so many shut in at home — but also because HBO will make 500 hours of its pro­gram­ming free to stream on its HBO Now and HBO Go plat­forms. If you’re in the Unit­ed States or anoth­er area served by HBO online, you can watch not just The Sopra­nos and The Wire in their entire­ty, but the vam­pire-themed True Blood, the under­tak­ing-themed Six Feet Under, and such comedic takes on Amer­i­can busi­ness and pol­i­tics as Sil­i­con Val­ley and Veep, a video essay from The Take on whose “satire in the age of Trump” appears above. Of all the ways we can define HBO-style pres­tige tele­vi­sion, isn’t “TV shows good enough to inspire video essays” the most apt? Get start­ed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wire as Great Vic­to­ri­an Nov­el

The Wire Breaks Down The Great Gats­by, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Clas­sic Crit­i­cism of Amer­i­ca (NSFW)

David Chase Reveals the Philo­soph­i­cal Mean­ing of The Sopra­nos’ Final Scene

The Nine Minute Sopra­nos

Watch Curat­ed Playlists of Exper­i­men­tal Videos & Films to Get You Through COVID-19: Miran­da July, Jan Švankma­jer, Guy Maddin & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Join Choir! Choir! Choir! for a Community Singalong in Isolation

I love ya, and I think maybe if we sing togeth­er, well, we’d just feel a lit­tle bit bet­ter. Give it a try, okay? —Neil Dia­mond

Thus quoth singer-song­writer Neil Dia­mond on March 23, before launch­ing into his sur­pris­ing­ly stur­dy mon­ster hit, “Sweet Car­o­line,” hav­ing reworked its lyrics to pro­mote hand-wash­ing and social dis­tanc­ing to help con­trol the spread of COVID-19.

He’s not wrong about the ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fits of group singing. Dit­to the imper­a­tive to resist gath­er­ing pub­licly, or even in the homes of extend­ed fam­i­ly and close friends, until this cri­sis is in the rear view.

Choir! Choir! Choir!, an ongo­ing com­mu­ni­ty sing that’s attained glob­al renown thanks to its fre­quent tours, char­i­ta­ble work, and the sup­port of such star­ry per­son­ages as Pat­ti Smith and David Byrne, has had to put the kibosh on live group events. (Check out their 2014 sin­ga­long of Dia­mond’s “Sweet Car­o­line,” above, for a taste of the pro­ceed­ings.)

With every­one stay­ing home, founders Nobu Adil­man and Dav­eed Gold­man quick­ly imple­ment­ed a dig­i­tal work around, invit­ing fans and first-timers alike to week­ly online sing-ins.

Their next Social Dis­tan-Sing-Along is com­ing up this Sat­ur­day, April 4th at 3pm EDT, fea­tur­ing a camp­fire-themed playlist:

“The Weight”

“Blowin’ In The Wind”

“Our House”

“Leav­ing On A Jet Plane”

“Redemp­tion Song”

“Talkin Bout A Rev­o­lu­tion”

“Dust In The Wind”

“Cats In The Cra­dle”

“Wild World”

(Sad­ly, no “Titan­ic,” but per­haps that one’s more sum­mer camp than camp­fire, and these days, it’s prob­a­bly best to side­step any num­ber, no mat­ter how sil­ly, that springs from mass casu­al­ties…)

Par­tic­i­pants are instruct­ed to print a file of the song lyrics in advance and show up to the dig­i­tal camp­fire (live stream­ing on YouTube or Face­book) with a cou­ple of devicesenough to fol­low along with Adil­man and Gold­man, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly Zoom­ing in any friends you’ve pre-arranged to sing with.

(With 1000s attend­ing, one of Choir! Choir! Choir!’s usu­al joyslift­ing one’s voice with a vast cho­rus of most­ly strangersis a logis­ti­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty.)

Par­tic­i­pants are also encour­aged to share footage of them­selves singing along, using the hash­tag #Nev­er­StopSing­ingthough we remind our non-per­for­mance-ori­ent­ed read­ers that this is mere­ly a sug­ges­tion.

Choir! Choir! Choir in iso­la­tion may well attract show­er Sina­tras who’d nev­er dream of open­ing their mouths at an in-per­son event.

It’s a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty for the vocal­ly shy to become part of one of the biggest choirs in his­to­ry, secure in the knowl­edge that the only peo­ple to hear them croak­ing away will be the cat, the dog, any human co-inhab­i­tants… and, oh dear, what about neigh­bors in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty?

Don’t wor­ry about the neigh­bors. In fact, prick up your earsyou may hear them singing the exact same tunes.

To get you in the mood, here are some of our favorites from Choir! Choir! Choir!’s clas­sic playlist:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ital­ians’ Night­ly Sin­ga­longs Prove That Music Soothes the Sav­age Beast of Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine & Self-Iso­la­tion

65,000 Fans Break Into a Sin­ga­long of Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” at a Green Day Con­cert in London’s Hyde Park

Good Med­i­cine: The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” Sung by Rob­bie Robert­son, Ringo Starr & Spe­cial Guests from Around the World

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Like Choir! Choir! Choir!, she has been crowd­sourc­ing art in iso­la­tion, most recent­ly a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew Turns 50: Celebrate the Funk-Jazz-Psych-Rock Masterpiece

I shouldn’t have to tell you that Miles Davis’ Bitch­es Brew, released fifty years ago this month, is a ground­break­ing record. The funk-jazz-psych-rock mas­ter­piece has been hand­ed that award in “best of” lists for half a cen­tu­ry. “Bitch­es Brew is NOT LIKE OTHER records of its time, or any oth­er time,” Rick Frys­tak announced emphat­i­cal­ly on the Amoe­ba Records blog last year, on the 50th anniver­sary of the album’s 1969 “hatch­ing” onstage and in the stu­dio. How could it be oth­er­wise?

Davis “gave his band very lit­tle instruc­tion” about what to do, bassist and Jazz Night in Amer­i­ca host Chris­t­ian McBride tells NPR’s Audie Cor­nish. “Miles might come in with sheet music with, like, four bars. And then you just, do what you do.”

Or as gui­tarist John McLaugh­lin remem­bers it, in the clip above from The Miles Davis Sto­ry, “I don’t think even Miles had a clear idea of what he want­ed to do. But he was a man of such impec­ca­ble intu­ition that the moment that thing hap­pened, he knew it. He said, ‘that’s it.’”

“What got record­ed was the process,” says bassist Dave Hol­land, of fig­ur­ing out, for exam­ple, how to make three key­boards at once work. Author and Miles Davis schol­ar Paul Tin­gen tones down the idea that the band made it all up on the spot. “Three of the pieces had already been bro­ken in dur­ing live con­certs,” he writes, such as the live clip of “Bitch­es Brew” in Copen­hagen, 1969, above. And many of the musi­cians did get to rehearse before the stu­dio ses­sions.

But dur­ing much of the album’s mak­ing, Miles “brought in these musi­cal sketch­es that nobody had seen,” Davis him­self says, and the band, fea­tur­ing 13 musi­cians in total, found their way. Tin­gen writes:

On the third day the rhythm sec­tion con­sist­ed of as many as 11 play­ers: three key­boardists, elec­tric gui­tar, two bass­es, four drummers/percussionists and a bass clar­inet. Miles had pulled out the stops in his search for a heav­ier bot­tom end.

The album’s heav­i­ness, Davis’ tape echo, and McLaugh­lin’s squeal­ing, dis­tort­ed gui­tar turned off many jaz­zheads. “A lot of peo­ple felt that he was an artis­tic trai­tor,” McBride explains. “But I think that there were a num­ber of col­lege kids who were lis­ten­ing to pro­gres­sive rock [and] soul music who absolute­ly loved this record.” Davis was booked to open for the Grate­ful Dead, Neil Young, and the Steve Miller Band. A new gen­er­a­tion was turned on to jazz almost overnight.

After Bitch­es Brew, jazz kept fus­ing with rock instru­men­ta­tion and over­drive, “from Chick Corea with Return to For­ev­er and Wayne Short­er with Weath­er Report to Her­bie Han­cock with The Headhunters”—and, of course, McLaughlin’s Mahav­ish­nu Orches­tra. As Coltrane’s exper­i­men­tal 60s records had done, Davis’ bedrock fusion album freed rock from its for­mu­las, giv­ing it space to spread out and explore. Even Radio­head cit­ed it as an influ­ence on their ground­break­ing 1997 Ok Com­put­er. “It was build­ing some­thing up and watch­ing it fall apart,” says Thom Yorke, “that’s the beau­ty of it.”

The album’s ini­tial rejec­tion in jazz cir­cles didn’t last, as any­one famil­iar with the music’s direc­tion knows. Davis deter­mined its course in the 70s (as cov­er artist Mati Kar­wein deter­mined its look). “I’m not sure if jazz ever got unplugged,” says McBride, and influ­en­tial con­tem­po­rary jazz fusion­ists like Kamasi Wash­ing­ton, Thun­der­cat, and The Comet is Com­ing prove his point. Fifty years ago, the ground was bro­ken for exper­i­men­tal elec­tric jazz, and musi­cians are still build­ing on Miles’ Bitch­es Brew intu­itions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Icon­ic 1959 Album Kind of Blue Turns 60: Revis­it the Album That Changed Amer­i­can Music

Hear a 65-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Miles Davis’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Jazz Albums

Her­bie Han­cock Explains the Big Les­son He Learned From Miles Davis: Every Mis­take in Music, as in Life, Is an Oppor­tu­ni­ty

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

Pandemic Literature: A Meta-List of the Books You Should Read in Coronavirus Quarantine

Describ­ing con­di­tions char­ac­ter­is­tic of life in the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry, future his­to­ri­ans may well point to such epi­dem­ic viral ill­ness­es as SARS, MERS, and the now-ram­pag­ing COVID-19. But those focused on cul­ture will also have their pick of much more benign recur­ring phe­nom­e­na to explain: top­i­cal book lists, for instance, which crop up in the 21st-cen­tu­ry press at the faintest prompt­ing by cur­rent events. As the coro­n­avirus has spread through the Eng­lish-speak­ing world over the past month, pan­dem­ic-themed read­ing lists have appeared in all man­ner of out­lets: TimePBS, the Hol­ly­wood Reporter, the Guardian, the Globe and MailHaaretzVul­tureElec­tric Lit­er­a­ture, and oth­ers besides.

As mankind’s old­est dead­ly foe, dis­ease has pro­vid­ed themes to lit­er­a­ture since lit­er­a­ture’s very inven­tion. In the Euro­pean canon, no such work is more ven­er­a­ble than The Decameron, writ­ten by Renais­sance human­ist Gio­van­ni Boc­cac­cio in the late 1340s and ear­ly 1350s. “His pro­tag­o­nists, sev­en women and three men, retreat to a vil­la out­side Flo­rence to avoid the pan­dem­ic,” writes The Guardian’s Lois Beck­ett, refer­ring to the bubon­ic plague, or “Black Death,” that rav­aged Europe in the mid-14th cen­tu­ry. “There, iso­lat­ed for two weeks, they pass the time by telling each oth­er sto­ries” — and “live­ly, bizarre, and often very filthy sto­ries” at that — “with a dif­fer­ent theme for each day.”

A lat­er out­break of the bubon­ic plague in Lon­don inspired Robin­son Cru­soe author Daniel Defoe to write the A Jour­nal of the Plague Year. “Set in 1655 and pub­lished in 1722, the nov­el was like­ly based, in part, on the jour­nals of the author’s uncle,” writes the Globe and Mail’s Alec Scott. Defoe’s diarist “speaks of bod­ies pil­ing up in mass graves, of sud­den deaths and unlike­ly recov­er­ies from the brink, and also blames those from else­where for the out­break.” A Jour­nal of the Plague Year appears on these read­ing lists as often as Albert Camus’ The Plaguepre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. “Camus’ famous work about the inhab­i­tants of an Alger­ian town who are strick­en by the bubon­ic plague was pub­lished back in 1947,” writes PBS’ Court­ney Vinopal, “but it has struck a chord with read­ers today liv­ing through the coro­n­avirus.”

Of nov­els pub­lished in the past decade, none has been select­ed as a must-read in coro­n­avirus quar­an­tine as often as Emi­ly St. John Man­del’s Sta­tion Eleven. “After a swine flu pan­dem­ic wipes out most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, a group of musi­cians and actors trav­el around new­ly formed set­tle­ments to keep their art alive,” says Time. “Man­del show­cas­es the impact of the pan­dem­ic on all of their lives,” weav­ing togeth­er “char­ac­ters’ per­spec­tives from across the plan­et and over sev­er­al decades to explore how human­i­ty can fall apart and then, some­how, come back togeth­er.” Ling Ma’s dark­ly satir­i­cal Sev­er­ance also makes a strong show­ing: Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture describes it as “a pan­dem­ic-zom­bie-dystopi­an-nov­el, but it’s also a relat­able mil­len­ni­al com­ing-of-age sto­ry and an intel­li­gent cri­tique of exploita­tive cap­i­tal­ism, mind­less con­sumerism, and the drudgery of bull­shit jobs.”

Since a well-bal­anced read­ing diet (and those of us stuck at home for weeks on end have giv­en much thought to bal­anced diets) requires both fic­tion and non­fic­tion, sev­er­al of these lists also include works of schol­ar­ship, his­to­ry, and jour­nal­ism on the real epi­demics that have inspired all this lit­er­a­ture. Take Richard Pre­ston’s best­seller The Hot Zone: The Ter­ri­fy­ing True Sto­ry of the Ori­gins of the Ebo­la Virus, which Gre­go­ry Eaves at Medi­um calls “a hair-rais­ing account of the appear­ance of rare and lethal virus­es and their ‘crash­es’ into the human race.” For an episode of his­to­ry more com­pa­ra­ble to the coro­n­avirus, there’s John M. Bar­ry’s The Great Influen­za: The Sto­ry of the Dead­liest Pan­dem­ic in His­to­ry, “a tale of tri­umph amid tragedy, which pro­vides us with a pre­cise and sober­ing mod­el as we con­front the epi­demics loom­ing on our own hori­zon.”

Below you’ll find a meta-list of all the nov­els and non­fic­tion books includ­ed on the read­ing lists linked above. As for the books them­selves — libraries and book­stores being a bit dif­fi­cult to access in many parts of the world at the moment — you might check for them in our col­lec­tion of books free online, the tem­porar­i­ly opened Nation­al Emer­gency Library at the Inter­net Archive, and our recent post on clas­sic works of plague lit­er­a­ture avail­able to down­load. How­ev­er you find these books, hap­py read­ing — or, more to the point, healthy read­ing.

Fic­tion

  • Ammonite by Nico­la Grif­fith
  • The Androm­e­da Strain by Michael Crich­ton
  • Beau­ty Salon by Mario Bel­latin
  • Bird Box by Josh Maler­man
  • Blind­ness by José Sara­m­a­go
  • The Book of M by Peng Shep­herd
  • The Bro­ken Earth tril­o­gy by N.K. Jemisin
  • Bring Out Your Dead by J.M. Pow­ell
  • The Child Gar­den by Geoff Ryman
  • The Children’s Hos­pi­tal by Chris Adri­an
  • The Com­pan­ion by Katie M. Fly­nn
  • The Decameron by Gio­van­ni Boc­cac­cio
  • The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
  • The Dooms­day Book by Con­nie Willis
  • The Dream­ers by Karen Thomp­son Walk­er
  • Earth Abides by George R. Stew­art
  • The Eyes of Dark­ness by Dean Koontz
  • Find Me by Lau­ra van den Berg
  • The Great Believ­ers by Rebec­ca Makkai
  • Jane Eyre by Char­lotte Bron­të
  • Jour­nal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
  • Jour­nal of the Plague Years by Nor­man Spin­rad
  • The Last Man by Mary Shel­ley
  • The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen
  • Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez
  • My Side of the Moun­tain by Jean Craig­head George
  • My Year of Rest and Relax­ation by Ottes­sa Mosh­fegh
  • The Old Drift by Namwali Ser­pell
  • Oryx and Crake by Mar­garet Atwood
  • Pale Horse, Pale Rid­er by Kather­ine Anne Porter
  • The Pas­sage tril­o­gy by Justin Cronin
  • The Plague by Albert Camus
  • The Pow­er by Nao­mi Alder­man
  • Real Life by Bran­don Tay­lor
  • The Road by Cor­mac McCarthy
  • Room by Emma Donoghue
  • Sev­er­ance by Ling Ma
  • Sta­tion Eleven by Emi­ly St. John Man­del
  • The Stand by Stephen King
  • They Came Like Swal­lows by William Maxwell
  • The Train­ing Com­mis­sion by Ingrid Bur­ring­ton and Bren­dan Byrne
  • The Trans­mi­gra­tion of Bod­ies by Yuri Her­rera
  • The White Plague by Frank Her­bert
  • Wilder Girls by Rory Pow­er
  • World War Z by Max Brooks
  • The Year of the Flood by Mar­garet Atwood
  • Year of Won­ders by Geral­dine Brooks
  • The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stan­ley Robin­son
  • Zone One by Col­son White­head

 

Non­fic­tion

  • The Amer­i­can Plague: The Untold Sto­ry of Yel­low Fever, The Epi­dem­ic That Shaped Our His­to­ry by Mol­ly Cald­well Cros­by
  • And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts
  • The Com­ing Plague: New­ly Emerg­ing Dis­eases in a World Out of Bal­ance by Lau­rie Gar­rett
  • A Dis­tant Mir­ror: The Calami­tous 14th Cen­tu­ry by Bar­bara W. Tuch­man
  • Flu: The Sto­ry Of the Great Influen­za Pan­dem­ic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It by Gina Kola­ta
  • The Ghost Map: The Sto­ry of London’s Most Ter­ri­fy­ing Epidemic–and How It Changed Sci­ence, Cities, and the Mod­ern World by Steven John­son
  • The Great Influen­za: The Sto­ry of the Dead­liest Pan­dem­ic in His­to­ry by John Bar­ry
  • The Great Mor­tal­i­ty: An Inti­mate His­to­ry of the Black Death, the Most Dev­as­tat­ing Plague of All Time by John Kel­ly
  • His­to­ry of the Pelo­pon­nesian War by Thucy­dides
  • The Hot Zone The Ter­ri­fy­ing True Sto­ry of the Ori­gins of the Ebo­la Virus by Richard Pre­ston
  • Net­worked Dis­ease: Emerg­ing Infec­tions in the Glob­al City by A. Har­ris Ali and Roger Keil
  • Pale Rid­er: The Span­ish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World by Lau­ra Spin­ney
  • Pox: An Amer­i­can His­to­ry by Michael Will­rich

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Clas­sic Works of Plague Fic­tion: From Daniel Defoe & Mary Shel­ley, to Edgar Allan Poe

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Nov­el the Coro­n­avirus Has Made a Best­seller Again

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

The Nation­al Emer­gency Library Makes 1.5 Mil­lion Books Free to Read Right Now

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Dolly Parton Will Read Bedtime Stories to You Every Week

Used to be that Dol­ly Par­ton was rel­e­gat­ed to the coun­try music community–well loved, adored, but hemmed in by her genre. Cer­tain­ly Gen X’ers like myself didn’t take her too seri­ous­ly, and hav­ing a theme park named after you in Ten­nessee? Not too cool.

Yet, as we have wan­dered back into the wretched, burn­ing plains of mod­ern life and found that, yes, Mis­ter Rogers was a good per­son all along, we have also made space for Dol­ly Par­ton. She is a good per­son, and she is also there­fore a Good Per­son.

Start­ing today, April 2, 2020, Dol­ly Par­ton will join us all in quar­an­tine by way of the Inter­net to read us bed­time sto­ries. She will be start­ing with The Lit­tle Engine That Could (see below), the clas­sic tale of deter­mi­na­tion by Wat­ty Piper. And lis­ten, Gen X’ers, this isn’t for you! This is for your kids! (But okay yes, it’s also for you. It’s for all of you who have tak­en on the role of par­ent, teacher, enter­tain­er, psy­chol­o­gist, and social work­er with­out any increase in pay dur­ing these hard times. You just might be asleep before your kids once Dol­ly starts read­ing. I might just join you if I can find a spare blankie.

Dol­ly Parton’s Imag­i­na­tion Library has been the force behind all this, a non-prof­it that pro­motes lit­er­a­cy and par­ent-child read­ing by send­ing a book every month to a child, from their birth till age five. It start­ed in Parton’s home coun­ty in the mid-‘80s but now reach­es 1,546,000+ chil­dren not just in the Unit­ed States, but in Cana­da, Aus­tralia, the UK and the Repub­lic of Ire­land, accord­ing to her web­site.

The Lit­tle Engine That Could is a great kick off to a series of week­ly bed­time sto­ries. Do you think you can get through this? Just repeat to your­self: I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dol­ly Parton’s “Jolene” Slowed Down to 33RPM Sounds Great and Takes on New, Unex­pect­ed Mean­ings

Feel Strange­ly Nos­tal­gic as You Hear Clas­sic Songs Reworked to Sound as If They’re Play­ing in an Emp­ty Shop­ping Mall: David Bowie, Toto, Ah-ha & More

Enter an Archive of 6,000 His­tor­i­cal Children’s Books, All Dig­i­tized and Free to Read Online

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.

This is What Richard Feynman’s PhD Thesis Looks Like: A Video Introduction

Richard Feyn­man wasn’t just an “ordi­nary genius.” He was, accord­ing to math­e­mati­cian Mark Kac “in his tax­on­o­my of the two types of genius­es,” a “magi­cian” and “a cham­pi­on of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge so effec­tive and so beloved that he has gen­er­at­ed an entire canon of per­son­al mythol­o­gy,” writes Maria Popo­va at Brain Pick­ings. Many a Feyn­man anec­dote comes from Feyn­man him­self, who bur­nished his pop­u­lar image with two best­selling auto­bi­ogra­phies. His sto­ries about his life in sci­ence are extra­or­di­nary, and true, includ­ing one he tells the first sem­i­nar he gave at Prince­ton in 1939, attend­ed by Wolf­gang Pauli, John von Neu­mann, and Albert Ein­stein.

“Ein­stein,” Feyn­man writes in Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man!, “appre­ci­at­ed that things might be dif­fer­ent from what his the­o­ry stat­ed; he was very tol­er­ant of oth­er ideas.” The young upstart had many oth­er ideas. As biog­ra­ph­er James Gle­ick writes, Feyn­man was “near­ing the crest of his pow­ers. At twen­ty three… there may now have been no physi­cist on earth who could match his exu­ber­ant com­mand over the native mate­ri­als of the­o­ret­i­cal sci­ence.” He had yet to com­plete his dis­ser­ta­tion and would take a break from his doc­tor­al stud­ies to work on the Man­hat­tan Project in 1941.

Then, in 1942, Feyn­man sub­mit­ted his the­sis, Prin­ci­ples of least action in quan­tum mechan­ics, super­vised John Archibald Wheel­er, with whom Feyn­man shares the name of an elec­tro­dy­nam­ic the­o­rem. Pub­lished for the first time in 2005 by World Sci­en­tif­ic, “its orig­i­nal motive,” notes the pub­lish­er, “was to quan­tize the clas­si­cal action-at-a-dis­tance electrodynamics”—partly in response to the chal­lenges posed to his ear­ly lec­tures. In order to do this, says Toby, host of the video above, “he’ll need to come up with his own for­mu­la­tion of quan­tum mechan­ics, and he does this by first com­ing up with a new for­mu­la­tion in clas­si­cal mechan­ics,” which he must apply to quan­tum mechan­ics. “This turns out to be a bit of a chal­lenge.”

Feyn­man him­self found it insur­mount­able. “I nev­er solved it,” he writes in Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, “a quan­tum the­o­ry of half-advanced, half-retard­ed potentials—and I worked on it for years.” But his “field-less elec­tro­dy­nam­ics” pos­sessed a “stu­pen­dous effi­cien­cy,” argues physi­cist Olivi­er Dar­rigol, that “appeared like mag­ic to most of his com­peti­tors.” The val­ue of this ear­ly work, says Toby, lies not in its abil­i­ty to solve the prob­lems it rais­es, but to come up with “a new way to approach things”—a method of con­tin­u­al search­ing that served him his entire career. He may have dis­card­ed many of the ideas in the the­sis, but his “mag­i­cal” think­ing would nonethe­less lead to lat­er mas­sive break­throughs like Feyn­man dia­grams.

Those who fol­low the math can do so in the fif­teen-minute video walk­through of the Feynman’s thesis—and read the the­sis in pdf form here. Toby lists sev­er­al sources on key con­cepts on the video’s YouTube page to get you up to speed. If the high-lev­el physics flies right over your head, learn more about how Feynman’s incred­i­ble abil­i­ty to learn and teach almost any sub­ject made him such a flex­i­ble and cre­ative thinker in Gleick’s book, Genius: The Life and Sci­ence of Richard Feyn­man.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

Richard Feynman’s Tech­nique for Learn­ing Some­thing New: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Richard Feynman’s “Lost Lec­ture:” An Ani­mat­ed Retelling

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

Why Did LEGO Become a Media Empire? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #37

Why has a chil­dren’s toy become a brand attached to vir­tu­al­ly every media type, part­ner­ing with the most ubiq­ui­tous fran­chis­es, and serv­ing as a pas­time for many adult hob­by­ists who will gut you if you call LEGO a “chil­dren’s toy.”

Bri­an Hirt (our res­i­dent AFOL, i.e. adult fan of LEGO) talks with co-hosts Eri­ca Spyres and Mark Lin­sen­may­er about cre­ative play vs. fol­low­ing the print­ed direc­tions, build­ing purists vs. anthro­po­mor­phiz­ers, LEGO qua cor­po­rate over­lord, the LEGO films and com­pet­i­tive build­ing TV show, and more.

Bri­an’s LEGO designs that we react to are the Man­del­brot frac­tal, baby Yoda, drei­del, and swim­ming pool. “AFOL” is but the first of many LEGO-spe­cif­ic ini­tialisms; see the glos­sary.

Here are some arti­cles we drummed up to pre­pare:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. 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 or start with the first episode.

Samuel L. Jackson Reads “Stay the F**k at Home”

The 2020 sequel to Go the F–k to Sleep Nar­rat­ed by Samuel L. Jack­son. The read­ing starts at the 6:10 mark…

 

Watch Online 75 Short Films from 2020’s South by Southwest Festival

South by South­west, one of Amer­i­ca’s biggest cul­tur­al events, won’t hap­pen this year. The cause, of course, is the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, its own sta­tus as an event unprece­dent­ed in our age evi­denced by the fact that South by South­west has nev­er in its 33-year his­to­ry been can­celed before. When SXSW, as it’s now known, launched in Austin, Texas back in 1987, it did so pure­ly as a music fes­ti­val; cin­e­ma came in 1994, when it became the “SXSW Film and Mul­ti­me­dia Con­fer­ence.” Since then quite a few movies have launched from Austin into inter­na­tion­al renown, includ­ing Jef­frey Blitz’s spelling-bee doc­u­men­tary Spell­bound, Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War thriller The Hurt Lock­er, and the entire genre of “mum­blecore.”

Spare a thought, then, for the film­mak­ers with work accept­ed into SXSW 2020 — or bet­ter yet, spare some time to watch their films online. While the fes­ti­val’s orga­niz­ers fig­ure out whether and how to resched­ule, e‑mail newslet­ter ser­vice Mailchimp and inde­pen­dent film com­pa­ny Oscil­lo­scope Lab­o­ra­to­ries “have cre­at­ed a dig­i­tal home for this incred­i­ble slate of short films, so you can watch them from wher­ev­er you are.”

That slate includes selec­tions from sub­cat­e­gories such as ani­ma­tion, doc­u­men­tary, the “pre­view of the next film­mak­ing gen­er­a­tion” offered by the work of Texas high-school film­mak­ers, and even the beloved “mid­nighters,” offi­cial­ly described as “bite-sized bits for all of your sex, gore, and hilar­i­ty crav­ings.”

One such mid­nighter, a piece of domes­tic hor­ror by Jan­i­na Gavankar and Rus­so Schelling called Stuc­co, appears at the top of the post. You’ll find it on this Youtube playlist of short offi­cial selec­tions from SXSW 2020, which also includes Zoe and Hanh, Kim Tran’s exam­i­na­tion of “girls, boys, and moth­ers,” a “tri­an­gle of ten­sion since… for­ev­er,” and Char­lie Tyrel­l’s Bro­ken Orches­tra, a doc­u­men­tary on a Philadel­phia com­mu­ni­ty’s effort to breathe life into a trou­bled pub­lic-school music pro­gram. There isn’t much over­lap between this playlist and the many shorts avail­able to watch free on Mailchim­p’s site, so if you want to dis­cov­er the film­mak­ers you would have at Austin this year — includ­ing the mak­ers of Grand Jury Prize win­ners No Cry­ing at the Din­ner Table, Regret, Just Hold On, and Wish Upon a Snow­man — head over there and have your own pri­vate SXSW Film Fes­ti­val.

via No Film School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Watch Curat­ed Playlists of Exper­i­men­tal Videos & Films to Get You Through COVID-19: Miran­da July, Jan Švankma­jer, Guy Maddin & More

Stream Free Online 200 Films from Tribeca Film Fes­ti­vals

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.


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