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

When we get sick, many of us habit­u­al­ly use the time away from work and oth­er oblig­a­tions to do the same thing: watch movies. But old favorites and recent releas­es we’d missed our first chance to catch can only last us so long: now, with so much of the world either sick or at home try­ing not to get sick, a com­bi­na­tion of iso­la­tion and uncer­tain­ty about the state of things push­es us to seek out more cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly dar­ing fare. To sat­is­fy this demand, Los Ange­les film­mak­er Kate Lain has cre­at­ed a col­lec­tion called “CABIN FEVER: Cop­ing with COVID-19 playlist of online exper­i­men­tal films & videos,” all of them free to watch online, begun “as an editable Google sheet on March 13 to gath­er some exper­i­men­tal films togeth­er based on moods one might be expe­ri­enc­ing while being cooped up.”

Since then, Lain writes, “the list has mor­phed some, with some great new cat­e­gories being added to the mix.” The most recent ver­sion of the spread­sheet, avail­able in .XSLX and .PDF for­mats, includes such cat­e­gories as “For when you need to laugh or smile,” “For when you’re stuck inside but want to be out­side,” “Ani­mals,” “Plants,” “Nos­tal­gia,” and “Virus movies cuz why not.” (One such movie, Tuzan Wu’s Dis­ease of Man­i­fes­ta­tion, appears at the top of the post.)

With­in these and oth­ers appears the work of such film­mak­ers as Jan Švankma­jer, Miran­da July, Fer­nand Léger (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), Man Ray, Maya Deren, and Cindy Sher­man. (Avant-garde enthu­si­asts may also rejoice at the sight of names like Hol­lis Framp­ton, James Ben­ning, and Ken­neth Anger.)

Inspired by Lain’s col­lec­tion, Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Dessane Lopez Cas­sell has “reached out to artists, film­mak­ers, and Hyper­al­ler­gic con­trib­u­tors to assem­ble a list of what we’ve been shar­ing and encoun­ter­ing across our net­works.” Their selec­tions include Afro­nauts, “a lumi­nous short which ren­ders the sto­ry of the Zam­bian Space Pro­gram” — at which we looked back ear­li­er this month — “as a dream­like work of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion”; Bassem Saad’s Saint Rise, about the trans­porta­tion of a stat­ue of Saint Char­bel (“now being her­ald­ed by con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious media as a heal­er of the Coro­n­avirus,” the film­mak­er adds) to a high moun­tain­top in Faraya, Leba­banon; and Guy Maddin’s The Green Fog (watch in full here and see the trail­er below), described by crit­ic Car­man Tse as “a scene-by-scene recre­ation of Ver­ti­go, made entire­ly of footage from oth­er movies that take place in San Fran­cis­co.”

“There’s an espe­cial­ly fun­ny mon­tage right at the cli­max of the movie that uses Chuck Nor­ris clips,” Tse notes, mak­ing The Green Fog a promis­ing choice for those of us who need to light­en the mood of our iso­la­tion — and who also appre­ci­ate a high den­si­ty of inter-cin­e­mat­ic ref­er­ence. Hail­ing as he does from the noto­ri­ous­ly win­try Cana­di­an city of Win­nipeg, Maddin him­self sure­ly knows a thing or two about how best to amuse one­self dur­ing long peri­ods stuck indoors. Indeed, every artist grow­ing up in cir­cum­stances of iso­la­tion, occa­sion­al or fre­quent, devel­ops a strong appre­ci­a­tion and high­ly refined sense of artis­tic dar­ing, one that unfail­ing­ly shows in their work when it debuts in the wider world. If we take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand the depth and breadth of our own view­ing expe­ri­ences, imag­ine how much more astute film­go­ers we’ll be after the pan­dem­ic pass­es.

Find the Cab­in Fever col­lec­tion of exper­i­men­tal videos and films here. It cur­rent­ly has 284 videos on the list. Hyper­all­ger­ic adds yet more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

A Page of Mad­ness: The Lost, Avant Garde Mas­ter­piece from Ear­ly Japan­ese Cin­e­ma (1926)

Watch “Bells of Atlantis,” an Exper­i­men­tal Film with Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Music Fea­tur­ing Anaïs Nin (1952)

The Exper­i­men­tal Abstract Films of Pio­neer­ing Amer­i­can Ani­ma­tor Mary Ellen Bute (1930s-1950s)

Sigour­ney Weaver Stars in a New Exper­i­men­tal Sci-Fi Film: Watch “Rak­ka” Free Online

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 or on Face­book.

Meet the World’s First Known Author: Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna

Watch­ers of West­world will have heard a char­ac­ter in the most recent episode utter the line, “for the first time, his­to­ry has an author.” It’s as loaded a bit of dia­logue as the series has dropped on fans, not least for its sug­ges­tion that in the absence of a god we should be bet­ter off with an all-know­ing machine.

The line might bend the ear of lit­er­ary schol­ars for anoth­er rea­son. The idea of author­ship is a com­pli­cat­ed one. In one sense, maybe, every­one is an author of his­to­ry, and in anoth­er, per­haps no one is. But it’s dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend these abstractions—we crave sto­ries with strong char­ac­ters, hence our ven­er­a­tion of Great Men and Women of the past.

Still, in many times and places, indi­vid­ual author­ship was irrel­e­vant. Renais­sance thinkers reval­ued the author as an auc­tori­tas, a wor­thy fig­ure of influ­ence and renown. “Death of the author” the­o­rists point­ed out that the appear­ance of a lit­er­ary text could nev­er be reduced to a sin­gle, unchang­ing per­son­al­i­ty. In reli­gious stud­ies, ques­tions of author­ship open onto mine­field after mine­field. There may be no com­mon­ly agreed-upon way to think about what an author is.

Does it make sense, then, to talk about the “world’s first author”? Per­haps. In the TED-Ed les­son above by Soraya Field Fio­rio, we learn that the first known per­son to use writ­ten lan­guage for lit­er­ary pur­pos­es was named was Enhed­u­an­na, a pow­er­ful Mesopotami­an high priest­ess who wrote forty-two hymns and three epic poems in cuneiform 4,3000 hun­dred years ago.

Daugh­ter of Sar­gon of Akkad, who placed her in a posi­tion to rule, Enhed­u­an­na lived about “1,500 years before Homer and about 500 years before the Bib­li­cal patri­arch Abra­ham.” (There’s con­sid­er­able doubt, of course, about whether either of those peo­ple exist­ed, whether they wrote the works attrib­uted to them, or whether such works were penned by com­mit­tee, so to speak.)

Sar­gon was also an author, hav­ing com­posed an auto­bi­og­ra­phy, The Leg­end of Sar­gon, that “exert­ed a pow­er­ful influ­ence over the Sume­ri­ans he sought to con­quer,” notes Joshua J. Mark at the Ancient His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­dia. But first, Enhed­u­an­na used her posi­tion as high priest­ess to uni­fy her father’s empire with reli­gious hymns that praised the gods of each major Sumer­ian city. “In her writ­ing, she human­ized the once aloof gods,” just as Homer would hun­dreds of years lat­er. “Now they suf­fered, fought, loved, and respond­ed to human plead­ing.”

Her hymns to Inan­na are her most defin­ing lit­er­ary achieve­ment, but Enhed­u­an­na has some­how been com­plete­ly left out of his­to­ry. “We know who the first nov­el­ist is,” writes Charles Hal­ton at Lit Hub, “eleventh cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Noble­woman Murasa­ki Shik­ibu, who wrote the Tale of Gen­ji.” Like­wise, we know the first nov­el­ist of the west­ern world, Miguel de Cer­vantes, and the first essay­ist, Michel de Mon­taigne. But “ask any per­son in your life who wrote the first poem and they’re apt to draw a blank.”

Maybe this is because, unlike nov­els, we don’t think of poet­ry as being invent­ed by a sin­gle indi­vid­ual. It seems as though it must have sprung from the col­lec­tive psy­che not long after humans began using lan­guage. Yet from the point of view of lit­er­ary history—which, like most his­to­ries, con­sists of a suc­ces­sion of great names—Enheduanna cer­tain­ly deserves the hon­or as the world’s first known poet and first known author.  Learn more about her in the les­son above.

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Write in Cuneiform, the Old­est Writ­ing Sys­tem in the World: A Short, Charm­ing Intro­duc­tion

Watch a 4000-Year Old Baby­lon­ian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Har­vard

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in its Orig­i­nal Ancient Lan­guage, Akka­di­an

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

The “Feynman Technique” for Studying Effectively: An Animated Primer

After win­ning the Nobel Prize, physi­cist Max Planck “went around Ger­many giv­ing the same stan­dard lec­ture on the new quan­tum mechan­ics. Over time, his chauf­feur mem­o­rized the lec­ture and said, ‘Would you mind, Pro­fes­sor Planck, because it’s so bor­ing to stay in our rou­tine, if I gave the lec­ture in Munich and you just sat in front wear­ing my chauffeur’s hat?’ Planck said, ‘Why not?’ And the chauf­feur got up and gave this long lec­ture on quan­tum mechan­ics. After which a physics pro­fes­sor stood up and asked a per­fect­ly ghast­ly ques­tion. The speak­er said, ‘Well, I’m sur­prised that in an advanced city like Munich I get such an ele­men­tary ques­tion. I’m going to ask my chauf­feur to reply.’ ”

That this intel­lec­tu­al switcheroo nev­er actu­al­ly hap­pened did­n’t stop Char­lie Munger from using it as an open­er for a com­mence­ment speech to USC’s Law School. But when a suc­cess­ful bil­lion­aire investor finds val­ue even in an admit­ted­ly “apoc­ryphal sto­ry,” most of us will find val­ue in it as well. It illus­trates, accord­ing to the Free­dom in Thought video above, the dif­fer­ence between “two kinds of knowl­edge: the deep knowl­edge that Max had, and the shal­low knowl­edge that the chauf­feur had.” Both forms of knowl­edge have their advan­tages, espe­cial­ly since none of us have life­time enough to under­stand every­thing deeply. But we get in trou­ble when we can’t tell them apart: “We risk fool­ing our­selves into think­ing we actu­al­ly under­stand or know some­thing when we don’t. Even worse, we risk tak­ing action on mis­in­for­ma­tion or mis­un­der­stand­ing.”

Even if you put lit­tle stock into a made-up anec­dote about one Nobel-win­ning physi­cist, sure­ly you’ll believe the doc­u­ment­ed words of anoth­er. Richard Feyn­man once artic­u­lat­ed a first prin­ci­ple of know­ing as fol­lows: “You must not fool your­self, and you are the eas­i­est per­son to fool.” This prin­ci­ple under­lies a prac­ti­cal process of learn­ing that con­sists of four steps. First, “explain the top­ic out loud to a peer who is unfa­mil­iar with the top­ic. Meet them at their lev­el of under­stand­ing and use the sim­plest lan­guage you can.” Sec­ond, “iden­ti­fy any gaps in your own under­stand­ing, or points where you feel that you can’t explain an idea sim­ply.” Third, “go back to the source mate­r­i­al and study up on your weak points until you can use sim­ple lan­guage to explain it.” Final­ly, “repeat the three steps above until you’ve mas­tered the top­ic.”

We’ve fea­tured the so-called “Feyn­man tech­nique” once or twice before here on Open Cul­ture, but its empha­sis on sim­plic­i­ty and con­ci­sion always bears repeat­ing — in, of course, as sim­ple and con­cise a man­ner as pos­si­ble each time. Its ori­gins lie in not just Feny­man’s first prin­ci­ple of knowl­edge but his intel­lec­tu­al habits. This video’s nar­ra­tor cites James Gle­ick­’s biog­ra­phy Genius, which tells of how “Richard would cre­ate a jour­nal for the things he did not know. His dis­ci­pline in chal­leng­ing his own under­stand­ing made him a genius and a bril­liant sci­en­tist.” Like all of us, Feyn­man was igno­rant all his life of vast­ly more sub­jects than he had mas­tered. But unlike many of us, his desire to know burned so furi­ous­ly that it pro­pelled him into per­pet­u­al con­fronta­tion with his own igno­rance. We can’t learn what we want to know, after all, unless we acknowl­edge how much we don’t know.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

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

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

The Cor­nell Note-Tak­ing Sys­tem: Learn the Method Stu­dents Have Used to Enhance Their Learn­ing Since the 1940s

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 or on Face­book.

Japanese Artist Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eaten for 32 Years: Behold the Delicious Illustrations of Itsuo Kobayashi

Since the 1980s, Itsuo Kobayashi has drawn a pic­ture of every sin­gle meal he eats. How­ev­er notable we find this prac­tice now, it would sure­ly have struck us as down­right eccen­tric back then. Kobayashi began draw­ing his food before the arrival of inex­pen­sive dig­i­tal cam­eras and cell­phones, and well before the smart­phone com­bined the two into the sin­gle pack­age we now keep close at hand. We all know peo­ple who take cam­era-phone pic­tures of their meals, some of them with the reg­u­lar­i­ty and solem­ni­ty of prayer, but how many of them could pro­duce life­like ren­der­ings of the food placed before them with only pen and paper?

“The Japan­ese out­sider artist and pro­fes­sion­al cook, born in 1962, first began keep­ing food diaries as a teenag­er,” Art­net’s Sarah Cas­cone writes of Kobayashi. “In his 20s, he began adding illus­tra­tions of the dish­es he made at work, and those he ate while din­ing out.” When, at the age of 46, a “debil­i­tat­ing neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der made it dif­fi­cult for him to walk, leav­ing him large­ly con­fined to his home,” Kobayashi began to focus on his food diaries even more intense­ly.

His sub­jects are now most­ly “food deliv­er­ies — some­times from restau­rants, some­times from his moth­er. And though his day-to-day exis­tence rarely varies, he’s been push­ing his prac­tice in a new direc­tion, cre­at­ing a new series of pop-up paint­ings.”

After 32 years of mak­ing increas­ing­ly detailed and real­is­tic over­head draw­ings of his every meal — includ­ing such infor­ma­tion as names, prices, fla­vor notes, and faith­ful­ly repli­cat­ed restau­rant logos — Kobayashi’s work has caught the atten­tion of the Amer­i­can art world. The Fukuya­ma-based gallery Kushi­no Ter­race “gave Kobayashi his US debut in Jan­u­ary, at New York’s Out­sider Art Fair,” Cas­cone writes. “His works sell for between $500 and $3,000.” That makes for quite a step up in pres­tige from his old job cook­ing at a soba restau­rant, though his copi­ous expe­ri­ence with that dish shows when­ev­er it appears in his diary.

But then, after decade upon decade of dai­ly prac­tice, every­thing Kobayashi draws looks good enough to eat, from bowls of ramen to plates of cur­ry to ben­to box­es filled with all man­ner of delights from land and sea. Though hard­ly fan­cy, espe­cial­ly by the advanced stan­dards of Japan­ese food cul­ture, these are the kind of meals you want to savor, the ones to which you feel you should pay appre­cia­tive atten­tion rather than just scarf­ing down. Or at least they look that way under Kobayashi’s gaze, which even the most ardent 21st-cen­tu­ry food-pho­tograph­ing hob­by­ist must envy. Many of us wish to eat more con­scious­ly, and the work of this cook-turned-artist shows us how: put down the phone, and pick up the sketch­book.

via Art­net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Tee­ny Tiny Japan­ese Meals Get Made in a Minia­ture Kitchen: The Joy of Cook­ing Mini Tem­pu­ra, Sashi­mi, Cur­ry, Okonomiya­ki & More

Wagashi: Peruse a Dig­i­tized, Cen­turies-Old Cat­a­logue of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Can­dies

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Mas­ter Sushi Chef

How the Aston­ish­ing Sushi Scene in Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs Was Ani­mat­ed: A Time-Lapse of the Month-Long Shoot

The Prop­er Way to Eat Ramen: A Med­i­ta­tion from the Clas­sic Japan­ese Com­e­dy Tam­popo (1985)

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 or on Face­book.

Digital Archives Give You Free Access to Thousands of Historical Children’s Books

It is no arbi­trary coin­ci­dence that Margery Williams’ clas­sic The Vel­veteen Rab­bit involves a ter­ri­fy­ing brush with scar­let fever. Pub­lished in 1922, the book was based on her own chil­dren. But all of its first read­ers would have shud­dered at the men­tion, giv­en very recent mem­o­ries of the glob­al dev­as­ta­tion wrought by “Span­ish” flu. The sto­ry earns its fairy-tale end­ing by invok­ing cat­a­stro­phe, with images of the poor rab­bit near­ly thrown into the fire and then tossed out with the trash.

The Vel­veteen Rab­bit recalls Oscar Wilde’s 19th cen­tu­ry children’s sto­ries, in which “loss is not a pose; it is real,” writes Jeanette Win­ter­son. All may even­tu­al­ly be restored, “there is usu­al­ly a hap­py end­ing,” but “Wilde’s fairy­tale trans­for­ma­tions turn on loss.” The author of The Vel­veteen Rab­bit did not share Wilde’s con­trar­i­an streak, nor indulge the same sen­ti­men­tal fits of piety, but Williams’ intent was no less pro­found and seri­ous. The specter of fever still haunts the book’s Arca­di­an end­ing.

Williams’ major influ­ence was Wal­ter de la Mare, whom the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion describes as a writer of “dreams, death, rare states of mind and emo­tion, fan­ta­sy worlds of child­hood, and the pur­suit of the transcendent”—all themes The Vel­veteen Rab­bit engages in the nar­ra­tive lan­guage of kids. Do chil­dren’s books still rec­og­nize ear­ly child­hood as unique­ly for­ma­tive, while also regard­ing chil­dren as sophis­ti­cat­ed read­ers who can appre­ci­ate emo­tion­al depth and psy­cho­log­i­cal com­plex­i­ty?

Do Disney’s mod­ern fran­chis­es take loss as seri­ous­ly? What about Paw Patrol? Were Wilde and Williams’ sto­ries unusu­al for their time or did they mark a trend? How do children’s books serve as codes of con­duct, and what do they tell us about how we fil­ter life’s calami­ties in digestible nar­ra­tives for our kids? How can we use such sto­ries to edu­cate in the midst of over­whelm­ing events?

For those who find these ques­tions intrigu­ing for pure­ly aca­d­e­m­ic rea­sons, or who strug­gle with them as both par­ents and new­ly mint­ed home­school teach­ers, we offer, below, sev­er­al online libraries with thou­sands of scanned his­tor­i­cal children’s books, from very ear­ly print­ed exam­ples in the 18th cen­tu­ry to exam­ples of a much more recent vin­tage.

These come from pub­lish­ers in Eng­land, the U.S., and the Sovi­et Union, and from names like Christi­na Roset­ti, Jules Verne, Wiz­ard of Oz author Frank L. Baum, and Eng­lish artist Ran­dolph Calde­cott, whose sur­name has dis­tin­guished the best Amer­i­can pic­ture books for 70 years. For every star of children’s writ­ing and illus­tra­tion, there are hun­dreds of writ­ers and artists hard­ly any­one remem­bers, but whose work can be as play­ful, mov­ing, and hon­est as the famous clas­sic children’s sto­ries we pass on to our kids.

Dis­cov­er 6,000 new-old clas­sics, and plen­ty of didac­tic man­u­als, alpha­bet books, and children’s devo­tion­al books, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Florida’s Bald­win Library of His­tor­i­cal Children’s Lit­er­a­ture

Enter a dig­i­tal archive of over 1,800 clas­sic children’s books at the UCLA Children’s Book Col­lec­tion, with books dat­ing from 1728 to 1999

Mar­vel at the Library of Congress’s small but sig­nif­i­cant online col­lec­tion of books from the 19th and 20th cen­turies

And, final­ly, at Prince­ton’s online col­lec­tions, browse Sovi­et children’s books pub­lished between 1917 and 1953, for a very dif­fer­ent view of ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion.

Whether we’re par­ents, schol­ars, teach­ers, curi­ous read­ers, or all of the above, we find that the best children’s books show us “why we need fairy tales,” as Win­ter­son writes, at every age. “Rea­son and log­ic are tools for under­stand­ing the world. We need a means of under­stand­ing our­selves, too. That is what imag­i­na­tion allows.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyaza­ki Picks His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More 

Watch Stars Read Clas­sic Children’s Books: Bet­ty White, James Earl Jones, Rita Moreno & Many More

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

Free Online Drawing Lessons for Kids, Led by Favorite Artists & Illustrators

When I became the Kennedy Cen­ter Edu­ca­tion Artist-in-Res­i­dence, I didn’t real­ize the most impact­ful word in that title would be “Res­i­dence.” —illus­tra­tor Mo Willems

Even as schools regroup and online instruc­tion gath­ers steam, the scram­ble con­tin­ues to keep cooped-up kids engaged and hap­py.

These COVID-19-prompt­ed online draw­ing lessons and activ­i­ties might not hold much appeal for the sin­gle-mind­ed sports nut or the junior Feyn­man who scoffs at the trans­for­ma­tive prop­er­ties of art, but for the art‑y kid, or fans of cer­tain children’s illus­tra­tors, these are an excel­lent diver­sion.

Mo Willems, author of Knuf­fle Bun­ny and the Kennedy Center’s first Edu­ca­tion Artist-in-Res­i­dence, is open­ing his home stu­dio every week­day at 1pm EST for approx­i­mate­ly twen­ty min­utes worth of LUNCHDOODLES. Episode 5, finds him using a fat mark­er to doo­dle a Can­dy­land-ish game board (sans trea­cle).

Once the design is com­plete, he rolls the dice to advance both his piece and that of his home view­er. A 5 lands him on the crowd-pleas­ing direc­tive “fart.” Clear­ly the online instruc­tor enjoys cer­tain lib­er­ties the class­room teacher would be ill-advised to attempt.

Check out the full playlist on the Kennedy Center’s YouTube chan­nel and down­load activ­i­ty pages for each episode here.

#MoL­unch­Doo­dles

If the dai­ly LUNCHDOODLES leaves ‘em want­i­ng more, there’s just enough time for a quick pee and snack break before Lunch Lady’s Jar­rett J. Krosocz­ka takes over with Draw Every­day with JJK, a basic illus­tra­tion les­son every week­day at 2pm EST. These are a bit more nit­ty grit­ty, as JJK, the kid who loved to draw and grew up to be an artist, shares prac­ti­cal tips on pen­cil­ing, ink­ing, and draw­ing faces. Pro tip: resis­tant Star Wars fans will like­ly be hooked by the first episode’s Yoda, a char­ac­ter Krosocz­ka is well versed in as the author and illus­tra­tor of the Star Wars Jedi Acad­e­my series.

Find the com­plete playlist here.

Illus­tra­tor Car­son Ellis eschews video lessons to host a Quar­an­tine Art Club on her Insta­gram page. Her most recent assign­ment is car­tog­ra­phy based chal­lenge, with help­ful tips for cre­at­ing an “impact­ful page turn” for those who wish to share their cre­ations on Insta­gram:

DRAW A MAP: When we think of trea­sure maps, we think of sea mon­sters, islands with palm trees, pirate ships, anthro­po­mor­phic clouds blow­ing gales upon white-capped seas. YOUR map can be of any­where: an enchant­ed wood, a dystopi­an sub­urb, your back­yard, your apart­ment that has nev­er felt so small, all of the above, none of the above. Or your map can be a tra­di­tion­al trea­sure map lead­ing to a pirate’s hoard. It’s total­ly up to you. Three things that you MUST include are: a com­pass rose (very important—look this up if you don’t know what it is), the name of the place you are map­ping, and a red X.

DRAW THE TREASURE: The first part of this assign­ment is to draw a map with a red X to mark the loca­tion of hid­den trea­sure. The sec­ond part of this assign­ment is to draw the trea­sure. I don’t know what the trea­sure is. Only you know what the trea­sure is. Draw it on a sep­a­rate piece of paper from the map.

BONUS POINTS: If you’re going to post this on insta­gram, I rec­om­mend for­mat­ting it with two images. Post the map first, then the trea­sure which the view­er will swipe to see. This will cre­ate what we in the kids book world call AN IMPACTFUL PAGE TURN. That’s the thing that hap­pens when you’re read­ing a pic­ture book and you turn the page to dis­cov­er some­thing fun­ny or sur­pris­ing. It’s kind of hard to explain, but you know a good page turn when you’ve expe­ri­enced one.

#Quar­an­ti­n­eArt­Club

Wendy McNaughton, who spe­cial­izes in drawn jour­nal­ism, also likes the Insta­gram plat­form, host­ing a live Draw Togeth­er ses­sion every school day, from 10–10.30 am PST. Her approach is a bit more freeform, with impromp­tu dance par­ties, spe­cial guests, and field trips to the back­yard.

Her How to Watch Draw Togeth­er high­light is a hilar­i­ous crash course in Insta­gram Live, scrawled in mag­ic mark­er by some­one who’s pos­si­bly only now just get­ting a grip on the plat­form. Don’t see it? Maybe it’s the week­end, or “maybe ask a mil­len­ni­al for help?”

#Draw­To­geth­er

And bless E.B. Goodale, an illus­tra­tor, first time author and moth­er of a young son, who hav­ing coun­ter­act­ed the heart­break of a can­celled book tour with a hasti­ly launched week of dai­ly Insta­gram Live Tod­dler Draw­ing Club meet­ings, made the deci­sion to scale back to just Tues­days and Thurs­days:

It was fun doing it every­day but turned out to be a bit too much to han­dle giv­en our family’s new sched­ule. We’re all fig­ur­ing it out, right? I hope you will con­tin­ue to join me in our unchar­tered ter­ri­to­ry next week as we draw to stay sane. Tune in live to make requests or watch it lat­er and fol­low along at home.

(Her How to Draw a Cat tuto­r­i­al, above, was like­ly intend­ed for in-per­son book­store events relat­ing to her just pub­lished Under the Lilacs…)

#draw­ing­with­tod­dlers

Our per­son­al favorite is Stick­ies Art School, whose online children’s class­es are led not by mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary artist Nina Katchadouri­an, whose Face­book page serves as the online insti­tu­tion’s home, but rather her senior tuxe­do cat, Stick­ies.

Stick­ies, who comes to the gig with an impres­sive com­mand of Eng­lish, honed no doubt by fre­quent appear­ances on Katchadourian’s Insta­gram page, affects a dif­fi­dent air to dole out assign­ments, the lat­est of which is above.

He allows his stu­dents ample time to com­plete their tasksthus far all por­traits of him­self. The next one, to ren­der Stick­ies in a cos­tume of the artist’s choice, is due Wednes­day by 9am, Berlin time.

Stick­ies also offers pos­i­tive feed­back on sub­mit­ted work in delight­ful fol­low up videos, a respon­si­bil­i­ty that Katchadouri­an takes seri­ous­ly:

There have been so many con­ver­sa­tions at NYU Gal­latin where I’m on the fac­ul­ty about online teach­ing, how to do it, how to think of a stu­dio course in this new form, etc, and I think per­haps that crossed over with the desire to cheer up some peo­ple with kids, many of whom are already Stick­ies fans, or so I have been told. 

His child pro­teges are no doubt unaware that Stick­ies looked ready to leave the plan­et sev­er­al weeks ago, a fact whose import will res­onate with many pet own­ers in these dark days:

Maybe a third ele­ment was just being so glad he is still around, that hav­ing him active­ly “out there” feels good and life-affirm­ing at the moment.

Stick­ies Art School is mar­velous fun for adults to audit from afar, via Katchadourian’s pub­lic Face­book posts. If you are a par­ent whose child would like to par­tic­i­pate, send her a friend request and men­tion that you’re doing so on behalf of your child artist.

Search­ing on the hash­tag #art­teach­er­sofin­sta­gram will yield many more resources.

Art of Edu­ca­tion Uni­ver­si­ty has sin­gled out 12 accounts to get you start­ed, as well as lots of help­ful infor­ma­tion for class­room art teach­ers who are fig­ur­ing out how to teach effec­tive­ly online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn to Draw Butts with Just Five Sim­ple Lines

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Teach­es You How to Draw

How to Draw the Human Face & Head: A Free 3‑Hour Tuto­r­i­al

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Giv­en the can­cel­la­tion of every­thing, she’s tak­en to Insta­gram to doc­u­ment her social dis­tance strolls through New York City’s Cen­tral Park, using the hash­tag #queenoftheapeswalk  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

When Orson Welles Crossed Paths With Hitler (and Churchill): “He Had No Personality.… I Think There Was Nothing There.”

Dick Cavett excelled at turn­ing the late-night talk show for­mat into a show­case for gen­uine­ly reveal­ing con­ver­sa­tions (and the occa­sion­al wrestling match). Of the many riv­et­ing guests he had on through­out the 60s and 70s, some appear­ing mul­ti­ple times, few could match Orson Welles for sheer sto­ry­telling prowess. As if in a con­test to out­do him­self, Welles appeared on Cavett’s show three times in 1970, and once more in 1973, as an ami­able, gruff racon­teur who lived a life almost impos­si­ble to believe actu­al­ly hap­pened.

Welles met every­one. He even met Hitler, he says in the clip above from a July 1970 appear­ance on the show, his sec­ond that year. In those ear­ly days, he says, “the Nazis were just a very com­i­cal kind of minor­i­ty par­ty of nuts that nobody took seri­ous­ly at all” except Welles’ Aus­tri­an hik­ing instruc­tor, who brought the leg­endary actor and direc­tor to a Nazi din­ner with the future mass-mur­der­ing dic­ta­tor. Welles was seat­ed next to Hitler, who “made so lit­tle an impres­sion on me that I can’t remem­ber a sec­ond of it. He had no per­son­al­i­ty. He was invis­i­ble…. I think there was noth­ing there.”

By 1938, every­one knew who he was: Hitler was named “man of the year” by Time mag­a­zine, who wrote, “less­er men of the year seemed small indeed beside the Führer”—and Welles was named “Radio’s Man of the Year.” His “famous The War of the Worlds broad­cast, scared few­er peo­ple than Hitler,” the edi­tors wrote, “but more than had ever been fright­ened by radio before, demon­strat­ing that radio can be a tremen­dous force in whip­ping up mass emo­tion.” Welles’ nev­er met Stal­in, he tells Cavett, unprompt­ed, but knew Roo­sevelt “very well.”

In a lat­er appear­ance on the show, in Sep­tem­ber 1970, Welles claimed Roo­sevelt told him no one believed the Pearl Har­bor announce­ment because of the War of the Worlds hoax. Here, in this twelve-minute clip from July, he has many more sto­ries to tell and excel­lent ques­tions from Cavett to answer (if he went back to school, he says, and “real­ly want­ed to get good at a sub­ject,” he would study anthro­pol­o­gy). Towards the end, at 9:00, he talks about anoth­er world leader who did make a dis­tinct impres­sion on him: Win­ston Churchill. “He was quite anoth­er thing,” says Welles. “He had great humor and great irony.”

Welles tells a sto­ry of Churchill com­ing to see him play Oth­el­lo in Lon­don. “I heard a mur­mur­ing in the front row. I thought he was talk­ing to him­self.” Churchill lat­er came to vis­it Welles in his dress­ing room and began to recite all of Othello’s lines from mem­o­ry, “includ­ing the cuts which I had made.” Years lat­er, after the war, when Churchill was out of office, Welles ran into him once more in Venice, and their pri­or asso­ci­a­tion came very much in handy in the financ­ing of his next pic­ture. (He doesn’t name the film, but it might have been The Stranger.)

No one expe­ri­enced the 20th cen­tu­ry quite like Orson Welles, and no one left such a cre­ative lega­cy. Always enter­tain­ing, his Cavett appear­ances are more than oppor­tu­ni­ties for name dropping—they’re tele­vised mem­oirs, in extem­po­ra­ne­ous vignettes, from one of history’s most engag­ing sto­ry­tellers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & More (1970)

Orson Welles Trash­es Famous Direc­tors: Alfred Hitch­cock (“Ego­tism and Lazi­ness”), Woody Allen (“His Arro­gance Is Unlim­it­ed”) & More

Alfred Hitch­cock Talks with Dick Cavett About Sab­o­tage, For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent & Lax­a­tives (1972)

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

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

Rosetta Stone

Since the first stir­rings of the inter­net, artists and cura­tors have puz­zled over what the flu­id­i­ty of online space would do to the expe­ri­ence of view­ing works of art. At a con­fer­ence on the sub­ject in 2001, Susan Haz­an of the Israel Muse­um won­dered whether there is “space for enchant­ment in a tech­no­log­i­cal world?” She referred to Wal­ter Benjamin’s rumi­na­tions on the “poten­tial­ly lib­er­at­ing phe­nom­e­non” of tech­no­log­i­cal­ly repro­duced art, yet also not­ed that “what was for­feit­ed in this process were the ‘aura’ and the author­i­ty of the object con­tain­ing with­in it the val­ues of cul­tur­al her­itage and tra­di­tion.” Eval­u­at­ing a num­ber of online gal­leries of the time, Haz­an found that “the speed with which we are able to access remote muse­ums and pull them up side by side on the screen is alarm­ing­ly imme­di­ate.” Per­haps the “accel­er­at­ed mobil­i­ty” of the inter­net, she wor­ried, “caus­es objects to become dis­pos­able and to decline in sig­nif­i­cance.”

VG-Self-Portrait-1887

Fif­teen years after her essay, the num­ber of muse­ums that have made their col­lec­tions avail­able online whole, or in part, has grown expo­nen­tial­ly and shows no signs of slow­ing. We may not need to fear los­ing muse­ums and libraries—important spaces that Michel Fou­cault called “het­ero­topias,” where lin­ear, mun­dane time is inter­rupt­ed. These spaces will like­ly always exist.

Yet increas­ing­ly we need nev­er vis­it them in per­son to view most of their con­tents. Stu­dents and aca­d­e­mics can con­duct near­ly all of their research through the inter­net, nev­er hav­ing to trav­el to the Bodleian, the Bei­necke, or the British Library. And lovers of art must no longer shell out for plane tick­ets and hotels to see the pre­cious con­tents of the Get­ty, the Guggen­heim, or the Rijksmu­se­um. And who would dare do that dur­ing our cur­rent pan­dem­ic?

For all that may be lost, online gal­leries have long been “mak­ing works of art wide­ly avail­able, intro­duc­ing new forms of per­cep­tion in film and pho­tog­ra­phy and allow­ing art to move from pri­vate to pub­lic, from the elite to the mass­es.”

Kandinsky-Composition-II

Even more so than when Haz­an wrote those words, the online world offers pos­si­bil­i­ties for “the emer­gence of new cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na, the vir­tu­al aura.” Over the years we have fea­tured dozens of data­bas­es, archives, and online gal­leries through which you might vir­tu­al­ly expe­ri­ence art the world over, an expe­ri­ence once sole­ly reserved for only the very wealthy. And as artists and cura­tors adapt to a dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment, they find new ways to make vir­tu­al gal­leries enchant­i­ng. The vast col­lec­tions in the vir­tu­al gal­leries list­ed below await your vis­it, with 2,000,000+ paint­ings, sculp­tures, pho­tographs, books, and more. See the Roset­ta Stone at the British Muse­um (top), cour­tesy of the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute. See Van Gogh’s many self-por­traits and vivid, swirling land­scapes at The Van Gogh Muse­um. Vis­it the Asian art col­lec­tion at the Smith­so­ni­an’s Freer and Sack­ler Gal­leries. Or see Vass­i­ly Kandin­sky’s daz­zling abstract com­po­si­tions at the Guggen­heim.

And below the list of gal­leries, find links to online col­lec­tions of sev­er­al hun­dred art books to read online or down­load. Con­tin­ue to watch this space: We’ll add to both of these lists as more and more col­lec­tions come online.

Art Images from Muse­ums & Libraries

Art Books

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in May 2016. It has since been updat­ed to include more art from dif­fer­ent muse­ums.

Relat­ed Con­tents:

Down­load 448 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

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

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Dead & Company Announces Couch Tour, Letting You Stream Free Concerts at Home

More free music/entertainment to car­ry you through these bleak, strange times. Dead & Com­pa­ny (the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the Grate­ful Dead plus John May­er and Oteil Bur­bridge) are mak­ing con­certs free to stream at home. And the first one gets under­way tonight.

They announced on Twit­ter:

Stay at home this week­end and tune in to “One More Sat­ur­day Night”, a new #Couch­Tour series fea­tur­ing your favorite Dead & Com­pa­ny shows, for FREE.   We’re kick­ing things off with the 12/2/17 Austin show this Sat­ur­day at 8pm ET/ 5pm PT on nugs.tv and on Face­book!

Click the links above to watch the show. Until then, you can watch a set above, record­ed live in Atlanta’s Lake­wood Amphithe­atre, back in June 2017.

Also find a trove of 11,000+ record­ed Grate­ful Dead shows in the Relat­eds below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

11,215 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

The Longest of the Grate­ful Dead’s Epic Long Jams: “Dark Star” (1972), “The Oth­er One” (1972) and “Play­ing in The Band” (1974)

Bruce Spring­steen Releas­es Live Con­cert Film Online: Watch “Lon­don Call­ing: Live In Hyde Park” and Prac­tice Self Dis­tanc­ing

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Soothing, Uplifting Resources for Parents & Caregivers Stressed by the COVID-19 Crisis

When COVID-19 closed schools and shut­tered the­aters and con­cert venues, response was swift.

Stars rang­ing from the Cincin­nati zoo’s hip­po Fiona to Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miran­da leapt to share free con­tent with sud­den­ly home­bound view­ers.

Coldplay’s front­man, Chris Mar­tin, sep­a­rat­ed from his band­mates by inter­na­tion­al bor­ders, played a mini gig at home, as did coun­try star Kei­th Urban, with his wife, Nicole Kid­man, lurk­ing in the back­ground.

Chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Deb­bie Allen got peo­ple off the couch with free dance class­es on Insta­gram.

Audi­ble pledged to pro­vide free audio­books for lit­tle kids and teens for the dura­tion.

An embar­rass­ment of rich­es for those whose expe­ri­ence of COVID-19 is some­where between extend­ed snow day and stay­ca­tion…

But what about care­givers who sud­den­ly find them­selves pro­vid­ing 24–7 care for elders with demen­tia, or neu­ro-atyp­i­cal adult chil­dren whose upend­ed rou­tine is wreak­ing hav­oc on their emo­tions?

“I know peo­ple are hap­py that the schools have closed but I just lost crit­i­cal work­day hours and if/when day hab clos­es I will have to take low-paid med­ical leave AND we will not have any breaks from care­giv­ing some­one with 24–7 needs and aggres­sive, loud behav­iors. I feel com­plete­ly defeat­ed,” one friend writes.

24 hours lat­er:

We just lost day hab, effec­tive tomor­row. My mes­sages for in-home ser­vices haven’t been returned yet. Full on pan­ic mode.

What can we do to help light­en those loads when we’re barred from phys­i­cal inter­ac­tion, or enter­ing each other’s homes?

We combed through our archive, with an eye toward the most sooth­ing, uplift­ing con­tent, appro­pri­ate for all ages, start­ing with pianist Paul Bar­ton’s clas­si­cal con­certs for ele­phants in Kan­chanaburi, Thai­land, above.

Calm­ing videos:

Hours of sooth­ing  nature footage from the BBC.

Com­muters in New­castle’s Hay­mar­ket Bus Sta­tion Play­ing Beethoven 

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour’s Musi­cal Take on Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Guid­ed Imagery Med­i­ta­tion from Johns Hop­kins All Children’s Hos­pi­tal

Four clas­sic per­for­mances from the “Father of Bossa Nova” João Gilber­to

The Insects’ Christ­mas, a 1913: Stop Motion  Ani­ma­tion

Mul­ti­ple sea­sons of Bob Ross!

60+ Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

Home­made Amer­i­can Music, a 1980 doc­u­men­tary on rur­al south­east­ern tra­di­tion­al music and musi­cians

Win­sor McKay’s Ger­tie the Dinosaur

Calm­ing Music and Audio:

Metal­li­ca, REM, Led Zep­pelin & Queen Sung in the Style of Gre­go­ri­an Chant

18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Weight­less, the most relax­ing song ever made

Calm­ing Piano, Jazz & Harp Cov­ers of Music from Hayao Miyaza­ki Films

240 Hours of Relax­ing, Sleep-Induc­ing Sounds from Sci-Fi Video Games: From Blade Run­ner to Star Wars

Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release

We’ve also got a trove of free col­or­ing books and pages, though care­givers should vet the con­tent before shar­ing it with some­one who’s like­ly to be dis­turbed by med­ical illus­tra­tion and images of medieval demons…

Read­ers, if you know a resource that might buy care­givers and their agi­tat­ed, house­bound charges a bit of peace, please add it in the com­ments below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ther­a­peu­tic Ben­e­fits of Ambi­ent Music: Sci­ence Shows How It Eas­es Chron­ic Anx­i­ety, Phys­i­cal Pain, and ICU-Relat­ed Trau­ma

Free Guid­ed Imagery Record­ings Help Kids Cope with Pain, Stress & Anx­i­ety

Chill Out to 70 Hours of Ocean­scape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

A Short, Animated Film Shows How a Scientific Article Gets Published: “Excitement, Baby Steps and Reams of Rejections”

When peo­ple say things like “the sci­ence is set­tled” or “the sci­ence has changed,” researchers tend to grind their teeth. Sci­ence can come to a broad con­sen­sus, as in the case of the coro­n­avirus or cli­mate change, but it isn’t ever per­fect­ly set­tled as a bloc on any ques­tion. We pro­ceed in sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge not by attain­ing per­fect knowl­edge but, as Isaac Asi­mov once wrote, by being less wrong than those who came before.

And sci­en­tists advance in sci­en­tif­ic pub­lish­ing, as Aeon writes, not with cer­tain­ty, but with “excite­ment, baby steps and reams of rejec­tions.” As we see in the short film above, The Researcher’s Arti­cle, by French film­mak­er Char­lotte Arene, get­ting one’s research pub­lished can be “a patience-test­ing exer­cise in rejec­tion, rewrit­ing and wait­ing,” demon­strat­ed here by the tra­vails of physi­cists Frédéric Restag­no and Julien Bobroff of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris-Saclay.

Even before sub­mit­ting their find­ings, the sci­en­tists must care­ful­ly fit their work into the tra­di­tion­al form known as the “let­ter,” a doc­u­ment of four pages or few­er that con­dens­es years of research into strict­ly suc­cinct para­graphs, graphs, and ref­er­ences. The “let­ter” is “one of the most pop­u­lar for­mats of arti­cles in physics,” say the physi­cists, not­ing the major Nobel prize-win­ning dis­cov­er­ies to appear as let­ters in recent years, includ­ing the Hig­gs’ Boson pub­li­ca­tion that won in 2013, com­ing in at only two pages long.

Sum­ming up “a mas­sive amount of data,” short sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles then go on to prove them­selves to their respec­tive fields through a ref­er­ee­ing process in which three anony­mous sci­en­tists read the work and rec­om­mend pub­li­ca­tion, revi­sion, or rejec­tion. This process can go sev­er­al rounds and take sev­er­al months. One must be per­sis­tent: Restag­no and Bobroff were reject­ed from sev­er­al jour­nals before final­ly get­ting an accep­tance.

After this sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment of time and effort, the authors may have a read­er­ship of maybe twen­ty peo­ple. But crowd size is not the point, they say, “because research is made up of all these small dis­cov­er­ies,” con­tribut­ing to a larg­er pic­ture, inform­ing and cor­rect­ing each oth­er, and going about the hum­ble, painstak­ing busi­ness of try­ing to be less wrong than their pre­de­ces­sors, while still build­ing on the best insights of hun­dreds of years of sci­en­tif­ic pub­lish­ing.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the Short­est Aca­d­e­m­ic Arti­cle Ever Writ­ten: “The Unsuc­cess­ful Self-Treat­ment of a Case of ‘Writer’s Block’”

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

The Emper­or of Japan, Aki­hi­to, Is Still Pub­lish­ing Sci­en­tif­ic Papers in His 80s

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


  • 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

  • Archives

  • Search

  • Quantcast
    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.