Hear David Lynch Read from His New Memoir Room to Dream, and Browse His New Online T‑Shirt Store

in Books, Fashion, Film | June 15th, 2018

We think of David Lynch as a film­mak­er, and right­ly so, but the direc­tor of Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve has long kept a more diverse cre­ative port­fo­lio. He began as a painter, study­ing at the Penn­syl­va­nia Acad­e­my of the Fine Arts, and has also tried his hand at pho­tog­ra­phy, music, and com­ic strips. More recent­ly, writes the AV Club’s Ran­dall Col­burn, “Lynch has also released his own line of cof­fee, col­lab­o­rat­ed on Twin Peaks-themed beer and skate­boards, and cre­at­ed his own fes­ti­val. His lat­est endeav­or? T‑shirts, which is wild because it’s hard to imag­ine the ever-dap­per film­mak­er ever wear­ing one.”

Per­haps a line of Lynch-approved tra­di­tion­al white shirts, made to be but­toned all the way up even with­out a tie, remains in devel­op­ment. But for now, fans choose from the 57 T‑shirts designs now avail­able at Stu­dio: David Lynch’s Ama­zon store. All suit­able for wear­ing to your local revival house, they include “Turkey Cheese Head,” “Cow­boy,” “Small Dog,”“Small Bark­ing Dog,“and “You Got­ta Be Kid­din’ Me.” What kind of life, now solid­ly into its eighth decade, has both enabled and dri­ven Lynch to make not just so many things, but so many Lynchi­an things? Per­haps we can find a few answers with­in the near­ly 600 pages of Room to Dream, Lynch’s new mem­oir.

“Fans who share Lynch’s plea­sure in mys­tery will approach this book anx­ious­ly, hop­ing that his secrets may some­how be both revealed and sus­tained,” writes the Wash­ing­ton Post’s Charles Arrow­smith of the book, an excerpt of which you can hear read by Lynch him­self above. (He begins by say­ing “I’m going to tell you a sto­ry about my grand­par­ents” and ends with the image of his young self vom­it­ing into a hel­met he’d brought to school for show-and-tell.) And those who fear that the con­ven­tion­al­i­ty of the mem­oir form might flat­ten out Lynch’s idio­syn­crasies can rest assured that “in telling his life sto­ry, Lynch demon­strates the same dis­re­gard for causal­i­ty and tonal con­sis­ten­cy that marks his films.”

Despite includ­ing not just Lynch’s per­spec­tive but the per­spec­tives of many oth­ers (“sur­pris­ing­ly can­did ex-wives, fam­i­ly mem­bers, actors, agents, musi­cians, and col­leagues in var­i­ous fields,” pro­claims the jack­et copy), “Room to Dream pulls off a neat trick in draw­ing back a cur­tain and reveal­ing rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle. Despite the book’s heft, there’s not much to expli­cate the mys­ter­ies of Lynch’s work. But then, for him, the mystery’s the thing. To explain would be to destroy. What we get instead is insight into his cre­ative process.” As ded­i­cat­ed Lynch enthu­si­asts under­stand, the cre­ative process, which through­out his career has led him not to answers but ever more strange­ly com­pelling ques­tions, is every­thing.

Note: When Room to Dream comes out on June 19th, you can down­load the audio­book ver­sion, which Lynch helps nar­rate, for free if you sign up for Audi­ble’s free tri­al pro­gram. We have details on that pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paint­ings of Filmmaker/Visual Artist David Lynch

David Lynch’s Pho­tographs of Old Fac­to­ries

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Rapping, Deconstructed: How Some of the Greatest Rappers Make Their Rhymes

in Music, Poetry | June 15th, 2018

If high school Eng­lish teach­ers can chal­lenge skep­ti­cal stu­dents to cul­ti­vate an appre­ci­a­tion for Shake­speare and poet­ry with rap-based assign­ments, might the reverse also hold true?

Many afi­ciona­dos of high cul­ture turn up their noses at rap, believ­ing it to be a sim­ple form, requir­ing more brag­gado­cio than tal­ent.

Estelle Caswell, rap fan and pro­duc­er of Vox’s Ear­worm series, may get them to rethink that posi­tion with the above video, show­cas­ing how great rap­pers assem­ble rhymes.

Caswell uses visu­al graph­ing to explain the progress from the A‑A-B‑B scheme of ear­ly rap­per Kur­tis Blow’s “The Breaks” (1980) to the com­plex and sur­pris­ing holorimes of her per­son­al favorite, MF DOOM.

To appre­ci­ate her visu­al break­downs, you must under­stand that raps can be scored like tra­di­tion­al music. Here the bar reigns supreme—each bar con­sist­ing of four beats. The fur­ther out we go from rap’s ori­gins, the more its prac­ti­tion­ers play with place­ment and rhyme.

Above are some lyrics from Eric B. and Rakim’s 1986 cut, “Eric B. Is Pres­i­dent,” fea­tur­ing inter­nal rhymes high­light­ed in yel­low and mul­ti-syl­lab­ic rhymes picked out in pink. You’ll also find them escap­ing the tyran­ny of the bar line, con­tin­u­ing the rhyme on the first beat of the next bar.

Caswell is so intent on exam­in­ing the late Noto­ri­ous B.I.G.‘s “Hyp­no­tize,” that she over­looks a rather siz­able ele­phant in the room, the misog­y­nis­tic POV behind those en and oo sounds.

Short­ly there­after, Mos Def ups both the rhyming game and the fem­i­nist account­abil­i­ty, by stuff­ing his com­po­si­tions with mul­ti-syl­lab­ic words and phras­es that sort of rhyme—cinnamon, Entenmann’s, adren­a­line and “sent to them.”

Mean­while, Andre 3000 is play­ing with vary­ing the accent of his rhymes, rel­a­tive to the beat and bar, rather than com­mit­ting to a pre­dictable thud­ding.

Eminem, who has the dis­tinc­tion of pen­ning the first rap to win an Acad­e­my Award, places a pre­mi­um on nar­ra­tive, and refus­es to con­cede that noth­ing rhymes with orange.

Cur­rent chart top­per Kendrick Lamar’s gal­lop­ing “Rig­amor­tis” estab­lish­es a musi­cal motif that Caswell com­pares to Beethoven’s famous fifth.

MF DOOM kicks the ball fur­ther down the court with dou­ble enten­dres, word­play and a will­ing­ness to steer clear of the expect­ed “b word.”

Lis­ten to a Spo­ti­fy playlist of the songs ref­er­enced in the video.

Delve fur­ther into the sub­ject by read­ing the thoughts of rap ana­lyst Mar­tin Con­nor, whom Caswell cred­its as a sort of bea­con.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Hip Hop Music Visu­al­ized on a Turntable Cir­cuit Dia­gram: Fea­tures 700 Artists, from DJ Kool Herc to Kanye West

Found­ing Fathers, A Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed By Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D, Presents the True His­to­ry of Hip Hop

150 Songs from 100+ Rap­pers Get Art­ful­ly Woven into One Great Mashup: Watch the “40 Years of Hip Hop”

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear the First Track From John Coltrane’s Lost Album: The Newly-Discovered 1963 Collection Will Get Officially Released Later This Month

in Music | June 14th, 2018

Saint­hood and incal­cu­la­ble influ­ence aside, John Coltrane didn’t always break new ground in the stu­dio. “If you heard the John Coltrane Quar­tet live in the ear­ly-to-mid 1960s,” writes Gio­van­ni Rus­sonel­lo at The New York Times—refer­ring to the clas­sic line­up of bassist Jim­my Gar­ri­son, drum­mer Elvin Jones, and pianist McCoy Tyner—you heard “a ground-shak­ing band, an almost phys­i­cal being, bear­ing a promise that seemed to reach far beyond music.”

Pri­or to 1965’s super­nat­ur­al A Love Supreme, how­ev­er, few of the eight albums the clas­sic quar­tet record­ed for Impulse! Records cap­tured “the band’s live eth­ic.” The “fun­ny prob­lem” Coltrane had was his com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty, which made the label eschew record­ing the quartet’s con­sid­er­ably exper­i­men­tal ten­den­cies in favor of “con­cept-dri­ven and con­sumer-friend­ly projects.” Now, Rus­sonel­lo writes, “that sto­ry needs a major foot­note.” A lost Coltrane album from 1963 has emerged, dis­cov­ered by the fam­i­ly of his first wife, Naima.

Coltrane his­to­ry may be rewrit­ten on June 29th when the album, Both Direc­tions at Once, gets its release. We have a glimpse at what fans have been miss­ing for the past 55 years in the soar­ing first track, “Unti­tled Orig­i­nal 11383,” above, a “brisk minor blues.” The album’s remain­ing trea­sures may jus­ti­fy Son­ny Rollin’s com­par­i­son of this dis­cov­ery to “find­ing a new room in the Great Pyra­mid.” In addi­tion to two pre­vi­ous­ly unheard orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions, the album fea­tures some very intrigu­ing record­ings.

The final track, a stu­dio ver­sion of “One Up, One Down,” was “pre­vi­ous­ly heard only on a boot­leg record­ing made at the Bird­land jazz club,” notes Fact Mag­a­zine. “One of Coltrane’s most famous com­po­si­tions, ‘Impres­sions,’ is fea­tured in a trio with­out piano,” and the album also con­tains the first record­ing of “Nature Boy,” which lat­er appeared on The John Coltrane Quar­tet Plays. (See Fact Mag for a full track­list­ing of the stan­dard and two-CD deluxe edi­tions of the album.) This col­lec­tion comes very close “to the breadth of what Coltrane and his asso­ciates were deliv­er­ing onstage,” claims Rus­sonel­lo.

It may also rep­re­sent a pre­scient­ly tran­si­tion­al doc­u­ment, as its title sug­gests. As Coltrane’s son Ravi puts it, “you do get a sense of John with one foot in the past and one foot head­ed toward his future.” After the album’s 1963 record­ing at the Rudy Van Gelder Stu­dio in New Jer­sey, the mas­ter tapes some­how went miss­ing, but Coltrane had tak­en home the ref­er­ence tape that only recent­ly sur­faced. Both Direc­tions at Once fills in a gap between the “mar­velous” albums Coltrane and Cres­cent, show­ing off the band’s dynamism in the peri­od between “spring 1962 to spring 1964” and let­ting them cut loose while stay­ing with­in famil­iar har­mon­ic forms.

Coltrane’s avant-garde bril­liance may have changed the course of mod­ern music, but some of his most for­ward-think­ing exper­i­ments can be dif­fi­cult lis­ten­ing for those unini­ti­at­ed in the rites of modal free jazz. Accord­ing to pianist and schol­ar Lewis Porter, com­ment­ing on an advance copy of Both Direc­tions at Once, the redis­cov­ered album, con­tains “a lot of that musi­cal meat” that Coltrane’s quar­tet deliv­ered to live audi­ences in the ear­ly-to-mid-six­ties, “but in a con­text that will be more acces­si­ble to a lot of lis­ten­ers.”

Maybe more con­ser­v­a­tive lis­ten­ers, how­ev­er, can find in the lost album a key that unlocks the incred­i­ble mys­ter­ies of lat­er record­ings like Ascen­sion, Med­i­ta­tions, and the wild, posthu­mous­ly-released Inter­stel­lar Space.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream the “Com­plete” John Coltrane Playlist: A 94-Hour Jour­ney Through 700+ Trans­for­ma­tive Tracks

John Coltrane Draws a Mys­te­ri­ous Dia­gram Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal & Mys­ti­cal Qual­i­ties of Music

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme (1964)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Hear Eric Clapton’s Isolated Guitar Track From the Beatles’ ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ (1968)

in Music | June 14th, 2018

George Har­ri­son of the Bea­t­les was an accom­plished gui­tar play­er with a dis­tinc­tive solo­ing style. So you might think that with a song as per­son­al and gui­tar-cen­tric as “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” he would do his own play­ing. In fact, the song fea­tures gui­tar play­ing by Eric Clap­ton.

It was record­ed on Sep­tem­ber 6, 1968, dur­ing the acri­mo­nious White Album ses­sions. Har­ri­son had been strug­gling off and on for over a month to get the song right. He first tried it with his own play­ing on a Gib­son J‑200 gui­tar along with an over­dubbed har­mo­ni­um. He lat­er exper­i­ment­ed by run­ning the gui­tar solo back­wards. Noth­ing seemed to work.

So final­ly Har­ri­son asked his friend Clap­ton for a lit­tle help. When Har­ri­son walked into Abbey Road Stu­dios with Clap­ton, the oth­er Bea­t­les start­ed tak­ing the song seri­ous­ly. In a 1987 inter­view with Gui­tar Play­er mag­a­zine, Har­ri­son was asked whether it had bruised his ego to ask Clap­ton to play on the song.

No, my ego would rather have Eric play on it. I’ll tell you, I worked on that song with John, Paul, and Ringo one day, and they were not inter­est­ed in it at all. And I knew inside of me that it was a nice song. The next day I was with Eric, and I was going into the ses­sion, and I said, “We’re going to do this song. Come on and play on it.” He said, “Oh, no. I can’t do that. Nobody ever plays on the Bea­t­les records.” I said, “Look, it’s my song, and I want you to play on it.” So Eric came in, and the oth­er guys were as good as gold–because he was there. Also, it left me free to just play the rhythm and do the vocal. So Eric played that, and I thought it was real­ly good. Then we lis­tened to it back, and he said, “Ah, there’s a prob­lem, though; it’s not Beat­ley enough”–so we put it through the ADT [auto­mat­ic dou­ble-track­er], to wob­ble it a bit.

For the impres­sion of a per­son weep­ing and wail­ing, Clap­ton used the fin­gers on his fret­ting hand to bend the strings deeply, in a high­ly expres­sive descend­ing vibra­to. He was play­ing a 1957 Gib­son Les Paul, a gui­tar he had once owned but had giv­en to Har­ri­son, who nick­named it “Lucy.” You can hear Clap­ton’s iso­lat­ed play­ing above. And for a reminder of how it all came togeth­er, you can lis­ten to the offi­cial ver­sion here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in May, 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lost Gui­tar Solo for “Here Comes the Sun” by George Har­ri­son, Dis­cov­ered by George Mar­tin

A Young Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Gui­tar Sound

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 9 ) |

Life Lessons from Anthony Bourdain: How He Developed His Iron Professionalism, Achieved Creative Freedom & Learned from Failure

in Food & Drink, Life | June 14th, 2018

Antho­ny Bour­dain was not a par­tic­u­lar­ly good chef. That state­ment comes not as a cheap shot at the recent­ly depart­ed, but a quote from the depart­ed him­self. Bour­dain freely admit­ted it over a cou­ple of Tiger beers with a Fast Com­pa­ny inter­view­er last year. “I was very deserved­ly fired on a num­ber of occa­sions,” he adds for good mea­sure, ref­er­enc­ing his decades of dirty work and drug abuse before he rose to promi­nence in the worlds of food- and trav­el-cen­tric books and tele­vi­sion. But in more than one way, those decades pre­pared him to ride the kind of suc­cess he would even­tu­al­ly achieve into a body of work that could have arisen from no oth­er life or per­son­al­i­ty.

“Most of the peo­ple I’ve met who’ve been in the tele­vi­sion indus­try for a long time, their great­est fear is that they will not be in the tele­vi­sion indus­try next year,” Bour­dain says. “That they’ll say some­thing or do some­thing or make a deci­sion that will be so unpop­u­lar that they’ll lose their gig and won’t end up back on tele­vi­sion again. I don’t have that fear.” He knew, sure­ly bet­ter than any­one who has pub­licly remarked on it, that he may not have shown the genius in the kitchen to attain star-chef sta­tus. But he also knew he had some­thing ulti­mate­ly more impor­tant: the skills to turn out meal after flaw­less meal, day in and day out. “If I have to,” he says, “I’m pret­ty sure I can keep up on an omelet sta­tion.”

Many remem­brances of Bour­dain have high­light­ed his iron pro­fes­sion­al­ism. “He is con­trolled to the point of neu­ro­sis: clean, orga­nized, dis­ci­plined, cour­te­ous, sys­tem­at­ic,” wrote the New York­er’s Patrick Rad­den Keefe in a pro­file pub­lished last year. “He is Apol­lo in drag as Diony­sus.” Bour­dain cred­it­ed that to his lean years in the kitchen: “Every­thing impor­tant I ever learned, I learned as dish­wash­er and as a cook: you show up on time, you stay orga­nized, you clean up after your­self, you think about the peo­ple you work with, you respect the peo­ple you work with. You do the best you can.” This went for mat­ters per­son­al as well as pro­fes­sion­al: “If I say to you I’m going to meet you tomor­row at twelve min­utes after five to see John Wick 7, I will be there at 5:02.”

He would also, he adds, be “hang­ing out across the street, dis­creet­ly observ­ing to see what time you show up. And I’ll be mak­ing some very impor­tant deci­sions based on your arrival time.” Bour­dain’s exact­ing stan­dards, for him­self and oth­ers, allowed him to achieve an unusu­al degree of free­dom for a major media per­son­al­i­ty. “I detest com­pe­tent, work­man­like sto­ry­telling,” he says of his and his col­lab­o­ra­tors’ pen­chant for cre­ative risk. “A pow­er­ful reac­tion, in one way or the oth­er, is infi­nite­ly prefer­able to me than pleas­ing every­body.” Yet despite tak­ing books and tele­vi­sion shows osten­si­bly about food in new and unpre­dictable aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al direc­tions, in the kitchen he remained a tra­di­tion­al­ist to the end. “You put chick­en in a car­bonara? You lost me. It’s an unfor­giv­able sin against God.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s Free Show Raw Craft, Where He Vis­its Crafts­men Mak­ing Gui­tars, Tat­toos, Motor­cy­cles & More (RIP)

Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Inter­view: Record­ed by David Rem­nick of The New York­er

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)

David Fos­ter Wal­lace: The Big, Uncut Inter­view (2003)

Paulo Coel­ho on How to Han­dle the Fear of Fail­ure

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Weezer Covers Toto’s “Africa” & Makes a Young Fan’s Dream Come True: The Latest, Greatest Cover of the 1983 Song

in Music | June 14th, 2018

Last month, rock band Weez­er per­formed a remark­able bit of fan ser­vice: tak­ing a request from a fan’s Twit­ter and grant­i­ng it. A user called, appro­pri­ate­ly, “Weez­er Cov­er Africa by Toto,” has been bad­ger­ing the band since Decem­ber of 2017 to do just that. The per­son behind the account is 15-year-old Mary from Ohio, who is both a seri­ous fan of Weez­er and of “Africa,” which she first heard on an episode of “Stranger Things.”

Though the band decid­ed to help Mary out, they had a lit­tle bit of fun first, trolling her and cov­er­ing “Rosan­na,” Toto’s big­ger hit (it won Record of the Year at the 1983 Gram­mys ). A few days lat­er, they dropped “Africa”…and watched as it sailed to the top of the iTunes charts. (If you’re won­der­ing, the orig­i­nal reached the top spot in the Bill­board 100 back in 1983).

Now, if you know the orig­i­nal, Weezer’s cov­er is pret­ty note-for-note. One could argue that Toto, mocked for its smooth pop lean­ings, actu­al­ly rock hard­er than Weez­er, espe­cial­ly in the song’s cho­rus.
But Mary’s obses­sion with “Africa” doesn’t come out of nowhere. YouTube is full of odd cov­ers of the song.

Here’s a loop ped­al and piano ver­sion from Peter Bence:

Or how about a choral group’s ver­sion, com­plete with a ASMR-tas­tic recre­ation of a rain­storm.

You could also watch a rub­ber chick­en have a go:

But my cur­rent favorite is this very enthu­si­as­tic Nordic met­al cov­er from Leo Morac­chi­oli and friends:

Why do peo­ple more than ever love “Africa”? When it came out it was def­i­nite­ly a hit, but over 35 years or so it’s tran­scend­ed its cheesy pop sta­tus to become a “clas­sic” of pop con­struc­tion, filled with dynam­ic changes, mul­ti­part har­monies, and a com­plex arrange­ment. There’s noth­ing iron­ic in lov­ing it.

Annie Zales­ki, in her Salon arti­cle on the song’s endur­ing pow­er, describes its world music indul­gences and its rhythm:

With­out flash or fan­fare, “Africa” incor­po­rates con­gas, marim­bas, the gong and oth­er per­cus­sion flour­ish­es, giv­ing the song a tex­tured veloc­i­ty. Under­neath it all is a hyp­not­ic groove, resem­bling a con­stant, gen­tle push — one that keeps the song pul­sat­ing for­ward. When lis­ten­ing to “Africa,” it’s impos­si­ble to stay still; the song’s innate move­ment is infec­tious.

Co-writer David Paich (Toto’s key­boardist) explained the thoughts behind the lyrics in a Grant­land inter­view, explain­ing they stemmed from his days as a Catholic school­boy and hear­ing tales of mis­sion­ary work:

I had all these things rat­tling about in my brain when I was writ­ing the song. All these thoughts about priests and young social work­ers that have gone over there, devot­ing their lives to help­ing peo­ple, and hav­ing to choose what kind of life they’re going to have — whether to keep doing this, what I’m doing here, or can I have a life, get mar­ried, have kids, and do that kind of thing. So it was a life choice mixed in with a geo­graph­i­cal fas­ci­na­tion there.

But as he also says, the line “I bless the rains down in Africa” just popped out when he first start­ed work­ing on the cho­rus. The vers­es were writ­ten after to explain the mys­tery of the cho­rus. Also: the song was added at the last minute, clos­ing off the album, which opens with “Rosan­na,” per­fect book­ends which the rest of the album can’t reach.

And final­ly, if you’re still fas­ci­nat­ed with the song, Rick Beato checks out the indi­vid­ual mul­ti-tracks on his series “What Makes This Song So Great.” By the end, you might just have the answer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Bonham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zeppelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

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

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

How to Film Thought: A Close Look at the Masterful Editing of Sherlock, Starring Benedict Cumberbatch

in Film, Television | June 13th, 2018

What has drawn Sher­lock, the BBC tele­vi­sion series star­ring a mod­ern-day ver­sion of Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved con­sult­ing detec­tive, such great acclaim? Some of it, of course, has to do with the for­mi­da­ble act­ing skills of Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch in the title role. But if you believe Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the video essay­ist the Nerd­writer, much of the genius of this “intox­i­cat­ing­ly inven­tive TV show” lies in the edit­ing.

The plot of each episode runs on how Sher­lock “gets from point A to point B, from prob­lem to solu­tion, mys­tery to clar­i­ty,” and just as Cum­ber­batch must con­vinc­ing­ly por­tray the fig­ur­ing-out process with his per­for­mance, so must the edi­tors with their cuts. Puschak illus­trates Sher­lock’s cre­ative, idea-dense way of doing this with just one sequence of three min­utes and 42 sec­onds. It comes trig­gered by a bout of with­draw­al from cocaine, a choice that stays true to the nature of the char­ac­ter Conan Doyle cre­at­ed, bril­liant but also a drug addict.

Dur­ing this sequence, Sher­lock arrives at just what every good detec­tive sto­ry needs: a rev­e­la­tion, a moment when both he and we see the pieces of infor­ma­tion the sto­ry has pre­vi­ous­ly pre­sent­ed from a new angle, in a way that reveals the cru­cial rela­tion­ship between them. And as essen­tial­ly a cin­e­mat­ic work, Sher­lock lit­er­al­ly shows it from not just one but many new angles, even from per­spec­tives impos­si­ble in real life. As with any well-craft­ed piece of edit­ing, you can only feel this sequence’s pow­er when you watch it, not when you read it described. Puschak takes full advan­tage of his own form, the video essay, to not just show it to us but break it down to its con­stituent ele­ments.

Conan Doyle’s orig­i­nal Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries won their wide and avid read­er­ship by offer­ing a glimpse into the work­ings of an unusu­al mind, mak­ing them leg­i­ble in text. Sher­lock goes a dimen­sion fur­ther by mak­ing them leg­i­ble in image and sound. The rela­tion­ship between the two par­al­lels the rela­tion­ship between the tra­di­tion­al essay and the video essay: the lat­ter, in this case, allows us to fol­low the process of Puschak’s thoughts about Sher­lock not just tex­tu­al­ly but audio­vi­su­al­ly as well. And with his chan­nel’s just hav­ing passed one mil­lion sub­scribers, he seems well on the way to achiev­ing a Sher­lock­ian lev­el of pop­u­lar­i­ty him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

Hear the Vin­tage Sher­lock Holmes Radio Dra­ma, Star­ring John Giel­gud, Orson Welles & Ralph Richard­son

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

How Film­mak­ers Tell Their Sto­ries: Three Insight­ful Video Essays Demys­ti­fy the Craft of Edit­ing, Com­po­si­tion & Col­or

How Sein­feld, the Sit­com Famous­ly “About Noth­ing,” Is Like Gus­tave Flaubert’s Nov­els About Noth­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Enter a Digitized Collection of 38,000 Pamphlets & Periodicals From the French Revolution

in History | June 13th, 2018

“What oth­er solu­tion but rev­o­lu­tion?” asks Jon­ah Wal­ters of the con­di­tions for most of the pop­u­la­tion in late-18th cen­tu­ry France. The major­i­ty lived in abject pover­ty; “the eco­nom­ic sub­ju­ga­tion in the coun­try­side was pro­found.” The urban workers—or sans-culottes—fared lit­tle bet­ter. “The cler­gy and nobil­i­ty,” on the oth­er hand, “com­pris­ing about 1.6 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, were doing just fine—most nobles lived in extreme opu­lence.” This out­line sketch­es the barest con­text for the resent­ment that fueled the vio­lence of the French Rev­o­lu­tion and the thou­sands of exe­cu­tions even­tu­al­ly car­ried out by the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Tri­bunal.

Lawyer and ora­tor Georges Dan­ton, who had argued force­ful­ly for the killing of Louis XVI, pro­posed the Tri­bunal, in fact, as a means of stem­ming ter­ror. “I shall go so far as to say,” he declared, “that if a tri­bunal had been in exis­tence” in the years between 1789 and 1793, “the peo­ple, who have been so often and so cru­el­ly rebuked for the actions of these days, would not have cov­ered them with blood.” He advo­cat­ed that the tri­bunal “be ter­ri­ble in order that the peo­ple may be spared the neces­si­ty of being ter­ri­ble.” The fol­low­ing year, Dan­ton him­self was behead­ed, accused of lenien­cy and self-indul­gence.

Like his con­tem­po­raries Robe­spierre and Marat, Danton’s sto­ry illus­trates the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies’ elo­quent ide­al­ism and their com­mit­ment to the exe­cu­tion of roy­al­ists, coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, and thou­sands of accused crim­i­nals as a means of remak­ing the nation and ful­ly destroy­ing the Ancien Régime. Kingston University’s Marisa Lin­ton sums up the polit­i­cal cri­sis:

The French went almost overnight from being an absolute monar­chy to a polit­i­cal sys­tem in which the will of the peo­ple replaced that of the king. In the absence of tra­di­tions of par­lia­men­tary rule, the French fell back on uni­ver­sal­ist abstract prin­ci­ples and Enlight­en­ment rhetoric which were to prove increas­ing­ly divi­sive and leave no space for legit­i­mate oppo­si­tion. In this cli­mate, all polit­i­cal rivals had the poten­tial to be denounced as con­spir­a­tors against pop­u­lar sov­er­eign­ty.

As in the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion a few years ear­li­er, these debates took place in pub­lic via speech­es, peri­od­i­cals, and pam­phlets, which were print­ed by the tens of thou­sands. Chicago’s New­ber­ry Library French Rev­o­lu­tion Col­lec­tion hous­es on the Inter­net Archive “more than 30,000” such pam­phlets and “more than 23,000 issues of 180 peri­od­i­cals pub­lished between 1780 and 1810…. The col­lec­tion rep­re­sents the opin­ions of all the fac­tions that opposed and defend­ed the monar­chy dur­ing the tur­bu­lent peri­od between 1789 and 1799 and also con­tains innu­mer­able ephemer­al pub­li­ca­tions of the ear­ly Repub­lic.”

Much of the impres­sive New­ber­ry col­lec­tion, “among the most com­pre­hen­sive in the world,” has been dig­i­tized and made freely avail­able via the French Rev­o­lu­tion Pam­phlets Dig­i­tal Ini­tia­tive. Addi­tion­al­ly, the New­ber­ry has an open project for trans­lat­ing these pam­phlets into Eng­lish “in order to broad­en access, aid class­room instruc­tion, and sup­port schol­ar­ship.” The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the mate­ri­als are, of course, in French, but some few are also in Latin and oth­er lan­guages.

The pam­phlet at the top is one of sev­er­al trans­lat­ed by the stu­dents of DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor Pas­cale-Anne Brault. This doc­u­ment announces the ver­dict of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Court against Jean-Bap­tiste Car­ri­er, a for­mer deputy of the Nation­al Con­ven­tion who stood accused of hor­rif­ic atroc­i­ties in the com­mis­sion of his duties, includ­ing “drown­ing men, women, chil­dren” and “assas­si­nat­ing a large num­ber of peo­ple and burn­ing towns, where men and women had their throats cut and girls were raped.” The judg­ment claims that “Nero was less blood­thirsty” than Car­ri­er and his accom­plices.

Fur­ther up, we see the first page of a pam­phlet writ­ten by René Louis Delagueulle, a mem­ber of the Nation­al Con­ven­tion, detail­ing plans for “a Repub­li­can Edu­ca­tion of the Peo­ple.” Delagueulle begins his pro­pos­al with a set of jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, among them the need for full employ­ment. “This mea­sure equal­ly oblig­es all cit­i­zens to learn,” he writes, “at a set age, an art, a trade or a pro­fes­sion capa­ble of procur­ing them the means of sub­sis­tence. We have decreed equal­i­ty: we wish it not to be an emp­ty name, that it remain illu­so­ry & with­out real­i­ty; for in a demo­c­ra­t­ic & pop­u­lar Repub­lic, the law of equal­i­ty is the only law that can bring about com­mon hap­pi­ness.”

Just above, see a pam­phlet titled “The Dec­la­ra­tion of the Rights of Women,” penned in 1792 by an anony­mous col­lec­tive of female French cit­i­zens writ­ing under the pseu­do­nym Phi­laletes (Greek for “lover of truth”). The pam­phlet con­sists of sev­en­teen arti­cles enu­mer­at­ing the rights of free speech for French women. “Women are born, live, and die with the right to speak,” states the first arti­cle. “They are equal in their ambi­tion in this regard.” The doc­u­ment ends with a “Ded­i­ca­tion Epis­tle to Female Cit­i­zens,” which begins, “for too long the Assem­blée Nationale has made you wait for the dec­la­ra­tion of your rights; it is essen­tial and urgent that they be pro­claimed.”

These fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ments rep­re­sent just a tiny sam­pling of the thou­sands of pam­phlets avail­able, though most of them remain to be trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. You can vol­un­teer to help with the trans­la­tion ini­tia­tive here. And enter the enor­mous archive of near­ly 40,000 pam­phlets, orga­nized by year, sub­ject, cre­ator, col­lec­tion, and lan­guage, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

14,000 Free Images from the French Rev­o­lu­tion Now Avail­able Online

Explore 5,300 Rare Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized by the Vat­i­can: From The Ili­ad & Aeneid, to Japan­ese & Aztec Illus­tra­tions

3,500 Occult Man­u­scripts Will Be Dig­i­tized & Made Freely Avail­able Online, Thanks to Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Causes & Prevalence of Suicide Explained by Two Videos from Alain de Botton’s School of Life

in Life, Philosophy | June 13th, 2018

“Sui­cide,” writes Albert Camus in “The Myth of Sisy­phus,” has nev­er been dealt with except as a social phe­nom­e­non.” And yet, as Alain de Bot­ton argues in his School of Life video above, at least when it comes to media and gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ties, con­tem­po­rary soci­eties pre­fer to hard­ly deal with the prob­lem at all, even though it claims the lives of some 800,000 peo­ple every year. “It remains entire­ly strange,” says De Bot­ton, “that through the media we should hear so much about killers and so lit­tle about those who take their own lives.”

Giv­en that so much mass media seems to spe­cial­ize in pro­duc­ing a fear of oth­ers, per­haps this is not so strange after all. How­ev­er, when it comes to the allo­ca­tion of gov­ern­ment resources, most “in the wealthy nations tend over­whelm­ing­ly to direct their efforts to deal­ing with pover­ty, ill­ness, and aging,” and devote lit­tle to the prob­lem of sui­cide. This may be due to social stig­ma. “Sui­cide is the supreme reminder of our intense psy­cho­log­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty,” and in high­ly reli­gious soci­eties, like the Unit­ed States, it car­ries an added stigma­ti­za­tion as a “sin.”

Nonethe­less, “giv­en that more peo­ple die by sui­cide than are col­lec­tive­ly mur­dered, die in traf­fic acci­dents, or are killed by ani­mals,” it should stand to rea­son that we would expend more effort on find­ing out why. Per­haps over and above phi­los­o­phy and the social sci­ences, De Bot­ton argues that lit­er­a­ture alerts us to the impor­tance of sev­er­al qual­i­ties that make our lives mat­ter, includ­ing “love, self accep­tance, mean­ing, hope, sta­tus, pride, for­give­ness.” Such intan­gi­bles have no price or val­ue in the com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­places that increas­ing­ly dom­i­nate our lives.

The triv­i­al­iza­tion of psy­cho­log­i­cal needs leads to anoth­er com­mon fea­ture of suicide—the “ele­ment of sur­prise.” The sui­cide of those we know, or thought we knew, near­ly always comes as a shock, which De Bot­ton takes as “evi­dence of an unwit­ting neglect of one anoth­er (and of our­selves).” It does not serve us at all to live in denial of suf­fer­ing or push despair to the mar­gins of thought. “We should always be mind­ful,” Arthur Schopen­hauer wrote in 1818, “of the fact that no man is ever very far from the state in which he would read­i­ly want to seize a sword or poi­son in order to bring his exis­tence to an end.”

Schopenhauer’s grim uni­ver­sal­iz­ing state­ment, how­ev­er, does not accord with the vast dif­fer­ences in sui­cide rates across soci­eties. Cer­tain coun­tries, like Kuwait, have rates close to zero, or 0.1 in 100,000. By con­trast, Chi­na has the high­est rate of all, at 25.6 in 100,000. One sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence, De Bot­ton argues, has to do with the “inter­pre­ta­tion and accep­tance of dif­fi­cul­ty,” includ­ing “a greater accep­tance of fail­ure, a high­er role for for­give­ness,” and “a sta­tus sys­tem that hon­ors intrin­sic val­ue over achieve­ment.”

The dif­fer­ence in sui­cide rates between nations does not have any­thing to do, how­ev­er, with wealth. “One of the most sur­pris­ing aspects of sui­cide,” De Bot­ton observes in the video above, is that rates tend to rise “marked­ly the rich­er and more devel­oped a soci­ety becomes,” a phe­nom­e­non that might appear to “negate the whole pur­pose of eco­nom­ic growth”—that is, if we assume the pur­pose is the max­i­miza­tion of human well-being. The sui­cide rate of an “unde­vel­oped coun­try like the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go,” he notes, “is a frac­tion of the rate of a devel­oped coun­try like South Korea.”

De Bot­ton does not address the prob­lem of inequal­i­ty with­in wealthy soci­eties. The Unit­ed States, for exam­ple, the wealth­i­est coun­try in record­ed his­to­ry, also has the great­est degree of eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty in his­to­ry. Here, sui­cide rates have risen an aston­ish­ing 25% over­all and over 30% in half of the states since 1999. De Botton’s cul­tur­al expla­na­tion for wide­ly vary­ing sui­cide rates between dif­fer­ent kinds of soci­eties may help us under­stand that alarm­ing increase.

Para­phras­ing the work of soci­ol­o­gist Emile Durkheim, he tells us that “the cru­cial fac­tor behind people’s deci­sion to end their lives is not real­ly wealth or pover­ty…. It’s the extent to which the sur­round­ing cul­ture ascribes respon­si­bil­i­ty for fail­ure to indi­vid­u­als” rather than to exter­nal fac­tors beyond our con­trol. Ide­olo­gies of indi­vid­u­al­ism and mer­i­toc­ra­cy cre­ate gross­ly exag­ger­at­ed beliefs about our abil­i­ty to influ­ence events in our favor, and gross­ly exag­ger­ate the shame and stig­ma heaped upon us when we can­not do so.

This makes high-pro­file celebri­ty sui­cides seem to us the ulti­mate conun­drum, since such peo­ple appear, at least super­fi­cial­ly, to have it “all”: wealth, pow­er, tal­ent, sta­tus, and acclaim. But the celebri­ty cul­ture that ele­vates some peo­ple beyond the reach of ordi­nary mor­tals can also be pro­found­ly iso­lat­ing, cre­at­ing illu­sions of hap­pi­ness rather than gen­uine ful­fill­ment. We can nev­er tru­ly know what pri­vate griefs and per­son­al feel­ings of fail­ure and sor­row oth­er peo­ple live with. Tend­ing to our emo­tion­al needs, in spite of soci­etal pres­sures and nar­ra­tives, is crit­i­cal for sui­cide pre­ven­tion and can great­ly deep­en our care and com­pas­sion for our­selves and those around us.

Sui­cide is one of the top 10 caus­es of death in the U.S. right now. Call 1–800-273-TALK (8255) for help and sup­port.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Depres­sion & Melan­choly: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the Cru­cial Dif­fer­ence Between Every­day Sad­ness and Clin­i­cal Depres­sion

A Uni­fied The­o­ry of Men­tal Ill­ness: How Every­thing from Addic­tion to Depres­sion Can Be Explained by the Con­cept of “Cap­ture”

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

How Dr. Martens’ Boots Are Made

in Fashion | June 13th, 2018

In recent months, we’ve high­light­ed how Dr. Martens, the icon­ic boot mak­er, has tried to rein­vent itself by cre­at­ing more artis­ti­cal­ly inspired boots, some actu­al­ly adorn­ing the art­work of William Blake, Hierony­mus Bosch, and tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese artists. These aren’t your grand­fa­ther’s Doc Martens, to be sure.

But how­ev­er dif­fer­ent Docs may now look on the out­side, they haven’t changed much on the inside. Just watch the video above, which takes you on a tour of “Dr. Martens’ only UK fac­to­ry on Cobbs Lane in Wol­las­ton, Northamp­ton­shire.” The fac­to­ry “employs 50 work­ers that make about 100,000 pairs of boots per year,” all in the com­pa­ny’s tried and true way.…

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:

Doc Martens Now Come Adorned with William Blake’s Art, Thanks to a Part­ner­ship with Tate Britain

Doc Martens Boots Adorned with Hierony­mus Bosch’s “Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights”

Doc Martens Boots Now Come Adorned with Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Art

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

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

in History, Science, Technology | June 12th, 2018

In an 1878 North Amer­i­can Review descrip­tion of his new inven­tion, the phono­graph, which tran­scribed sound on wax-cov­ered met­al cylin­ders, Thomas Edi­son sug­gest­ed a num­ber of pos­si­ble uses: “Let­ter writ­ing and all kinds of dic­ta­tion with­out the aid of a stenog­ra­ph­er,” “Phono­graph­ic books” for the blind, “the teach­ing of elo­cu­tion,” and, of course, “Repro­duc­tion of music.” He did not, vision­ary though he was, con­ceive of one extra­or­di­nary use to which wax cylin­ders might be put—the recov­ery or recon­struc­tion of extinct and endan­gered indige­nous lan­guages and cul­tures in Cal­i­for­nia.

And yet, 140 years after Edison’s inven­tion, this may be the most cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant use of the wax cylin­der to date. “Among the thou­sands of wax cylin­ders” at UC Berkeley’s Phoebe A. Hearst Muse­um of Anthro­pol­o­gy, writes Hyperallergic’s Alli­son Meier, “are songs and spo­ken-word record­ings in 78 indige­nous lan­guages of Cal­i­for­nia. Some of these lan­guages, record­ed between 1900 and 1938, no longer have liv­ing speak­ers.”

Such is the case with Yahi, a lan­guage spo­ken by a man called “Ishi,” who was sup­pos­ed­ly the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of his cul­ture when anthro­pol­o­gist Alfred Kroe­ber met him in 1911. Kroe­ber record­ed near­ly 6 hours of Ishi’s speech on 148 wax cylin­ders, many of which are now bad­ly degrad­ed.

“The exist­ing ver­sions” of these arti­facts “sound ter­ri­ble,” says Berke­ley lin­guist Andrew Gar­rett in the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion video at the top, but through dig­i­tal recon­struc­tion much of this rare audio can be restored. Gar­rett describes the project—supported joint­ly by the NSF and NEH—as a “dig­i­tal repa­tri­a­tion of cul­tur­al her­itage.” Using an opti­cal scan­ning tech­nique, sci­en­tists can recov­er data from these frag­ile mate­ri­als with­out fur­ther dam­ag­ing them. You can see audio preser­va­tion­ist Carl Haber describe the advanced meth­ods above.

The project rep­re­sents a sci­en­tif­ic break­through and also a stark reminder of the geno­cide and humil­i­a­tion of indige­nous peo­ple in the Amer­i­can west. When he was found, “starv­ing, dis­ori­ent­ed and sep­a­rat­ed from his tribe,” writes Jes­si­ca Jimenez at The Dai­ly Cal­i­forn­ian, Ishi was “believed to be the last Yahi man in exis­tence because of the Three Knolls Mas­sacre in 1866, in which the entire Yahi tribe was thought to have been slaugh­tered.” (Accord­ing to anoth­er Berke­ley schol­ar his sto­ry may be more com­pli­cat­ed.) He was “put on dis­play at the muse­um, where out­siders could watch him make arrows and describe aspects of Yahi cul­ture.” He nev­er revealed his name (“Ishi” means “man”) and died of tuber­cu­lo­sis in 1916.

The wax cylin­ders will allow schol­ars to recov­er oth­er lan­guages, sto­ries, and songs from peo­ples destroyed or dec­i­mat­ed by the 19th cen­tu­ry “Indi­an Wars.” Between 1900 and 1940, Kroe­ber and his col­leagues record­ed “Native Cal­i­for­ni­ans from many regions and cul­tures,” the Berke­ley project page explains, “speak­ing and singing; recit­ing his­to­ries, nar­ra­tives and prayers, list­ing names for places and objects among many oth­er things, all in a wide vari­ety of lan­guages. Many of the lan­guages record­ed on the cylin­ders have trans­formed, fall­en out of use, or are no longer spo­ken at all, mak­ing this col­lec­tion a unique and invalu­able resource for lin­guists and con­tem­po­rary com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers hop­ing to learn about or revi­tal­ize lan­guages, or retrieve impor­tant piece of cul­tur­al her­itage.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the UCSB Cylin­der Audio Archive

Inter­ac­tive Map Shows the Seizure of Over 1.5 Bil­lion Acres of Native Amer­i­can Land Between 1776 and 1887

1,000+ Haunt­ing & Beau­ti­ful Pho­tos of Native Amer­i­can Peo­ples, Shot by the Ethno­g­ra­ph­er Edward S. Cur­tis (Cir­ca 1905)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |


« 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.