40 Years of Saul Bass’ Groundbreaking Title Sequences in One Compilation

in Design, Film | February 18th, 2015

A good title sequence tells you every­thing you need to know about the world of a movie. As it unspools the cred­its for a giv­en film, it can also con­vey the movie’s mood, its sense of place, its story’s theme and even a few of its plot points. Saul Bass invent­ed the mod­ern title sequence with Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Gold­en Arm (1955). Con­sist­ing large­ly of mov­ing white rec­tan­gles on a black back­ground set to a jazzy score, the piece feels like a Blue Note record cov­er come to life – per­fect for a grit­ty tale about hero­in addic­tion. The open­ing was so strik­ing that Hol­ly­wood took note and soon title sequences became the rage, espe­cial­ly ones made by Bass.

Above you can watch a long com­pi­la­tion of Saul Bass titles, start­ing with Man with the Gold­en Arm and end­ing with Mar­tin Scorsese’s Casi­no (1995). Along the way, the mon­tage illus­trates the evo­lu­tion of style over the course of those 40 years, show­ing how titles grew in ambi­tion and sophis­ti­ca­tion. You can see titles for some great films from the yawn­ing spi­ral in Ver­ti­go to the mono­chrome crum­bling busts in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus to the abstract shots of neon in Casi­no.

But to real­ly get a sense of Bass’s tal­ents, look to some of the less famous movies he worked on. For Carl Forman’s The Vic­tors (1963), a bleak, big-bud­get anti-war flick, Bass com­pressed Euro­pean his­to­ry from the end of WWI to the dev­as­ta­tion of WWII into one mas­ter­ful mon­tage. At one point, still pho­tos of Hitler giv­ing a speech flash across the screen, each shot pushed clos­er in on his mouth than the last, before the sequence cul­mi­nates in a series of explo­sions. It’s one of the most con­cise and elo­quent retellings of his­to­ry in cin­e­ma. And for the zany com­e­dy Not with My Wife, You Don’t!, Bass cre­at­ed an ani­mat­ed green-eyed mon­ster of jeal­ousy play­ing a vio­lin. Say what you will about con­tem­po­rary movies, but there are def­i­nite­ly not enough car­toon green-eyed mon­sters of jeal­ousy these days.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Saul Bass’ Vivid Sto­ry­boards for Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus (1960)

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Mastermind of Devo, Mark Mothersbaugh, Shows Off His Synthesizer Collection

in Music | February 17th, 2015

Mark Moth­ers­baugh’s stu­dio is locat­ed in a cylin­dri­cal struc­ture paint­ed bright green — it looks more like a fes­tive auto part than an office build­ing. It’s a fit­ting place for the icon­o­clast musi­cian. For those of you who didn’t spend your child­hoods obses­sive­ly watch­ing the ear­ly years of MTV, Mark Moth­ers­baugh was the mas­ter­mind behind the band Devo. They skew­ered Amer­i­can con­for­mi­ty by dress­ing alike in shiny uni­forms and their music was nervy, twitchy and weird. They taught a nation that if you must whip it, you should whip it good.

In the years since, Moth­ers­baugh has segued into a suc­cess­ful career as a Hol­ly­wood com­pos­er, spin­ning scores for 21 Jump Street and The Roy­al Tenen­baums among oth­ers.

In the video above, you can see Moth­ers­baugh hang out in his stu­dio filled with syn­the­siz­ers of var­i­ous makes and vin­tages, includ­ing Bob Moog’s own per­son­al Mem­o­ry­moog. Watch­ing Moth­ers­baugh pull out and play with each one is a bit like watch­ing a pre­co­cious child talk about his toys. He just has an infec­tious ener­gy that is a lot of fun to watch.

Prob­a­bly the best part in the video is when he shows off a device that can play sounds back­ward. It turns out that if you say, “We smell sausage” back­wards it sounds an awful lot like “Jesus loves you.” Who knew?

Below you can see Moth­ers­baugh in action with Devo, per­form­ing live in Japan dur­ing the band’s hey­day in 1979.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

Watch Her­bie Han­cock Rock Out on an Ear­ly Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

600+ Covers of Philip K. Dick Novels from Around the World: Greece, Japan, Poland & Beyond

in Art, Books | February 17th, 2015

Radio Free Albemuth-gr

I envy book design­ers tasked with putting togeth­er cov­ers for Philip K. Dick nov­els, and yet I don’t envy them. On one hand, they get the chance to visu­al­ly inter­pret some of the most unusu­al, inde­scrib­able genre fic­tion ever writ­ten; on the oth­er hand, they bear the bur­den of visu­al­ly rep­re­sent­ing some of the most unusu­al, inde­scrib­able genre fic­tion ever writ­ten.

valis-it

Dick wrote inter­est­ing books, to put it mild­ly, and as book-lovers know, cer­tain coun­tries’ pub­lish­ing indus­tries tend to put out more inter­est­ing book cov­ers than oth­ers. So what hap­pens at the inter­sec­tion? Here we present to you a selec­tion of Philip K. Dick cov­ers from around the world, begin­ning with a Greek cov­er of his posthu­mous­ly pub­lished nov­el Radio Free Albe­muth that fea­tures the man him­self, relax­ing in his nat­ur­al inter­plan­e­tary envi­ron­ment beside his vin­tage radio.

mancastle-chile

That book put a bare­ly fic­tion­al gloss on Dick­’s own psy­cho­log­i­cal expe­ri­ences, as did Valis, whose Ital­ian edi­tion you also see pic­tured here. But his more fan­tas­ti­cal nov­els, such as the I Ching-dri­ven sto­ry of an Amer­i­ca that lost the Sec­ond World War, have received equal­ly com­pelling inter­na­tion­al cov­ers, such as the one from Chile just above.

flow-jp

You can usu­al­ly trust Japan­ese pub­lish­ers to come up with book designs nei­ther too abstract nor too lit­er­al for the con­tents with­in, as one of their edi­tions of Flow My Tears, the Police­man Said quite lit­er­al­ly illus­trates just above. And if you can rely on Japan for that sort of cov­er, you can rely on France for under­state­ment; half the French nov­els I’ve seen have noth­ing on the front but the name of the work, the author, and the pub­lish­er, but behold how Dick­’s untamed exper­i­men­tal spir­it allowed Robert Laf­font to cut loose:

ubik-french28

But if you real­ly want to see an unusu­al graph­ic design cul­ture, you’ve got to look to Poland. We fea­tured that coun­try’s dis­tinc­tive movie posters a few years ago, but their books also par­take of the very same delight­ful­ly askew visu­al tra­di­tion, one I imag­ine that would have done Dick him­self proud­est. Below we have Pol­ish cov­er art for Con­fes­sions of a Crap Artist, his nov­el of mid­cen­tu­ry sub­ur­ban strife, com­posed with mate­ri­als few of us would have thought to use:

confessions-of-a-crap-artist-polish

You can see 600+ inter­na­tion­al Philip K. Dick cov­ers at philipkdick.com’s cov­er gallery, which has for some rea­son gone offline, but which most­ly sur­vives through the mag­ic of the Inter­net Way­back Machine — a device Dick nev­er imag­ined even in his far­thest-out, trick­i­est-to-rep­re­sent fan­tasies.

Relat­ed Content:

Philip K. Dick Takes You Inside His Life-Chang­ing Mys­ti­cal Expe­ri­ence

Robert Crumb Illus­trates Philip K. Dick’s Infa­mous, Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Meet­ing with God (1974)

Down­load 14 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Philip K. Dick as Free Audio Books and Free eBooks

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Read 3 Stories from Haruki Murakami’s Short Story Collection Published in Japan Last Year

in e-books, Literature | February 17th, 2015

Briefly not­ed: Last spring, Haru­ki Muraka­mi released a new col­lec­tion of short sto­ries in Japan, rough­ly trans­lat­ed as Men With­out Women. If past trends hold, this vol­ume may nev­er see the light of day in the States. But we may get to read all of the indi­vid­ual sto­ries in the pages of The New York­er. Last year, the mag­a­zine pub­lished two of Murakami’s six new sto­ries — “Scheherazade” and “Yes­ter­day.” And now comes anoth­er, “Kino.”  You can read it online here.

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:

Read 6 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Reads in Eng­lish from The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle in a Rare Pub­lic Read­ing (1998)

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

7 Short Stories by Junot Díaz Free Online, In Text and Audio

in Literature | February 16th, 2015

As much as any con­tem­po­rary writer of lit­er­ary fic­tion ever does, Junot Díaz has become some­thing of a house­hold name in the years since his debut nov­el, The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao appeared in 2007, then went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, among oth­er many oth­er hon­ors. The nov­el has recent­ly topped crit­ics lists of the best 21st cen­tu­ry nov­els (so far), and the recog­ni­tion is well-deserved, and very hard-won. Díaz spent a decade writ­ing the book, his process, in the words of The New York Times’ Sam Ander­son, “noto­ri­ous­ly slow” and labo­ri­ous. But none of his time work­ing on Oscar Wao, it seems, was spent idle. Dur­ing the long ges­ta­tion peri­od between his first book of sto­ries, 1996’s Drown, his first nov­el, and the many acco­lades to fol­low, Diaz has reli­ably turned out short sto­ries for the likes of The New York­er, cul­mi­nat­ing in his most recent col­lec­tion from 2012, This Is How You Lose Her.

Díaz is his own worst critic—even he admits as much, call­ing his over­bear­ing crit­i­cal self “a char­ac­ter defect” and “way too harsh.” Per­haps one of the rea­sons he finds his process “mis­er­able” is that his “nar­ra­tive space,” as crit­ic Liz­a­beth Par­avisi­ni-Gebert writes, con­sists not of “nos­tal­gic recre­ations of ide­al­ized child­hood land­scapes,” but rather the “bleak, bar­ren, and decayed mar­gins of New Jersey’s inner cities,” as well as the trag­ic, bloody past of his native Domini­can Repub­lic.

Despite the his­tor­i­cal vio­lence from which his char­ac­ters emerge, the voic­es of Diaz’s nar­ra­tives are a vital force, full of light­en­ing-fast recall of pop cul­tur­al touch­stones, hip-hop, his­toric and folk­loric allu­sions, and the minu­ti­ae of high geek­ery, from sci-fi film, to gam­ing, to com­ic book lore. (Watch Diaz dis­cuss geek cul­ture at New York’s St. Mark’s Comics above.)

Like a nerdy New World Joyce, Díaz works in a dizzy­ing swirl of ref­er­ences that crit­ic and play­wright Gregg Bar­rios calls a “deft mash-up of Domini­can his­to­ry, comics, sci-fi, mag­ic real­ism and foot­notes.” The writer’s unique idiom—swinging with ease from the most street­wise and pro­fane ver­nac­u­lar to the most for­mal aca­d­e­m­ic prose and back again—interrogates cat­e­gories of gen­der and nation­al iden­ti­ty at every turn, ask­ing, writes Bar­rios, “Who is Amer­i­can? What is the Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence?” Diaz’s nar­ra­tive voice—described by Leah Hager Cohen as one of “rad­i­cal inclusion”—provides its own answers.

That noto­ri­ous­ly slow process pays div­i­dends when it comes to ful­ly-real­ized char­ac­ters who seem to live and breathe in a space out­side the page, a con­se­quence of Díaz “sit­ting with my char­ac­ters” for a long time, he tells Cres­si­da Leyshon, “before I can write a sin­gle word, good or bad, about them. I seem to have to make my char­ac­ters fam­i­ly before I can access their hearts in any way that mat­ters.” You can read the results of all that sit­ting and ago­niz­ing below, in sev­en sto­ries that are avail­able free online, in text and audio. Sto­ries with an aster­isk next to them appear in This Is How You Lose Her. The final sto­ry comes from Diaz’s first col­lec­tion, Drown.

  • “The Cheater’s Guide to Love” * (The New York­er, July 2012—text, audio)
  • “Mon­stro” (The New York­er, June 2012—text)
  • “Miss Lora” * (The New York­er, April 2012—text)
  • “The Pura Prin­ci­ple” * (The New York­er, March 2010—text)
  • “Alma” * (The New York­er, Decem­ber 2007—text, audio)
  • “Wild­wood” (The New York­er, June 2007—text)
  • “How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or hal­fie)” (text, audio)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

A Sneak Peek at Junot Díaz’s Syl­labi for His MIT Writ­ing Class­es, and the Nov­els on His Read­ing List

Junot Díaz Anno­tates a Selec­tion of The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao for “Poet­ry Genius”

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Advertisements from Japan’s Golden Age of Art Deco

in Art | February 16th, 2015

JDeco 1

Get talk­ing with graph­ic design peo­ple, and Japan will come up soon­er or lat­er. That coun­try, always a world leader in aes­thet­ics, has put the time and ener­gy of gen­er­a­tions into per­fect­ing the dis­ci­pline. You can see this progress chart­ed out on the Tokyo-based Ian Lynam Design’s “Misruptions/Disruptions: A Japan­ese Graph­ic Design His­to­ry Time­line.” It labels the busy peri­od of 1910–1941 as the time of an “adop­tion of West­ern Avant Garde aes­thet­ics in Graph­ic Design & Typog­ra­phy, coin­cid­ing with Left-lean­ing exper­i­men­ta­tion and increased state sup­pres­sion of the Left” — and the time that gave rise to Japan­ese Art Deco.

JDeco 2

Last year, I attend­ed Deco Japan, a show at the Seat­tle Art Muse­um, which show­cased a great many arti­facts from that pre­war move­ment of such com­bined artis­tic and com­mer­cial abun­dance. It put on dis­play all man­ner of paint­ings, vas­es, pieces of fur­ni­ture, house­hold items, and pack­ages, but some­how, the peri­od adver­tise­ments struck me as still the most vital of all. The Japan­ese graph­ic design­ers who made them drew, in the words of Cap­i­tal’s Grace-Yvette Gem­mell, “on sta­ples of pro­gres­sive Euro­pean and Amer­i­can high and pop­u­lar art, incor­po­rat­ing styl­ized ver­sions of gears and clocks that bring to mind Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis and Char­lie Chaplin’s Mod­ern Times.”

JDeco 3

This makes more sense than it sounds like it would: “the Deco use of for­eign imagery and design ele­ments was a vir­tu­al­ly seam­less process giv­en exist­ing prac­tices of both abstrac­tion and cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion at work in the dec­o­ra­tive arts at the time in Japan. Many tra­di­tion­al designs already pos­sessed a sort of visu­al affin­i­ty with the Art Deco aes­thet­ic; the syn­the­sis of con­ven­tion­al design ele­ments with con­tem­po­rary, pared-down forms appealed to the culture’s col­lec­tive knowl­edge of tra­di­tion­al motifs and sym­bols while feed­ing their desire for mod­ern con­sumer prod­ucts that reflect­ed a keen sense of cos­mopoli­tanism per­fect­ly com­bin­ing the old with the ultra­mod­ern.”

JDeco 4

Many of the adver­tise­ments, or oth­er works of graph­ic design like leaflets and mag­a­zine cov­ers, to come out of Japan’s Art Deco gold­en age fea­ture the image of the “moga,” or, in Japanized Eng­lish, “mod­ern girl.” Hav­ing appeared in Japan as a new kind of jazz-lov­ing, bob-haired, rel­a­tive­ly lib­er­at­ed woman, the moga quick­ly became an attrac­tive com­mer­cial propo­si­tion. The Asian Art Muse­um print­ed up a leaflet of their own, list­ing off the “ten qual­i­fi­ca­tions for being a moga” as orig­i­nal­ly enu­mer­at­ed in 1929 by illus­tra­tor Tak­a­batake Kashō in the mag­a­zine Fujin sekai (Ladies’ World):

  1. Strength, the “ene­my” of con­ven­tion­al fem­i­nin­i­ty
  2. Con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion of West­ern food and drink
  3. Devo­tion to jazz records, danc­ing, and smok­ing Gold­en Bat cig­a­rettes from a met­al cig­a­rette hold­er
  4. Knowl­edge of the types of West­ern liquor and a will­ing­ness to flirt to get them for free
  5. Devo­tion to fash­ion from Paris and Hol­ly­wood as seen in for­eign fash­ion mag­a­zines
  6. Devo­tion to cin­e­ma
  7. Real or feigned inter­est in dance halls as a way to show off one’s osten­si­ble deca­dence to mobo (mod­ern boys)
  8. Strolling in the Gin­za every Sat­ur­day and Sun­day night
  9. Pawn­ing things to get mon­ey to buy new clothes for each sea­son
  10. Offer­ing one’s lips to any man who is use­ful, even if he is bald or ugly, but keep­ing one’s chasti­ty because “infringe­ment of chasti­ty” law­suits are out of style

JDeco 5

Sound a fair bit more inter­est­ing than the women demand­ed for today’s ads in the West, don’t they?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gaze at Glob­al Movie Posters for Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go: U.S., Japan, Italy, Poland & Beyond

René Magritte’s Ear­ly Art Deco Adver­tis­ing Posters, 1924–1927

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs of 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Monopoly: How the Original Game Was Made to Condemn Monopolies & the Abuses of Capitalism

in Economics, History | February 16th, 2015

The great cap­i­tal­ist game of Monop­oly was first mar­ket­ed by Park­er Broth­ers back in Feb­ru­ary 1935, right in the mid­dle of the Great Depres­sion. Even dur­ing hard times, Amer­i­cans could still imag­ine amass­ing a for­tune and secur­ing a monop­oly on the real estate mar­ket. When it comes to mak­ing mon­ey, Amer­i­cans nev­er run out of opti­mism and hope.

Monop­oly did­n’t real­ly begin, how­ev­er, in 1935. And if you trace back the ori­gins of the game, you’ll encounter an iron­ic, curi­ous tale. The sto­ry goes like this: Eliz­a­beth (Lizzie) J. Magie Phillips (1866–1948), a dis­ci­ple of the pro­gres­sive era econ­o­mist Hen­ry George, cre­at­ed the pro­to­type for Monop­oly in 1903. And she did so with the goal of illus­trat­ing the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with con­cen­trat­ing land in pri­vate monop­o­lies.

As Mary Pilon, the author of the new book The Monop­o­lists: Obses­sion, Fury, and the Scan­dal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game, recent­ly explained in The New York Times, the orig­i­nal game — The Landlord’s Game — came with two sets of rules: “an anti-monop­o­list set in which all were reward­ed when wealth was cre­at­ed, and a monop­o­list set in which the goal was to cre­ate monop­o­lies and crush oppo­nents.” Phillips’ approach, Pilon adds, “was a teach­ing tool meant to demon­strate that the first set of rules was moral­ly supe­ri­or.” In oth­er words, the orig­i­nal game of Monop­oly was cre­at­ed as a cri­tique of monop­o­lies — some­thing the trust- and monop­oly-bust­ing pres­i­dent, Theodore Roo­sevelt, could relate to.

Patent­ed in 1904 and self-pub­lished in 1906, The Land­lord’s Game fea­tured “play mon­ey and deeds and prop­er­ties that could be bought and sold. Play­ers bor­rowed mon­ey, either from the bank or from each oth­er, and they had to pay tax­es,” Pilon writes in her new book.

The Landlord’s Game also had the look & feel of the game the Park­er Broth­ers would even­tu­al­ly bas­tardize and make famous. Above, you can see an image from the patent Philips filed in 1904 (top), and anoth­er image from the mar­ket­ed game.

Magie Philips nev­er got cred­it or resid­u­als from the Park­er Broth­ers’ game. Instead, a fel­low named Charles Dar­row came along and draft­ed his own ver­sion of the game, tweaked the design, called it Monop­oly (see the ear­li­est ver­sion here), slapped a copy­right on the pack­ag­ing with his name, and then sold the game to Park­er Broth­ers for a report­ed $7,000, plus resid­u­als. He even­tu­al­ly made mil­lions.

As they like to say in the US, it’s just busi­ness.

For more on the ori­gins of Monop­oly, read Mary Pilon’s piece in The Times.

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:

Hen­ry Rollins: Edu­ca­tion is the Cure to “Dis­as­ter Cap­i­tal­ism”

Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mas­ter­piece Stalk­er Gets Adapt­ed into a Video Game

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Free Online Course: Robert Thurman’s Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism (Recorded at Columbia U)

in Philosophy, Religion | February 15th, 2015

Image by Won­der­lane, via Flickr Com­mons

Today you can be a fly on the wall at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, and lis­ten to Robert Thur­man’s lec­tures on “The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet.” Thur­man is, as his own web­site right­ly describes him, a “world­wide author­i­ty on reli­gion and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty,” and an “elo­quent advo­cate of the rel­e­vance of Bud­dhist ideas to our dai­ly lives.”  A “lead­ing voice of the val­ue of rea­son, peace and com­pas­sion,” he was “named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influ­en­tial Amer­i­cans.” And, in case you’re won­der­ing, he’s also Uma Thur­man’s dad.

The audio above comes from a course taught by Prof. Thur­man at Colum­bia, and it’s based on his book The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet. The course “explores the philo­soph­i­cal thought of Indo-Tibetan Bud­dhism, both in the intel­lec­tu­al set­ting of ancient India and Tibet and in the con­text of the cur­rent glob­al phi­los­o­phy.” You will find the course added to our ever-grow­ing list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: There are 13 lec­tures in total, each run­ning almost two hours. The audio play­er above should stream through them all. The first 30 sec­onds are a lit­tle muf­fled, but then things improve. The lec­tures are host­ed by Archive.org.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bud­dhism 101: A Short Intro­duc­to­ry Lec­ture by Jorge Luis Borges

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger Talks Phi­los­o­phy with a Bud­dhist Monk on Ger­man Tele­vi­sion (1963)

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

David Carr Gives 10 Pieces of Work & Life Advice to UC Berkeley Graduates

in Graduation Speech, Life, Media | February 14th, 2015

David Carr took sev­en years to get through col­lege. He did­n’t have a Mas­ter’s degree or a PhD. Before he made it big writ­ing for The New York Times, he spent time in rehab and on wel­fare. David Carr did­n’t fit the pro­file of your aver­age com­mence­ment speak­er.

And yet Carr, who died in the Times news­room on Thurs­day night, earned his spot speak­ing before the 2014 grad­u­at­ing class at UC Berke­ley’s Grad­u­ate School of Jour­nal­ism. Known for his insight­ful report­ing on changes in pub­lish­ing, tele­vi­sion and social media, Carr under­stood the world these young jour­nal­ists were enter­ing. And when he offered 10 pieces of grad­u­a­tion advice, you know the stu­dents took note. You should too:

1.) Some­one who is under­es­ti­mat­ed will be the one who changes the world. It’s not the per­son every­one expects. It might be you.

2.) “Do what is front of you.” Focus on the small steps ahead of you.

3.) Don’t wor­ry about achiev­ing a mas­ter plan, about the plot to take over the world.

4.) Be a work­er among work­ers. It’s more impor­tant that you fit in before you stick out.

5.) Fol­low the “Mom Rule.” Don’t do any­thing you couldn’t explain or jus­ti­fy to your mom.

6.) Don’t just do what you’re good at. Get out­side of your com­fort zone. Being a jour­nal­ist is per­mis­sion for life­time learn­ing.

7.) Be present. Don’t wor­ry about doc­u­ment­ing the moment with your smart­phone. Expe­ri­ence it your­self.

8.) Take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the good and the bad. Learn to own your fail­ures.

9.) Be hon­est, and be will­ing to have the dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion.

10.) Don’t be afraid to be ambi­tious. It’s not a crime.

He says it’s a lis­ti­cle that won’t appear on Buz­zfeed. But it fits per­fect­ly on OC. David, we’re so sor­ry to see you go.

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:

Michael Pol­lan Presents an Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion, A Free Online Course From UC Berke­ley

“Wear Sun­screen”: The Sto­ry Behind the Com­mence­ment Speech That Kurt Von­negut Nev­er Gave

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 2005 Com­mence­ment Speech “This is Water” Visu­al­ized in Short Film

NPR Launch­es Data­base of Best Com­mence­ment Speech­es Ever

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Predict Which 21st Century Novels Will Enter the Literary Canon? And Which Overrated Ones Won’t?

in Books, Literature | February 13th, 2015

oscarwao11

Last year, we fea­tured a 1936 poll where read­ers pre­dict­ed what writ­ers would make it into the lit­er­ary canon of the year 2000. But what results would the same inquiry yield today? What 21st-cen­tu­ry nov­els (ear­ly in the game, I know, but still) will remain wide­ly read over half a cen­tu­ry from now? How much more pre­science have we evolved com­pared to that of our equiv­a­lents almost 80 years ago? How many mod­ern Sin­clair Lewis­es and Willa Cathers would we pick — ver­sus how many mod­ern James Truslow Adamses and James Branch Cabells?

Writ­ing for Arts.Mic, Claire Luchette gives one pos­si­ble set of answers to this ques­tion with her list of “11 Twen­ty-First Cen­tu­ry Books Our Kids Will Be Taught in School,” which runs as fol­lows:

  1. White Teeth (Zadie Smith, 2000)
  2. Life of Pi (Yann Mar­tel, 2001)
  3. Mid­dle­sex (Jef­frey Eugenides, 2002)
  4. The Kite Run­ner (Khaled Hos­sei­ni, 2003)
  5. The Name­sake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)
  6. Gilead by Mar­i­lynne Robin­son (2004)
  7. The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Díaz, 2008)
  8. A Vis­it From the Goon Squad (Jen­nifer Egan, 2010)
  9. Free­dom (Jonathan Franzen, 2010)
  10. Dear Life (Alice Munro, 2012)
  11. Tenth of Decem­ber (George Saun­ders, 2013)

The future already looks bright for sev­er­al of Luchet­te’s picks. Junot Diaz’s “habit-form­ing­ly col­or­ful and bright” (not to men­tion Pulitzer-win­ning) The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao recent­ly topped BBC Cul­ture’s crit­ics poll for the best nov­el of the 21st cen­tu­ry so far. Oth­ers face longer odds. As high a point in the zeit­geist as Yann Martel’s Life of Pi reached — and no less an opin­ion leader than Barack Oba­ma called it “an ele­gant proof of God” — I per­son­al­ly tend to agree with the assess­ment of James Wood, who likens its cen­tral rev­e­la­tion to “an edi­to­r­i­al meet­ing of Social Text.”

And so we hand it over to you, Open Cul­ture read­ers. What does the future’s canon look like from where you stand? In the com­ments, name the books you think will remain wide­ly read (or grow more so) at the end of the cen­tu­ry, or indeed, the ones wide­ly read now that will have, by that point, col­lect­ed the bet­ter part of a cen­tu­ry’s dust. Bonus points for telling us why.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read­ers Pre­dict in 1936 Which Nov­el­ists Would Still Be Wide­ly Read in the Year 2000

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

The 25 Best Non-Fic­tion Books Ever: Read­ers’ Picks

The Books You Think Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read: Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Moby-Dick & Beyond (Many Free Online)

600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 17 ) |

The Marvelous Health Benefits of Chocolate: A Curious Medical Essay from 1631

in Food & Drink, Health | February 13th, 2015

chocolate histoy

When cof­fee first came to the west­ern world dur­ing the 17th cen­tu­ry, it did­n’t taste par­tic­u­lar­ly good. So the peo­ple import­ing and ped­dling the new com­mod­i­ty talked up the health ben­e­fits of the new drink. The first known Eng­lish adver­tise­ment for cof­fee, dat­ing back to 1652, made these claims: Cof­fee is “very good to help diges­tion.” It also “quick­ens the Spir­its, and makes the Heart Light­some.” And it “is good against sore Eys, and the bet­ter if you hold your Head o’er it, and take in the Steem that way.”

It turns out that choco­late had a sim­i­lar intro­duc­tion to the West. Writ­ing at the always inter­est­ing Pub­lic Domain Review, Chris­tine A. Jones recounts how when choco­late “first arrived from the Amer­i­c­as into Europe in the 17th cen­tu­ry it was a rare and mys­te­ri­ous sub­stance, thought more of as a drug than as a food.” The Span­ish, who con­quered the Aztecs in 1521, first doc­u­ment­ed the choco­late they encoun­tered there in 1552. And then, in 1631, they placed choco­late in the annals of med­ical his­to­ry when Anto­nio Colmen­ero de Ledes­ma, a Span­ish physi­cian and sur­geon, wrote a med­ical essay called Curioso Trata­do de la nat­u­raleza y cal­i­dad del choco­late. The essay made the case that choco­late, if tak­en cor­rect­ly, could help bal­ance the body’s humors (Blood, Yel­low Bile, Black Bile & Phlegm) and ward off dis­ease. (You can bone up on the ancient sci­ence of Humorism here.) When trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish in 1651, the trea­tise now called Choco­late; or, an Indi­an Drinke came pref­aced by an intro­duc­tion that tout­ed choco­late’s health ben­e­fits:

It is an excel­lent help to Diges­tion, it cures Con­sump­tions, and the Cough of the Lungs, the New Dis­ease, or Plague of the Guts, and oth­er Flux­es, the Green Sick­nesse, Jaun­dise, and all man­ner of Infla­ma­tions, Opi­la­tions, and Obstruc­tions. It quite takes away the Mor­phew, Cleanseth the Teeth, and sweet­neth the Breath, Pro­vokes Urine, Cures the Stone, and stran­gury, Expells Poi­son, and pre­serves from all infec­tious Dis­eases.

And it fea­tured one of the first recipes for hot choco­late:

To every 100. Cacaos, you must put two cods of the*Chiles long red Pep­per, of which I have spo­ken before, and are called in the Indi­an Tongue, Chilpar­lagua; and in stead of those of the Indies, you may take those of Spaine which are broad­est, & least hot. One hand­full of Annis-seed Ore­jue­las, which are oth­er­wise called Pinacaxli­dos: and two of the flow­ers, called Mecha­suchil, if the Bel­ly be bound. But in stead of this, in Spaine, we put in six Ros­es of Alexan­dria beat to Pow­der: One Cod of Campeche, or Log­wood: Two Drams of Cina­mon; Almons, and Hasle-Nuts, of each one Dozen: Of white Sug­ar, halfe a pound: of Achio­tee­nough to give it the colour.

You can read more about the curi­ous med­ical his­to­ry of choco­late at The Pub­lic Domain Review. And while you’re there, you should check out their new book of essays, which we fea­tured on Open Cul­ture in Decem­ber.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Harvard’s Free Course on Mak­ing Cakes, Pael­la & Oth­er Deli­cious Food

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Cui­sine All at Once (Free Online Course)

A Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties: Dis­cov­er The Pub­lic Domain Review’s New Book of Essays

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.