Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the Music Industry Waged War on the Cassette Tape During the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back

in Music, Technology | July 25th, 2023

The first time I saw the infa­mous Skull­cas­sette-and-Bones logo was on hol­i­day in the UK and pur­chased the very un-punky Char­i­ots of Fire sound­track. It was on the inner sleeve. “Home Tap­ing Is Killing Music” it pro­claimed. It was? I asked myself. “And it’s ille­gal” a sub­head added. It is? I also asked myself. (Iron­i­cal­ly, this was a few months before I came into pos­ses­sion of my first com­bi­na­tion turntable-cas­sette deck.)

Ten years and racks and racks of home­made cas­sette dubs on my shelves lat­er, music seemed to be doing very well. (Lat­er, by going dig­i­tal, the music indus­try killed itself, and I had absolute­ly noth­ing to do with it.)

British record col­lec­tors will no doubt remem­ber this cam­paign that start­ed in 1981, anoth­er busi­ness-backed “moral” pan­ic. And fun­ni­ly enough it had noth­ing to do with dub­bing vinyl.

Instead, the British Phono­graph­ic Indus­try (BPI) were tak­ing aim at peo­ple who were record­ing songs off the radio instead of pur­chas­ing records. With the rise of the cas­sette tape in pop­u­lar­i­ty, the BPI saw pounds and pence leav­ing their pock­ets.

Now, fig­ur­ing out lost prof­its from home tap­ing could be a fools’ errand, but let’s focus on the “ille­gal” part. Tech­ni­cal­ly, this is true. Radio sta­tions pay licens­ing fees to play music, so a con­sumer tap­ing that song off the radio is infring­ing on the song’s copy­right. Britain has very dif­fer­ent “fair use” laws than Amer­i­ca. In addi­tion, dig­i­tal radio and clear­er sig­nals have com­pli­cat­ed mat­ters over the years.

In prac­tice, how­ev­er, the whole thing was bunkum. Radio record­ings are his­toric. Mix­tapes are cul­ture. I have my tapes of John Peel’s BBC shows, which I record­ed for the music. Now, I lis­ten to them for Peel’s intros and out­ros.

Seri­ous­ly, the Napalm Death Peel Ses­sions *only* make sense with his com­men­tary. Who­ev­er taped this is an unknown leg­end:

The post-punk crowd knew the cam­paign was bunkum too. Mal­colm McLaren, always the provo­ca­teur, released Bow Wow Wow’s cas­sette-only-sin­gle C‑30 C‑60 C‑90 Go with a blank B‑side that urged con­sumers to record their own music. EMI quick­ly dropped the band.

The Dead Kennedys also repeat­ed the black b‑side gim­mick with In God We Trust, Inc. (I would be inter­est­ed in any­body who picks up a copy used of either to see what *is* on the b‑side).

And then there were the par­o­dies. The met­al group Ven­om used “Home Tap­ing Is Killing Music; So Are Ven­om” on an album; Peter Prin­ci­ple offered “Home Tap­ing Is Mak­ing Music”: Bil­ly Bragg kept it Marx­ist: “Cap­i­tal­ism is killing music — pay no more than £4.99 for this record”. For the indus­try, music was the prod­uct; for the reg­u­lar folks, music was com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it was art, it was a lan­guage.

The cam­paign nev­er did much dam­age. Attempts to levy a tax on blank cas­settes didn’t get trac­tion in the UK. And BPI’s direc­tor gen­er­al John Dea­con was frus­trat­ed that record com­pa­nies didn’t want to splash the Jol­ly Roger on inner sleeves. The logo lives on, how­ev­er, as part of tor­rent site Pirate Bay’s sails:

Just after the hys­te­ria died down, com­pact discs began their rise, plant­i­ng the seeds for the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion, the mp3, file shar­ing, and now stream­ing.

(Wait, is it pos­si­ble to record inter­net streams? Why, yes.)

If you have any sto­ries about how you helped “kill music” by record­ing your favorite DJs, con­fess your crimes in the com­ments.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

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:

Frank Zap­pa Debates Whether the Gov­ern­ment Should Cen­sor Music in a Heat­ed Episode of Cross­fire: Why Are Peo­ple Afraid of Words? (1986)

The Dev­il­ish His­to­ry of the 1980s Parental Advi­so­ry Stick­er: When Heavy Met­al & Satan­ic Lyrics Col­lid­ed with the Reli­gious Right

75 Post-Punk and Hard­core Con­certs from the 1980s Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR, Lemon­heads, Dain Bra­m­age (with Dave Grohl) & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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How Streaming Led to the TV Writers Strike: Four TV Writers Explain the Logic of the Strike

in Business, Television | July 25th, 2023

Though it’s too ear­ly to know what will turn out to be the defin­ing cul­tur­al expe­ri­ence of the twen­ty-twen­ties, I’d put my mon­ey on first hear­ing of an acclaimed tele­vi­sion show from one of its devot­ed fans only after it’s already been on the air for months or even years, if not after its lament­ed can­cel­la­tion. Part of this has to do with a change in quan­ti­ty, laid out by tele­vi­sion writer War­ren Leight in the Vox video above: “There used to be 80 shows in a year. Now you’re up to 500, 550 shows in a year,” many of them cre­at­ed not for tra­di­tion­al broad­cast net­works but for new­er, con­tent-hun­gri­er online stream­ing plat­forms. “For writ­ers, it was good because it gave peo­ple entry.”

Writ­ing for stream­ing, Leight explains, “you did­n’t have to wor­ry about com­mer­cial breaks” and their dra­mat­ic dis­rup­tions. Instead, “you get to write a dif­fer­ent struc­ture. Maybe it’s just an organ­ic three-act struc­ture to an hour.” And in short­er stream­ing sea­sons, “you could arc a sto­ry across eight episodes. You can go a lit­tle dark­er, you can go a lit­tle deep­er.”

But “as the episode orders have shrunk,” says Leight’s col­league Julia Yorks, “what used to be 40 weeks of the year that you were work­ing is now 20 weeks,” with an at-least-con­comi­tant reduc­tion in pay­checks. What­ev­er its artis­tic short­com­ings, the old “net­work mod­el” guar­an­teed a cer­tain degree of sta­bil­i­ty for those who wrote its shows — a sta­bil­i­ty dis­rupt­ed by the age of stream­ing.

Hence the ongo­ing Writ­ers Guild of Amer­i­ca strike, and the cen­tral­i­ty to the WGA’s demands of improved resid­u­als (that is, pay­ments made for a pro­duc­tion after its ini­tial run) from stream­ing media. But the pro­fes­sion­als inter­viewed for this video also express con­cerns about what hap­pens to the shows them­selves when their writ­ing gets sep­a­rat­ed from their pro­duc­tion, which has become increas­ing­ly com­mon in recent years. On the likes of Law and Order or Friends, says Yorks, “your show was being filmed con­cur­rent­ly when you were in the writ­ers’ room,” cre­at­ing nat­ur­al oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­tin­u­ous cross-dis­ci­pli­nary inter­ac­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion. We may live in a “gold­en age of tele­vi­sion,” but left unchecked, the strain of this frag­men­ta­tion, as well as the finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties imposed on writ­ers, could very well take the shine off of it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Har­lan Ellison’s Won­der­ful Rant on Why Writ­ers Should Always Get Paid

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

How Break­ing Bad Craft­ed the Per­fect TV Pilot: A Video Essay

10 Tips From Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play

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

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Steely Dan’s Lost Jingle for a Schlitz Beer Commercial (Circa 1973)

in Music | July 24th, 2023

Some­where between the record­ing of their first and sec­ond albums (1972–1973), Steely Dan wrote a jin­gle to pro­mote Schlitz, “the beer that made Mil­wau­kee famous.” Accord­ing to Amer­i­can Song­writer, the jin­gle “fea­tures Steely Dan jazz fusion along with Fagen singing Once around life / Once around livin’ / Once around beer / And you’ll keep around Schlitz.”

Schlitz nev­er ulti­mate­ly used the track. The song includ­ed lyrics that Fagen trans­lat­ed from Span­ish to Eng­lish: When I get home from a hard day’s work / He says he likes to grab for all the gus­to he can get / ‘Cause you only go around one time.” Appar­ent­ly the word “grab” came from the Span­ish word “coger,” which is also a Span­ish slang word for sex­u­al inter­course. Schlitz seem­ing­ly cold feet, and the jin­gle nev­er reached the pub­lic. Until now.

via Amer­i­can Song­writer

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 

Decon­struct­ing Steely Dan: The Band That Was More Than Just a Band

How Steely Dan Wrote “Dea­con Blues,” the Song Audio­philes Use to Test High-End Stere­os

How Steely Dan Went Through Sev­en Gui­tarists and Dozens of Hours of Tape to Get the Per­fect Gui­tar Solo on “Peg”

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The Ancient World Comes to Life in an Animation Featuring Istanbul’s Islamic, Ottoman, Greek & Byzantine Art

in Architecture, Art, Film | July 24th, 2023

Trav­el for travel’s sake can be won­der­ful but noth­ing beats trav­el­ing with a pur­pose.

Syr­i­an Ger­man film­mak­er Waref Abu Quba was so tak­en with Istanbul’s time­less beau­ty on his first vis­it in 2021 that he resolved to pho­to­graph as many exam­ples of it as pos­si­ble.

Hav­ing amassed some 2,900 pho­tos, he set about ani­mat­ing them using a flash cut tech­nique, rapid­ly tog­gling between sim­i­lar images to bring life and move­ment to fixed archi­tec­tur­al and dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments.

(Warn­ing: the result­ing con­tent could trig­ger seizures in view­ers with epilep­sy or pho­to­sen­si­tiv­i­ty.)

Takrar –  Ara­bic for ‘rep­e­ti­tion’ — took two years to com­plete, con­dens­ing the sense of won­der Quba expe­ri­enced on his trav­els into four aston­ish­ing min­utes.

His col­lab­o­ra­tion with com­pos­er Alex Sto­ry and per­cus­sion­ist Robbe Kieck­ens brings added vital­i­ty to these ancient pat­terns on stone, wood, ceram­ic, and tile.

Among the forms Quba infus­es with life are 140 unique columns from Hagia Sophia, each carved with the emper­or’s mono­gram and their land of orig­in’s cap­i­tal.

The domed ceil­ings of Istanbul’s mag­nif­i­cent mosques achieve a kalei­do­scop­ic effect.

The three insti­tu­tions that com­prise the Istan­bul Archae­o­log­i­cal Muse­ums proved a rich source of mate­r­i­al, from Assyr­i­an sculp­tures and mosaics from Mesopotamia, to orna­ments dec­o­rat­ing the 4th cen­tu­ry BCE Alexan­der Sar­coph­a­gus, to the Hel­lenis­tic Sar­coph­a­gus of Cry­ing Women, whose tit­u­lar mourn­ers now shim­my in a rit­u­al­is­tic dance.

Even door­knobs man­age to cap­ti­vate, while a cobalt blue Iznik charg­er plate from the Muse­um Of Turk­ish and Islam­ic Arts pos­sess­es true star qual­i­ty.

Watch more of Waref Abu Quba’s films here.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Istan­bul Cap­tured in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Top­ka­ki Palace’s Impe­r­i­al Gate & More

An Intro­duc­tion to Hagia Sophia: After 85 Years as a Muse­um, It’s Set to Become a Mosque Again

Hear the Sound of the Hagia Sophia Recre­at­ed in Authen­tic Byzan­tine Chant

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

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Exquisite 2300-Year-Old Scythian Woman’s Boot Preserved in the Frozen Ground of Siberia

in History, Photography | July 23rd, 2023

Shoes and boots, show where your feet have gone. —Guy Sebeus, 10 New Scythi­an Tales 

In the age of fast fash­ion, when planned obso­les­cence, cheap mate­ri­als, and shod­dy con­struc­tion have become the norm, how star­tling to encounter a styl­ish women’s boot that’s tru­ly built to last…

…like, for 2300 years.

It helps to have land­ed in a Scythi­an bur­ial mound in Siberia’s Altai Moun­tains, where the above boot was dis­cov­ered along with a num­ber of nomadic after­life essentials—jewelry, food, weapons, and cloth­ing.

These arti­facts (and their mum­mi­fied own­ers) were well pre­served thanks to per­mafrost and the painstak­ing atten­tion the Scythi­ans paid to their dead.

As cura­tors at the British Muse­um wrote in advance of the 2017 exhi­bi­tion Scythi­ans: War­riors of Ancient Siberia:

Nomads do not leave many traces, but when the Scythi­ans buried their dead they took care to equip the corpse with the essen­tials they thought they need­ed for the per­pet­u­al rides of the after­life. They usu­al­ly dug a deep hole and built a wood­en struc­ture at the bot­tom. For impor­tant peo­ple these resem­bled log cab­ins that were lined and floored with dark felt – the roofs were cov­ered with lay­ers of larch, birch bark and moss. With­in the tomb cham­ber, the body was placed in a log trunk cof­fin, accom­pa­nied by some of their prized pos­ses­sions and oth­er objects. Out­side the tomb cham­ber but still inside the grave shaft, they placed slaugh­tered hors­es, fac­ing east.

18th-cen­tu­ry water­col­or illus­tra­tion of a Scythi­an bur­ial mound. Archive of the Insti­tute of Archae­ol­o­gy of the Russ­ian Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, St Peters­burg

The red cloth-wrapped leather bootie, now part of the State Her­mitage Muse­um’s col­lec­tion, is a stun­ner, trimmed in tin, pyrite crys­tals, gold foil and glass beads secured with sinew. Fan­ci­ful shapes—ducklings, maybe?—decorate the seams. But the true mind­blow­er is the remark­able con­di­tion of its sole.


Spec­u­la­tion is ram­pant on Red­dit, as to this bot­tom layer’s pris­tine con­di­tion:

Maybe the boot belonged to a high-rank­ing woman who wouldn’t have walked much…

Or Scythi­ans spent so much time on horse­back, their shoe leather was spared…

Or per­haps it’s a high qual­i­ty funer­al gar­ment, reserved for exclu­sive­ly post-mortem use…

The British Muse­um cura­tors’ expla­na­tion is that Scythi­ans seat­ed them­selves on the ground around a com­mu­nal fire, sub­ject­ing their soles to their neigh­bors’ scruti­ny.

Become bet­ter acquaint­ed with Scythi­an boots by mak­ing a pair, as ancient Per­sian empire reen­ac­tor Dan D’Silva did, doc­u­ment­ing the process in a 3‑part series on his blog. How you bedaz­zle the soles is up to you.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

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:

Styl­ish 2,000-Year-Old Roman Shoe Found in a Well

The Ancient Egyp­tians Wore Fash­ion­able Striped Socks, New Pio­neer­ing Imag­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Imag­ing Reveals

The Ancient Romans First Com­mit­ted the Sar­to­r­i­al Crime of Wear­ing Socks with San­dals, Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Sug­gests

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

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Noam Chomsky Teaches a MasterClass on Critical Thinking & Media Literacy

in Online Courses | July 21st, 2023

“We now have to decide with­in a cou­ple of decades whether the human exper­i­ment is going to con­tin­ue or whether it’ll go down in glo­ri­ous dis­as­ter,” says Noam Chom­sky in a new inter­view on econ­o­mist Tyler Cowen’s pod­cast Con­ver­sa­tions with Tyler. “That’s what we’re fac­ing. We know answers, at least pos­si­ble answers to all of the prob­lems that face us. We’re not pur­su­ing them.” This came in response to one of Cowen’s stan­dard ques­tions, about the guest’s “pro­duc­tion func­tion”: that is, the meth­ods or sys­tems the guest uses to remain pro­duc­tive in their work. Such a line of inquiry is espe­cial­ly per­ti­nent in Chom­sky’s case, giv­en the famous­ly intense work sched­ule he main­tains as a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al at the age of 94.

Recent­ly, that sched­ule has also involved shoot­ing a Mas­ter­class on Inde­pen­dent Think­ing and the Medi­a’s Invis­i­ble Pow­ers, whose trail­er appears above. In the course\, Chom­sky “explores the dark side of media,” teach­ing us “to cut through pro­pa­gan­da, defend against manip­u­la­tion, and con­trol what you con­sume.”

Pro­pa­gan­da, manip­u­la­tion, and con­sump­tion are major themes of his work (one for­gets that he first became well-known as a lin­guist), and he became pop­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with them thanks in large part to Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent, the 1988 book he co-wrote with Edward S. Her­man. Of course, the media land­scape looked quite dif­fer­ent 35 years ago, and this Mas­ter­class — a class of prod­uct scarce­ly imag­in­able back then — offers him an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bring his views into the twen­ty-twen­ties.

“Social media tends to dri­ve peo­ple into self-rein­forc­ing bub­bles,” Chom­sky says in the trail­er. “It’s dri­ving peo­ple even to more extreme views.” This is the kind of lament one now hears aired three or four times before break­fast, but sel­dom from a fig­ure who’s been the­o­riz­ing about the under­ly­ing forces as long as Chom­sky has. Social media may offer an avenue of free­dom from the stan­dard suite of top-down main­stream nar­ra­tives, but it may also con­sti­tute just anoth­er “pow­er sys­tem,” which by its very nature seeks only “con­trol and dom­i­na­tion.” Encour­ag­ing the habits of crit­i­cal think­ing need­ed to resist such con­trol and dom­i­na­tion has long been essen­tial to Chom­sky’s project. And the stakes of that project, as he’ll sure­ly nev­er stop seek­ing plat­forms from which to tell the world, could hard­ly be high­er. Explore Noam Chom­sky Teach­es Inde­pen­dent Think­ing and the Medi­a’s Invis­i­ble Pow­ers here.

Note: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Noam Chomsky’s Ground­break­ing Lin­guis­tic The­o­ries

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Noam Chom­sky on Chat­G­PT: It’s “Basi­cal­ly High-Tech Pla­gia­rism” and “a Way of Avoid­ing Learn­ing”

Noam Chom­sky Explains the Best Way for Ordi­nary Peo­ple to Make Change in the World, Even When It Seems Daunt­ing

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Noam Chomsky’s Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent and How the Media Cre­ates the Illu­sion of Democ­ra­cy

When Rage Against the Machine Inter­viewed Noam Chom­sky (1999)

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

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GWAR Performs a Tiny Desk Concert: When Heavy Metal Meets NPR

in Music | July 21st, 2023

In Feb­ru­ary 2020, a par­o­dy news site post­ed the head­line: “GWAR asks NPR’s Tiny Desk Staff if They’re Ready to Get Their A******* Ripped Open.” In July 2023, NPR made good on the joke, invit­ing the heavy met­al band to per­form their own tiny desk con­cert. NPR writes: “As the band of inter­galac­tic mon­sters strapped gui­tars to their bat­tle-worn bod­ies, thun­der and rain pound­ed the NPR build­ing out­side. As if the late Oderus Urun­gus was piss­ing his bless­ing from Val­hal­la, the prophe­cy had final­ly been ful­filled: GWAR came to destroy the Tiny Desk once and for all.” Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Con­certs: Inti­mate Per­for­mances from The Pix­ies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

75 Post-Punk and Hard­core Con­certs from the 1980s Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR, Lemon­heads, Dain Bra­m­age (with Dave Grohl) & More

16-Year-Old Dave Grohl Demon­strates His Emerg­ing Drum­ming Tal­ent, Play­ing in His Punk Band “Mis­sion Impos­si­ble” (1985)

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Kids’ Films, Adult Messages — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #153

in Film, Pretty Much Pop | July 21st, 2023

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Today’s Pret­ty Much Pop fea­tures pan­el of par­ents: your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er, NY Times Enter­tain­ment Writer and Phi­los­o­phy Pro­fes­sor Lawrence Ware, edu­ca­tor Michelle Par­rinel­lo-Cason and pop-cul­ture philoso­pher Chris Suna­mi. We take on the mass of large­ly ani­mat­ed films by Dis­ney, Pixar, Dream­works, Illu­mi­na­tion, etc. We’ve all watched them with our kids, and many adults devour them even in pref­er­ence to oth­er types of films.

So what’s the under­ly­ing ide­ol­o­gy of this kind of media? What mes­sages are they con­vey­ing, and are these sub­stan­tial or even coher­ent? What ele­ments in these films can adults relate to?

We touch on Puss in Boots, Turn­ing Red, Soul, Trolls, Eno­la Holmes, The Polar Express, tod­dler edu­tain­ment, things we watched as kids, and sto­ries by Roald Dahl, Lewis Car­roll and L. Frank Baum. Our hosts rec­om­mend­ed The Babysit­ter’s Club, The Mys­te­ri­ous Bene­dict Soci­ety, the stu­dio Ghi­b­li films, and the Series of Unfor­tu­nate Events books.

Fol­low us @law_writes, @DaylaLearning (Michelle), @PopCultPhil (Chris), and @MarkLinsenmayer.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. If you’re not sub­scribed to the pod­cast, you’re miss­ing lots of good episodes, such as our recent post-mortems on Suc­ces­sion and Ted Las­so. Sup­port the show and hear bonus talk­ing for this and near­ly every oth­er episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

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

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Does Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity Suggest That There Is an Afterlife?: A Theoretical Physicist Explains

in Physics | July 20th, 2023

“Let’s talk about the physics of dead grand­moth­ers.” Thus does the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Sabine Hossen­felder start off the Big Think video above, which soon gets into Ein­stein’s the­o­ry of spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty. The ques­tion of how Hossen­felder man­ages to con­nect the for­mer to the lat­ter should raise in any­one curios­i­ty enough to give these ten min­utes a watch, but she also address­es a cer­tain com­mon cat­e­go­ry of mis­con­cep­tion. It all began, she says, when a young man posed to her the fol­low­ing ques­tion: “A shaman told me that my grand­moth­er is still alive because of quan­tum mechan­ics. Is this right?”

Upon reflec­tion, Hossen­felder arrived at the con­clu­sion that “it’s not entire­ly wrong.” For decades now, “quan­tum mechan­ics” has been hauled out over and over again to pro­vide vague sup­port to a range of beliefs all along the spec­trum of plau­si­bil­i­ty. But in the dead-grand­moth­er case, at least, it’s not the applic­a­ble area of physics. “It’s actu­al­ly got some­thing to do with Ein­stein’s the­o­ry of spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty,” she says. With that par­tic­u­lar achieve­ment, Ein­stein changed the way we think about space and time, prov­ing that “every­thing that you expe­ri­ence, every­thing that you see, you see as it was a tiny, lit­tle amount of time in the past. So how do you know that any­thing exists right now?”

In Ein­stein’s descrip­tion of phys­i­cal real­i­ty, “there is no unam­bigu­ous notion to define what hap­pens now; it depends on the observ­er.” And “if you fol­low this log­ic to its con­clu­sion, then the out­come is that every moment could be now for some­one. And that includes all moments in your past, and it also includes all moments in your future.” Ein­stein posits space and time as not two sep­a­rate con­cepts, but aspects of a sin­gle enti­ty called space­time, in which “the present moment has no fun­da­men­tal sig­nif­i­cance”; in the result­ing “block uni­verse,” past, present, and future coex­ist simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, and no infor­ma­tion is ever destroyed, just con­tin­u­al­ly rearranged.

“So if some­one you knew dies, then, of course, we all know that you can no longer com­mu­ni­cate with this per­son. That’s because the infor­ma­tion that made up their per­son­al­i­ty dis­pers­es into very sub­tle cor­re­la­tions in the remains of their body, which become entan­gled with all the par­ti­cles around them, and slow­ly, slow­ly, they spread into radi­a­tion that dis­pers­es through­out the solar sys­tem, and even­tu­al­ly, through­out the entire uni­verse.” But one day could bring “some cos­mic con­scious­ness­es which will also be spread out, and this infor­ma­tion will be acces­si­ble again” — in about a bil­lion years, any­way, which will at least give grand­ma’s reassem­bled intel­li­gence plen­ty to catch up on.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Is There Life After Death?: Michio Kaku, Bill Nye, Sam Har­ris & More Explore One of Life’s Biggest Ques­tions

Elie Wiesel (RIP) Talks About What Hap­pens When We Die

Is There an After­life? Christo­pher Hitchens Spec­u­lates in an Ani­mat­ed Video

Einstein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Explained in One of the Ear­li­est Sci­ence Films Ever Made (1923)

Is There Life After Death?: John Cleese and a Pan­el of Sci­en­tists Dis­cuss That Eter­nal Ques­tion

Albert Ein­stein On God: “Noth­ing More Than the Expres­sion and Prod­uct of Human Weak­ness”

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

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Take a High Def, Guided Tour of Pompeii

in Architecture, History | July 20th, 2023

“If you want to under­stand ancient Rome, its archi­tec­ture, its his­to­ry, the sprawl of the Roman Empire, you’ve got to go Rome.” So says archae­ol­o­gist Dar­ius Arya in the video above, mak­ing a fair, if obvi­ous, point. “But you also have to go to the Vesu­vian cities”: that is, the set­tle­ments locat­ed near the vol­cano Mount Vesu­vius on the Gulf of Naples. “You have to go to Her­cu­la­neum. You must go to Pom­peii. Not just because they’re famous, but because of the lev­el of preser­va­tion.” This preser­va­tion was a side effect of the explo­sion of Vesu­vius in 79 AD, which destroyed all life in Her­cu­la­neum and Pom­peii, but also kept the basic struc­tures of both cities intact; vis­it­ing either one today allows us to “get immersed in the world of the Romans.”

It is in Pom­peii that the video’s cre­ator Manuel Bra­vo (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his expla­na­tions of the Great Pyra­mids of Giza and Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi’s dome in Flo­rence) immers­es not just him­self but also us in that world.

He does so with high-res­o­lu­tion trav­el footage, but also with his expla­na­tions of the city’s archi­tec­ture and urban plan­ning, break­ing down the details of every­thing from its grand Forum (“antic­i­pat­ing mod­ern prac­tice by almost 2,000 years” as a “pedes­tri­an-only precinct”) to its com­plex­es of baths, to its ther­mopo­lia (“essen­tial­ly ancient fast-food restau­rants”). Even more reveal­ing are its hum­bler fea­tures, such as the step­ping-stones across streets that allowed cit­i­zens to avoid “the rain­wa­ter, sewage, and ani­mal waste that would accu­mu­late there.”

“Almost every build­ing in Pom­peii has inte­ri­or wall paint­ings, from pri­vate res­i­dences to pub­lic spaces such as baths and mar­kets,” says Bra­vo, and these omnipresent works of art “offer valu­able insights into the every­day life and cul­tur­al val­ues of ancient Roman soci­ety.” (And indeed, they’re still offer­ing new ones: just last month, a redis­cov­ered Pom­pei­ian fres­co showed the world an ancient pre­cur­sor to piz­za.) They also evi­dence the sur­pris­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of trompe-l’œil, where artists cre­ate the illu­sion of walls con­struct­ed from sol­id mar­ble, or even lush out­door spaces. Even the already-grand Domus Romana, the form of hous­ing of choice for afflu­ent Pom­pei­ians, incor­po­rat­ed paint­ings to look grander still. Even once you make it, as the ancients clear­ly knew, you’ve still got to fake it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ruins of Pom­peii

Behold 3D Recre­ations of Pompeii’s Lav­ish Homes — As They Exist­ed Before the Erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

The Last Morn­ing in Pom­peii & The Night Pom­peii Died: A New Video Series Explores the End of the Doomed Roman City

A New­ly Dis­cov­ered Fres­co in Pom­peii Reveals a Pre­cur­sor to Piz­za

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

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Behold the Unique Beauty of Japan’s Artistic Manhole Covers

in Art, Design, Travel | July 19th, 2023

Vis­i­tors to Japan can’t help but be struck by the beau­ty of its tem­ples, its scenic views, its zen gar­dens, its man­hole cov­ers…

You read that right.

What start­ed as a scheme to get tax­pay­ers on board with pricey rur­al sew­er projects in the 1980s has grown into a coun­try­wide tourist attrac­tion and a mat­ter of civic pride.

Each munic­i­pal­i­ty boasts its own unique man­hole cov­er designs, inspired by spe­cif­ic region­al ele­ments.

A com­mu­ni­ty might opt to rep its local flo­ral or fau­na, a famous local land­mark or fes­ti­val, an his­toric event or bit of folk­lore.

Mat­sumo­to City high­lights one of its pop­u­lar folk craft sou­venirs, the col­or­ful silk temari balls that once served as toys for female chil­dren and bridal gifts.

Nagoya touts the puri­ty of its water with a water strid­er — an insect that requires the most pris­tine con­di­tions to sur­vive.

Hiroshi­ma pays trib­ute to its base­ball team.

Osa­ka offers a view of its cas­tle sur­round­ed by cher­ry blos­soms.

The prox­im­i­ty of the San­rio Puroland theme park allows Tama City to lay claim to Hel­lo Kit­ty and Poké­mon-themed lids have sprung up like mush­rooms from Tokyo to Oki­nawa.

Most of Japan’s 15 mil­lion artis­tic man­hole cov­ers are mono­chro­mat­ic steel which makes spot­ting one of the vibrant­ly col­ored mod­els even more excit­ing.

In the fifty some years since their intro­duc­tion, an entire sub­cul­ture has emerged. Vet­er­an enthu­si­ast Sho­ji Mori­mo­to coined the term “man­holer” to describe hob­by­ists par­tic­i­pat­ing in this “trea­sure hunt for adults.”

Remo Camero­ta doc­u­ments his obses­sion in Drainspot­ting: Japan­ese Man­hole Cov­ers and Amer­i­can trav­el­er Car­rie McN­inch shares the joy of stum­bling across pre­vi­ous­ly unspot­ted ones in her auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal com­ic series You Don’t Get There From Here.

The ongo­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of this offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned street art is evi­denced by the Japan­ese Soci­ety of Man­hole Lovers, an annu­al man­hole sum­mit, and tons of col­lectible trad­ing cards.

Explore a crowd­sourced gallery of Japan­ese man­hole cov­ers here.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Dis­cov­er Edo, the His­toric Green/Sustainable City of Japan

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

Down­load Clas­sic Japan­ese Wave and Rip­ple Designs: A Go-to Guide for Japan­ese Artists from 1903

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of The East Vil­lage Inky zine and nine books, includ­ing, most recent­ly Cre­ative, Not Famous. Fol­low her @Ayun-Halliday

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