Michel Gondry Creates a Burger King Ad That Touts New Research on Reducing Cow Flatulence & Climate Change

As every grade school­er knows (and delights in work­ing into con­ver­sa­tion), cows have a ten­den­cy towards flat­u­lence. At first this just deterred kids from going into ani­mal hus­bandry, but now those kids have come to asso­ciate the phe­nom­e­non of fart­ing live­stock with a larg­er issue of inter­est to them: cli­mate change. From cows’ rear ends comes methane, “one of the most harm­ful green­house gas­es and a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change,” as Adam Satar­i­ano puts it in a recent New York Times arti­cle on sci­en­tif­ic research into the prob­lem. “If they were a coun­try, cows would rank as the world’s sixth-largest emit­ter, ahead of Brazil, Japan and Ger­many, accord­ing to data com­piled by Rhodi­um Group, a research firm.”

For some, such bovine dam­age to the cli­mate has pro­vid­ed a rea­son to stop eat­ing beef. But that’s hard­ly the solu­tion one wants to endorse if one runs a com­pa­ny like, say, Burg­er King. And so we have the Reduced Methane Emis­sions Beef Whop­per, the prod­uct of a part­ner­ship “with top sci­en­tists to devel­op and test a new diet for cows, which accord­ing to ini­tial study results, on aver­age reduces up to 33% of cows’ dai­ly methane emis­sions per day dur­ing the last 3 to 4 months of their lives.” The main effec­tive ingre­di­ent is lemon­grass, as any­one can find out by look­ing up the pro­jec­t’s for­mu­la online, where Burg­er King has made it pub­lic — or as the mar­ket­ing cam­paign stress­es, “open source.”

That cam­paign also has a music video, direct­ed by no less an auteur of the form than Michel Gondry. In it the Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind and Be Kind Rewind film­mak­er has eleven-year-old coun­try musi­cian Mason Ram­sey and eight oth­er West­ern-attired young­sters sing about the role of cow flat­u­lence in cli­mate change and Burg­er King’s role in address­ing it. All of this presents a nat­ur­al oppor­tu­ni­ty for Gondry to indulge his sig­na­ture hand­made aes­thet­ic, at once clum­sy and slick, child­like and refined. You may rec­og­nize Ram­sey as the boy yodel­ing “Lovesick Blues” at Wal­mart in a video that, orig­i­nal­ly post­ed two years ago, has now racked up near­ly 75 mil­lion views. Burg­er King sure­ly hopes to cap­ture some of that viral­i­ty to pro­mote its cli­mate-mind­ed­ness — and, of course, to encour­age view­ers to have a Reduced Methane Emis­sions Beef Whop­per “while sup­plies last.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Presents an Ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion with Noam Chom­sky

Direc­tor Michel Gondry Makes a Charm­ing Film on His iPhone, Prov­ing That We Could Be Mak­ing Movies, Not Tak­ing Self­ies

The Coen Broth­ers Make a TV Com­mer­cial — Ridi­cul­ing “Clean Coal”

Watch Andy Warhol Eat an Entire Burg­er King Whopper–While Wish­ing the Burg­er Came from McDonald’s (1981)

McDonald’s Opens a Tiny Restau­rant — and It’s Only for Bees

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

A Short Documentary on the Courageous Tuskegee Airmen, Narrated by Morgan Freeman

For decades, would-be black mil­i­tary pilots saw their pos­si­ble future careers “can­celed,” as they say, by racism in the seg­re­gat­ed U.S. armed forces. Black ser­vice­men “were denied mil­i­tary lead­er­ship roles and skilled train­ing,” writes the offi­cial Tuskegee Air­men site, “because many believed they lacked qual­i­fi­ca­tions for com­bat duty.” Aspir­ing air­men would final­ly, after cam­paign­ing since World War I, be giv­en the chance to train and fly mis­sions in the ear­ly for­ties, after “civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions and the black press exert­ed pres­sure that result­ed in the for­ma­tion of an all African-Amer­i­can pur­suit squadron based in Tuskegee, Alaba­ma.”

Actu­al­ly trained on a dozen air­fields around Tuskegee Uni­ver­si­ty, the air­men in the pro­gram “came away from those god­for­sak­en Alaba­ma fields with the unwa­ver­ing belief that their new­found abil­i­ties might just help over­come prej­u­dice, hearsay, and plain old dis­like,” says Mor­gan Free­man in his voiceover nar­ra­tion for “Red Tails,” the short doc­u­men­tary above. The “Red Tails” or “Red Tail Angels,” as they were called after the dis­tinc­tive col­or of their planes’ tails, round­ly sur­passed all expec­ta­tions, becom­ing some of the most suc­cess­ful fight­er pilots of the war.

“They would not be denied, despite the fact that they were unwel­come, unap­pre­ci­at­ed, and very much under­es­ti­mat­ed,” says Free­man. This is an under­state­ment. The belief that African Amer­i­cans lacked the capac­i­ty for com­pli­cat­ed flight train­ing was so preva­lent that even the pro­gres­sive Eleanor Roo­sevelt would give voice to it (in a demon­stra­tion to dis­prove it) when she vis­it­ed the bud­ding pro­gram in April 1941. “Can Negroes real­ly fly air­planes?” she cheer­ful­ly asked the program’s head Charles “Chief” Ander­son. He was oblig­ed to give her a demon­stra­tion in his Piper J‑3 Cub, against the objec­tions of her Secret Ser­vice detail.

Soon after­ward, the first Negro Air Corps pilots began train­ing, and the enlist­ed men cho­sen for the pro­gram became offi­cers. Part­ly because of turnover among white senior offi­cers in the pro­gram, who used it as a step­ping stone to pro­mo­tions and left after a few months, progress was slow. It wasn’t until Sep­tem­ber that Cap­tain Ben­jamin O. Davis, Jr. was giv­en the go-ahead for a solo flight, and not until April 1943 that the first squadron, the 99th, giv­en com­bat clear­ance. Their sto­ry has passed into leg­end, from the claim that the Red Tails nev­er lost a sin­gle bomber to the dra­mat­ic recre­ations of George Lucas’ Red Tails.

Lat­er declas­si­fied doc­u­ments appear to show that they had, in fact, lost bombers, like every oth­er fight­er group in the war. The fact hard­ly tar­nish­es the Tuskegee Airmen’s many medals or their pro­lif­i­cal­ly attest­ed skill and courage. It wouldn’t be until three years after the war end­ed that the mil­i­tary was final­ly deseg­re­gat­ed, though the air­men them­selves were laud­ed, pro­mot­ed, and sought out by pri­vate indus­try when they returned to civil­ian life. Robert Friend, who died in 2019 at the age of 99, went on to serve in Korea and Viet­nam, retired as a lieu­tenant colonel, worked on space launch vehi­cles, and formed his own aero­space com­pa­ny.

Charles McGee, who fea­tures in the short video doc­u­men­tary, just turned 100 this past Feb­ru­ary, and received a pro­mo­tion to brigadier gen­er­al. His reac­tion was ambiva­lent: “At first I would say ‘wow,’ but look­ing back, it would have been nice to have had that dur­ing active duty, but it didn’t hap­pen that way. But still, the recog­ni­tion of what was accom­plished, cer­tain­ly, I am pleased and proud to receive that recog­ni­tion.”

Davis, the Tuskegee program’s first solo pilot and com­man­der of the 99th Pur­suit Squadron “was instru­men­tal in draft­ing the Air Force plan to imple­ment” deseg­re­ga­tion in 1948, and he would become the Air Force’s first African Amer­i­can gen­er­al. Davis’ father, it so hap­pens, Ben­jamin O. Davis, Sr., had been the first black gen­er­al in the U.S. Army. The Tuskegee Air­men were undoubt­ed­ly pio­neers, but they were also part of a long tra­di­tion of black Amer­i­cans who fought for the U.S. since its begin­nings, “despite the fact,” as Free­man says, “that they were unwel­come, unap­pre­ci­at­ed, and very much under­es­ti­mat­ed.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Two Teenage Dutch Sis­ters End­ed Up Join­ing the Resis­tance and Assas­si­nat­ing Nazis Dur­ing World War II

How to Behave in a British Pub: A World War II Train­ing Film from 1943, Fea­tur­ing Burgess Mered­ith

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

What Happened When Americans Had to Wear Masks During the 1918 Flu Pandemic

Med­ical pro­fes­sion­als have had a par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult time get­ting peo­ple in the Unit­ed States to act in uni­son for the pub­lic good dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. This has been the case with every step that experts urge to curb the spread of COVID-19, from clos­ing schools, church­es, and oth­er meet­ing places, to enforc­ing social dis­tanc­ing and wear­ing masks over the nose and mouth in pub­lic spaces.

The resis­tance may seem symp­to­matic of the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal cli­mate, but there is ample prece­dent for it dur­ing the spread of so-called Span­ish Flu, which took the lives of 675,000 Amer­i­cans a lit­tle over a hun­dred years ago. Even when forced to wear masks by law or face jail time, many Amer­i­cans absolute­ly refused to do so.

“In 1918,” writes E. Thomas Ewing at Health Affairs, “US pub­lic health author­i­ties rec­om­mend­ed masks for doc­tors, nurs­es, and any­one tak­ing care of influen­za patients.” The advi­so­ry “grad­u­al­ly and incon­sis­tent­ly” spread to the gen­er­al pub­lic, in a dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al cli­mate, in some impor­tant respects, than our own, as Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan med­ical his­to­ri­an J. Alexan­der Navar­ro explains.

Nation­wide, posters pre­sent­ed mask-wear­ing as a civic duty – social respon­si­bil­i­ty had been embed­ded into the social fab­ric by a mas­sive wartime fed­er­al pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign launched in ear­ly 1917 when the U.S. entered the Great War. San Fran­cis­co May­or James Rolph announced that “con­science, patri­o­tism and self-pro­tec­tion demand imme­di­ate and rigid com­pli­ance” with mask wear­ing. In near­by Oak­land, May­or John Davie stat­ed that “it is sen­si­ble and patri­ot­ic, no mat­ter what our per­son­al beliefs may be, to safe­guard our fel­low cit­i­zens by join­ing in this prac­tice” of wear­ing a mask.

Despite the civic spir­it and gen­er­al­ized pub­lic sup­port for mask wear­ing, pass­ing local mask ordi­nances was “fre­quent­ly a con­tentious affair.” Debates that sound famil­iar raged in city coun­cils in Los Ange­les and Port­land, both of which reject­ed mask orders. (One offi­cial declar­ing them “auto­crat­ic and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.”) San Fran­cis­co, on the oth­er hand, brought the police down on any­one who refused to wear a mask, impos­ing fines and jail time.

These mea­sures were adopt­ed by oth­er cities, as well as abroad in Paris and Man­ches­ter. “Fines ranged,” Navar­ro writes, “from US$5 to $200,” a huge amount of mon­ey in 1918, and a good amount for many peo­ple out of work today. Even in cities that did not impose harsh penal­ties, “non­com­pli­ance and out­right defi­ance quick­ly became a prob­lem.” Much of the resis­tance to wear­ing masks, how­ev­er, came lat­er, after a first wave of flu infec­tions sub­sided. When pre­cau­tions were relaxed, cas­es rose once again, and new mask man­dates went into effect in 1919.

San Francisco’s Anti-Mask League formed in protest, attract­ing some­where between 4,000 and 5,000 unmasked atten­dees to a Jan­u­ary meet­ing. Some of their objec­tions rest­ed on an ear­ly study that found scant evi­dence for the effi­ca­cy of com­pul­so­ry mask-wear­ing. How­ev­er, a lat­er com­pre­hen­sive 1921 study by War­ren T. Vaughn, notes Ewing, found that the data was too sketchy to draw con­clu­sions: “The prob­lem was human behav­ior: Masks were used until they were filthy, worn in ways that offered lit­tle or no pro­tec­tion, and com­pul­so­ry laws did not over­come the ‘fail­ure of coop­er­a­tion on the part of the pub­lic.’”

Vaughn con­clud­ed, “It is safe to say that the face mask as used was a fail­ure.” Many behav­iors con­tributed to this out­come. As we see in the pho­to­graph at the top of anony­mous Cal­i­for­ni­ans wear­ing masks and hold­ing a sign that reads, “Wear a mask or go to jail,” many did not wear masks prop­er­ly, leav­ing their nose exposed, for exam­ple, like the woman in the cen­ter of the group. Notably, instead of social dis­tanc­ing, the group stands shoul­der to shoul­der, ren­der­ing their masks most­ly inef­fec­tive.

The kind of masks most peo­ple wore were made of thin gauze. (“Obey the laws and wear the gauze. Pro­tect your jaws from sep­tic paws,” went a jin­gle at the time.) The mate­r­i­al was­n’t at all effec­tive at clos­er dis­tances, where today’s quilt­ed cot­ton masks, on the oth­er hand, have been shown to stop the virus a few inch­es from the wearer’s face. Still, masks, when com­bined with oth­er mea­sures, were shown to be effec­tive when com­pli­ance was high, though much of the evi­dence is anec­do­tal.

What can we learn from this his­to­ry? Does it under­mine the case for masks today? “We need to learn the right lessons from the fail­ure of flu masks in 1918,” Ewing argues. The over­whelm­ing sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus is that masks are some of the most effec­tive tools for slow­ing the spread of the coro­n­avirus, and that, unlike in 1918, “Masks can work if we wear them cor­rect­ly, mod­i­fy behav­ior appro­pri­ate­ly, and apply all avail­able tools to con­trol the spread of infec­tious dis­ease.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Japan­ese Health Man­u­al Cre­at­ed Dur­ing the 1918 Span­ish Flu Pan­dem­ic Offers Time­less Wis­dom: Stay Away from Oth­ers, Cov­er Your Mouth & Nose, and More

What Hap­pened to U.S. Cities That Practiced–and Didn’t Practice–Social Dis­tanc­ing Dur­ing 1918’s “Span­ish Flu”

The His­to­ry of the 1918 Flu Pan­dem­ic, “The Dead­liest Epi­dem­ic of All Time”: Three Free Lec­tures from The Great Cours­es

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

How Cannonball Adderley Shared the Joy of Jazz

Jazz has always had big per­son­al­i­ties. In the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, an explo­sion of major play­ers became as well known for their per­son­al quirks as for their rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­niques and com­po­si­tions. Monk’s endear­ing odd­ness, Miles Davis’ brood­ing bad tem­per, Charles Min­gus’ exu­ber­ant shouts and rages, Ornette Coleman’s cryp­tic phi­los­o­phiz­ing, Coltrane’s gen­tle mys­ti­cism…. These were not only the jazz world’s great­est play­ers; they were also some of the century’s most inter­est­ing peo­ple.

The same can be said for Julian Edwin “Can­non­ball” Adder­ley, sax­o­phon­ist and band­leader who was her­ald­ed as a new Char­lie Park­er on arrival in the New York scene from Ft. Laud­erdale, Flori­da, where he had worked as a pop­u­lar high school band direc­tor and local musi­cian before decid­ing to pur­sue grad­u­ate stud­ies. Music had oth­er plans for him. Instead of going back to school when he arrived in Man­hat­tan in 1955, he fell in with the right crowd and became an instant crit­i­cal sen­sa­tion.

Adder­ley end­ed up play­ing onstage and record­ing with greats like Davis, Coltrane, Art Blakey, Bill Evans, and his broth­er, Nat Adder­ley, who joined him to play in his Quin­tet, com­plet­ed the Can­non­ball Adder­ley Sex­tet in the six­ties with Yusef Lateef, and helped him make some of the best music of his career. Adder­ley joined Miles Davis’s band when Coltrane left and played on Kind of Blue and Mile­stones, leav­ing “a deep impres­sion on Davis and his sex­tet,” notes one biog­ra­phy.

Unlike some of his famous peers, Adder­ley had none of the traits of the dif­fi­cult or enig­mat­ic artiste. Where most jazz musi­cians remained silent and mys­te­ri­ous onstage, Adder­ley engaged bois­ter­ous­ly with his audi­ence, in mono­logues one can imag­ine him shout­ing gre­gar­i­ous­ly over a band room full of stu­dents warm­ing up. With his irre­press­ible charm, he estab­lished an “amus­ing and edu­ca­tion­al rap­port with his audi­ence, often-times explain­ing what he and his musi­cians were about to play” (hear him do so before launch­ing into his pop­u­lar 1966 soul jazz sin­gle “Mer­cy, Mer­cy, Mer­cy,” below.)

Adderley’s per­son­al­i­ty helped put jazz new­com­ers at ease, but he didn’t teach from the text­book, exper­i­ment­ing broad­ly with sev­er­al gen­res and incor­po­rat­ing elec­tron­ic ele­ments and African polyrhythms in the 60s and 70s, when he also became “a jazz spokesman. Whether it was tele­vi­sion, res­i­den­cies at sev­er­al col­leges, or film appear­ances.” Adder­ley helped pio­neer soul jazz, post-bop, and oth­er exper­i­men­tal sub­gen­res, many of which crossed over into the pop charts. “Two words best encap­su­late the music of alto sax­o­phon­ist Julian “Can­non­ball” Adder­ley,” writes Nick Mor­ri­son at NPR: “’joy’ and ‘soul.’”

The Poly­phon­ic video at the top focus­es on the role of joy in Adderley’s music, mak­ing the case that he “exem­pli­fies joy more than any­one else in jazz.” His vora­cious appetite for life—reflected in his high school nick­name “Can­ni­bal,” which mor­phed into “Cannonball”—propelled him into the “cen­ter of the jazz uni­verse.” It also led him to devour influ­ences oth­er jazz musi­cians avoid­ed. He had no pre­ten­sions to jazz as high art, though he was him­self a high artist, and he joy­ful­ly embraced pop music at a time when it was scorned by the jazz elite.

“Adderley’s great ambi­tion was to share the joy of jazz with the world, and he knew that no mat­ter how tech­ni­cal­ly impres­sive a piece of music was, peo­ple wouldn’t lis­ten to it if it wasn’t fun, so Can­non­ball made his music fun and acces­si­ble.” Records like The Can­non­ball Adder­ley Sex­tet in New York sound like “a par­ty,” writes CJ Hurtt at Vinyl Me, Please: “a par­ty with some far-out near­ly free jazz post-bop ele­ments to it” but no short­age of straight-ahead grooves. The album kicks off with Can­non­ball “telling the audi­ence that they are actu­al­ly hip and not mere­ly pre­tend­ing to be.” It’s tongue-in-cheek, of course; Adder­ley nev­er pre­tend­ed to be any­one but his own out­go­ing self. But his unre­lent­ing cheer­ful­ness, even when he played the blues, also made him one of the hippest cats around.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Jazz Helped Fuel the 1960s Civ­il Rights Move­ment

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

Her­bie Hancock’s Joy­ous Sound­track for the Orig­i­nal Fat Albert TV Spe­cial (1969)

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

Explore Flowcharts That Japanese Aquariums Use to Document the Romantic Lives of Penguins

In recent years, view­ers the world over have been binge-watch­ing a Japan­ese real­i­ty show called Ter­race House. The New York­er’s Troy Pat­ter­son describes its for­mat thus: “Three men and three women move into an ele­gant pad for a spell, while oth­er­wise con­duct­ing their lives as usu­al. The mem­bers of the cast are above aver­age in their cam­era-readi­ness and their civil­i­ty, and in no oth­er dis­cernible way.” Fueled not by the self-pro­mo­tion­al show­boat­ing and ginned-up resent­ment that have become con­ven­tions of Ter­race House’s West­ern pre­de­ces­sors, “the show’s slow-burn­ing action is sparked by the hon­est fric­tion of minor per­son­al­i­ty flaws and con­flict­ing per­son­al needs,” mak­ing it “clos­er to a nature doc­u­men­tary than to the exploita­tion films that one has come to expect from real­i­ty tele­vi­sion.”

If view­ing human beings the way we’re used to view­ing nature can give us such sat­is­fac­tion, how about view­ing nature the way we’re used to view­ing human beings? Japan, as John­ny Wald­man reports at Spoon and Tam­a­go, has led the way in both rever­sals: “Two aquar­i­ums in Japan, Kyoto Aquar­i­um and Sum­i­da Aquar­i­um, keep obses­sive tabs on their pen­guins and main­tain an updat­ed flow­chart that visu­al­izes all their pen­guin dra­ma.”

Wald­man quotes Japan-based researcher Oliv­er Jia as tweet­ing the fact that “Pen­guin dra­ma actu­al­ly isn’t total­ly unex­pect­ed. They’re known to be vicious ani­mals who cheat on their part­ners and steal oth­er’s chil­dren. So basi­cal­ly, your aver­age day in Los Ange­les” — the cra­dle, one might add, of the real­i­ty-TV indus­try.

Though the lives of pen­guins may, in the eyes of the aquar­i­um-vis­it­ing lay­man, appear to con­sist entire­ly of swim­ming, eat­ing fish, and stand­ing around, the ani­mals’ “roman­tic escapades are fair­ly easy to observe,” at least accord­ing to Wald­man’s trans­la­tion of the pen­guin care­tak­ers at the Sum­i­da Aquar­i­um. “Wing-flap­ping is a sign of affec­tion and cou­ples can be seen groom­ing each oth­er. Pen­guins who are get­ting over a break-up will often refuse to eat.” This is the kind of obser­va­tion­al data that inform the inten­sive­ly detailed (and cute­ness-opti­mized) pen­guin-rela­tion­ship dia­grams seen here, high-res­o­lu­tion ver­sions of which you can down­load from the Kyoto Aquar­i­um and Sum­i­da Aquar­i­um’s web sites. Now that Ter­race House has come to an end, per­haps the time has come on Japan­ese real­i­ty tele­vi­sion for a bit of non-human dra­ma.

via Spoon and Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Act of Love: A Strange, Won­der­ful Visu­al Dic­tio­nary of Ani­mal Courtship

See Pen­guins Wear­ing Tiny “Pen­guin Books” Sweaters, Knit­ted by the Old­est Man in Aus­tralia

Japan­ese Design­er Cre­ates Incred­i­bly Detailed & Real­is­tic Maps of a City That Doesn’t Exist

The First Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Japan­ese Folk­lore Mon­sters Is Now Open

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

Meet Con­go the Chimp, London’s Sen­sa­tion­al 1950s Abstract Painter

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

Twilight Zone Morality Tales: A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#52)

Some­thing’s strange… Is it a dream? If it’s a moral­i­ty tale with a twist end­ing, you’re prob­a­bly in the Twi­light Zone. Your hosts Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er, plus guest Ken Ger­ber (Bri­an’s broth­er) are in it this week, dis­cussing the thrice revived TV series. Does the 1959–1963 show hold up? What makes for a good TZ episode, and does Jor­dan Peele’s lat­est iter­a­tion cap­ture the spir­it? We talk about episodes new and old, the 1983 film, plus com­par­isons to Black Mir­ror and David Lynch.

The clas­sic episodes we focus most on (and might spoil, so you should go watch them) are It’s a Good Life, Will the Real Mar­t­ian Please Stand Up?, What You Need, The Howl­ing Man, Per­chance to Dream, and Nick of Time. The oth­ers Ken rec­om­mend­ed for us are The Obso­lete Man and The Masks. Mark com­plains about Walk­ing Dis­tance.

In the new series, sea­son 1, we do spoil Blur­ry Man and praise (but don’t spoil) Replay. We don’t spoil sea­son two at all, but rec­om­mend Try, Try and Meet in the Mid­dle and pan Ova­tion and 8.

Some arti­cles we looked at include:

A good video on the back­ground of the show is “Amer­i­can Mas­ters Rod Ser­ling: Sub­mit­ted for your Approval,” and you can find detailed dis­cus­sions of many episodes on The Twi­light Zone Pod­cast. Ken rec­om­mends The Twi­light Zone Com­pan­ion. Oh, and Chris Hard­wick real­ly likes TZ.

If you enjoyed this episodes, you might like our pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion with Ken on time trav­el.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This week, we con­tin­ue for more than half an hour, fur­ther dis­cussing the Twi­light Zone with Ken, which includes a look at the 1985–1989 series.

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.

Orson Welles Narrates Animations of Plato’s Cave and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” Two Parables of the Human Condition

You’re held cap­tive in an enclosed space, only able faint­ly to per­ceive the out­side world. Or you’re kept out­side, unable to cross the thresh­old of a space you feel a des­per­ate need to enter. If both of these sce­nar­ios sound like dreams, they must do so because they tap into the anx­i­eties and sus­pi­cions in the depths of our shared sub­con­scious. As such, they’ve also proven reli­able mate­r­i­al for sto­ry­tellers since at least the fourth cen­tu­ry B.C., when Pla­to came up with his alle­go­ry of the cave. You know that sto­ry near­ly as sure­ly as you know the ancient Greek philoso­pher’s name: a group of human beings live, and have always lived, deep in a cave. Chained up to face a wall, they have only ever seen the images of shad­ow pup­pets thrown by fire­light onto the wall before them.

To these iso­lat­ed beings, “the truth would be lit­er­al­ly noth­ing but the shad­ows of the images.” So Orson Welles tells it in this 1973 short film by ani­ma­tor Dick Oden. In his time­less­ly res­o­nant voice that com­ple­ments the pro­duc­tion’s haunt­ing­ly retro aes­thet­ic, Wells then speaks of what would hap­pen if a cave-dweller were to be unshack­led.

“He would be much too daz­zled to see dis­tinct­ly those things whose shad­ows he had seen before,” but as he approach­es real­i­ty, “he has a clear­er vision.” Still, “will he not be per­plexed? Will he not think that the shad­ows which he for­mer­ly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?” And if brought out of the cave to expe­ri­ence real­i­ty in full, would he not pity his old cave­mates? “Would he not say, with Homer, bet­ter to be the poor ser­vant of a poor mas­ter and to endure any­thing rather than think as they do and live after their man­ner?”

Pla­to’s cave was­n’t the first para­ble of the human con­di­tion Welles nar­rat­ed. Just over a decade ear­li­er, he engaged pin­screen ani­ma­tor Alexan­dre Alex­eieff (he of Night on Bald Moun­tain and and “The Nose,” pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) to illus­trate his read­ing of Franz Kafka’s sto­ry “Before the Law.” The law, in Kafka’s telling, is a build­ing, and before that build­ing stands a guard. “A man comes from the coun­try, beg­ging admit­tance to the law,” says Welles. “But the guard can­not admit him. May he hope to enter at a lat­er time? That is pos­si­ble, said the guard.” Yet some­how that time nev­er comes, and he spends the rest of his life await­ing admis­sion to the law. “Nobody else but you could ever have obtained admit­tance,” the guard admits to the man, not long before the man expires of old age. “This door was intend­ed only for you! And now, I’m going to close it.”

“Before the Law” describes a grim­ly absurd sit­u­a­tion, as does Welles’ The Tri­al, the film to which it serves as an intro­duc­tion. Adapt­ed from anoth­er work of Kafka’s, specif­i­cal­ly his best-known nov­el, it also con­cerns itself with the legal side of human affairs, at least on the sur­face. But when it becomes clear that the crime with which its bureau­crat pro­tag­o­nist Josef K. has been charged will nev­er be spec­i­fied, the sto­ry plunges into an alto­geth­er more trou­bling realm. We’ve all, at one time or anoth­er, felt to some degree like Joseph K., per­se­cut­ed by an ulti­mate­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble sys­tem, legal, social, or oth­er­wise. And can we help but feel, espe­cial­ly in our high­ly medi­at­ed 21st cen­tu­ry, like Pla­to’s immo­bi­lized human, raised in dark­ness and made to build a world­view on illu­sions? As for how to escape the cave — or indeed to enter the law — it falls to each of us indi­vid­u­al­ly to fig­ure out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear John Malkovich Read Plato’s “Alle­go­ry of the Cave,” Set to Music Mixed by Ric Ocasek, Yoko Ono & Sean Lennon, OMD & More

Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry Ani­mat­ed Mon­ty Python-Style

Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry Brought to Life with Clay­ma­tion

The Phi­los­o­phy of The Matrix: From Pla­to and Descartes, to East­ern Phi­los­o­phy

Franz Kafka’s Exis­ten­tial Para­ble “Before the Law” Gets Brought to Life in a Strik­ing, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, “A Coun­try Doc­tor,” Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

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

The Only Surviving Script Written by Shakespeare Is Now Online

Four years ago, when the world com­mem­o­rat­ed the 400th anniver­sary of William Shakespeare’s death, some marked the event with ref­er­ence to a dra­mat­ic work hard­ly anyone’s ever read, and few­er have ever seen per­formed. Called The Booke of Sir Thomas More, “this late 16th or ear­ly 17th-cen­tu­ry play,” the British Library notes, “is not always includ­ed among the Shake­speare­an canon, and it was not until the 1800s that it was even asso­ci­at­ed with the Bard of Avon.”

Since then, Sir Thomas More has become famous, at least among lit­er­ary schol­ars, as the only sur­viv­ing exam­ple of Shakespeare’s hand­writ­ing next to his will. It also became briefly inter­net famous in 2016 when Sir Ian McK­ellen reprised the title role he first played in 1964 for a dra­mat­ic read­ing in Lon­don that spoke elo­quent­ly, cen­turies lat­er, to the moment. The play itself is the work of sev­er­al drama­tists, and the orig­i­nal text, from some­time between 1590 and 1605, is a patch­work of pages of inser­tions and six dif­fer­ent scrib­al hands, Shakespeare’s very like­ly among them.

That same year, the British Library put a scan of the Shake­speare-penned pages of the play online and put the phys­i­cal man­u­script on dis­play in an exhib­it called Shake­speare in Ten Acts. Now, they have uploaded the full, scanned man­u­script to their Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts page and you can view it here. “In these pages we can per­haps see the mas­ter play­wright at work, mus­ing, com­pos­ing and cor­rect­ing his text: a win­dow into Shake­speare’s dra­mat­ic art, as it were.” We can hear what McK­ellen calls the “human empa­thy” in a speech “sym­bol­ic and won­der­ful… so much at the heart of Shakespeare’s human­i­ty.”

The speech, which McK­ellen dis­cuss­es above, has the human­ist More pas­sion­ate­ly address­ing a mob who are attempt­ing to vio­lent­ly deport French protes­tant refugees. More did indeed address a riot­ing mob on May 1, 1517, what came to be known as “Evil May Day” (he was lat­er exe­cut­ed in 1535 for trea­son when he refused to back Hen­ry VIII against the Catholic Church). The play, which shows his actions as espe­cial­ly hero­ic, was cen­sored by Edwin Tilney, Mas­ter of the Rev­els, and nev­er per­formed until McK­ellen took the role. (He has joked that he may be “the last actor who can say ‘I cre­at­ed a part writ­ten by William Shake­speare.’”)

Read a tran­scrip­tion of the full, 147-line More speech thought to be by Shake­speare, and writ­ten in his own hand, at Quartz. “Prov­ing that More’s words were indeed writ­ten by Shake­speare is not straight­for­ward,” the British Library notes, though schol­ars have gen­er­al­ly agreed on the author­ship since the late 19th cen­tu­ry, based on evi­dence you can read about here. But “in their keen sym­pa­thy for the plight of the alien­at­ed and dis­pos­sessed,” these lines “seem to pre­fig­ure the insights of great dra­mas of race such as The Mer­chant of Venice and Oth­el­lo.”

One can see, giv­en Shake­speare’s sym­pa­thy for social out­siders, why he would be drawn to More’s speech, or why he might have been hand­picked among oth­er drama­tists at the time to write the philosopher’s broad-mind­ed plea for tol­er­ance. See the full man­u­script of The Booke of Sir Thomas More here at the British Library’s Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ian McK­ellen Reads a Pas­sion­ate Speech by William Shake­speare, Writ­ten in Defense of Immi­grants

What Shakespeare’s Hand­writ­ing Looked Like

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

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

Nursing Home Residents Replace Famous Rock Stars on Iconic Album Covers

Deserved­ly or not, British care homes have acquired a rep­u­ta­tion as espe­cial­ly drea­ry places, from Vic­to­ri­an nov­els to dystopi­an fic­tion to the flat affect of BBC doc­u­men­taries. Mar­tin Parr gave the world an espe­cial­ly mov­ing exam­ple of the care home doc­u­men­tary in his 1972 pho­to series on Prest­wich Asy­lum, out­side Man­ches­ter. The com­pelling por­traits human­ize peo­ple who were neglect­ed and ignored, yet their lives still look bleak in that aus­tere­ly post-war British insti­tu­tion kind of way.

One can­not say any­thing of the kind of the pho­to series rep­re­sent­ed here, which casts res­i­dents of Syd­mar Lodge Care Home in Edge­ware, Eng­land as rock stars, dig­i­tal­ly recre­at­ing some of the most famous album cov­ers of all time. This is not, obvi­ous­ly, a can­did look at res­i­dents’ day-to-day exis­tence. But it sug­gests a pret­ty cheer­ful place. “The main aim was to show that care homes need not be a sad envi­ron­ment, even dur­ing this pan­dem­ic,” says the pho­tos’ cre­ator Robert Speker, the home’s activ­i­ties man­ag­er.

“Speker tweet­ed side-by-side pho­tos of the orig­i­nal cov­ers and the Syd­mar Lodge res­i­dents’ new takes, and the tweets quick­ly took off,” NPR’s Lau­rel Wams­ley writes. He’s made it clear that the pri­ma­ry audi­ence for the recre­at­ed cov­ers is the res­i­dents them­selves: Iso­lat­ed in lock­down for the past four months; cut off from vis­its and out­ings; suf­fer­ing from an indef­i­nite sus­pen­sion of famil­iar rou­tines.

Speker does not deny the grim real­i­ty behind the inspir­ing images. “Elder­ly peo­ple will remain in lock­down for a long time,” he writes on a GoFundMe page he cre­at­ed to help sup­port the home. “It could be months before the sit­u­a­tion changes for them.”

But he is opti­mistic about his abil­i­ties to “make their time as hap­py and full of enjoy­ment and inter­est as pos­si­ble.” Would that all nurs­ing homes had such a ded­i­cat­ed, award-win­ning coor­di­na­tor. Res­i­dents them­selves, he wrote on Twit­ter, were “enthused and per­haps a bit bemused by the idea, but hap­py to par­tic­i­pate.” When they saw the results—stunning Roma Cohen as Aladdin Sane, defi­ant Sheila Solomons as Elvis and The Clash’s Paul Simenon, casu­al Mar­tin Stein­berg as a “Born in Eng­land” Springsteen—they were delight­ed. Four of the home­’s car­ers got their own cov­er, too, posed as Queen.

Res­i­dents, Speker said, were real­ly “hav­ing a good gig­gle about it.” And we can too, as we bear in mind the many elder­ly peo­ple around us who have been locked in for months, with maybe many more months of iso­la­tion ahead. Not every­one is as tal­ent­ed as Robert Speker, who did the mod­els’ make­up and tat­toos him­self (with hair by a care home man­ag­er), as well as tak­ing all the pho­tographs and edit­ing the images to con­vinc­ing­ly mim­ic the pos­es, com­po­si­tion, light­ing, font, and col­or schemes of the orig­i­nals. But let’s hope his work is a spark that lights up nurs­ing homes and care facil­i­ties with all sorts of cre­ative ideas to keep spir­its up. See sev­er­al more cov­ers below and the rest on Twit­ter.

via the BBC/NPR

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peo­ple Pose in Uncan­ny Align­ment with Icon­ic Album Cov­ers: Dis­cov­er The Sleeve­face Project

The His­to­ry of the Fish­eye Pho­to Album Cov­er

Dyson Cre­ates 44 Free Engi­neer­ing & Sci­ence Chal­lenges for Kids Quar­an­tined Dur­ing COVID-19

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

Cambridge University Professor Cooks 4000-Year-Old Recipes from Ancient Mesopotamia, and Lets You See How They Turned Out

Those of us who’ve ded­i­cat­ed a por­tion of our iso­la­tion to the art of sour­dough have not suf­fered for a lack of infor­ma­tion on how that par­tic­u­lar sausage should get made.

The Inter­net har­bors hun­dreds, nay, thou­sands of com­pli­cat­ed, con­trary, often con­tra­dic­to­ry, extreme­ly firm opin­ions on the sub­ject. You can lose hours…days…weeks, ago­niz­ing over which method to use.

The course for Bill Suther­land’s recent culi­nary exper­i­ment was much more clear­ly chart­ed.

As doc­u­ment­ed in a series of now-viral Twit­ter posts, the Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of Con­ser­va­tion Biol­o­gy decid­ed to attempt a Mesopotami­an meal, as inscribed on a 3770-year-old recipe tablet con­tain­ing humankind’s old­est sur­viv­ing recipes.

As Suther­land told Bored Pan­da’s Liu­ci­ja Ado­maite and Ilona Bal­iū­naitė, the trans­lat­ed recipes, found in Ancient Mesopotamia Speaks: High­lights of the Yale Baby­lon­ian Col­lec­tion, were “aston­ish­ing­ly terse” and “per­plex­ing,” lead­ing to some guess work with regard to onions and gar­lic.

In addi­tion to 25 recipes, the book has pho­tos and illus­tra­tions of var­i­ous arti­facts and essays that “present the ancient Near East in the light of present-day dis­cus­sion of lived expe­ri­ences, focus­ing on fam­i­ly life and love, edu­ca­tion and schol­ar­ship, iden­ti­ty, crime and trans­gres­sion, demons, and sick­ness.”

Kind of like a cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion Martha Stew­art Liv­ing, just a bit less user friend­ly with regard to things like mea­sure­ments, tem­per­a­ture, and cook­ing times. Which is not to say the instruc­tions aren’t step-by-step:

Stew of Lamb

Meat is used. 

You pre­pare water. 

You add fat. 

You add fine-grained salt, bar­ley cakes, onion, Per­sian shal­lot, and milk. 

You crush and add leek and gar­lic.

The meal, which required just a cou­ple hours prep in Sutherland’s non-ancient kitchen sounds like some­thing he might have ordered for deliv­ery from one of Cam­bridge’s Near East­ern restau­rants.

The lamb stew was the hit of the night.

Unwind­ing, a casse­role of leeks and spring onion, looked invit­ing but was “a bit bor­ing.”

Elamite Broth was “pecu­liar but deli­cious,” pos­si­bly because Suther­land sub­sti­tut­ed toma­to sauce for sheep’s blood.

It’s an admit­ted­ly meaty propo­si­tion. Only 2 of the 25 recipes in the col­lec­tion are veg­e­tar­i­an (“meat is not used.”)

And even there, to be real­ly authen­tic, you’d have to sauté every­thing in sheep fat.

(Suther­land swapped in but­ter.)

via Bored Pan­da

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Dic­tio­nary of the Old­est Writ­ten Language–It Took 90 Years to Com­plete, and It’s Now Free Online

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her iso­la­tion projects are sour­dough and an ani­ma­tion with free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing the use of face cov­er­ings to stop the spread of COVID-19. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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

No tour of Istan­bul can fail to include Hagia Sophia. The same is true enough of the British Muse­um in Lon­don or the Lou­vre in Paris, but Hagia Sophia is more than a muse­um: it’s also spent dif­fer­ent stretch­es of its near-mil­len­ni­um-and-a-half of exis­tence as an East­ern Ortho­dox cathe­dral, a Roman Catholic cathe­dral, and a mosque. Stripped of its reli­gious func­tion in the mid-1930s by the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, remem­bered for his cre­ation of a sec­u­lar Turk­ish repub­lic, the majes­tic build­ing has spent the past 85 years as not just a muse­um but the coun­try’s top tourist attrac­tion. Now, accord­ing to a decree issued last week by Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan, Hagia Sophia will become a mosque again.

“Erdo­gan, like his pre­de­ces­sor Ataturk, appears to be using the fate of the Hagia Sophia to make a polit­i­cal state­ment and score some points with his sup­port­ers,” writes Ars Tech­ni­ca’s Kiona N. Smith. But so did Emper­or Jus­tin­ian I of the East­ern Roman Empire, who “ordered the cathedral’s con­struc­tion in the first place for sim­i­lar rea­sons.”

Built on the site where two cathe­drals had pre­vi­ous­ly stood, both burned down in dif­fer­ent revolts, “the Hagia Sophia has always been as much a polit­i­cal land­mark as a reli­gious or cul­tur­al one — so it’s not sur­pris­ing that it has also changed hands, and func­tions, at least four times in its his­to­ry.” Ataturk’s sec­u­lar­iza­tion of Hagia Sophia entailed a restora­tion of its his­toric fea­tures: “Chris­t­ian mosaics that had been plas­tered over in the late 1400s were care­ful­ly uncov­ered, and they shared the domed space with Mus­lim prayer nich­es and pul­pits.”

You can get a clear­er sense of what the build­ing’s archi­tec­ture and dec­o­ra­tion reveal in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son at the top of the post. Edu­ca­tor Kel­ly Wall points to, among oth­er fea­tures, the ancient for­ti­fi­ca­tions that “hint at the strate­gic impor­tance of the sur­round­ing city, found­ed as Byzan­tium by Greek colonists in 657 BCE.”; the foun­da­tion stones that “mur­mur tales from their home­lands of Egypt and Syr­ia, while columns tak­en from the Tem­ple of Artemis recall a more ancient past”; and, beneath the gold­en dome that “appears sus­pend­ed from heav­en,” rein­forc­ing Corinthi­an columns, “brought from Lebanon after the orig­i­nal dome was par­tial­ly destroyed by an earth­quake in 558 CE,” that offer a reminder of “fragili­ty and the engi­neer­ing skills such a mar­vel requires.” The BBC 360-degree vir­tu­al tour just above goes into greater detail on these ele­ments and oth­ers.

Accord­ing to reports cit­ed by Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Hakim Bishara, “tourists will still have access to the site, although it might be closed to vis­i­tors dur­ing prayer time.” Still, “art his­to­ri­ans and con­ser­va­tion­ists wor­ry that the Turk­ish author­i­ties might decide to cov­er up or remove the cen­turies-old Byzan­tine mosaics and Chris­t­ian iconog­ra­phy that adorn the cel­e­brat­ed struc­ture, as was done in oth­er con­vert­ed church­es in Turkey in the past.” Good job, then, that irre­press­ible tele­vi­sion trav­el­er Rick Steves has already shot his episode on Istan­bul, which (from 9:34) nat­u­ral­ly fea­tures a vis­it to Hagia Sophia. But whether as a muse­um, cathe­dral, a mosque, or what­ev­er it becomes next, the build­ing will sure­ly remain what Steves called “the high point of Byzan­tine archi­tec­ture” and “the pin­na­cle of that soci­ety’s sixth-cen­tu­ry glo­ry days.” And no leader of Turkey, no mat­ter what their beliefs about church and state, will want the tourists to stop com­ing.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Hagia Sophia’s Awe-Inspir­ing Acoustics Get Recre­at­ed with Com­put­er Sim­u­la­tions, and Let Your­self Get Trans­port­ed Back to the Mid­dle Ages

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

French Illus­tra­tor Revives the Byzan­tine Empire with Mag­nif­i­cent­ly Detailed Draw­ings of Its Mon­u­ments & Build­ings: Hagia Sophia, Great Palace & More

Map­ping the Sounds of Greek Byzan­tine Church­es: How Researchers Are Cre­at­ing “Muse­ums of Lost Sound”

The Com­plex Geom­e­try of Islam­ic Art & Design: A Short Intro­duc­tion

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


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