Crash Course Philosophy: Hank Green’s Fast-Paced Introduction to Philosophy Gets Underway on YouTube

in Education, Philosophy | February 19th, 2016

Vlog­broth­ers and “Nerd­fight­er” online per­son­al­i­ties Hank and John Green set about con­quer­ing the world of edu­ca­tion­al media a few years ago—while also writ­ing best­selling nov­els, record­ing pop­u­lar albums, and cre­at­ing star­tups and char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions on the side. They’ve almost suc­ceed­ed, with their “Crash Course” video series steam­rolling its way through U.S. His­to­ry, World His­to­ry, and the His­to­ry of Every­thing Else, as well as Psy­chol­o­gy, Lit­er­a­ture, the Sci­ences, and, now, Phi­los­o­phy, just above, with Hank tak­ing on the pro­fes­so­r­i­al duties. “It’s gonna be hard,” he says in the intro video above, “and enlight­en­ing, and frus­trat­ing, and if I do my job prop­er­ly it’s going to stick with you long after you and I have part­ed ways.”

Hank begins where we gen­er­al­ly do, in ancient Greece, and intro­duces the three main branch­es of phi­los­o­phy: meta­physics, epis­te­mol­o­gy, and ethics. Next up, in episode two above, he dives into log­ic and argu­men­ta­tion, sub­jects dear to the heart of an inter­net-based edu­ca­tor, whose audi­ence is quite famil­iar with the con­tentious online com­men­tari­at. Han­k’s style, like his broth­er’s, is hip, fast-paced, and full of wit­ty edi­to­r­i­al asides, enhanced by clever edit­ing, pop-cul­ture ref­er­ences, and ani­mat­ed visu­al aids. In short, he’s exact­ly what you wish your col­lege pro­fes­sors were like in the class­room.

Is tak­ing one of the Green’s “crash cours­es” the equiv­a­lent of a col­lege intro course? I guess it would depend on the col­lege, the class, and the instruc­tor. Your mileage may vary with any edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence, and every­one has their own way of learn­ing. If you’re com­fort­able hav­ing infor­ma­tion deliv­ered at the speed of advertising—which I do not mean as an insult, but as an accu­rate descrip­tion of their pacing—then you may find that the Green’s meth­ods work per­fect­ly well. If you need to mull things over, take care­ful notes, hear in-depth expla­na­tions, etc., you may con­sid­er these videos as fun ways to get your feet wet. Then when you’re ready to dive in, con­sid­er tak­ing one of the many free online phi­los­o­phy cours­es we fea­ture on the site, and sup­ple­ment­ing with pod­casts, free eBooks, and oth­er resources.

If you fol­low this playlist, you can find more Crash Course Phi­los­o­phy videos as they become avail­able.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Down­load 100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es & Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 197 Pod­casts (With More to Come)

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

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New Digital Archive, “Richard Pryor’s Peoria,” Takes You Inside the Dark, Lively World That Shaped the Pioneering Comedian

in Comedy, History | February 18th, 2016

By Scott Saul:

Richard Pry­or is a leg­endary com­ic, and for good rea­son. He had extra­or­di­nary gifts as a mim­ic, sto­ry­teller, phys­i­cal come­di­an, satirist, and impro­vis­ing actor — gifts he brought togeth­er in an act that had the dan­ger­ous elec­tric­i­ty of an unin­su­lat­ed wire. Mean­while he estab­lished a feed­back loop between his act and his per­son­al life, mak­ing use of all those stage chops to draw com­e­dy out of a life that was painful­ly full of self-sab­o­tage, may­hem, and var­i­ous forms of abuse.

It was my task, as Pryor’s biog­ra­ph­er, to probe the leg­ends of his life, start­ing with the vivid sto­ries he told of his for­ma­tive years in the red-light dis­trict of Peo­ria, Illi­nois. In his stage act and rem­i­nis­cences, Pry­or relat­ed how he’d been raised in a broth­el by a grand­moth­er and father who worked, respec­tive­ly, as madam and pimp, and how he had both suf­fered at their hands and learned from them. He told, too, how he’d made his way in a larg­er world that, while bru­tal, was also touched with grace — that grace he felt when he ven­tured onstage, at school or in a club, and start­ed to find him­self as a per­former. 

 young pryor

Ear­li­er biog­ra­phers had won­dered how much Pry­or had embell­ished his past in build­ing his act around his life sto­ry. In my research I dis­cov­ered a moth­er­lode of mate­r­i­al — fam­i­ly pho­tos, court records, news­pa­per arti­cles, and more — that not only cor­rob­o­rat­ed the out­lines of Pryor’s sto­ry but also filled in the pic­ture and gave it a his­tor­i­cal depth. I could see, for instance, how Pryor’s taboo-bust­ing com­e­dy was root­ed in his child­hood envi­ron­ment, a black work­ing-class under­ground where taboos were bust­ed on a reg­u­lar basis, and hypocrisies called to account. You can watch a short, four-minute film above that sets the sto­ry of the young Richard and his fam­i­ly against the back­drop of “Roarin’ Peo­ria.”

RP-highschool-recordslores-clip1

Ulti­mate­ly, I dis­cov­ered so much in my research into Pryor’s for­ma­tive years that I felt it couldn’t be con­tained in the book I was writ­ing (in which Pryor’s first two decades in Peo­ria make up only one of five sec­tions). So I built a dig­i­tal com­pan­ion where you can explore over 200 doc­u­ments from “Richard Pryor’s Peo­ria”. Here you can see, through the young Richard’s report card, how he strug­gled in the con­fines of Peo­ria schools. You can see, through the divorce case of his par­ents, how his moth­er (con­trary to reports that she aban­doned him) tried, unsuc­cess­ful­ly, to steal Richard away from his grand­moth­er and father, and from the red-light dis­trict itself. You can see, through the paper trail of Richard’s for­mi­da­ble grand­moth­er Marie, how she fought — with wil­i­ness and blunt force — against her abu­sive hus­band and against the sys­tem of Jim Crow. And you can vis­it the var­i­ous scenes of Richard’s youth, from his family’s tav­ern and the com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter where he first took the stage to the some­times rau­cous, some­times styl­ish clubs where he got his start as an enter­tain­er. 

Richard Pry­or was an excep­tion­al human being — a genius who changed the rules of com­e­dy in Amer­i­ca — and the web­site aims to show how the seeds of that genius were plant­ed. At the same time, it sug­gests how Pryor’s life sto­ry makes rich­er sense when set against larg­er his­tor­i­cal back­drops: the sto­ry of how the Midwest’s pre­mier “Sin City” became, dur­ing the Cold War, a lead­ing “All-Amer­i­can City”; the sto­ry of how black neigh­bor­hoods were demol­ished in “urban renew­al” efforts (Pryor’s child­hood home was itself tar­get­ed by a wreck­ing ball so that Peo­ria might be linked to an inter­state high­way); and, most of all, the sto­ry of how black Amer­i­cans, while locked into seg­re­ga­tion in the Mid­west, defied that sys­tem in inven­tive and force­ful ways.

This post is by Scott Saul, the author of Becom­ing Richard Pry­or (Harper­Collins), now out in paper­back.  He teach­es Amer­i­can his­to­ry and lit­er­a­ture at UC-Berke­ley, and also is the host of the Chap­ter & Verse pod­cast. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @scottsaul4.

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In Japanese Schools, Lunch Is As Much About Learning As It’s About Eating

in Food & Drink | February 18th, 2016

I grew up in the Unit­ed States, and we Amer­i­cans don’t, in the main, look back on our school days with par­tic­u­lar­ly fond mem­o­ries of lunch. Some schools do a superb job of serv­ing up deli­cious and nutri­tious meals. Oth­ers can bare­ly get their act togeth­er to reheat yes­ter­day’s chick­en fin­gers, and, as with much else in Amer­i­ca, it all aver­ages out to a frus­trat­ing medi­oc­rity. These days, the culi­nary stan­dards of Amer­i­can school lunch­es often come in for pun­ish­ing com­par­isons in the media to those of oth­er soci­eties, espe­cial­ly France, which has long held up eat­ing well as one of its high­est pri­or­i­ties, and Japan, known for its atten­tion to detail as well as the health of its peo­ple.

Just have a look at the nine-minute doc­u­men­tary above on one lunch peri­od at an ele­men­tary school in Saita­ma (about fif­teen miles out­side Tokyo) and you’ll have a vivid sense of the dif­fer­ence — a dif­fer­ence that goes well beyond what gets eat­en. At 12:25 in the after­noon, the kids all bow and thank their teacher for the first half of the day’s instruc­tion. Then they put on their caps and smocks and lay their place­mats and chop­sticks on their desks. A rotat­ing team of stu­dents goes to col­lect every­one’s meals from the kitchen (thank­ing the lunch­ladies before wheel­ing their carts away) while the rest arrange the fur­ni­ture into the stan­dard lunch for­ma­tion. Back in the class­room, the stu­dents serve each oth­er the day’s fried fish with pear sauce, five-veg­etable soup, and mashed pota­toes grown on the school’s own farm by stu­dents.

But wait, there’s more: the kids all brush their teeth after lunch, then break down their milk car­tons, wash them, and set them aside to dry before plac­ing them in the next day’s recy­cling. The video then shows how, after lunch, they all clean their class­room togeth­er. Lunch becomes an oppor­tu­ni­ty not just to eat healthy food, but to teach stu­dents a num­ber of valu­able life lessons–good man­ners, ethics, team­work and more.

I could­n’t have imag­ined any of this hap­pen­ing in my own fifth-grade class­room, and if you could­n’t have either, you can read more about how the phe­nom­e­non of the Japan­ese school lunch came to be at Japan­ese School Lunch, the site of Japan schol­ar Alex­is Agliano San­born. She delves into the his­to­ry, the goals, the mechan­ics (right down to sea­son­al menu plan­ning), and the suc­cess­es of Japan’s school lunch sys­tem. “Per­haps no oth­er coun­try in the world can offer school lunch cook­books, school lunch-themed restau­rants or even school lunch-themed para­pher­na­lia,” she writes. Cer­tain­ly not the one I came from!

(via Twist­ed Sifter)

Relat­ed Com­ment:

A Wealth of Free Doc­u­men­taries on All Things Japan­ese: From Ben­to Box­es to Tea Gar­dens, Ramen & Bul­let Trains

Dis­cov­er Japan’s Earth­quake Proof Under­ground Bike Stor­age Sys­tem: The Future is Now

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

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Tour of Stanley Kubrick’s Prized Lens Collection

in Film, Photography | February 18th, 2016

One of the many rea­sons Stan­ley Kubrick was such a for­mi­da­ble film­mak­er was that he came to cin­e­ma after many years as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for pub­li­ca­tions like Look mag­a­zine. Not only did that give him the kind of eye that knew how to tell (and sell) visu­al­ly and with max­i­mum effi­cien­cy, it meant that he real­ly knew his cam­era and by exten­sion his lens­es. He knew what each lens could do, its strengths and weak­ness­es, and–as in those days, all were hand-ground–their indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ties.

Very few direc­tors keep up with cam­era tech–that’s usu­al­ly the job of the cinematographer–but Kubrick did. Although he was­n’t the first direc­tor to use Steadicam, he was the first (on The Shin­ing) to get the rig mod­i­fied so it could coast close to the ground.

In this video, Joe Dun­ton, who owned one of the major cam­era rental facil­i­ties in Lon­don and worked very close­ly with Kubrick, takes us on a tour of Kubrick’s lens col­lec­tion. For those who went to the trav­el­ing Kubrick exhib­it two to three years ago, a selec­tion of these were on dis­play, and Dunton’s inter­view seems to have been part of a sim­i­lar show in Frank­furt.

Kubrick was a tin­ker­er, and many of the lens­es here he mod­i­fied him­self, com­bin­ing bod­ies, or chang­ing a still cam­era lens so that it could mount onto his favorite film cam­era, the Arri­flex IIc, a rel­a­tive­ly small hand­held movie cam­era that he often oper­at­ed him­self.

The direc­tor rarely rent­ed, pre­fer­ring to buy his own lens­es to keep. He was also a big fan of using nat­ur­al light when he could–further evi­dence of the influ­ence of his pho­to­jour­nal­ism career. Nat­ur­al light could be as dim as the flick­er of a can­dle, which led to the use of a Zeiss lens designed for NASA as a way of pho­tograph­ing space–Kubrick used it for the evening shots in Bar­ry Lyn­don in order to cap­ture can­dle­light.

Also shown, the high­ly cov­et­ed Ange­nieux 10-to‑1 zoom lens, and what would a Kubrick film be with­out those icon­ic slow zooms.

If there is an unsung hero in all this, it’s a man named George Hill, who was Kubrick’s go-to-guy when he need­ed a lens cre­at­ed. It was the only guy he trust­ed to clean his lens­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

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

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Watch Classic Performances from Maria Callas’ Wondrous and Tragically-Short Opera Career

in Music, Opera | February 18th, 2016

“Histri­on­ic” is not a word we often hear used as a com­pli­ment, describ­ing as it does over­wrought, the­atri­cal, melo­dra­mat­ic behav­ior we tend to frown on in every­day life. In the opera world, how­ev­er, one can right­ly praise a diva like the late Maria Callas for her “histri­on­ic pow­er.” Jason Vic­tor Ser­i­nus uses the phrase in an arti­cle on Callas for San Fran­cis­co Clas­si­cal Voice, and also writes of Callas’ “col­oratu­ra agili­ty,” “styl­is­tic authen­tic­i­ty,” “mes­mer­iz­ing stage pres­ence” and “increas­ing­ly scan­dalous behav­ior.”

That last descrip­tion refers in part to a break in Callas’ life and career in 1959 when she left her hus­band and man­ag­er Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Menegh­i­ni and took up with Aris­to­tle Onas­sis. That rela­tion­ship end­ed in heart­break, and after sev­er­al attempts to reclaim her for­mer glo­ry in the sev­en­ties, Callas’ own heart final­ly gave out: in 1977, she died of what may have been a drug-induced heart attack in Paris, her last years, writes Ser­i­nus, “a real tragedy of oper­at­ic pro­por­tions.”

We also, of course, think of anoth­er break in Callas’ life—with opera itself, which she left behind as her wide­ly-praised vocal abil­i­ty dimin­ished rather dra­mat­i­cal­ly in her 40s, an effect, per­haps, of rapid weight loss ear­ly in her career or—as crit­ic and voice teacher Con­rad Osborne spec­u­lates in an NPR pro­file—of a “lack of prop­er tech­nique to sus­tain her ambi­tious reper­toire.” And yet, writes NPR, it was Callas’ “imper­fec­tions” that “set her apart,” along with “her abil­i­ty to find the emo­tion­al mean­ing in a role.” But as much as Callas has been laud­ed for her “sen­sa­tion­al voice,” she has as often been derid­ed in pro­por­tion­ate­ly unflat­ter­ing terms.

Crit­ic Ter­ry Tea­chout describes Callas’ voice as one of “ugly beau­ty,” tak­ing a phrase from Thelo­nious Monk. The con­trast express­es the range of opin­ions crit­ics and audi­ences have held about Callas. While “much of what is writ­ten about her,” Tea­chout observes, “is the work of ador­ing fans whose wor­ship­ful prose is apt to make cool­er heads a bit queasy,” those cool­er heads have always found sub­tle and not so sub­tle ways of insult­ing her dis­tinc­tive voice or strik­ing looks. (“She con­trived through sheer force of will to per­suade audi­ences that she was a great beau­ty,” sneers Tea­chout, “with an even greater voice.”) Callas, in oth­er words, inspires devo­tion and vituperation—but no one sees her per­form and remains unmoved.

Was Maria Callas’ rise to fame a “con job,” as Tea­chout provoca­tive­ly alleges? Isn’t all great per­for­mance some­thing of a con? In any case, I doubt any­one could fool so many devot­ed opera fans into believ­ing in char­ac­ters as whole­heart­ed­ly as mil­lions have believed in Callas’ Rosi­na from Rossini’s Bar­ber of Seville (top from 1958), or in her Nor­ma from Bellini’s chal­leng­ing bel can­to opera (below it, from the same year). Were audi­ences unable to see through the range of her stun­ning per­for­mances in the two Ham­burg con­certs from 1959 and 1962 (fur­ther down)? Could no one dis­cern how flawed her Covent Gar­den per­for­mance, above, or her bravu­ra turn in the title role of Bizet’s Car­men, below, both from 1962?

Of course they heard the flaws. They were part of her appeal. NPR quotes Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia pro­fes­sor Tim Page, who points to Callas’ “feroc­i­ty” and “inten­si­ty” in the role of Car­men. Before Callas, singers “would con­cen­trate only on nice melodies, pret­ti­ly sung. Callas’ Car­men was not nec­es­sar­i­ly very pret­ty, but it was thrilling.” At the height of her pow­ers, Callas brought a robust strength and per­son­al­i­ty to the opera that had been miss­ing from the form, and recov­ered, writes Ser­i­nus, “a host of bel can­to rar­i­ties that had ced­ed from the stage because of a decline in vocal tech­nique among then-liv­ing singers.”

Though Callas’ own tech­nique comes in for much critique—deservedly or not, I can’t say—no one can ever accuse her of timid­i­ty or con­ser­vatism in an are­na that demands courage and flam­boy­ance, that demands, in a word, “histri­on­ics.” The his­to­ry of 20th cen­tu­ry opera, Ser­i­nus writes, can right­ly be divid­ed “with the terms B.C. and A.C.—Before Callas and After Callas…. [Her] ascen­dance put an end to the era of bird­song col­orat­uras who chirped their way through florid mad-scenes with lit­tle regard for their emo­tion­al import.” If a cer­tain rough brava­do and self-con­scious self-fash­ion­ing is what it took to restore to so many roles their depth and grav­i­ty, so be it. Callas paid a price for her out­sized voice and life, and you can hear it in her weak­ened farewell per­for­mance, above, from 1973. But her ador­ing fans will for­ev­er be grate­ful to her for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Video Cap­tures 29-Year-Old Luciano Pavarot­ti in One of His Ear­li­est Record­ed Per­for­mances (1964)

All the Great Operas in 10 Min­utes

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores (and Free MP3s) on the Web

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

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Chess Grandmaster Maurice Ashley Plays Unsuspecting Trash Talker in Washington Square Park

in Games | February 17th, 2016

Not more than two weeks ago, we took you inside the world of Mau­rice Ash­ley. As you might recall, he’s “the first African-Amer­i­can Inter­na­tion­al Grand­mas­ter in the annals of the game” and also a Fel­low at the Media Lab at MIT. Today, Ash­ley released on his YouTube chan­nel a video filmed in Wash­ing­ton Square Park, a place where, as New York­ers know, you can watch some great chess play­ers in action, school­ing each oth­er in how to play the game, and some­times talk­ing a lit­tle trash. In the clip above, Mau­rice sits down to play Wil­son and gets jaw­boned for exact­ly four min­utes, until (to mix metaphors) it’s game, set and match. Enjoy the action.

via Peter B. Kauf­man

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:

Clay­ma­tion Film Recre­ates His­toric Chess Match Immor­tal­ized in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

The Wis­dom & Advice of Mau­rice Ash­ley, the First African-Amer­i­can Chess Grand­mas­ter

Vladimir Nabokov’s Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Mind-Bend­ing Chess Prob­lems

Watch Bill Gates Lose a Chess Match in 79 Sec­onds to the New World Chess Cham­pi­on Mag­nus Carlsen

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

 

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Legendary Classical Guitarist Andrés Segovia Plays Timeless Pieces by J.S. Bach

in Music | February 17th, 2016

“Elec­tric gui­tars are an abom­i­na­tion,” the great Span­ish clas­si­cal gui­tarist Andrés Segovia report­ed­ly said, “Who­ev­er heard of an elec­tric vio­lin, elec­tric cel­lo or, for that mat­ter, an elec­tric singer?” We’ve now heard all those things, more or less, and civ­i­liza­tion has not yet col­lapsed around our ears. Segovia, it’s said (by his most accom­plished stu­dent, no less) was a bit of a snob. Or put anoth­er way, he was a purist. And while that qual­i­ty may have made him a dif­fi­cult per­son at times, and a very exact­ing teacher, it also gave him such devo­tion to his instru­ment, and the clas­si­cal music he inter­pret­ed with it, that we will always think of the name Segovia when we think of clas­si­cal gui­tar.

Segovia’s “mere name,” writes Joseph Steven­son, “was enough to sell out hous­es world­wide.” A prodi­gy whose tech­nique was “supe­ri­or to that which was being taught at the time,” Segovia made his debut at the age of 15. Just a few years lat­er, he played Madrid, the Paris Con­ser­va­to­ry, and Barcelona, then, in 1919 made a “wild­ly suc­cess­ful” tour of South Amer­i­ca. When he returned, the com­pos­er Albert Rous­sel wrote a piece specif­i­cal­ly for him, which he per­formed in Paris, “the first of many works,” Steven­son writes, “writ­ten for him by dis­tin­guished com­posers…. There were clas­si­cal gui­tarists before him, and dis­tin­guished ones even when he appeared, but it was not an instru­ment that was regard­ed as a seri­ous vehi­cle for clas­si­cal music. Segovia per­son­al­ly changed that.”

Being a pio­neer­ing instru­men­tal­ist in the clas­si­cal world, Segovia was oblig­ed to tran­scribe the music of his favorite com­posers for the gui­tar, includ­ing works by Haydn, Mozart, Chopin, Han­del, and, as we fea­ture here today, J.S. Bach. At the top of the post, see him play the Pre­lude to Bach’s Suite in G Major, writ­ten for the cel­lo. Below it, he plays Bach’s Gavotte, also writ­ten for cel­lo. Just above, hear the Suite in E Minor, writ­ten for the lute, and below, the Par­ti­ta in E Major, penned for the vio­lin.

Segovia’s con­tri­bu­tion to clas­si­cal music is ines­timable, and though he may have looked down on pop­u­lar musi­cians with elec­tric gui­tars, many have adored him. Ringo Starr is a big fan (Segovia inspired him to pick up clas­si­cal gui­tar). Punk front­man Ian Drury namechecked the clas­si­cal mas­ter in a song. And Segovia has more in com­mon with pop musi­cians than he would have ever liked to admit—taking up gui­tar against both his par­ents’ strong objec­tions and becom­ing a self-taught super­star at an ear­ly age. He may be firm­ly ensconced in the clas­si­cal world musi­cal­ly, but as far as his fame and rep­u­ta­tion goes, Segovia was a rock star.

You can lis­ten to Segovi­a’s com­plete Bach record­ings over at Spo­ti­fy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All of Bach is Putting Bach’s Com­plete Works Online: 100 Done, 980 to Come

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

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

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An Animated Introduction to Leo Tolstoy, and How His Great Novels Can Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

in Literature, Psychology | February 17th, 2016

Despite our fond­est intu­itions and most cher­ished of cul­tur­al notions—manifested for decades in aspi­ra­tional “Great Books” cours­es and read­ing lists—there is no “com­pelling evi­dence,” wrote Uni­ver­si­ty of York pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy Gre­go­ry Cur­rie at the New York Times in 2013, “that sug­gests that peo­ple are moral­ly or social­ly bet­ter for read­ing Tol­stoy.” Or any­thing else for that mat­ter.

On the con­trary, respond­ed Annie Mur­phy Paul at Time, “there is such evi­dence,” and she cites ear­li­er psy­chol­o­gy stud­ies that show a link between read­ing fic­tion and empa­thy. Lat­er that same year, social psy­chol­o­gists David Com­er Kidd and Emanuele Cas­tano pub­lished a study in Sci­ence titled “Read­ing Lit­er­ary Fic­tion Improves The­o­ry of Mind”—or, in oth­er words, improves empa­thy. The study is enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly picked up by Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, and picked apart by Slate. In short order, Neu­ro­science gets in the game, and there’s talk of chil­dren’s brains “light­ing up” like Christ­mas in response to Har­ry Pot­ter and oth­er books. The Guardian’s “Teacher Net­work” col­umn finds in this sci­ence con­fir­ma­tion for what edu­ca­tors already sus­pect­ed.

Like Cur­rie, Lee Siegel at The New York­er casts doubt on these sup­pos­ed­ly cel­e­bra­to­ry find­ings. Should we require that books prove their util­i­ty, that they make us “bet­ter” in the way that, say, dietary sup­ple­ments do? Is empa­thy real­ly a moral qual­i­ty, or sim­ply an abil­i­ty that allows the unscrupu­lous to bet­ter manip­u­late oth­ers?

This recent tem­pest of social sci­ence and skep­ti­cism notwith­stand­ing, nov­el­ists have long argued that their craft requires, and fos­ters, bet­ter under­stand­ing of oth­er people—or in the famous words of Kaf­ka, which Siegel quotes dis­mis­sive­ly, lit­er­a­ture is “an axe to break the frozen sea inside us.” Fore­most among such artists is Leo Tol­stoy, who—says Alain de Bot­ton in his School of Life video above—“was a believ­er in the nov­el not as a source of enter­tain­ment, but as a tool for psy­cho­log­i­cal edu­ca­tion and reform. It was in his eyes the supreme medi­um by which we can get to know others—especially those who, from the out­side, might seem unappealing—and there­by expand our human­i­ty and tol­er­ance.”

Were Tol­stoy a less­er writer, a the­o­ry like this might have pro­duced unread­ably didac­tic books unlike­ly to find much of an audi­ence. His great lit­er­ary skill makes his books engross­ing­ly enter­tain­ing despite these inten­tions. Nonethe­less, De Bot­ton shows us the ways in which nov­els like Anna Karen­i­na (find it in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books) teach eth­i­cal con­cepts like “sym­pa­thy and for­give­ness.” And whether you read Tol­stoy express­ly to become a bet­ter per­son, or find per­son­al improve­ment a side-effect of read­ing Tol­stoy, I don’t think we need social sci­en­tif­ic argu­ments to read Tol­stoy. Indeed, though great nov­els may teach us many things we did not know about human com­plex­i­ty, their val­ue can reside as much in the ques­tions they ask—and that we ask of them—as in the sup­posed answers they pro­vide about human­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leo Tol­stoy Cre­ates a List of the 50+ Books That Influ­enced Him Most (1891)

Leo Tolstoy’s Masochis­tic Diary: I Am Guilty of “Sloth,” “Cow­ardice” & “Sissi­ness” (1851)

6 Polit­i­cal The­o­rists Intro­duced in Ani­mat­ed “School of Life” Videos: Marx, Smith, Rawls & More

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

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

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