This fall, the world’s population reached seven billion. A sobering thought. How did we get to this point? Producer Adam Cole and photographer Maggie Starbard of National Public Radio have put the world’s accelerating population growth in perspective in a two-and-a-half minute video, above.

In those two and a half minutes, 638 babies will be born worldwide, according to statistics from the United States Census Bureau, and 265 people will die. That’s a net gain of 373 people, just while you watch the film. The biggest growth, according to NPR,  is happening in sub-Saharan Africa, where access to family planning is low and infant mortality rates are high.

It may seem counter-intuitive that population growth rates are high where infant survival rates are low, but as Swedish global health expert Hans Rosling put it during a recent TED talk, “Only by child survival can we control population growth.” Because population growth and infant mortality rates are both correlated to poverty rates, he argues, eliminating poverty is the key to achieving a sustainable world population. You can learn more in our November 1 feature,  “Hans Rosling Uses IKEA Props to Explain World of 7 Billion People.”

Crowded House: How the World’s Population Grew to 7 Billion People is a post from: Open Culture

In 1941, director Dave Fleischer and Paramount Pictures animators Steve Muffati and George Germanetti produced Superman: The Mechanical Monsters — a big-budget animated adaptation of the popular Superman comics of that period, in which a mad scientist unleashes robots to rob banks and loot museums, and Superman, naturally, saves the day. It was one of seventeen films that raised the bar for theatrical shorts and are even considered by some to have given rise to the entire Anime genre.

More than a mere treat of vintage animation, the film captures the era’s characteristic ambivalence in reconciling the need for progress with the fear of technology in a culture on the brink of incredible technological innovation. It was the dawn of the techno-paranoia that persisted through the 1970s, famously captured in the TV series Future Shock narrated by Orson Welles, and even through today. Take for example books like Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows and Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.

Superman: The Mechanical Monsters is available for download on The Internet Archive, and Toonami Digital Arsenal has the complete series of all seventeen films. Find more vintage animation in Open Culture’s collection of Free Movies Online.

Maria Popova is the founder and editor in chief of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and DesignObserver, and spends a great deal of time on Twitter.

The Mechanical Monsters: Seminal Superman Animated Film from 1941 is a post from: Open Culture

The culture wars wage on. Almost twenty years after the great Murphy Brown debate, we’re still going at it. But now, instead of debating the pros and cons of single motherhood, the focus has turned to whether Michelle Obama erred in inviting the rapper Common to the White House Poetry Night last week. (See his actual performance here.) Critics point to this 2007 YouTube video, A Letter to the Law, though they don’t necessarily listen until the very end. And they also flag his sympathetic words directed toward Joanne Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur), an ex-Black Panther, convicted of killing a New Jersey police officer in 1973. This all built up to the latest Jon Stewart - Bill O’Reilly faceoff, which drilled down to the question: Did the First Lady make a major gaffe? Or is this another case of selective outrage? Part 1 is above; Part II is here…

via @Frauenfelder

Jon Stewart & Bill O’Reilly Debate Rapper’s Visit to the White House is a post from: Open Culture

Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged sold an estimated 25 million copies between its publication in 1957 and 2007. Early on, the book inspired a young generation of business leaders, and now, decades later, it holds appeal for a new class of conservatives. But it wasn’t always that way. Back in the 1950s, William F. Buckley, the enfant terrible of the conservative movement, launched the National Review and published a review by Whittaker Chambers — the Soviet spy who famously turned against Communism (and Alger Hiss), all while building a remarkable career at TIME Magazine. About Atlas Shrugged, Chambers wrote: ”I find it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story is preposterous.” And, what’s more, he adds: “Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal.”

Rand never forgave Buckley for the review. Persona non grata, he was. Years later, in 2003, Buckley revisited the whole affair with Charlie Rose and made known his personal feelings for Rand’s book. “I had to flog myself to read it…”

Related Content:

Mike Wallace Interviews Ayn Rand (1959)

William F. Buckley v. Gore Vidal (1968)

Ayn Rand Talks Atheism with Phil Donahue

Wealthy Donors Paying Universities to Teach Rand

via Roger Ebert

William F. Buckley Flogged Himself to Get Through Atlas Shrugged is a post from: Open Culture

The recent 9.0-magnitude Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and subsequent Fukushima nuclear accidents were among the most devastating environmental disasters in recorded history. The immediate consequences are frightening, but their full, long-term impact remains an unsettling mystery.

This, of course, isn’t the first time Japan has faced a nuclear emergency. After the World War II atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. government recorded the raw aftermath of Hiroshima in candid, grim detail (while Hollywood was busy lampooning America’s nuclear obsession). Filmed in the spring of 1946 by the Department of Defense, Way of Life documents how the people of Hiroshima adapted to life after the atomic bomb. Though the archival footage lacks sound, its imagery — moving, heartbreaking, deeply human — speaks volumes about the delicate duality of despair and resilience.

Maria Popova is the founder and editor in chief of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and DesignObserver, and spends a great deal of time on Twitter.

Way of Life: Rare Footage of the Hiroshima Aftermath, 1946 is a post from: Open Culture

Much has been said, tweeted and written about the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, glorifying it as one of the most landmark triumphs of freedom in recent history. Yet the Western media has delivered surprisingly little on its aftermath, leaving the lived post-revolution reality of the Egyptian people a near-mystery.

This beautiful short film by British film studio Scattered Images offers a rare glimpse of a phoenix still struggling to rise from the ashes of oppression. With incredible visual eloquence, the film peels away at the now-worn media iconography of the revolution itself, revealing how life after it has actually changed — or hasn’t — as Egypt remains a nation in transition, with a future yet to be decided.

Politically, there is a vacuum. The revolution demanded a government accountable to the people and ruled by transparent institutions. But now, the only ruler is uncertainty.

Maria Popova is the founder and editor in chief of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness. She writes for Wired UK, The Atlantic and DesignObserver, and spends a great deal of time on Twitter.

Phoenix Still Rising: Egypt After The Revolution is a post from: Open Culture

We’re often obsessed with oil. A year ago, the issue was offshore drilling. The Deepwater Horizon rig had exploded, and crude oil was spilling into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of 53,000 barrels a day. We all watched helplessly as BP threw everything but the kitchen sink at the problem. (Remember the golf balls?) Three months passed and 4.9 million barrels ripped into the ecosystem before the well was finally capped. Time to talk about it? Hardly. Now the discussion has moved on to skyrocketing oil prices and the issues surrounding them, like the causes (conflict in the Middle East, rising consumption in China and India, commodity speculation at home…) and the political implications for the 2012 U.S. presidential election if gas prices stay high. Weighty issues, to be sure. But before we allow the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 to fade into our collective amnesia, Chris Harmon, a Brooklyn-based designer, animator and writer, has created a work of animated typography to put some of the staggering facts into perspective.

Oil’d, by Chris Harmon is a post from: Open Culture

“Human, All Too Human” is a three-hour BBC series from 1999, about the lives and work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The filmmakers focus heavily on politics and historical context — the Heidegger hour, for example, focuses almost exclusively on his troubling relationship with Nazism.

The most engaging chapter is “Jean-Paul Sartre: The Road to Freedom,” in part because the filmmakers had so much archival footage and interview material (Check out a still lovely Simone de Bouvoir at minute 9:00, giggling that Sartre was the ugliest, dirtiest, most unshaven student at the Sorbonne).

A note on Part 2: Thinking the Unthinkable. We linked to the YouTube version, which has a slight whistle in the background. Catch a cleaner version here on Google Video while you still can.

Related Content:

Walter Kaufmann’s Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

28 Free Philosophy Courses from Great Universities

Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts and culture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Weekly, Mother Jones, and many other publications. You can follow her on twitter at @sheerly

Sartre, Heidegger, Nietzsche: Three Philosophers in Three Hours is a post from: Open Culture

Both Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey are longtime advocates for government funding of  the Arts. If you missed their testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommitee on the Interior earlier this month, you aren’t alone. They were kicked off the schedule because of preparations for a congressional shutdown. These speeches were delivered not to the subcommittee but to a crowd of advocates and fans.

Both are well worth watching. Spacey, who is also the artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theatre, has long been one of the most respected and articulate actors in Hollywood. (See his inspiring pep talk to a young actor on Inside the Actor’s Studio here.) He packs more wisdom in these 12 and a half minutes than some performers do in a lifetime.

As for Alec Baldwin, his speech is shorter, but equally compelling. If you’re in a rush, head straight to minute  4:00, which begins with this teaser: “I come from a business where we all know a great secret …”

Sheerly Avni is a San Francisco-based arts and culture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Weekly, Mother Jones, and many other publications. You can follow her on twitter at @sheerly.

Kevin Spacey & Alec Baldwin Go to Bat for the Arts is a post from: Open Culture

50 years ago (April 17, 1961), the CIA launched one of its famously botched operations. On that day, 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles stormed the beaches of southern Cuba, beginning an invasion meant to topple Fidel Castro and his Soviet-aligned government.

The plan called for airstrikes to soften up Castro’s defenses, then for troops to land on the beaches along the Bahía de cochinos. But things went quickly awry. Ships got stuck in shallow Cuban waters. Bombers missed targets. Further airstrikes were called off. And ground forces were eventually left without support — as good as dead in the water.

The bungled affair, a stinging embarrassment for the young Kennedy administration, gets revisited in a new book by Jim Rasenberger, The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. The video above succinctly recaps the events at the Bay of Pigs with the help of historical footage and interviews with historical actors…

via NPR

The Bay of Pigs: 50 Years Later is a post from: Open Culture