Built to Last: How Ancient Roman Bridges Can Still Withstand the Weight of Modern Cars & Trucks

in History, Technology | October 22nd, 2024

A for­eign trav­el­er road-trip­ping across Europe might well feel a wave of trep­i­da­tion before dri­ving a ful­ly loaded mod­ern auto­mo­bile over a more than 2,000-year-old bridge. But it might also be bal­anced out by the under­stand­ing that such a struc­ture has, by def­i­n­i­tion, stood the test of time — and, for those with a grasp of the his­to­ry of engi­neer­ing, that its ancient design­ers would have ensured its capac­i­ty to bear a load far heav­ier than any that would have crossed it in real­i­ty. With no sci­en­tif­ic means of mod­el­ing stress­es, as clas­si­cal-his­to­ry Youtu­ber Gar­rett Ryan explains in the new Told in Stone video above, they just had to build it tough.

Key to that tough­ness were arch­es, “made of heavy blocks laid over a false­work frame until the key­stone was slot­ted into place.” From the late first cen­tu­ry, stonework was sup­ple­ment­ed or replaced by brick and Roman con­crete, a sub­stance much-fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

We’ve also cov­ered the Roman bridges you can still cross today: Spain’s Puente de Alcán­tara (from the Ara­bic al-qanţarah, mean­ing “arch”), for exam­ple, which, though crossed by a quar­ter-mil­lion vehi­cles every year, “shows no signs of fail­ing”; or France’s Pont des Marchands, which “has sup­port­ed a neigh­bor­hood of mul­ti-sto­ry shops and hous­es since the Mid­dle Ages.”

But the arch­es of the near­ly 1,000 whol­ly or par­tial­ly sur­viv­ing Roman bridges haven’t done all the work by geom­e­try alone. “The load-bear­ing capac­i­ty of a bridge depend­ed both on the solid­i­ty of its abut­ments and the strength — ‘shear­ing point’ — of its vous­soirs,” or the stones of its arch­es between the key­stone at the top and the springers at the bot­tom. “Since Roman builders carved vous­soirs from the strongest read­i­ly avail­able stone, their bridges tend­ed to be impres­sive­ly sol­id.” You would­n’t want to run a freight train across the Puente de Alcán­tara, but 40-ton trucks are no prob­lem — to say noth­ing of a car filled with lug­gage, a few kids, and even a dog or two.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Roman Roads and Bridges You Can Still Trav­el Today

The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved: Why Has Roman Con­crete Been So Durable?

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

Why Hasn’t the Pantheon’s Dome Col­lapsed?: How the Romans Engi­neered the Dome to Last 19 Cen­turies and Count­ing

The Roads of Ancient Rome Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Online Course from Yale

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

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The Wisdom of Alan Watts in 4 Mind-Expanding Animations

in Philosophy, Religion | October 21st, 2024

Per­haps no sin­gle per­son did more to pop­u­lar­ize Zen Bud­dhism in the West than Alan Watts. In a sense, Watts pre­pared U.S. cul­ture for more tra­di­tion­al­ly Zen teach­ers like Soto priest Suzu­ki Roshi, whose lin­eage con­tin­ues today, but Watts did not con­sid­er him­self a Zen Bud­dhist. Or at least that’s what he tells us in the talk above, ani­mat­ed by Trey Park­er and Matt Stone, the cre­ators of South Park. “I am not a Zen Bud­dhist,” he says, “I am not advo­cat­ing Zen Bud­dhism, I am not try­ing to con­vert any­one to it. I have noth­ing to sell.” Instead, he calls him­self “an enter­tain­er.” Is he pulling our leg?

After all, Watts was the author of such books as The Spir­it of Zen (1936—his first), The Way of Zen (1957), and ”This Is It” and Oth­er Essays on Zen and Spir­i­tu­al Expe­ri­ence (1960). Then again, he also wrote books on Chris­tian­i­ty, on “Erot­ic Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty,” and on all man­ner of mys­ti­cism from near­ly every major world reli­gion.

And he was ordained an Epis­co­pal priest in 1945 and served as such until 1950. Watts was a tricky character—a strict anti-dog­ma­tist who found all rigid doc­trine irri­tat­ing at best, deeply oppres­sive and dehu­man­iz­ing at worst.

While Watts may not have been any sort of doc­tri­naire Zen priest, he learned—and taught—a great deal from Japan­ese Bud­dhist con­cepts, which he dis­tills in the video at the top. He gleaned very sim­i­lar insights—about the uni­ty and inter­con­nect­ed­ness of all things—from Dao­ism. Just above, see a very short ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by Eddie Rosas, from The Simp­sons, in which Watts uses a sim­ple para­ble to illus­trate “Dao­ism in per­fec­tion.”

The con­cepts Watts elu­ci­dates from var­i­ous tra­di­tions are instant­ly applic­a­ble to eco­log­i­cal con­cerns and to our rela­tion­ship to the nat­ur­al world. “The whole process of nature,” he says above in a para­ble ani­mat­ed by Steve Agnos, “is an inte­grat­ed process of immense com­plex­i­ty.” In this case, how­ev­er, rather than offer­ing a les­son in uni­ty, he sug­gests that nature, and real­i­ty, is ulti­mate­ly unknow­able, that “it is real­ly impos­si­ble to tell whether any­thing that hap­pens in it is good or bad.” The most rea­son­able atti­tude then, it seems, is to refrain from mak­ing judg­ments either way.

It’s that ten­den­cy of the human mind to make hasty, erro­neous judg­ments that comes in for cri­tique in the Watts talk above, ani­mat­ed by Tim McCourt and Wes­ley Louis of West­min­ster Arts & Film Lon­don. Here, he reach­es even deep­er, inves­ti­gat­ing ideas of per­son­al iden­ti­ty and the exis­tence of the ego as an enti­ty sep­a­rate from the rest of real­i­ty. Return­ing to his grand theme of inter­con­nect­ed­ness, Watts assures us it’s “impos­si­ble to cut our­selves off from the social envi­ron­ment, and also fur­ther­more from the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. We are that; there’s no clear way of draw­ing the bound­ary between this organ­ism and every­thing that sur­rounds it.” But in order to dis­cov­er this essen­tial truth, says Watts, we must become “deep lis­ten­ers” and let go of embar­rass­ment, shy­ness, and anx­i­ety.

If you enjoy these excerpts from Alan Watts’ lec­tures, you can find many hours of his talks online. What Watts would have thought of this, I do not know, but I’m cer­tain he’d be glad that so much of his work—hours of lec­tures, in fact—is avail­able free of charge on YouTube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Great­est Hits of Alan Watts: Stream a Care­ful­ly-Curat­ed Col­lec­tion of Alan Watts Wis­dom

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy: Watch the 1960 TV Show, East­ern Wis­dom and Mod­ern Life

What If Mon­ey Was No Object?: Thoughts on the Art of Liv­ing from East­ern Philoso­pher Alan Watts

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets of Aldous Hux­ley and His Art of Dying

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Tech­nol­o­gy Can’t Grasp Real­i­ty

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

 

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How Man Ray Reinvented Himself & Created One of the Most Iconic Works of Surrealist Photography

in Art, Photography | October 21st, 2024

It would sur­prise none of us to encounter a young artist look­ing to cast off his past and make his mark on the cul­ture in a place like Williams­burg. But in the case of Man Ray, Williams­burg was his past. One must remem­ber that the Brook­lyn of today bears lit­tle resem­blance to the Brook­lyn of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry in which the famed avant-gardist grew up. Back then, he was known as Emmanuel Rad­nitzky, the son of immi­grant gar­ment work­ers. It was after he took up the art life in Man­hat­tan that he met the gal­lerist Alfred Stieglitz, form­ing an asso­ci­a­tion that would begin his trans­for­ma­tion from aspir­ing painter into form-chang­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

Inspired by Mar­cel Ducham­p’s Nude Descend­ing a Stair­case, No. 2 after see­ing it at the epoch-mak­ing 1913 Armory Show, Ray befriend­ed the artist him­self. Despite its con­sid­er­able lan­guage bar­ri­er, this rela­tion­ship gave him a way into the lib­er­at­ing realms of sur­re­al­ism in gen­er­al and Dada in par­tic­u­lar. “The move­men­t’s refusal to be defined or cod­i­fied gave Ray the ratio­nale to leave his for­mer life and head to Paris, where he could com­plete his rein­ven­tion unfet­tered by his past,” says James Payne in the new Great Art Explained video above. It was this relo­ca­tion — almost as dra­mat­ic, in those days, as going from Brook­lyn to Man­hat­tan — that offered him the chance to become a major artis­tic fig­ure.

Soon after set­tling in Mont­par­nasse, Ray “made an acci­den­tal redis­cov­ery of the cam­era-less pho­togram, which he called ‘Rayo­graphs.’ ” This tech­nique, which involved plac­ing objects on pho­to­sen­si­tive paper and then expos­ing the arrange­ment to light, pro­duced images that were “dubbed pure Dada cre­ations” and “played a sig­nif­i­cant role in redefin­ing pho­tog­ra­phy as a medi­um capa­ble of abstrac­tion and con­cep­tu­al depth.” It was in that same part of town that he entered into an artis­tic and roman­tic part­ner­ship with Alice Prin, more wide­ly known as Kiki de Mont­par­nasse — and even more wide­ly known, a cen­tu­ry lat­er, as Le Vio­lon d’In­gres, which in 2022 became the most expen­sive pho­to­graph ever sold.

The $12.4 mil­lion sale price of Le Vio­lon d’In­gres is rather less inter­est­ing than the sto­ry behind it, which involves not just Ray and Kik­i’s life togeth­er, but also a process of tech­ni­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion whose result “per­fect­ly embod­ies the sur­re­al­ist inter­est in chal­leng­ing tra­di­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions and blend­ing every­day objects with the human form.” Tame though it may look in the era of Pho­to­shop (to say noth­ing of AI-gen­er­at­ed imagery), the pic­ture’s con­vinc­ing place­ment of vio­lin-style sound holes on Kik­i’s clas­si­cal­ly pre­sent­ed body sug­gest­ed to its view­ers that pho­tog­ra­phy had non-doc­u­men­tary pos­si­bil­i­ties nev­er before imag­ined — cer­tain­ly not in Williams­burg, any­way.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Watch Four Ground­break­ing Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

Man Ray’s Por­traits of Ernest Hem­ing­way, Ezra Pound, Mar­cel Duchamp & Many Oth­er 1920s Icons

The Home Movies of Two Sur­re­al­ists: Look Inside the Lives of Man Ray & René Magritte

Man Ray Cre­ates a “Sur­re­al­ist Chess­board,” Fea­tur­ing Por­traits of Sur­re­al­ist Icons: Dalí, Bre­ton, Picas­so, Magritte, Miró & Oth­ers (1934)

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

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

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Take The Near Impossible Literacy Test Louisiana Used to Suppress the Black Vote (1964)

in History, Politics | October 21st, 2024

In William Faulkner’s 1938 nov­el The Unvan­quished, the implaca­ble Colonel Sar­toris takes dras­tic action to stop the elec­tion of a black Repub­li­can can­di­date to office after the Civ­il War, destroy­ing the bal­lots of black vot­ers and shoot­ing two North­ern car­pet­bag­gers. While such dra­mat­ic means of vot­er sup­pres­sion occurred often enough in the Recon­struc­tion South, tac­tics of elec­toral exclu­sion refined over time, such that by the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry the Jim Crow South relied large­ly on near­ly impos­si­ble-to-pass lit­er­a­cy tests to impede free and fair elec­tions.

These tests, writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, were “sup­pos­ed­ly applic­a­ble to both white and black prospec­tive vot­ers who couldn’t prove a cer­tain lev­el of edu­ca­tion” (typ­i­cal­ly up to the fifth grade). Yet they were “in actu­al­i­ty dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly admin­is­tered to black vot­ers.”

Addi­tion­al­ly, many of the tests were rigged so that reg­is­trars could give poten­tial vot­ers an easy or a dif­fi­cult ver­sion, and could score them dif­fer­ent­ly as well. For exam­ple, the Vet­er­ans of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment describes a test admin­is­tered in Alaba­ma that is so entire­ly sub­jec­tive that it mea­sures the registrar’s shrewd­ness and cun­ning more than any­thing else.

The test here from Louisiana con­sists of ques­tions so ambigu­ous that no one, what­ev­er their lev­el of edu­ca­tion, can divine a “right” or “wrong” answer to most of them. And yet, as the instruc­tions state, “one wrong answer denotes fail­ure of the test,” an impos­si­ble stan­dard for even a legit­i­mate exam. Even worse, vot­ers had only ten min­utes to com­plete the three-page, 30-ques­tion doc­u­ment. The Louisiana test dates from 1964, the year before the pas­sage of the Vot­ing Rights Act, which effec­tive­ly put an end to these bla­tant­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices.

Learn more about the his­to­ry of Jim Crow vot­er sup­pres­sion at Rebec­ca Onion’s orig­i­nal post here and an update here. And here you can watch video of Har­vard stu­dents try­ing to take the test.

Note: Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Har­vard Stu­dents Fail the Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote in 1964

Philoso­pher Richard Rorty Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Results of the 2016 Elec­tion … Back in 1998

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

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Neuroscience Shows That Viewing Art in Museums Engages the Brain More Than Reproductions

in Art, Neuroscience | October 18th, 2024

We may appre­ci­ate liv­ing in an era that does­n’t require us to trav­el across the world to know what a par­tic­u­lar work of art looks like. At the same time, we may instinc­tive­ly under­stand that regard­ing a work of art in its orig­i­nal form feels dif­fer­ent than regard­ing even the most faith­ful repro­duc­tion. That includes the ten-bil­lion-pix­el scan, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, of Johannes Ver­meer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring — which hap­pens to be the very same paint­ing used in a recent sci­en­tif­ic study that inves­ti­gates exact­ly why it feels so much more inter­est­ing to look at art in a muse­um rather than on a screen or a page.

The study was com­mis­sioned by the Mau­rit­shuis, which owns Ver­meer’s most famous paint­ing. “Researchers used elec­troen­cephalo­grams (EEGs) to reveal that real art­works, includ­ing Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, elic­it a pow­er­ful pos­i­tive response much greater than the response to repro­duc­tions,” says the muse­um’s press release.

“The secret behind the attrac­tion of the ‘Girl’ is also based on a unique neu­ro­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non. Unlike oth­er paint­ings, she man­ages to ‘cap­ti­vate’ the view­er, in a ‘sus­tained atten­tion­al loop.’ ” This process most clear­ly stim­u­lates a part of the brain called the pre­cuneus, which is “involved in one’s sense of self, self-reflec­tion and episod­ic mem­o­ries.”

Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring was­n’t the only paint­ing used in the study, but it pro­duced by far the great­est mea­sur­able dif­fer­ence in the view­ers’ neu­ro­log­i­cal reac­tion. The oth­ers, which includ­ed Rem­brandt’s Self-Por­trait (1669) and Van Hon­thorst’s Vio­lin Play­er, lack the dis­tinc­tive­ly promi­nent human fea­tures that encour­age addi­tion­al look­ing: “As with most faces, vis­i­tors look first at the Girl’s eyes and mouth, but then their atten­tion shifts to the pearl, which then guides the focus back to the eyes and mouth, then to the pearl, and so on.” Muse­um­go­ers wear­ing elec­troen­cephalo­gram-read­ing head­sets may not be quite what Wal­ter Ben­jamin had in mind when he put his mind to defin­ing the “aura” of an orig­i­nal art­work — but they have, these 90 or so years lat­er, lent some sci­en­tif­ic sup­port to the idea.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why is Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring Con­sid­ered a Mas­ter­piece?: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

A 10 Bil­lion Pix­el Scan of Vermeer’s Mas­ter­piece Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring: Explore It Online

See the Com­plete Works of Ver­meer in Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty: Google Makes Them Avail­able on Your Smart­phone

Inge­nious Impro­vised Recre­ations of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, Using Mate­ri­als Found Around the House

A Guid­ed Tour Through All of Vermeer’s Famous Paint­ings, Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry

Artists May Have Dif­fer­ent Brains (More Grey Mat­ter) Than the Rest of Us, Accord­ing to a Recent Sci­en­tif­ic Study

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

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Orson Welles Narrates an Animated Parable About How Xenophobia & Greed Will Put America Into Decline (1971)

in Current Affairs, Film | October 18th, 2024

More than 50 years and 10 pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tions have passed since Orson Welles nar­rat­ed Free­dom Riv­er (1971). And while it shows signs of age, the ani­mat­ed film, a para­ble about the role of immi­gra­tion, race, and wealth in Amer­i­ca, still res­onates today. Actu­al­ly, giv­en the cyn­i­cal exploita­tion of xeno­pho­bia dur­ing this most unpres­i­den­tial of pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns, you could say that Free­dom River strikes a big­ger chord than it has in years. That’s why we’re fea­tur­ing the ani­ma­tion once again on Open Cul­ture.

The back­sto­ry behind the film deserves a lit­tle men­tion. Accord­ing to Joseph Cavel­la, a writer for the film, it took a lit­tle cajol­ing and per­se­ver­ance to get Orson Welles involved in the film.

For sev­er­al years, Bosus­tow Pro­duc­tions had asked Orson Welles, then liv­ing in Paris, to nar­rate one of their films. He nev­er respond­ed. When I fin­ished the Free­dom Riv­er script, we sent it to him togeth­er with a portable reel to reel tape recorder and a siz­able check and crossed our fin­gers. He was either des­per­ate for mon­ey or (I would rather believe) some­thing in it touched him because two weeks lat­er we got the reel back with the nar­ra­tion word for word and we were on our way.

Indeed, they were.

Direct­ed by Sam Weiss, Free­dom Riv­er tells the sto­ry of decline–of a once-great nation laps­ing into ugli­ness. Despite the com­fort­ing myths we like to tell our­selves here in Amer­i­ca, that ugli­ness has always been there. Xeno­pho­bia, greed, racism (you could add a few more traits to the list) are noth­ing new. They just tend to sur­face when dem­a­gogues make it per­mis­si­ble, which is pre­cise­ly what we’re see­ing right now. For­tu­nate­ly, Welles’s nar­ra­tion leaves us with room to hope, with room to believe that our cit­i­zens will rise above what our worst lead­ers have to offer.

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

Orson Welles Nar­rates Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner in an Exper­i­men­tal Film Fea­tur­ing the Art of Gus­tave Doré

Is It Always Right to Be Right?: Orson Welles Nar­rates a 1970 Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion That Still Res­onates Today

Future Shock: Orson Welles Nar­rates a 1972 Film About the Per­ils of Tech­no­log­i­cal Change

An Ani­ma­tion of Orson Welles’ Famous Frozen Peas Rant

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Learn Data Analytics & AI with Google, and Fast-Track Your Career

in Data, Online Courses | October 17th, 2024

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We’re liv­ing in the age of data and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI). Every sec­ond, vast amounts of data are being gen­er­at­ed, processed, and ana­lyzed. And increas­ing­ly AI plays a cen­tral role in how that data gets man­aged. For com­pa­nies, gov­ern­ments, and indi­vid­u­als alike, under­stand­ing data is essen­tial. This makes Data Analytics—especially when accom­pa­nied by AI skills—a valu­able asset for most pro­fes­sion­als.

Enter Google, which recent­ly launched a pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate in Data Ana­lyt­ics–one that will “have you job-ready in less than 6 months.” Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, the Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate con­sists of eight cours­es, includ­ing “Foun­da­tions: Data, Data, Every­where,” “Pre­pare Data for Explo­ration,” “Data Analy­sis with R Pro­gram­ming,” and “Share Data Through the Art of Visu­al­iza­tion.” And now the course sequence has incor­po­rat­ed videos explor­ing how to lever­age arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence when work­ing with data. Over­all this pro­gram “includes over 180 hours of instruc­tion and hun­dreds of prac­tice-based assess­ments, which will help you sim­u­late real-world data ana­lyt­ics sce­nar­ios that are crit­i­cal for suc­cess in the work­place.”

Upon com­ple­tion, students–even those who haven’t pur­sued a col­lege degree–can direct­ly apply for jobs (e.g., junior or asso­ciate data ana­lyst, data­base admin­is­tra­tor, etc.) with Google and over 150 U.S. employ­ers, includ­ing Deloitte, Tar­get, and Ver­i­zon. You can start a 7‑day free tri­al and explore the cours­es here. If you con­tin­ue beyond the free tri­al, Google/Coursera will charge $49 per month. That trans­lates to about $300 after 6 months, the time esti­mat­ed to com­plete the cer­tifi­cate.

Final­ly, it’s worth men­tion­ing that any­one who enrolls in this cer­tifi­cate before Novem­ber 30, 2024 will get access to Google AI Essen­tials at no cost.

Explore the Data Ana­lyt­ics Cer­tifi­cate by watch­ing the video above. Learn more about the over­all Google career cer­tifi­cate ini­tia­tive here. And find oth­er Google pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cates here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

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The Night When Luciano Pavarotti & James Brown Sang “It’s a Man’s World” Together (2002)

in Music | October 17th, 2024

Luciano Pavarot­ti and James Brown are remem­bered as larg­er-than-life per­form­ers with an almost myth­i­cal-seem­ing pres­ence and dis­tinc­tive­ness. But it was­n’t so very long ago that both of them were active — and even active onstage togeth­er. In the video above, the King of the High Cs and the God­fa­ther of Soul get togeth­er on “It’s a Man’s World” in 2002. It hap­pened at the penul­ti­mate Pavarot­ti & Friends con­cert, one of a series of year­ly ben­e­fit shows that ran between 1992 and 2003, and also fea­tured the likes of Andrea Bocel­li, Grace Jones, Sting, and Lou Reed.

“It’s a remark­able per­for­mance on so many lev­els,” writes Tom Tei­cholz at Forbes.com. “James Brown is in top form, his voice strong and pure. He com­mands the stage, and he dom­i­nates — he is in every sense an equal to Pavarot­ti, who sings in Ital­ian with great sub­tle­ty, finesse, and emo­tion. The video is filled with moments of grace — such as when Brown, with a mag­is­te­r­i­al wave of his arm cedes the stage to Pavarot­ti to sing his solo, or when Brown says ‘my Bible says Noah made the Ark’ as if it was tru­ly HIS Bible.”

What’s more, this is hard­ly the James Brown only slight­ly exag­ger­at­ed by Eddie Mur­phy in those Sat­ur­day Night Live hot tub sketch­es a cou­ple of decades ear­li­er. “Brown’s per­for­mance is not about his staged the­atrics, not about his danc­ing, not even real­ly about Brown’s trade­mark grunts and growls,” Tei­cholz writes. “This is about singing and get­ting the song across,” a mis­sion cer­tain­ly not hin­dered by the kind of of orches­tral back­ing they have. “It’s a Man’s World” might seem like the kind of song you “could­n’t sing today,” at least if you take its title at face val­ue. But in any case, how many singers today would want to be sub­ject to com­par­i­son with this par­tic­u­lar ren­di­tion if they did so?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

Aretha Franklin Takes Over for an Ail­ing Luciano Pavarot­ti & Sings Puccini’s “Nes­sun Dor­ma” at the Gram­mys (1998)

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

Two Leg­ends: Weird Al Yankovic “Inter­views” James Brown (1986)

The Best Com­mer­cial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup (1992)

Is Opera Part of Pop Cul­ture? Pret­ty Much Pop #15 with Sean Spyres

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

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George Harrison Explains Why Everyone Should Play the Ukulele

in Music | October 16th, 2024

George Har­ri­son loved the ukulele, and real­ly, what’s not to love? For its dain­ty size, the uke can make a pow­er­ful­ly cheer­ful sound, and it’s an instru­ment both begin­ners and expert play­ers can learn and eas­i­ly car­ry around. As Harrison’s old friend Joe Brown remarked, “You can pick up a ukulele and any­body can learn to play a cou­ple of tunes in a day or even a few hours. And if you want to get good at it, there’s no end to what you can do.” Brown, once a star in his own right, met Har­ri­son and the Bea­t­les in 1962 and remem­bers being impressed with the fel­low uke-lover Harrison’s range of musi­cal tastes: “He loved music, not just rock and roll…. He’d go crack­ers, he’d phone me up and say ‘I’ve got this great record!’ and it would be Hoagy Carmichael and all this Hawai­ian stuff he used to like. George was not a musi­cal snob.”

“Crack­ers” may be the per­fect word for Harrison’s uke-phil­ia; he used it him­self in the adorable note above from 1999. “Every­one I know who is into the ukulele is ‘crack­ers,’” writes George, “you can’t play it and not laugh!” Har­ri­son remained upbeat, even dur­ing his first can­cer scare in 1997, the knife attack at his home in 1999, and the can­cer relapse that even­tu­al­ly took his life in 2001. The ukulele seemed a sweet­ly gen­uine expres­sion of his hope­ful atti­tude. And after Harrison’s death, it seemed to his friends the per­fect way to memo­ri­al­ize him. Joe Brown closed the Har­ri­son trib­ute con­cert at Roy­al Albert Hall with a uke ver­sion of “I’ll See You In My Dreams,” and Paul McCart­ney remem­bered his friend in 2009 by strum­ming “Some­thing” on a ukulele at New York’s Citi Field.

In his remarks, McCart­ney fond­ly rem­i­nisced: “When­ev­er you went round George’s house, after din­ner the ukule­les would come out and you’d inevitably find your­self singing all these old num­bers.” Just above, see Har­ri­son and an old-time acoustic jazz ensem­ble (includ­ing Jools Hol­land on piano) play one of those “old numbers”—“Between The Dev­il and Deep Blue Sea”—in 1988. The song even­tu­al­ly wound up on his last album, the posthu­mous­ly released Brain­washed. Just below, see Har­ri­son, McCart­ney, and Ringo Starr sing a casu­al­ly har­mo­nious ren­di­tion of the 1927 tune “Ain’t She Sweet” while loung­ing pic­nic-style in a park.

In Hawaii, where Har­ri­son owned a 150-acre retreat, and where he was known as Keo­ki, it’s said he bought ukule­les in batch­es and gave them away. The sto­ry may be leg­end, but it cer­tain­ly sounds in char­ac­ter. He was a gen­er­ous soul to the end. Just below, see Har­ri­son strum­ming and whistling away in a home video made short­ly before his death. You can hear the hoarse­ness in his voice from his throat can­cer, but you won’t hear much sad­ness there, I think.

And for good mea­sure:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cians Re-Imag­ine the Com­plete Song­book of the Bea­t­les on the Ukulele

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

George Harrison’s Mys­ti­cal, Fish­eye Self-Por­traits Tak­en in India (1966)

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain Per­forms The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”

Seri­ous­ly Awe­some Ukulele Cov­ers of “Sul­tans of Swing,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Thun­der­struck,” and “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”

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

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The Fake Buildings of New York: What Happens Inside Their Mysterious Walls

in Architecture, History | October 16th, 2024

You can’t go on a walk with a seri­ous enthu­si­ast of New York his­to­ry with­out hear­ing the sto­ries behind at least a few notable, beau­ti­ful, or down­right strange build­ings. Yet most long­time New York­ers, famed for tun­ing out their sur­round­ings to bet­ter strive for their goals of the day, tend not even to acknowl­edge the struc­tures liable to catch the atten­tion of out-of-town­ers. Take 58 Jorale­mon Street in Brook­lyn Heights: “From the out­side, it looks like your typ­i­cal town­house,” says urban explor­er Cash Jor­dan in his video above — but then you notice its blacked-out win­dows, bunker-like met­al cladding, and appar­ent­ly un-open­able door.

Though it was indeed a town­house when first built in 1847, 58 Jorale­mon Street was hol­lowed out and con­vert­ed into one sub­way-sys­tem vent back in 1907. But the build­ings right on either side remain res­i­dences, one of which, as Jor­dan finds, sold not long ago for $6 mil­lion.

In a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, more iso­lat­ed con­text stands the Streck­er Memo­r­i­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry on Roo­sevelt Island. Built in 1892 as a lab­o­ra­to­ry for City Hos­pi­tal, it opened as “the first insti­tu­tion in the nation for patho­log­i­cal and bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal research,” an activ­i­ty it makes sense to keep apart from a dense urban envi­ron­ment. Aban­doned in the nine­teen-fifties, it lat­er became anoth­er sub­way facil­i­ty, specif­i­cal­ly a pow­er con­ver­sion sub­sta­tion.

Jor­dan also vis­its a fake build­ing well out on Pier 34, and one that also pro­vides a func­tion essen­tial to New York tran­sit: ven­ti­lat­ing the smoke and exhaust out of the Hol­land Tun­nel. Owned and oper­at­ed by pub­lic agen­cies, these struc­tures per­form well-doc­u­ment­ed and entire­ly non-secret func­tions. The same can’t be said of the last and most strik­ing fake build­ing Jor­dan intro­duces, a win­dow­less Bru­tal­ist tow­er con­struct­ed in 1969 at 33 Thomas Street in Low­er Man­hat­tan. Owned by AT&T, it seems once to have been a tele­phone switch­ing sta­tion, but has late­ly been rumored to be a “huge dooms­day bunker.” That’s one the­o­ry, any­way, and the build­ing’s sin­is­ter appear­ance could inspire count­less oth­ers. Not that many locals are imag­in­ing them, obey­ing as they do one of the cen­tral com­mand­ments of Man­hat­tan: don’t look up.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of the Flat­iron Build­ing, “New York’s Strangest Tow­er”

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

An Intro­duc­tion to the Chrysler Build­ing, New York’s Art Deco Mas­ter­piece, by John Malkovich (1994)

The Old­est House in New York City: Meet the Wyck­off House (1652)

Archi­tect Breaks Down Five of the Most Icon­ic New York City Apart­ments

A 3D Ani­ma­tion Shows the Evo­lu­tion of New York City (1524 — 2023)

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

 

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Peanuts Creator Charles Schulz Shares with a 10-Year-Old Kid the True Meaning of Good Citizenship

in Comics/Cartoons, Life | October 16th, 2024

In 1970, when 10-year-old Joel Lin­ton asked Charles Schulz, the cre­ator of Peanuts, “What do you think makes a good cit­i­zen?” Schulz sent the young­ster a short but pithy reply:

Dear Joel:

I think it is more dif­fi­cult these days to define what makes a good cit­i­zen than it has ever been before. Cer­tain­ly all any of us can do is fol­low our own con­science and retain faith in our democ­ra­cy. Some­times it is the very peo­ple who cry out the loud­est in favor of get­ting back to what they call “Amer­i­can Virtues” who lack this faith in our coun­try. I believe that our great­est strength lies always in the pro­tec­tion of our small­est minori­ties.

Sin­cere­ly yours,

Charles M. Schulz

When this let­ter sur­faced in 2019, Schulz’s wid­ow com­ment­ed, “I con­tin­u­al­ly find com­ic strips that could have been writ­ten for today’s audi­ence.” “This says what needs to be said now.” Need­less to say, the same mes­sage bears repeat­ing in 2024.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent 

23 Min­utes of Charles Schulz Draw­ing Peanuts

Umber­to Eco Explains the Poet­ic Pow­er of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts

How Franklin Became Peanuts’ First Black Char­ac­ter, Thanks to a Car­ing School­teacher (1968)

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