A Young Jim Henson Teaches You How to Make Puppets with Socks, Tennis Balls & Other Household Goods (1969)

By the time he filmed this video archived on Iowa Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion’s YouTube chan­nel, Jim Hen­son was just about to strike gold with a new children’s show called Sesame Street. The year was 1969, and he already had 15 years of pup­petry expe­ri­ence under his belt, from children’s shows to com­mer­cials and exper­i­men­tal films.

On the cusp of suc­cess, Hen­son, along with fel­low pup­peteer Don Sahlin (the cre­ator and voice of Rowlf), ven­tures to teach kids how to make a pup­pet out of pret­ty much any­thing you’ll find around the house. Such a vision appears easy, but it real­ly shows the genius of Hen­son, as he and Sahlin make char­ac­ters from a ten­nis ball, a mop, a wood­en spoon, a cup, socks, an enve­lope, even pota­toes and pears. (There is a lot to be said for the inher­ent com­e­dy of goo­gly eyes, and the impor­tance of fake fur.)

An unknown assis­tant takes some of these pup­pets and brings them to life while Hen­son and his part­ner cre­ate more–funny voic­es, per­son­al­i­ties, even a bit of anar­chy are in play. Sur­pris­ing­ly, Ker­mit does not make an appear­ance, although his sock ances­tor does.

The man who saw poten­tial pup­pets in every­thing is in his ele­ment and relaxed. Check it out, smile, and then raid your kitchen for sup­plies for your own pup­pet show. And although Hen­son promis­es a fur­ther episode, it has yet to be found on YouTube, or else­where.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Henson’s Com­mer­cials for Wilkins Cof­fee: 15 Twist­ed Min­utes of Mup­pet Cof­fee Ads (1957–1961)

Watch Twin Beaks, Sesame Street’s Par­o­dy of David Lynch’s Icon­ic TV Show (1990)

Jim Henson’s Ani­mat­ed Film, Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, Pre­sent­ed by John­ny Car­son (1974)

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based 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.

The World’s Oldest Homework: A Look at Babylonian Math Homework from 4,000 Years Ago

Home­work has late­ly become unfash­ion­able, at least accord­ing to what I’ve heard from teach­ers in cer­tain parts of the Unit­ed States. That may com­pli­cate var­i­ous fair­ly long-stand­ing edu­ca­tion­al prac­tices, but it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect an absolute drop in stan­dards and expec­ta­tions. Those of us who went to school around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um may remem­ber feel­ing entombed in home­work, an inten­si­fied ver­sion of what the gen­er­a­tion that came of age amid the ear­ly Cold War’s pres­sure for “more sci­ence,” would have dealt with. But late baby boomers and ear­ly Gen-Xers in the six­ties and sev­en­ties had a much lighter load, as did the gen­er­a­tion edu­cat­ed under John Dewey’s reforms of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

We can fol­low this line all the way back to the times of the Baby­lo­ni­ans, 4,000 years ago. In the video above from her chan­nel Tibees, sci­ence YouTu­ber Toby Hendy shows us a few arti­facts of home­work from antiq­ui­ty and explains how to inter­pret them.

Inscribed in a clay tablet, their sim­ple but numer­ous marks reveal them to be exam­ples of math home­work, that most loathed cat­e­go­ry today, and per­haps then as well. (Even when inter­pret­ed in mod­ern lan­guage, the cal­cu­la­tions may seem unfa­mil­iar, per­formed as they are not in our base ten, but base 60 — shades of the “new math” to come much lat­er.) That the Baby­lo­ni­ans had fair­ly advanced math­e­mat­ics, which Hendy demon­strates using some clay of her own, may be as much of a sur­prise as the fact that they did home­work.

Not that they all did it. Uni­ver­sal school­ing itself dates only from the indus­tri­al age, and for the Baby­lo­ni­ans, indus­try was still a long way off. They did, how­ev­er, take the con­sid­er­able step of cre­at­ing civ­i­liza­tion, which they could­n’t have done with­out writ­ing. The ancient assign­ment Hendy shows would’ve been done by a stu­dent at an edu­ba, which she describes as a “scribe school.” Scribe, as we know, means one who writes — which, in Baby­lon, meant one who writes in Sumer­ian. That skill was trans­mit­ted through the net­work of edu­ba, or “house where tablets are passed out,” which were usu­al­ly locat­ed in pri­vate res­i­dences, and which turned out grad­u­ates lit­er­ate and numer­ate enough to keep the empire run­ning, at least until the sixth cen­tu­ry BC or so. From cer­tain destruc­tive forces, it seems, no amount of home­work can pro­tect a civ­i­liza­tion for­ev­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ancient Egypt­ian Home­work Assign­ment from 1800 Years Ago: Some Things Are Tru­ly Time­less

A 4,000-Year-Old Stu­dent ‘Writ­ing Board’ from Ancient Egypt (with Teacher’s Cor­rec­tions in Red)

3,200-Year-Old Egypt­ian Tablet Records Excus­es for Why Peo­ple Missed Work: “The Scor­pi­on Bit Him,” “Brew­ing Beer” & More

Archae­ol­o­gists Think They’ve Dis­cov­ered the Old­est Greek Copy of Homer’s Odyssey: 13 Vers­es on a Clay Tablet

Behold the Old­est Writ­ten Text in the World: The Kish Tablet, Cir­ca 3500 BC

Hear the Ear­li­est Record­ed Cus­tomer Com­plaint Let­ter: From Ancient Sume­ria 1750 BC

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 the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

They Study Authoritarianism. And They’re Leaving the U.S.: Why Three Yale Professors Have Moved to U. Toronto

Three Yale pro­fes­sors—Tim­o­thy Sny­der, Jason Stan­ley and Mar­ci Shore–have spent their careers study­ing fas­cism and author­i­tar­i­an­ism. They know the signs of emerg­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism when they see it. Now, they’re see­ing those signs here in the Unit­ed States, and they’re not sit­ting by idly. They’ve moved to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to where they can speak freely, with­out fear­ing per­son­al or insti­tu­tion­al ret­ri­bu­tion. Above, they share their views in the NYTimes Op-Doc. It comes pref­aced with the text below:

Legal res­i­dents of the Unit­ed States sent to for­eign pris­ons with­out due process. Stu­dents detained after voic­ing their opin­ions. Fed­er­al judges threat­ened with impeach­ment for rul­ing against the administration’s pri­or­i­ties.

In this Opin­ion video, Mar­ci Shore, Tim­o­thy Sny­der and Jason Stan­ley, all pro­fes­sors at Yale and experts in author­i­tar­i­an­ism, explain why Amer­i­ca is espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to a demo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing — and why they are leav­ing the Unit­ed States to take up posi­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to.

Pro­fes­sor Stan­ley is leav­ing the Unit­ed States as an act of protest against the Trump administration’s attacks on civ­il lib­er­ties. “I want Amer­i­cans to real­ize that this is a demo­c­ra­t­ic emer­gency,” he said.

Pro­fes­sor Shore, who has spent two decades writ­ing about the his­to­ry of author­i­tar­i­an­ism in Cen­tral and East­ern Europe, is leav­ing because of what she sees as the sharp regres­sion of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. “We’re like peo­ple on the Titan­ic say­ing our ship can’t sink,” she said. “And what you know as a his­to­ri­an is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”

She bor­rows from polit­i­cal and apo­lit­i­cal Slav­ic motifs and expres­sions, argu­ing that the Eng­lish lan­guage does not ful­ly cap­ture the demo­c­ra­t­ic regres­sion in this Amer­i­can moment.

Pro­fes­sor Snyder’s rea­sons are more com­pli­cat­ed. Pri­mar­i­ly, he’s leav­ing to sup­port his wife, Pro­fes­sor Shore, and their chil­dren, and to teach at a large pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty in Toron­to, a place he says can host con­ver­sa­tions about free­dom. At the same time, he shares the con­cerns expressed by his col­leagues and wor­ries that those kinds of con­ver­sa­tions will become ever hard­er to have in the Unit­ed States.

“I did not leave Yale because of Don­ald Trump or because of Colum­bia or because of threats to Yale — but that would be a rea­son­able thing to do, and that is a deci­sion that peo­ple will make,” he wrote in a Yale Dai­ly News arti­cle explain­ing his deci­sion to leave.

Their motives dif­fer but their analy­sis is the same: ignor­ing or down­play­ing attacks on the rule of law, the courts and uni­ver­si­ties spells trou­ble for our democ­ra­cy.

To delve deep­er into their work, see Stan­ley and Sny­der’s respec­tive works: How Fas­cism Works: The Pol­i­tics of Us and Them and On Tyran­ny: Twen­ty Lessons from the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Actor John Lith­gow Reads 20 Lessons on Tyran­ny, Penned by His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

Yale Pro­fes­sor Jason Stan­ley Iden­ti­fies 10 Tac­tics of Fas­cism: The “Cult of the Leader,” Law & Order, Vic­tim­hood and More

Umber­to Eco’s List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Toni Mor­ri­son Lists the 10 Steps That Lead Coun­tries to Fas­cism (1995)

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How Bob Dylan Kept Reinventing His Songwriting Process, Breathing New Life Into His Music

On his 84th birth­day this past Sat­ur­day, Bob Dylan played a show. That was in keep­ing with not only his still-seri­ous tour­ing sched­ule, but also his appar­ent­ly irre­press­ible instinct to work: on music, on writ­ing, on paint­ing, on sculp­ture. Even his occa­sion­al tweet­ing draws an appre­cia­tive audi­ence every time. The Bob Dylan of 2025 is not, of course, the Bob Dylan of 1965, but then, the Bob Dylan of 1965 was­n’t the Bob Dylan of 1964. This con­stant artis­tic change is just what his fans appre­ci­ate, not that they don’t still put on his ear­ly stuff with reg­u­lar­i­ty.

In the ear­li­est of that ear­ly stuff, as music YouTu­ber David Hart­ley explains in the new video above, Dylan “wrote songs by rein­vent­ing tra­di­tion.” Using noth­ing but his voice, gui­tar, and har­mon­i­ca, the young Dylan “imi­tat­ed some of the most well-known folk melodies,” plac­ing him­self in that long Amer­i­can tra­di­tion of bor­row­ing and rein­ter­pre­ta­tion. But as dra­ma­tized in the recent film A Com­plete Unknown, he soon “went elec­tric,” and with the change in instru­men­ta­tion came a change in song­writ­ing method: “He would just come up with end­less pages of lyrics, some­thing he once called ‘the long piece of vom­it.’ ”

The advice to “puke it out now and clean it up lat­er” has long been giv­en, in var­i­ous forms, to aspir­ing artists every­where. One aspect worth high­light­ing about the way Dylan did it was that, despite writ­ing pop­u­lar songs, he drew a great deal of inspi­ra­tion from more tra­di­tion­al lit­er­a­ture, to the point that his notes hard­ly appear to con­tain any­thing resem­bling vers­es or cho­rus­es at all. Only in the stu­dio, with a band behind him, could Dylan give these ideas their final musi­cal shape — or rather, their final shape on that par­tic­u­lar album, often to be mod­i­fied end­less­ly, and some­times rad­i­cal­ly, over decades of live per­for­mances to come.

Hart­ley tells of more dra­mat­ic changes to Dylan’s music and his process of cre­at­ing. The motor­cy­cle crash, the Base­ment Tapes, the open E tun­ing, Blood on the Tracks: all of these now lie half a cen­tu­ry or more in the past. To go over all the ways Dylan has approached music since then would require more hours than all but the most rabid enthu­si­asts (though there are many) would watch. The video does include a 60 Min­utes clip from 2004 in which Dylan says that “those ear­ly songs were almost mag­i­cal­ly writ­ten,” and that he would­n’t be able to cre­ate them any­more. But then, nor could the Dylan of High­way 61 Revis­it­ed have record­ed Time Out of Mind, and nor, for that mat­ter, could the Dylan of Time Out of Mind have record­ed any of Dylan’s albums from this decade — or those that could, quite pos­si­bly, be still to come.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

How Bob Dylan Cre­at­ed a Musi­cal & Lit­er­ary World All His Own: Four Video Essays

Watch Bob Dylan Make His Debut at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in Col­orized 1963 Footage

Hear Bob Dylan’s New­ly Released Nobel Lec­ture: A Med­i­ta­tion on Music, Lit­er­a­ture & Lyrics

Com­pare the “It Ain’t Me Babe” Scene from A Com­plete Unknown to the Real Bob Dylan & Joan Baez Per­for­mance at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

Bob Dylan Explains Why Music Has Been Get­ting Worse

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 the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

George Orwell Reviews Salvador Dali’s Autobiography: “Dali is a Good Draughtsman and a Disgusting Human Being” (1944)

Images or Orwell and Dali via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Should we hold artists to the same stan­dards of human decen­cy that we expect of every­one else? Should tal­ent­ed peo­ple be exempt from ordi­nary moral­i­ty? Should artists of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter have their work con­signed to the trash along with their per­son­al rep­u­ta­tions? These ques­tions, for all their time­li­ness in the present, seemed no less thorny and com­pelling 81 years ago when George Orwell con­front­ed the strange case of Sal­vador Dali, an unde­ni­ably extra­or­di­nary tal­ent, and—Orwell writes in his 1944 essay “Ben­e­fit of Cler­gy”—a “dis­gust­ing human being.”

The judg­ment may seem over­ly harsh except that any hon­est per­son would say the same giv­en the episodes Dali describes in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, which Orwell finds utter­ly revolt­ing. “If it were pos­si­ble for a book to give a phys­i­cal stink off its pages,” he writes, “this one would. The episodes he refers to include, at six years old, Dali kick­ing his three-year-old sis­ter in the head, “as though it had been a ball,” the artist writes, then run­ning away “with a ‘deliri­ous joy’ induced by this sav­age act.” They include throw­ing a boy from a sus­pen­sion bridge, and, at 29 years old, tram­pling a young girl “until they had to tear her, bleed­ing, out of my reach.” And many more such vio­lent and dis­turb­ing descrip­tions.

Dali’s litany of cru­el­ty to humans and ani­mals con­sti­tutes what we expect in the ear­ly life of ser­i­al killers rather than famous artists. Sure­ly he is putting his read­ers on, wild­ly exag­ger­at­ing for the sake of shock val­ue, like the Mar­quis de Sade’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal fan­tasies. Orwell allows as much. Yet which of the sto­ries are true, he writes, “and which are imag­i­nary hard­ly mat­ters: the point is that this is the kind of thing that Dali would have liked to do.” More­over, Orwell is as repulsed by Dali’s work as he is by the artist’s char­ac­ter, informed as it is by misog­y­ny, a con­fessed necrophil­ia and an obses­sion with excre­ment and rot­ting corpses.

But against this has to be set the fact that Dali is a draughts­man of very excep­tion­al gifts. He is also, to judge by the minute­ness and the sure­ness of his draw­ings, a very hard work­er. He is an exhi­bi­tion­ist and a careerist, but he is not a fraud. He has fifty times more tal­ent than most of the peo­ple who would denounce his morals and jeer at his paint­ings. And these two sets of facts, tak­en togeth­er, raise a ques­tion which for lack of any basis of agree­ment sel­dom gets a real dis­cus­sion.

Orwell is unwill­ing to dis­miss the val­ue of Dali’s art, and dis­tances him­self from those who would do so on moral­is­tic grounds. “Such peo­ple,” he writes, are “unable to admit that what is moral­ly degrad­ed can be aes­thet­i­cal­ly right,” a “dan­ger­ous” posi­tion adopt­ed not only by con­ser­v­a­tives and reli­gious zealots but by fas­cists and author­i­tar­i­ans who burn books and lead cam­paigns against “degen­er­ate” art. “Their impulse is not only to crush every new tal­ent as it appears, but to cas­trate the past as well.” (“Wit­ness,” he notes, the out­cry in Amer­i­ca “against Joyce, Proust and Lawrence.”) “In an age like our own,” writes Orwell, in a par­tic­u­lar­ly jar­ring sen­tence, “when the artist is an excep­tion­al per­son, he must be allowed a cer­tain amount of irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty, just as a preg­nant woman is.”

At the very same time, Orwell argues, to ignore or excuse Dali’s amoral­i­ty is itself gross­ly irre­spon­si­ble and total­ly inex­cus­able. Orwell’s is an “under­stand­able” response, writes Jonathan Jones at The Guardian, giv­en that he had fought fas­cism in Spain and had seen the hor­ror of war, and that Dali, in 1944, “was already flirt­ing with pro-Fran­co views.” But to ful­ly illus­trate his point, Orwell imag­ines a sce­nario with a much less con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure than Dali: “If Shake­speare returned to the earth to-mor­row, and if it were found that his favourite recre­ation was rap­ing lit­tle girls in rail­way car­riages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write anoth­er King Lear.”

Draw your own par­al­lels to more con­tem­po­rary fig­ures whose crim­i­nal, preda­to­ry, or vio­lent­ly abu­sive acts have been ignored for decades for the sake of their art, or whose work has been tossed out with the tox­ic bath­wa­ter of their behav­ior. Orwell seeks what he calls a “mid­dle posi­tion” between moral con­dem­na­tion and aes­thet­ic license—a “fas­ci­nat­ing and laud­able” crit­i­cal thread­ing of the nee­dle, Jones writes, that avoids the extremes of “con­ser­v­a­tive philistines who con­demn the avant garde, and its pro­mot­ers who indulge every­thing that some­one like Dali does and refuse to see it in a moral or polit­i­cal con­text.”

This eth­i­cal cri­tique, writes Char­lie Finch at Art­net, attacks the assump­tion in the art world that an appre­ci­a­tion of artists with Dali’s pecu­liar tastes “is auto­mat­i­cal­ly enlight­ened, pro­gres­sive.” Such an atti­tude extends from the artists them­selves to the soci­ety that nur­tures them, and that “allows us to wel­come dia­mond-mine own­ers who fund bien­nales, Gazprom bil­lion­aires who pur­chase dia­mond skulls, and real-estate moguls who dom­i­nate tem­ples of mod­ernism.” Again, you may draw your own com­par­isons.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When The Sur­re­al­ists Expelled Sal­vador Dalí for “the Glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Hit­ler­ian Fas­cism” (1934)

George Orwell Reviews Mein Kampf: “He Envis­ages a Hor­ri­ble Brain­less Empire” (1940)

How the Nazis Waged War on Mod­ern Art: Inside the “Degen­er­ate Art” Exhi­bi­tion of 1937

Tol­stoy Calls Shake­speare an “Insignif­i­cant, Inartis­tic Writer”; 40 Years Lat­er, George Orwell Weighs in on the Debate

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

A 3D Model Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Interior Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago

Stand­ing atop the Acrop­o­lis in Athens as it has for near­ly 2,500 years now, the Parthenon remains an impres­sive sight indeed. Not that those two and a half mil­len­nia have been kind to the place: one of the most famous ruins of the ancient world is still, after all, a ruin. But it does fire up vis­i­tors’ imag­i­na­tions, fill­ing their heads with visions of how it must have looked back in the fifth cen­tu­ry BC, when it was a func­tion­ing tem­ple and trea­sury. One enthu­si­ast in par­tic­u­lar, an Oxford archae­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor named Juan de Lara, has spent four years using 3D mod­el­ing tools to cre­ate a 3D dig­i­tal recon­struc­tion of the Parthenon at the height of its glo­ry, of which you can get glimpses in the video above and at the pro­jec­t’s offi­cial site.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

The mate­ri­als pro­mot­ing Parthenon 3D, as it’s called, empha­size one ele­ment above all: its almost 40-foot-tall stat­ue of the god­dess Athena Parthenos, bet­ter known mononymi­cal­ly as Athena. The work of the renowned sculp­tor Phidias, who also han­dled the rest of the struc­ture’s sculp­tur­al dec­o­ra­tion, it end­ed up cost­ing twice as much as the build­ing itself.

Though now long lost, the Athena stat­ue was well doc­u­ment­ed enough for de Lara to mod­el its every detail, down to the folds in her gold­en robes and the cracks in her ivory skin. Dur­ing the Pana­thenaic Fes­ti­val, which came around every four years, sun­light would enter the Parthenon at just the right angle to cause a super­nat­ur­al-look­ing illu­mi­na­tion of the god­dess against the sur­round­ing dark­ness.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

Of course, that effect was­n’t acci­den­tal. Even if we con­sid­er the cre­ation of the Parthenon to have been divine­ly inspired, we can best under­stand it as a work of man — and a metic­u­lous­ly thought-out work at that. For ancient Greek vis­i­tors, the illu­mi­na­tion of Athena would have been enhanced by the place­ment of roof aper­tures, reflect­ing water pools, and reflec­tive mate­ri­als, whose orig­i­nal incor­po­ra­tion into the space would come as a sur­prise to most mod­ern vis­i­tors. At present, Parthenon 3D offers the clos­est expe­ri­ence we have to a time machine set to the Parthenon as Phidias and archi­tects Ikti­nos and Cal­l­i­crates orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed. But as de Lara’s research notes, the build­ing also con­tained numer­ous incense burn­ers, so per­fect real­ism won’t be achieved until smells can go through the inter­net. Vis­it the Parthenon 3D site here.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Parthenon Mar­bles End­ed Up In The British Muse­um

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Athens: Fly Over Clas­si­cal Greek Civ­i­liza­tion in All Its Glo­ry

Robots Are Carv­ing Repli­cas of the Parthenon Mar­bles: Could They Help the Real Ancient Sculp­tures Return to Greece?

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

The City of Nashville Built a Full-Scale Repli­ca of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Still Stand­ing Today

Artist is Cre­at­ing a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Mon­u­ment to Democ­ra­cy & Intel­lec­tu­al Free­dom

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 the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Leo Tolstoy’s Family Recipe for Mac and Cheese

In 1874, Stepan Andree­vich Bers pub­lished The Cook­book and gave it as a gift to his sis­ter, count­ess Sophia Andreev­na Tol­staya, the wife of the great Russ­ian nov­el­ist, Leo Tol­stoy. The book con­tained a col­lec­tion of Tol­stoy fam­i­ly recipes, the dish­es they served to their fam­i­ly and friends, those for­tu­nate souls who belonged to the aris­to­crat­ic rul­ing class of late czarist Rus­sia. 150 years lat­er, this cook­book has been trans­lat­ed and repub­lished by Sergei Bel­tyukov.

Leo Tol­stoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe Book fea­tures dozens of recipes, every­thing from Tar­tar Sauce and Spiced Mush­rooms (what’s a Russ­ian kitchen with­out mush­rooms?), to Stuffed Dumplings and Green Beans à la Maître d’Hô­tel, to Cof­fee Cake and Vien­nese Pie. The text comes with a trans­la­tion, too, of Russ­ian weights and mea­sures used dur­ing the peri­od. One recipe Mr. Bel­tyukov pro­vid­ed to us (which I did­n’t see in the book) is for the Tol­stoys’ good ole Mac ‘N’ Cheese dish. It goes some­thing like this:

Bring water to a boil, add salt, then add mac­a­roni and leave boil­ing on light fire until half ten­der; drain water through a colan­der, add but­ter and start putting mac­a­roni back into the pot in lay­ers – lay­er of mac­a­roni, some grat­ed Parme­san and some veg­etable sauce, mac­a­roni again and so on until you run out of mac­a­roni. Put the pot on the edge of the stove, cov­er with a lid and let it rest in light fire until the mac­a­roni are soft and ten­der. Shake the pot occa­sion­al­ly to pre­vent them from burn­ing.

We’ll leave you with bon appétit! — an expres­sion almost cer­tain­ly heard in the homes of those French-speak­ing Russ­ian aris­to­crats.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Hear Leo Tol­stoy Read From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

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

The Final Days of Leo Tol­stoy Cap­tured in Rare Footage from 1910

Thomas Edison’s Record­ings of Leo Tol­stoy: Hear the Voice of the Great Russ­ian Nov­el­ist

The “Dark Relics” of Christianity: Preserved Skulls, Blood & Other Grim Artifacts

Chris­tian­i­ty often man­i­fests in pop­u­lar cul­ture through cel­e­bra­tions like Christ­mas and East­er, or icons like lambs and fish. Less often do you see it asso­ci­at­ed with vials of blood and dis­em­bod­ied heads. Yet as the new Hochela­ga video above reveals, the most famed Chris­t­ian arti­facts do tend toward the grue­some. Take one par­tic­u­lar­ly renowned exam­ple, the Shroud of Turin: hear the name, and you imag­ine a cloth bear­ing the image of Jesus Christ. But think about it a moment, and you remem­ber that it’s the blood­stained wrap­ping of a cru­ci­fied body — that is, if the tales told about it are true in the first place.

As with any reli­gious relics, you have to decide for your­self what to believe about all of these. If you pay a vis­it to the Basil­i­ca of St. Antho­ny in Pad­ua, you’ll see on dis­play the pre­served jaw of that holy fig­ure — which does, at least, look like a real human jaw. In south­east­ern France, at the basil­i­ca of Saint-Max­imin-la-Sainte-Baume, you’ll find a skull pur­port­ed to be that of Mary Mag­da­lene.

And we cer­tain­ly can’t rule out that it real­ly is, spec­u­la­tive though the evi­dence may be. The sit­u­a­tion grows some­what more com­pli­cat­ed with the head of John the Bap­tist — or rather, the heads of John the Bap­tist, four of which have been claimed in dif­fer­ent places so far.

“Dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, relics were in high demand, and there were always peo­ple will­ing to sup­ply them,” explains Hochela­ga cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny. “It’s often joked that, if you gath­ered all the alleged frag­ments of the true cross, you’d have enough wood to build a small for­est.” Even the Shroud of Turin has come under unfor­giv­ing scruti­ny. Radio­car­bon dat­ing has placed it in the mid-four­teenth cen­tu­ry, imply­ing a forgery, but more recent X‑ray tests sug­gest that its linen was made in the first cen­tu­ry, between the years 55 and 74: close enough to what we under­stand as the time of Jesus’ bur­ial. Debates over the authen­tic­i­ty of all these arti­facts will con­tin­ue for cen­turies — and quite pos­si­bly mil­len­nia — to come, but their pow­er­ful embod­i­ment of both “the deeply dis­turb­ing and the haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful” won’t fade away any time soon.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Our Depic­tion of Jesus Changed Over 2,000 Years and What He May Have Actu­al­ly Looked Like

The British Muse­um is Full of Loot­ed Arti­facts

Europe’s Old­est Intact Book Was Pre­served and Found in the Cof­fin of a Saint

Did Psy­che­del­ic Mush­rooms Appear in Medieval Chris­t­ian Art?: A Video Essay

The Real Sto­ry of East­er: How We Got from the First East­er in the Bible to Bun­nies, Eggs & Choco­late

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 the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

How Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd & Jethro Tull Financed the Making Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail isn’t a big-bud­get spec­ta­cle, and nobody knew that bet­ter than the Pythons them­selves. Neces­si­ty being the moth­er of inven­tion, they turned the pro­jec­t’s finan­cial con­straints into one of its many sources of humor, fash­ion­ing mem­o­rable gags out of every­thing from coconut shells sub­sti­tut­ing for hors­es to the sud­den shut­down of film­ing that ends the “sto­ry.” But, as explained in the Canned His­to­ry video above, putting togeth­er even the mod­est sum with which they had to work was hard­ly a straight­for­ward endeav­or. Turned down by stu­dios, the Pythons sought out the only financiers like­ly to pos­sess both suf­fi­cient wealth and suf­fi­cient belief in an absur­dist TV com­e­dy troupe mak­ing their first prop­er film: rock stars.

This was the mid-nine­teen-sev­en­ties, recall, when a group with a few hit albums could find them­selves mak­ing, quite lit­er­al­ly, more mon­ey than they knew what to do with. Such was the case with Pink Floyd, for exam­ple, after releas­ing The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973.

Mon­ty Python, for their part, had put out not only three sea­sons of their BBC series Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, but also a vari­ety of pur­chasable goods like books and LPs. The lat­ter made them the music-indus­try con­nec­tions that they could use to enlist the likes of not just the Floyd, but also Led Zep­pelin, Jethro Tull, as well as record labels like Island, Charis­ma, and Chrysalis. As Eric Idle tweet­ed much lat­er, Zep­pelin con­tributed £31,500, Pink Floy­d’s com­pa­ny £21,000, and Jethro Tul­l’s Ian Ander­son £6,300: £627,000 in more recent val­ue, or near­ly $850,000 in U.S. dol­lars.

Alto­geth­er, Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail’s bud­get came to £282,035 in 1974 pounds: by no means a king’s ran­som, but just enough to put togeth­er a com­ic take on Arthuri­an leg­end. No more con­ven­tion­al investors than the Pythons were con­ven­tion­al film­mak­ers, the rock stars and oth­er music-indus­try fig­ures involved made no vis­its to the set, nor offered any “notes” on the work in progress. One sus­pects that they were hap­py just to sup­port a Mon­ty Python project, and even more so to receive the tax break offered for films pro­duced in the U.K. In the event, of course, they all made their mon­ey back many times over, with a cut of the Broad­way musi­cal adap­ta­tion Spa­malot to boot. The film’s imme­di­ate and out­sized suc­cess can’t have been far from the mind of George Har­ri­son — that great ene­my of the tax­man — when Idle called him up a few years lat­er, ask­ing for the mon­ey to make Life of Bri­an.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream Online Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Free on Its 50th Anniver­sary

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 the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

60 Free Film Noir Movies You Can Watch Online, Including Classics by John Huston, Orson Welles & Fritz Lang

Dur­ing the 1940s and 50s, Hol­ly­wood entered a “noir” peri­od, pro­duc­ing riv­et­ing films based on hard-boiled fic­tion. These films were set in dark loca­tions and shot in a black & white aes­thet­ic that fit like a glove. Hard­ened men wore fedo­ras and for­ev­er smoked cig­a­rettes. Women played the femme fatale role bril­liant­ly. Love was the surest way to death. All of these ele­ments fig­ured into what Roger Ebert calls “the most Amer­i­can film genre” in his short Guide to Film Noir.

If you head over to this list of Noir Films, you can find 60 films from the noir genre, includ­ing some clas­sics by John Hus­ton, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang and Ida Lupino. The list also fea­tures some cin­e­mat­ic leg­ends like Humphrey Bog­a­rt, Peter Lorre, Bar­bara Stan­wyck, Edward G. Robin­son, and even Frank Sina­tra. Hope the col­lec­tion helps you put some noir enter­tain­ment into 2025!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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 

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

The Essen­tial Ele­ments of Film Noir Explained in One Grand Info­graph­ic

Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essen­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Noir Films

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How the First Rock Concert Ended in Mayhem (Cleveland, 1952)

“Amer­i­ca has only three cities: New York, San Fran­cis­co, and New Orleans. Every­where else is Cleve­land.” That obser­va­tion tends to be attrib­uted to Ten­nessee Williams, though it’s become some­what detached from its source, so deeply does it res­onate with a cer­tain expe­ri­ence of life in the Unit­ed States. But con­sid­er this: can every Amer­i­can city claim to be where rock and roll began — or at least the site of the very first rock and roll con­cert? Cleve­land can, thanks to Alan Freed, a famous radio announc­er of the nine­teen-for­ties and fifties. The Moon­dog Coro­na­tion Ball he orga­nized in 1952 may have end­ed in dis­as­ter, but it began a pop-cul­tur­al era that arguably con­tin­ues to this day.

Hav­ing attained pop­u­lar­i­ty announc­ing in a vari­ety of radio for­mats, includ­ing jazz and clas­si­cal music, Freed was awak­ened to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of what was then known as rhythm and blues by a local record-store own­er, Leo Mintz. It was with Mintz’s spon­sor­ship that Freed launched a pro­gram on Cleve­land’s WJW-AM, for which he cul­ti­vat­ed a hep­cat per­sona called “Moon­dog.” (Some cred­it the name to an album by Rob­by Vee and The Vees, and oth­ers to the avant-garde street musi­cian Moon­dog and his epony­mous “sym­pho­ny.”) Start­ing at mid­night, the show broad­cast hours of so-called “race music” to not just its already-enthu­si­as­tic fan base, but also the young white lis­ten­ers increas­ing­ly intrigued by its cap­ti­vat­ing, propul­sive sounds.

Freed soon com­mand­ed enough of an audi­ence to describe him­self as “King of the Moon­dog­gers.” When he announced the upcom­ing Moon­dog Coro­na­tion Ball, a show at Cleve­land’s hock­ey are­na fea­tur­ing sets from such pop­u­lar acts as Paul Williams and the Huck­le­buck­ers, Tiny Grimes and the Rock­ing High­landers (an all-black group whose sig­na­ture kilts would sure­ly stir up “cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion” dis­course today), Varet­ta Dil­lard, and Dan­ny Cobb, the Moon­dog­gers turned out. About 20,000 of them turned out, in fact, twice what the venue could han­dle. A tick­et mis­print was to blame, but the dam­age had been done — or rather, it would be done, when the well-dressed but over-excit­ed crowd stormed the are­na and the author­i­ties were called in to shut the show down by force.

In the event, only the first two acts ever took the stage. The planned coro­na­tion of the two most pop­u­lar teenagers in atten­dance (a holdover from anoth­er cul­tur­al dimen­sion entire­ly) nev­er hap­pened. But the spir­it of rebel­lious­ness wit­nessed at this first-ever rock con­cert was like a genie that could­n’t be put back in its bot­tle. How­ev­er square his image, Freed, who pop­u­lar­ized the term “rock and roll” as applied to music, was nev­er much of a rule-fol­low­er in his pro­fes­sion­al life. His lat­er impli­ca­tion in the pay­ola bribe scan­dals of the late fifties sent his career into a tail­spin, and his ear­ly death fol­lowed a few years lat­er. But to judge by re-tellings like the one in the Drunk His­to­ry video just above, he remains the hero of the sto­ry of the Moon­dog Coro­na­tion Ball — and thus a hero of rock and roll his­to­ry.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Live Music Archive Lets You Stream/Download More Than 250,000 Con­cert Recordings–for Free

Inti­mate Live Per­for­mances of Radio­head, Son­ic Youth, the White Stripes, PJ Har­vey & More: No Host, No Audi­ence, Just Pure Live Music

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound” — a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound Sys­tem — Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

The Ori­gin of the Rooftop Con­cert: Before the Bea­t­les Came Jef­fer­son Air­plane, and Before Them, Brazil­ian Singer Rober­to Car­los (1967)

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 the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.


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