Stephen King Reads from His Upcoming Sequel to The Shining

Late last week, Stephen King treat­ed an audi­ence at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty to a 10-minute read­ing from his upcom­ing book Dr. Sleep . It’s not just any oth­er book. It’s the sequel to The Shin­ing, his 1977 thriller that Stan­ley Kubrick fam­mous­ly adapt­ed to film. (Don’t miss Mak­ing the Shin­ing here.)

King first start­ed talk­ing about a sequel in 2009, and now we’re get­ting our first taste of what’s to come. At long last, you will know what hap­pened to Dan­ny Tor­rance.

The read­ing appears above, and King talks some more about the unfin­ished sequel below.

via Gal­l­ey­cat

John Hodgman Riffs on Magicians and Their Craft at Maker Faire

John Hodg­man, your favorite quirky, mus­ta­chioed humorist, made an appear­ance at the Mak­er Faire fes­ti­val in NYC ear­li­er this month. And, in the DIY spir­it of the event, he gave a 30+ minute com­ic riff on mate­r­i­al appear­ing in his upcom­ing book That is All — a com­pendi­um of “com­plete world knowl­edge” that can help you sur­vive an apoc­a­lypse. The bet­ter part of the talk focus­es, quite nat­u­ral­ly, on the mag­ic of mag­ic tricks — some­thing we all need to know more about…

How Paulo Coelho Started Pirating His Own Books (And Where You Can Find them)

Get ready for it. This week, Knopf will release Paulo Coel­ho’s lat­est nov­el, Aleph. And we’re tak­ing bets on three ques­tions. How many copies will be legal­ly sold? (The Alchemist has sold more than 65 mil­lion copies.) How many copies will be pirat­ed and giv­en away? And to what extent will the cir­cu­la­tion of ille­gal copies actu­al­ly ben­e­fit legit sales?

In recent years, Coel­ho has become some­thing of a will­ing con­spir­a­tor in the pirat­ing of his own work. Some­times he links on his own blog to pirat­ed copies float­ing around the web. Oth­er times he makes the texts avail­able (in mul­ti­ple lan­guages) in a nice share­able wid­get.

Coel­ho explains how his adven­tures in self-pirat­ing got under­way in a Q&A appear­ing in yes­ter­day’s New York Times.

Q. You’ve also had suc­cess dis­trib­ut­ing your work free. You’re famous for post­ing pirat­ed ver­sion of your books online, a very unortho­dox move for an author.

A. I saw the first pirat­ed edi­tion of one of my books, so I said I’m going to post it online. There was a dif­fi­cult moment in Rus­sia; they didn’t have much paper. I put this first copy online and I sold, in the first year, 10,000 copies there. And in the sec­ond year it jumped to 100,000 copies. So I said, “It is work­ing.” Then I start­ed putting oth­er books online, know­ing that if peo­ple read a lit­tle bit and they like it, they are going to buy the book. My sales were grow­ing and grow­ing, and one day I was at a high-tech con­fer­ence, and I made it pub­lic.

Q. Weren’t you afraid of mak­ing your pub­lish­er angry?

A. I was afraid, of course. But it was too late. When I returned to my place, the first phone call was from my pub­lish­er in the U.S. She said, “We have a prob­lem.”

Q. You’re refer­ring to Jane Fried­man, who was then the very pow­er­ful chief exec­u­tive of Harper­Collins?

A. Yes, Jane. She’s tough. So I got this call from her, and I said, “Jane, what do you want me to do?” So she said, let’s do it offi­cial­ly, delib­er­ate­ly. Thanks to her my life in the U.S. changed.

The rest of the inter­view con­tin­ues here. And, in the mean­time, you can find sev­er­al Coel­ho books cat­a­logued in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paulo Coel­ho on The Fear of Fail­ure

Google Puts The Dead Sea Scrolls Online (in Super High Resolution)

Thanks to Google and the Israel Muse­um in Jerusalem, you can now fire up your brows­er and start tak­ing a good, close look at The Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient bib­li­cal texts found between 1947 and 1956, right on the shores of the Dead Sea. The Scrolls were orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten between the third and first cen­turies BCE, and they con­sti­tute the old­est known pieces of the Hebrew Bible. Since 1965, they have been on dis­play in Jerusalem. But no mat­ter where you live, you can view five dig­i­tized Dead Sea Scrolls, each pho­tographed at a res­o­lu­tion of 1,200 megapix­els. That’s rough­ly 200 times greater than your aver­age cam­era.

To learn more about The Dead Sea Scrolls, watch this free lec­ture from The Great Cours­es: “Reveal­ing the Dead Sea Scrolls to the World”  pre­sent­ed by Gary A. Rends­burg, Rut­gers. (Get more free lec­tures by The Great Cours­es here.)

And, to put all of this con­text, please vis­it this free course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty: Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment (Hebrew Bible) by Chris­tine Hayes. You will find it list­ed in our big col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.

via Offi­cial Google Blog

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google App Enhances Muse­um Vis­its; Launched at the Get­ty

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

The Great Dr. Fox Lecture: A Vintage Academic Hoax (1970)

Back in 1970, three psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sors pulled off a hoax that dou­bled as med­ical research. They brought Dr. Myron L. Fox, “an author­i­ty on the appli­ca­tion of math­e­mat­ics to human behav­ior,” to a con­fer­ence near Lake Tahoe and let him talk about “Math­e­mat­i­cal Game The­o­ry as Applied to Physi­cian Edu­ca­tion.” Lit­tle did the audi­ence know that Fox was­n’t actu­al­ly a researcher or schol­ar. He was actu­al­ly an actor who had played parts in Hogan’s Heroes and Bat­man. And he was giv­en a gib­ber­ish-filled script to learn only the day before. Nonethe­less, the edu­ca­tors in the crowd ate up his mean­ing­less talk, and it allowed the researchers to draw the con­clu­sion that “style was more influ­en­tial than con­tent in pro­vid­ing learn­er sat­is­fac­tion.” A nice way of say­ing that jar­gon and cant can some­times take you a long way in the acad­e­my — in the human­i­ties and sci­ences alike. More back­sto­ry here. H/T Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment on YouTube

Carl Gus­tav Jung Talks About Death

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

Download 20 Popular High School Books Available as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Every year, thou­sands of Amer­i­can high school stu­dents read a com­mon selec­tion of great nov­els — clas­sics loved by young and old read­ers alike. Today, we have select­ed 20 of the most pop­u­lar books and high­light­ed ways that you can down­load ver­sions for free, most­ly as free audio books and ebooks, and some­times as movies and radio dra­mas. You will find more great works — and some­times oth­er dig­i­tal for­mats — in our twin col­lec­tions: 600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices and 550 Free Audio Books. So please give them a good look over, and if we’re miss­ing a nov­el you want, don’t for­get Audible.com’s 14 day tri­al. It will let you down­load an audio book for free, pret­ty much any one you want.

1984 by George Orwell: Free eBook — Free Audio Book — Free Movie
Although pub­lished in 1949, 1984 still cap­tures our imag­i­na­tion gen­er­a­tions lat­er because it offers one of the best lit­er­ary accounts of total­i­tar­i­an­ism ever pub­lished. And it’s sim­ply a great read.

Ani­mal Farm by George OrwellFree eBook — Free Audio Book — Free Ani­mat­ed Movie
Orwell’s 1945 alle­gor­i­cal novel­la took aim at the cor­rup­tion of the Sovi­et Union and its total­i­tar­i­an rule. The short book, which almost nev­er saw the light of day, appears on the Mod­ern Library’s list of the 100 Best Nov­els of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Brave New World by Aldous Hux­ley: eText — Free Radio Drama­ti­za­tion (by Hux­ley him­self) — Free Audio Book by Audi­ble
Lit­tle known fact. Hux­ley once taught George Orwell French at Eton. And, years lat­er his 1931 clas­sic, Brave New World, is often men­tioned in the same breath with 1984 when it comes to great books that describe a dystopi­an future.

Franken­stein by Mary Shel­ley - Free ebook — Free Audio Book (MP3) — Radio Dra­ma ver­sion (1938) — Movie
Mary Shel­ley start­ed writ­ing the great mon­ster nov­el when she was only 18 and com­plet­ed it when she was 21. The 1823 goth­ic nov­el is arguably one of your first works of sci­ence fic­tion.

Heart of Dark­ness by Joseph Con­rad: Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes) — Radio Drama­ti­za­tion by Orson Welles (MP3)
More than 100 years after its pub­li­ca­tion (1902), Con­rad’s novel­la still offers the most canon­i­cal look at colo­nial­ism and impe­ri­al­ism. So pow­er­ful was its influ­ence that Orson Welles dra­ma­tized it in 1938, and the book also famous­ly inspired Cop­po­la’s Apoc­a­lypse Now in 1979.

Plays by William Shake­speare

No descrip­tion need­ed. None giv­en.

Romeo and Juli­et — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (MP3s)

Mac­Beth — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes)

Ham­let — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (MP3s)

Julius Cae­sar — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (MP3s)

Note: You can find The Com­plete Works of Shake­speare here: Free eBook – Free ver­sion for the iPad

Pride & Prej­u­dice by Jane Austen – Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes)
Jane Austen’s 1813 nov­el remains as pop­u­lar as ever. To date, it has sold more than 20 mil­lion copies, and, every so often, it finds itself adapt­ed to a new film, TV or the­ater pro­duc­tion. A must read.

The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn by Mark Twain — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes)
When you think Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, you think Great Amer­i­can Nov­el. It was con­tro­ver­sial when it was first pub­lished in 1884, and it remains so today. But nonethe­less Twain’s clas­sic is a peren­ni­al favorite for read­ers around the world.

The Call of the Wild by Jack Lon­don — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes)
The Call of the Wild, first pub­lished in 1903, is regard­ed as Jack Lon­don’s mas­ter­piece. It’s “a tale about unbreak­able spir­it and the fight for sur­vival in the frozen Alaskan Klondike.”

The Cru­cible by Arthur Miller - Free Audio Book from Audible.com
Arthur Miller’s 1952 play used the Salem witch tri­als of 1692 and 1693 to offer a com­men­tary on McCarthy­ism that tar­nished Amer­i­ca dur­ing the 1950s. Today, The Cru­cible occu­pies a cen­tral place in Amer­i­ca’s lit­er­ary canon.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Stein­beck — Free Audio Book from Audible.com
This 1939 nov­el won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and lat­er helped Stein­beck win the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in 1962. It’s per­haps the most impor­tant book to give lit­er­ary expres­sion to the Great Depres­sion.

The Great Gats­by by F. Scott Fitzger­ald – Free eBook — Free Audio Book from Audible.com
It’s the clas­sic por­trait of the Jazz Age, a tale of deca­dence and excess. And today The Mod­ern Library has called Fitzger­ald’s 1925 mas­ter­piece the 2nd best nov­el of the last cen­tu­ry.

The Odyssey by Homer – Free eBook — Free Audio Book
The West­ern lit­er­ary tra­di­tion begins with Home­r’s epic poems The Ili­ad (etext here) and The Odyssey, both writ­ten some 2800 years ago. It has been said that “if the Ili­ad is the world’s great­est war epic, then the Odyssey is lit­er­a­ture’s grand­est evo­ca­tion of every­man’s jour­ney through life.” And that just about gets to the heart of the poem.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hem­ing­way Free Audio Book from Audible.com
It was Hem­ing­way’s last major work of fic­tion (1951) and cer­tain­ly one of his most pop­u­lar, bring­ing many read­ers into con­tact with Hem­ing­way’s writ­ing for the first time.

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane — Free eBook — Free Audio Book (iTunes) — Free Movie
This Civ­il War nov­el won what Joseph Con­rad called “an orgy of praise” after its pub­li­ca­tion in 1895, and inspired Ernest Hem­ing­way and the Mod­ernists lat­er. The nov­el made Stephen Crane a celebri­ty at the age of 24, though he died only five years lat­er.

The Scar­let Let­ter by Nathaniel Hawthorne – Free eBooks – Free Audio Book — Movie
Though set in Puri­tan Boston between 1642 and 1649, Hawthorne’s mag­num opus explores “the moral dilem­mas of per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, and the con­sum­ing emo­tions of guilt, anger, loy­al­ty and revenge” that were rel­e­vant in 1850 (when the book was pub­lished). And they remain so today.

To Kill a Mock­ing­bird by Harp­er Lee — Free Audio Book from Audible.com
Harp­er Lee’s 1960 nov­el takes an inci­sive look at atti­tudes toward race and class in the Deep South dur­ing the 1930s. It won the Pulitzer Prize a year lat­er.

Note: We list­ed Audible.com as an option when books were still under copy­right.

Mean­while, edu­ca­tors don’t miss our col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es. It fea­tures many free Lit­er­a­ture cours­es, includ­ing cours­es on Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture.

Jazz Toons: Allen Mezquida’s Journey from Bebop to Smigly

Allen Mezqui­da is an accom­plished alto sax­o­phon­ist. As a reg­u­lar on the New York jazz scene in the 80s and 90s, he per­formed and record­ed with many of the great­est musi­cians still play­ing at that time, like Art Blakey and Ger­ry Mul­li­gan. His 1996 solo album, A Good Thing, was well-received by crit­ics. In an ear­li­er age it might have been the begin­ning of a glo­ri­ous career. But as the 20th cen­tu­ry came to a close, Mezqui­da was becom­ing increas­ing­ly dis­il­lu­sioned.

“I was more frus­trat­ed with jaz­z’s tiny place in the cur­rent cul­tur­al land­scape than with my jazz career,” Mezqui­da told Open Cul­ture. So he turned to anoth­er of his artis­tic pas­sions. The visu­al arts–cartooning, in particular–had always attract­ed him.  â€śMad mag­a­zine, Chuck Jones and var­i­ous art books held my atten­tion along­side Miles, Coltrane and Stan Getz,” Mezqui­da said. He began exper­i­ment­ing with dig­i­tal ani­ma­tion, and before long he moved to Los Ange­les and began receiv­ing work from Dis­ney, Warn­er Broth­ers, Sony and PIXAR. He con­tributed to Aladdin and Toy Sto­ry.

Mezqui­da found him­self where he want­ed to be: at the very heart of Amer­i­ca’s cul­tur­al land­scape. Still, some­thing was­n’t right. As he told The Dai­ly Beast in 2010, “I was just hold­ing an oar in the bow­els of a Viking ship. And exe­cut­ing the ideas of morons that I did­n’t respect.” Mezqui­da want­ed cul­tur­al rel­e­vance and artis­tic free­dom. As a con­se­quence, Smigly was born.

Smigly is Mezquida’s alter ego, an Every­man adrift in a dehu­man­ized, cor­po­ra­tized cul­ture in which social media serve only to inten­si­fy a sense of social alien­ation. As an artist, Smigly faces a soci­ety less inter­est­ed in art than in the degra­da­tion of artists. Like Char­lie Chap­lin, or Char­lie Brown, there is some­thing time­less about Smigly: a sen­si­tive soul pour­ing his heart out to an indif­fer­ent, or hos­tile, world.

The tri­als and tribu­la­tions of Smigly are chron­i­cled on Smigly.tv.  The lat­est install­ment, Kind of Black and Blue, is shown above. The piece was com­mis­sioned by Gor­don Good­win’s Big Phat Band, but Mezqui­da was giv­en com­plete cre­ative con­trol. Kind of Black and Blue moves like a Swiss watch, each part fit­ting tight­ly into place. A musi­cian’s sense of tim­ing is evi­dent. “I spend a lot of time think­ing about the clear­est way to visu­al­ly com­mu­ni­cate an idea,” Mezqui­da said. “It brings peo­ple into the sto­ry faster. Gary Lar­son, PIXAR and Don Mar­tin quick­ly come to mind as very pre­cise visu­al sto­ry­tellers. Coltrane made every note count. Same thing.”

Mezqui­da con­tin­ues to play music, per­form­ing with sev­er­al jazz groups in the Los Ange­les area. And many of his car­toon episodes fea­ture his sax­o­phone play­ing. With his grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty on YouTube, Smigly has helped Mezqui­da find a new audi­ence for his music. And so, Mezqui­da moves clos­er to that elu­sive com­bi­na­tion of artis­tic inde­pen­dence and pop­u­lar suc­cess. We asked him about his hopes for the future. “I want to expe­ri­ence a major exis­ten­tial cri­sis decid­ing what to do when a major cor­po­ra­tion wants to spon­sor Smigly,” he said. “I’m kid­ding. A lit­tle.”

For more Smigly, go direct­ly to Smigly.tv or begin by check­ing out a few or our favorite episodes:

Noise

Art and Com­merce

I Heart Jazz

 

Dangerous Knowledge: 4 Brilliant Mathematicians & Their Drift to Insanity

We’re bring­ing back by pop­u­lar demand Dan­ger­ous Knowl­edge, the BBC’s 90-minute doc­u­men­tary that takes a close look at four math­e­mati­cians — Georg Can­tor, Lud­wig Boltz­mann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Tur­ing – whose think­ing pro­found­ly influ­enced mod­ern math­e­mat­ics but also drove them (or so the pro­gram argues) to insan­i­ty and even­tu­al­ly sui­cide. Can­tor gave us “set the­o­ry.” Boltz­mann made impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions in the fields of sta­tis­ti­cal mechan­ics and sta­tis­ti­cal ther­mo­dy­nam­ics. Gödel is remem­bered for his incom­plete­ness the­o­rems. Tur­ing built on Gödel’s work and laid the foun­da­tion for com­put­er sci­ence. They all spent their dif­fi­cult final years in var­i­ous states of men­tal decline. You can find Part 2 here.

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:

Free Math Cours­es (part of our larg­er col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online)

285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online

The Math Guy Radio Archive

The Beau­ti­ful Math of Coral and Cro­chet

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.