All You Need is Love: The Keys to Happiness Revealed by a 75-Year Harvard Study

in Health, Life, Psychology | February 9th, 2015

The lat­est install­ment from PBS’ Brain­Craft video series intro­duces us to two sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies that teach us a thing or two about what brings us hap­pi­ness. One set of results comes from Dr. John Gottman’s Fam­i­ly Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry (a.k.a. the “Love Lab”); the oth­er from the Har­vard Grant Study, a 75-year study that has traced the lives and devel­op­ment of 268 Har­vard sopho­mores from the class­es of 1939–1944. Although the study focus­es on priv­i­leged white men (the demo­graph­ic that attend­ed Har­vard Col­lege dur­ing the 1930s and 40s), the Har­vard Grant Study has yield­ed con­clu­sions that apply to a broad­er pop­u­la­tion.

One of the longest-run­ning stud­ies of adult devel­op­ment, the study has found, for exam­ple, that alco­holism has some of the most ruinous effects on mar­riages, fam­i­ly finances and per­son­al health. Like­wise, it reveals that lib­er­als have sex much fur­ther into old age than their con­ser­v­a­tive peers.

But those aren’t the big take­aways — the con­clu­sions that talk about hap­pi­ness. If you watch the inter­view below with George Vail­lant, the long­time direc­tor of the study, you will hear him con­clude that hap­pi­ness isn’t about “con­form­ing, keep­ing up with the Jone­ses. It is about play­ing, and work­ing, and lov­ing. And lov­ing is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant. Hap­pi­ness is love.”

Accord­ing to Vail­lant, “warmth of rela­tion­ships through­out life have the great­est pos­i­tive impact on ‘life sat­is­fac­tion.’ ” When we have warm rela­tion­ships with our par­ents, spous­es, friends and fam­i­ly, we expe­ri­ence less dai­ly anx­i­ety and a greater sense of over­all plea­sure; we have bet­ter health (includ­ing low­er lev­els of demen­tia lat­er in life); and we’re more effec­tive at work and make more mon­ey.

Essen­tial­ly The Bea­t­les had it right, “All you need is love. Love is all you need.”

You can read more about the Har­vard study over at The Atlantic.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Guide to Hap­pi­ness: Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Six Great Philoso­phers Can Change Your Life

Take the ‘Hap­pi­ness Exper­i­ment’

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

A Crash Course on Psy­chol­o­gy: A 30-Part Video Series from Hank Green

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Rare Interview: Tim Curry Discusses The Rocky Horror Picture Show, During the Week of Its Release (1975)

in Film, Television | February 9th, 2015

A defin­ing role can be both bless­ing and curse. In August of 1975, the week the The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show opened, its 29-year-old star, Tim Cur­ry gave an inter­view to STOIC, the Stu­dent Tele­vi­sion Of Impe­r­i­al Col­lege.

In between clips of Curry’s Frank-n-Furter sashay­ing through such des­tined-to-become cult favorites as “Sweet Trans­ves­tite” and “The Time Warp,” in fish­nets, mer­ry wid­ow, and maquil­lage designed by David Bowie’s per­son­al make­up artist, the actor enter­tained questions…in lus­cious black and white!

Kudos to the young inter­view­er, Mark Cald­well, for nev­er inter­rupt­ing or try­ing to elbow his way into the spot­light with jokey asides or dou­ble enten­dres. The reward is a seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the film­mak­ing process and the actor’s craft.

(Bear in mind that it would be at least a year until mid­night audi­ences at New York’s Waver­ly The­ater start­ed throw­ing toast, rice, and toi­let paper at the screen, thus ini­ti­at­ing an entire script’s worth of audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion.)

Hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed the role on the Lon­don stage (he audi­tioned with Lit­tle Richard’s “Tut­ti Frut­ti”) and reprised it in L.A., Cur­ry was clear­ly ready to put some space between him­self and his icon­ic cre­ation, announcing—correctly, as it turns out—that any sequels would have to pro­ceed with­out him.

Then he clammed up for three decades, refus­ing to dis­cuss his most icon­ic role until 2005, when he broke the silence dur­ing an inter­view on NPR’s Fresh Air .

It’s clear that Cur­ry saw the mak­ing of the film as a seri­ous busi­ness, but Rocky Hor­ror fans will find plen­ty of juicy morsels to feed their obses­sion. Even vir­gins will enjoy the sto­ry of Frank’s evolv­ing accent —from mid­dle Euro­pean to “Bel­gravia Host­ess with the Mostest.”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Watch 570 Million Years of Evolution on Earth in 60 Seconds

in Biology | February 8th, 2015

570 mil­lions years of evo­lu­tion. That’s a lot of ground to cov­er. And it could be like watch­ing paint dry. But not when it flies by in 60 sec­onds, with a groovy sound­track by I‑Konic. First come the arthro­pods. Next some friend­ly fish, all fol­lowed by land plants, fly­ing insects, amphib­ians, and rep­tiles. Way down the line, at the very end, the first humans arrive on the scene. But don’t blink, you might miss it.

To get a lit­tle more detail on how this all hap­pened, I’d sug­gest watch­ing Carl Sagan explain evo­lu­tion in a clas­sic 8‑minute ani­ma­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Ani­mat­ed Web Series Makes the The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion Easy to Under­stand

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

16,000 Pages of Charles Darwin’s Writ­ing on Evo­lu­tion Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

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B.B. King Explains in an Animated Video Whether You Need to Endure Hardship to Play the Blues

in Music | February 6th, 2015

George Har­ri­son had a beloved gui­tar named Lucy. B.B. King has one named Lucille. Curi­ous, that.

Above, in a new ani­mat­ed video by Blank on Blank, B.B. explains the sto­ry behind the nam­ing of his leg­endary gui­tar, and then answers the big ques­tion: Do you real­ly need to endure hard times to play the blues?  No spoil­ers here.

The audio was record­ed in Sep­tem­ber, 1985 by Warn­er Bros. A&R man­ag­er Joe Smith. While writ­ing a book on the music indus­try, Smith taped inter­views with leg­endary fig­ures like Dave Brubeck, Lou Reed, Paul McCart­ney, Joan Baez, Her­bie Han­cock, David Bowie, George Har­ri­son, Yoko Ono, James Brown, Bo Did­dley, Jer­ry Gar­cia, Chris­tine McVie, Mick Jag­ger, Lin­da Ron­stadt and more. Each inter­view runs 30–60 good min­utes. They’re fas­ci­nat­ing to lis­ten to, and you can find them on iTunes and the web.

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 Archive of Audio Inter­views with Rock, Jazz & Folk Leg­ends Now on iTunes

Maya Angelou Tells Studs Terkel How She Learned to Count Cards & Hus­tle in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

Blank on Blank Ani­ma­tions Revive Lost Inter­views with David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck

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William S. Burroughs’ Home Movies, Featuring Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Steve Buscemi & Cats

in Literature | February 6th, 2015

Giv­ing Gus Van San­t’s Drug­store Cow­boy a re-watch a cou­ple of weeks ago, I found I espe­cial­ly enjoyed William S. Bur­roughs’ appear­ance toward the end as — what else? — an aged but wise drug user in whose benev­o­lent pres­ence Matt Dil­lon’s pro­tag­o­nist comes to life-chang­ing con­clu­sions. That pic­ture rep­re­sent­ed a break into the main­stream, or close to it, for Van Sant, a direc­tor pre­vi­ous­ly known for Mala Noche, a stark black-and-white take on street hus­tlers on Port­land’s Skid Row.

But Bur­roughs’ pres­ence, among oth­er things, allowed Drug­store Cow­boy to keep a cer­tain raw edge. If you real­ly want to see Bur­roughs’ in a con­text of cin­e­mat­ic raw­ness, though, have a look at these home movies. We’ve pulled them out of the inter­net’s attic as a cel­e­bra­tion of the Naked Lunch author’s 101st birth­day. Only light­ly and taste­ful­ly edit­ed, these VHS gems (part one, part two) can­did­ly depict Bur­roughs at home in Lawrence, Kansas in 1996, just a year before his death.

They also find him in the com­pa­ny of such notable friends as Pat­ti Smith, Steve Busce­mi, and Allen Gins­berg, smok­ing, drink­ing, and — in Smith’s case — bust­ing out the gui­tar. Cats, as promised, roam through the frame. You might not call Bur­roughs him­self, made some­what less exu­ber­ant by time, the life of the par­ty, but he does seem to have radi­at­ed a kind of askew ani­mat­ing spir­it until the end. It cer­tain­ly kept him sur­round­ed by coun­ter­cul­tur­al lumi­nar­ies, all of them sure­ly still as keen as that young phar­ma­cy-rob­ber to learn from him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Drug­store Cow­boy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989)

Hear a Great Radio Doc­u­men­tary on William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rat­ed by Iggy Pop

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Between Time and Timbuktu, an Obscure TV Gem Based on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut

in Comedy, Literature, Television | February 6th, 2015

Just won­der­ing, who among us knows how to sing the zip code of Boston’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion, WGBH-TV?

If you war­bled “02134” with­out hes­i­ta­tion, you prob­a­bly grew up watch­ing a beloved children’s tele­vi­sion show of the 70s.

It turns out Zoom wasn’t the only cool pro­gram WGBH hatched in 1972. On March 13, just a cou­ple of months after Zoom’s debut, the sta­tion aired Between Time and Tim­buk­tu, a 90-minute spe­cial inspired by the work of Kurt Von­negut.

The script was writ­ten by David Odell, who lat­er won an Emmy for The Mup­pet Show, but Von­negut advised, pinch­ing char­ac­ters and scenes from such favorites as Cat’s Cra­dle, Sirens of Titan, and “Har­ri­son Berg­eron.”

Von­negut also wrote the intro­duc­tion to the pub­lished script, a paper­back quick­ie enhanced by pro­duc­tion stills and pho­tos tak­en by Vonnegut’s wife, Jill Kre­mentz. It was as good a forum as any for him to announce his retire­ment from film, which he cit­ed as a medi­um “too clank­ing and real” for his com­fort.

The show itself is like­ly to cause nos­tal­gia for television’s free­wheel­ing, Mon­ty Python era.

Though 1972 wasn’t an entire­ly sil­ly peri­od, if you’ll recall. The Viet­nam War was rag­ing, with Wal­ter Cronkite hold­ing down the CBS Evening News desk.

Between Time and Tim­buk­tu cap­i­tal­izes on the vet­er­an broad­cast­er’s ubiq­ui­ty by cast­ing come­di­an Ray Gould­ing of Bob and Ray fame, as an appro­pri­ate­ly grave Wal­ter Gesund­heit. Bob joined him at the news desk as a fic­ti­tious for­mer astro­naut. Von­negut was appre­cia­tive of their efforts, stat­ing that Amer­i­can come­di­ans had prob­a­bly done more to shape his think­ing than any oth­er writer.

Also look for William Hick­ey, who played Prizzi’s Honor’s genial, aged mafia don, in the lead role of Stony Stevenson—now there’s a peri­od char­ac­ter name! If you’ll remem­ber, Stony is also the first civil­ian in space, at least accord­ing to the Sirens of Titan.

via The Air­ship

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Watch a Young Bob Marley and The Wailers Perform Live in England (1973): For His 70th Birthday Today

in Music | February 6th, 2015

If you’ve spent any time at all on a col­lege cam­pus, you’ve heard Bob Mar­ley and the Wailer’s 1984 com­pi­la­tion album Leg­end waft­ing from dorm rooms and frat house win­dows. The longest chart­ing album in the his­to­ry of Bill­board mag­a­zine, it con­tains all of the band’s top 40 hits and more or less stands as every young American’s intro­duc­tion to the icon­ic Jamaican singer, if not to reg­gae music itself. Before Leg­end, there was Eric Clapton’s cov­er of Marley’s 1973 sin­gle “I Shot the Sher­iff.” Clapton’s ver­sion hit num­ber one on the Bill­board Hot 100 in ’74—his only num­ber one hit in the U.S.—and intro­duced Amer­i­can audi­ences to Marley’s fiery pol­i­tics, if not always to Mar­ley him­self. On what would have been Mar­ley’s 70th birth­day, we bring you some ear­ly footage of the man and his band.

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While many Amer­i­cans may been rather late to the Bob Mar­ley par­ty, and to reg­gae, the Eng­lish have long had a fas­ci­na­tion with West Indi­an music. Ska pio­neers like Desmond Dekker drew huge crowds in the UK while remain­ing much less pop­u­lar state­side (though Dekker had a num­ber one hit in the U.S. in 1969). But even some Brits didn’t quite know what to do with Mar­ley when he and the Wail­ers hit Eng­lish shores in the spring of 1973. Play­ing the Sun­down The­ater in the Lon­don sub­urb of Edmon­ton in sup­port of Dekker and a host of oth­er acts (top), Mar­ley, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “was still some­what of an enig­ma and the Wail­ers were son­i­cal­ly much more adven­tur­ous than some of the oth­er acts on the bill that day…. Accord­ing to reports at the time, most of the audi­ence at this Wail­ers gig didn’t ‘get’ the group.”

Nev­er­the­less, that ’73 tour changed the band’s for­tunes for­ev­er. After three albums, a pre­vi­ous UK tour, and sev­er­al attempts to break into the pop charts, the Wailer’s fourth record, major label-debut Catch a Fire, final­ly made them inter­na­tion­al stars, if not yet every Amer­i­can col­lege freshman’s favorite band. Just above, hear an FM broad­cast of anoth­er date from the UK leg of the Catch a Fire tour (see the Youtube page for the full setlist). After Britain, the band played a run of shows at Paul’s Mall in Boston, then four nights at New York’s Max’s Kansas City. Just a few months lat­er, they hit major cities all over the U.S. before return­ing to Eng­land in Novem­ber in sup­port of Burnin’, and the song Clap­ton made famous.

While we tend to asso­ciate Mar­ley with peace, love, and patchouli—an impres­sion fur­thered by Leg­end, which leans rather heav­i­ly on the love songs—these ear­ly albums are fierce and mil­i­tant, and do not hold back from explic­it calls for vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion and con­dem­na­tion of his­tor­i­cal oppres­sion. It’s a some­what neglect­ed side of Marley’s leg­end, but in these con­certs, we see just how mul­ti­fac­eted a song­writer and per­former he was. Charis­mat­ic and vibrant, and flanked by the tal­ent­ed Peter Tosh, Mar­ley exudes star pow­er. Today on his 70th birth­day, it’s still as good a time as any to cel­e­brate his life and remem­ber his stri­dent yet soul­ful calls for love and jus­tice.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Video: The Day Bob Mar­ley Played a Big Soc­cer Match in Brazil, 1980

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

Bill Graham’s Con­cert Vault: From Miles Davis to Bob Mar­ley

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

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The Shining and Other Complex Stanley Kubrick Films Recut as Simple Hollywood Movies

in Film | February 5th, 2015

Nev­er has the work of so pop­u­lar a film­mak­er felt so dis­tant from the main­stream than in the case of Stan­ley Kubrick. Just think­ing of the man who direct­ed movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shin­ing, Full Met­al Jack­et, and Eyes Wide Shut in the same cul­tur­al con­text as a rom-coms and explo­sion-inten­sive block­busters gets one chuck­ling. But Robert Ryang took it to the next lev­el when he cut togeth­er the trail­er above, which con­verts The Shin­ing, one of the most haunt­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror pic­tures ever made, into Shin­ing, a gar­den-vari­ety feel-good dram­e­dy.

Ryang, then a young edi­tor, pulled off this aston­ish­ing con­ver­sion as his win­ning sub­mis­sion for an Asso­ci­a­tion of Inde­pen­dent Cre­ative Edi­tors con­test, which asked for new trail­ers for exist­ing films that put them into dif­fer­ent gen­res. The Shin­ing trail­er’s suc­cess has spawned many imi­ta­tors, includ­ing quite a few based on Kubrick­’s work alone. Just above, we have 2001 turned into an entire­ly dif­fer­ent kind of sci­ence-fic­tion movie — the kind that try to over­whelm us with their sheer inten­si­ty sum­mer after tir­ing sum­mer.

This trail­er pro­duces anoth­er light­heart­ed Kubrick, this time out of per­haps Kubrick­’s most dark-heart­ed piece, the unre­lent­ing Viet­nam pic­ture Full Met­al Jack­et. Here it plays a lot more like Stripes with­out the satir­i­cal edge. Below, Kubrick­’s fam­i­ly-unfriend­ly Christ­mas film Eyes Wide Shut becomes a fam­i­ly-friend­ly Christ­mas film. Ulti­mate­ly, though, it speaks to the qual­i­ty of the orig­i­nal movies that, try as they might to con­vert them into the bland­est of stan­dard Hol­ly­wood fare, these trail­ers still can’t ful­ly con­ceal the pres­ence of some­thing cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly intrigu­ing indeed. I know I’d still buy a tick­et.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lost Kubrick: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick’s Unfin­ished Films

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Explore the Mas­sive Stan­ley Kubrick Exhib­it at the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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