Watch the Twin Peaks Visual Soundtrack Released Only in Japan: A New Way to Experience David Lynch’s Classic Show

in Music, Television | April 29th, 2019

Crit­ics describe David Lynch’s most mem­o­rable imagery as not just deeply trou­bling but deeply Amer­i­can. Despite that — or maybe because of it — his films have found enthu­si­as­tic audi­ences all over the world. But does Lynch com­mand quite as fer­vent a fan base in any coun­try as he does in Japan? Unlike­ly though the cul­tur­al match of cre­ator and view­er may seem, Lynch’s work tends to make big splash­es in the Land of the Ris­ing Sun, and Twin Peaks, the ground­break­ing­ly strange tele­vi­sion dra­ma Lynch co-cre­at­ed with Mark Frost, made an espe­cial­ly big one. Stand­ing as evi­dence is the Twin Peaks mate­r­i­al made for the Japan­ese and no one else: the Lynch-direct­ed Twin Peaks Geor­gia Cof­fee com­mer­cials, for instance, or the Twin Peaks Visu­al Sound­track on Laserdisc.

“What must the thir­ty-five mil­lion peo­ple who tuned in to the pilot episode of Twin Peaks in April 1990 have thought when they first wit­nessed the show’s open­ing cred­its?” writes musi­cian Claire Nina Norel­li in her book on Twin Peaks’ sound­track. “This haunt­ing music, cou­pled with images of rur­al ter­rain and indus­tri­al­iza­tion, must have belied audi­ences’ expec­ta­tions.”

That holds as true for audi­ences out­side Amer­i­ca as inside it: Norel­li, who first saw the show in her “small, iso­lat­ed home­town” of Perth, Aus­tralia, writes that “what real­ly cap­tured my atten­tion dur­ing what would be the first of many for­ays into the world of Twin Peaks was its sound­track, com­posed by Ange­lo Badala­men­ti.”

The Twin Peaks Visu­al Sound­track, which you can watch on Youtube, takes Badala­men­ti’s sound­track (which Norel­li cred­its with “strength­en­ing the visu­al lan­guage” of the show, no mean feat giv­en the innate strength of Lynch’s visions) and accom­pa­nies it with footage of the small town of Twin Peaks and its envi­rons — or rather, footage of the loca­tions around Wash­ing­ton state that Lynch and com­pa­ny used to craft the small town of Twin Peaks and its envi­rons. Matt Humphrey of the Twin Peaks Pod­cast high­lights the track “Lau­ra Palmer’s Theme,” whose video “explores the train grave­yard where they filmed the exte­ri­ors of Lau­ra’s death loca­tion. Now, in the series, the inte­ri­ors of the train were built on sets. In this video you can see the actu­al inte­ri­or of the old trains. It’s pret­ty cool/gross.”

“From what I can tell,” Humphrey writes, “these Visu­al Sound­track videos were tak­en in maybe 1992 by a Japan­ese film crew.” In some shots, he adds, “you can see the towns­folk star­ing.” Oth­er shots bear traces of Twin Peaks’ pop­u­lar­i­ty: “The Dou­ble R din­er is already sport­ing the ‘Twin Peaks Cher­ry Pie’ sign, so I think it’s after the series’ run. How­ev­er the town of North Bend is still in full Twin Peaks pro­mo­tion­al mode as you can see some gift shops in the videos sell­ing all sorts of mem­o­ra­bil­ia.” But Twin Peaks fans will espe­cial­ly enjoy the open­ing of the Visu­al Sound­track, a CGI fly-through of the epony­mous town com­plete with the afore­men­tioned din­er (cof­fee and cher­ry pie not includ­ed in the ren­der­ing), the Twin Peaks Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment, and a log­ging truck. See­ing how it all com­pares to Lynch’s hand-drawn map from when he first pitched the show to ABC will be left as an exer­cise for the true fan.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Exper­i­men­tal Post-Punk Band Xiu Xiu Plays the Music from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

Japan­ese Movie Posters of 10 David Lynch Films

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

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How to Take 70+ MasterClass Courses For Less Than a Cup of Good Coffee

in Online Courses | April 28th, 2019


FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Mas­ter­class has devel­oped a cat­a­log of online cours­es taught by “the world’s great­est minds.” As it stands, they have 85 cours­es cov­er­ing film­mak­ing, cre­ative writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, song­writ­ing and more, taught by fig­ures like David Lynch, Annie Lei­bovitz, Mal­colm Glad­well, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman, David Mamet and oth­ers. You can sign up for an indi­vid­ual course for $90. (Each course is list­ed below.) Or if you pur­chase an All Access Pass, you can take every course in the cat­a­log over a 12-month peri­od. The All Access Pass runs $180–which trans­lates to about $2.00 per course. Not bad, but if you want some­thing com­plete­ly free, see our col­lec­tion: How to Take 70+ Mas­ter­Class Cours­es For Less Than a Cup of Good Cof­fee

Act­ing

Helen Mir­ren Teach­es Act­ing

Samuel L. Jack­son Teach­es Act­ing

Natal­ie Port­man Teach­es Act­ing

Filmmaking/Directing

David Lynch Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Film

Spike Lee Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Wern­er Her­zog Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Mar­tin Scors­ese Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Ken Burns Teach­es Doc­u­men­tary Film­mak­ing

Jodie Fos­ter Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Ron Howard Teach­es Direct­ing

Mira Nair Teach­es Inde­pen­dent Film­mak­ing

Hans Zim­mer Teach­es Film Scor­ing

Dan­ny Elf­man Teach­es Music for Film

Pho­tog­ra­phy

Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy

Jim­my Chin Teach­es Adven­ture Pho­tog­ra­phy

Sci­ence

Neil deGrasse Tyson Teach­es Sci­en­tif­ic Think­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Writ­ing: Fic­tion, Poet­ry, TV, Plays & More

Mal­colm Glad­well Teach­es Writ­ing

Mar­garet Atwood Teach­es Cre­ative Writ­ing

Neil Gaiman Teach­es The Art of Sto­ry­telling

David Mamet Teach­es Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing

Bil­ly Collins Teach­es Read­ing and Writ­ing Poet­ry

Dan Brown Teach­es Writ­ing Thrillers

Dominique Ansel Teach­es French Pas­try Fun­da­men­tals

David Bal­dac­ci Teach­es Mys­tery and Thriller Writ­ing

James Pat­ter­son Teach­es Writ­ing

Shon­da Rhimes Teach­es Writ­ing For Tele­vi­sion

Aaron Sork­in’s Mas­ter­Class

R.L. Stine Teach­es Writ­ing for Young Audi­ences

Joyce Car­ol Oates on  the Short Sto­ry

David Sedaris on Sto­ry­telling and Humor

Music and Song­writ­ing

Car­los San­tana Teach­es The Art and Soul of Gui­tar

Her­bie Han­cock Teach­es Jazz

Tom Morel­lo Teach­es Elec­tric Gui­tar

Itzhak Perl­man Teach­es Vio­lin

Armin van Buuren Teach­es Dance Music

Christi­na Aguil­era Teach­es Singing

deadmau5 Teach­es Elec­tron­ic Music Pro­duc­tion

Tim­ba­land Teach­es Pro­duc­ing and Beat­mak­ing

Ush­er Teach­es the Art of Per­for­mance

Hans Zim­mer Teach­es Film Scor­ing

Dan­ny Elf­man Teach­es Music for Film

Com­e­dy

Steve Mar­tin Teach­es Com­e­dy

Judd Apa­tow Teach­es Com­e­dy

Cook­ing

Wolf­gang Puck Teach­es Cook­ing

Gor­don Ram­say Teach­es Cook­ing

Gor­don Ram­say Teach­es Cook­ing II: Restau­rant Recipes at Home

Alice Waters Teach­es Home Cook­ing

Gabriela Cama­ra Teach­es Mex­i­can Cook­ing

Dominique Ansel Teach­es French Pas­try Fun­da­men­tals

Thomas Keller Teach­es Cook­ing Tech­niques

James Suck­ling Teach­es Wine Appre­ci­a­tion

Mas­si­mo Bot­tura Teach­es Mod­ern Ital­ian Cook­ing

Aaron Franklin Teach­es Texas-Style BBQ

Lyn­nette Mar­rero & Ryan Chetiyawar­dana Teach Mixol­o­gy

Fash­ion

Marc Jacobs Teach­es Fash­ion Design

Diane Von Fursten­burg Teach­es Fash­ion

Anna Win­tour Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Lead­er­ship

Bob­bi Brown Teach­es Make­up and Beau­ty

Archi­tec­ture and Design

Kel­ly Wearstler Teach­es Inte­ri­or Design

Frank Gehry Teach­es Design and Archi­tec­ture

Games

Gar­ry Kas­parov Teach­es Chess

Daniel Negre­anu Teach­es Pok­er

Phil Ivey Teach­es Pok­er Strat­e­gy

Will Wright Teach­es Game Design and The­o­ry

Sports

Stephen Cur­ry Teach­es Bas­ket­ball

Ser­e­na Williams Teach­es Ten­nis

Simone Biles Teach­es Gym­nas­tics Fun­da­men­tals

Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics

Bob Iger Teach­es Busi­ness Strat­e­gy & Lead­er­ship

Jeff Good­by & Rich Sil­ver­stein Teach Adver­tis­ing and Cre­ativ­i­ty

Sara Blake­ly Teach­es Self-Made Entre­pre­neur­ship

Paul Krug­man Teach­es Eco­nom­ics and Soci­ety

Howard Schultz Lead­ing a Val­ues-Based Busi­ness

Chris Voss Teach­es the Art of Nego­ti­a­tion

Lead­er­ship

Bob Iger Teach­es Busi­ness Strat­e­gy & Lead­er­ship

Doris Kearns Good­win Teach­es US Pres­i­den­tial His­to­ry and Lead­er­ship

Anna Win­tour Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Lead­er­ship

Sundry

Jane Goodall Teach­es Con­ser­va­tion

David Axel­rod & Karl Rove Teach Cam­paign Strat­e­gy

Chris Had­field Teach­es Space Explo­ration

Misty Copeland Teach­es Bal­let Tech­nique and Artistry

RuPaul Teach­es Self-Expres­sion and Authen­tic­i­ty

 

This page will be updat­ed as more cours­es get added to the Mas­ter­Class cat­a­log.

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Why Do Sad People Like to Listen to Sad Music? Psychologists Answer the Question in Two Studies

in Music, Psychology | April 26th, 2019

I find it sur­pris­ing that psy­chol­o­gists have only just begun to study the rea­sons that sad peo­ple love sad songs. There’s an entire genre named after sad­ness, and the blues inspired near­ly all mod­ern music in one way or anoth­er. Clas­si­cal music is filled with dirges, ele­gies, laments, requiems, and “count­less tear-jerk­ers.” Lis­ten to the music of any ancient soci­ety and you will like­ly find the same. Humans, it seems, have some innate need to hear sad songs.

Maybe this isn’t too sur­pris­ing. We aren’t the only species to expe­ri­ence grief, but we are the only one to have devised lan­guage, and ways to make it sing to us. We tell sto­ries of loss through music, just as through every oth­er art. This expla­na­tion hard­ly sat­is­fies sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty, how­ev­er. Psy­chol­o­gists want to know, specif­i­cal­ly, why we do this. Or—more specifically—why sad peo­ple do this.

Maybe not every­one enjoys the maudlin jan­gle of The Smiths dur­ing a breakup, or wants to lis­ten to Leonard Cohen after a loss. But enough peo­ple do that scenes of sad char­ac­ters lis­ten­ing to sad songs (or being sad while sad songs play) are some of the most mem­o­rable, and mem­o­rably par­o­died, in movie his­to­ry. Researchers Anne­mieke Van den Tol and Jane Edwards at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lim­er­ick want­ed to under­stand the phe­nom­e­non in a 2013 study, so they sought out par­tic­i­pants online.

The researchers opt­ed for a lim­it­ed qual­i­ta­tive approach to get the ball rolling. “This issue has hard­ly been inves­ti­gat­ed before,” writes Chris­t­ian Jar­rett at The British Psy­cho­log­i­cal Society’s Research Digest. Their sam­ple con­sist­ed of a self-select­ing group of adults, age 18 to 66. Thir­ty-five of them were men and 30 women. Most of the respon­dents were Irish, though some were also from the Nether­lands, the U.S., Ger­many, and Spain.

Each of the study par­tic­i­pants was asked to describe a spe­cif­ic time in their lives when “they’d had a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence and then chose to lis­ten to a sad piece of music.” Their descrip­tions were then ana­lyzed for recur­ring themes. Among the most com­mon were nos­tal­gia, a desire for con­nec­tion, and a sense of “com­mon human­i­ty.” The par­tic­i­pants also cit­ed aes­thet­ic appre­ci­a­tion and a “re-expe­ri­enc­ing of their affect” in which the sad song helped them express their feel­ings and find relief.

A more recent study pub­lished in Emo­tion con­cen­trat­ed its focus. Rather than sur­vey­ing peo­ple who had had sad times in their lives—a cat­e­go­ry that includes pret­ty much everyone—researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da sur­veyed peo­ple with major depres­sion. Their sam­ple size is hard­ly any larg­er, and the par­tic­i­pants are more homoge­nous: 76 female under­grad­u­ates, half of whom had a diag­no­sis of major depres­sive dis­or­der and half of whom did not.

The study repli­cat­ed meth­ods used in a 2015 study to find out whether peo­ple with depres­sion tend­ed to choose sad music over “hap­py and neu­tral music,” writes Jar­rett. That turned out to be the case, the researchers found. The rea­son sur­prised them. Against “the provoca­tive idea” argued in oth­er research “that depressed peo­ple are seek­ing to per­pet­u­ate their low mood,” the study instead found that those “who favored sad music said that they did so because it was relax­ing, calm­ing or sooth­ing.”

In some ways, the answers aren’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from those of peo­ple who are not clin­i­cal­ly depressed but still expe­ri­ence peri­ods of deep sad­ness. Sad songs give mean­ing to our pain and let us know we aren’t the only ones feel­ing it. But we know this. Every­one has at least one or two sad songs that soothe them, and some of us have whole playlists of them. The Paste mag­a­zine staff put togeth­er an excel­lent list of songs that helped them “hurt so good.” It’s got some of the finest writ­ers and singers of sad songs on it: Tam­my Wynette, Elliot Smith, Tom Waits, Pat­ty Grif­fin, Prince, by way of Sinead O’Connor. If one of your sad songs isn’t on here, you’ll prob­a­bly find a few new ones to add.

I’d sug­gest for inclu­sion, to start, The Cure’s “The Same Deep Water as You,” Etta James’ “I Rather Go Blind,” Bon­nie ‘Prince’ Billie’s “I See a Dark­ness,” Radiohead’s “How to Dis­ap­pear Com­plete­ly,” and The Smith’s “That Joke Isn’t Fun­ny Any­more.” Tell us, what would you add—and why would you want to do a thing like lis­ten to sad music when you’re already mis­er­able? Tell us your rea­sons, and your songs, below.

via Research Digest

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Most Depress­ing Radio­head Songs Accord­ing to Data Sci­ence: Hear the Songs That Ranked High­est in a Researcher’s “Gloom Index”

Nick Cave Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Songs–His Favorite “Hid­ing Songs”

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Pulled Him­self Out of a Deep, Last­ing Funk: He Took Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice & Lis­tened to the Music of John Prine

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

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Steven Pinker & Rebecca Goldstein Debate the Value of Reason in an Animated Socratic Dialogue

in Animation, Philosophy | April 26th, 2019

Aca­d­e­m­ic pow­er cou­ple Steven Pinker and Rebec­ca New­berg­er Gold­stein prob­a­bly need no intro­duc­tion to Open Cul­ture read­ers, but if so, their lengthy and impres­sive CVs are only a search and click away. The Har­vard cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist and nov­el­ist and philoso­pher, respec­tive­ly, are sec­u­lar human­ist heroes of a sort—public intel­lec­tu­als who have ded­i­cat­ed their lives to defend­ing sci­ence and clas­si­cal log­ic and rea­son­ing. So, what do two such peo­ple talk about when they go out to din­ner?

The TED-Ed video above depicts a date night sce­nario, with dia­logue record­ed live at TED in 2012 and edit­ed into an “ani­mat­ed Socrat­ic dia­logue.” The first scene begins with a defen­sive Gold­stein hold­ing forth on the decline of rea­son in polit­i­cal dis­course and pop­u­lar cul­ture. “Peo­ple who think too well are often accused of elit­ism,” says Gold­stein, while she and Pinker’s ani­mat­ed avatars stroll under a Star Trek bill­board fea­tur­ing Spock giv­ing the Vul­can salute, just one of many clever details insert­ed by ani­ma­tion stu­dio Cog­ni­tive.

Pinker nar­rows the debate to a dilemma—a Spock­ean dilem­ma, if you will—between the head and heart. “Per­haps rea­son is over­rat­ed,” he ven­tures (artic­u­lat­ing a posi­tion he may not actu­al­ly hold): “Many pun­dits have argued that a good heart and stead­fast moral clar­i­ty are supe­ri­or to the tri­an­gu­la­tions of over-edu­cat­ed pol­i­cy wonks.” The cow­boy with a six-shoot­er and a heart of gold depict­ed in the ani­ma­tion bests the stereo­typ­i­cal eggheads in every Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion.

The “best and bright­est” of the eggheads, after all, says Pinker, “dragged us into the quag­mire in Viet­nam.” Oth­er quag­mires advo­cat­ed by oth­er pol­i­cy wonks might come to mind (as might the unrea­son­ing cow­boys who made the big deci­sions.) Rea­son, says Pinker, gave us envi­ron­men­tal despo­li­a­tion and weapons of mass destruc­tion. He sets up a dichoto­my between “char­ac­ter & con­science” on the one side and “cold-heart­ed cal­cu­la­tion” on the oth­er. “My fel­low psy­chol­o­gists have shown that we are led by our bod­ies and our emo­tions and use our puny pow­ers of rea­son mere­ly to ratio­nal­ize our gut feel­ings after the fact.”

Gold­stein coun­ters, “how could a rea­soned argu­ment entail the inef­fec­tive­ness of rea­soned argu­ments?” (Visu­al learn­ers may remem­ber the image of a per­son blithe­ly saw­ing off the branch on which they sit.) “By the very act of try­ing to rea­son us into your posi­tion, you’re con­ced­ing reason’s poten­cy.” One might object that stat­ing a sci­en­tif­ic theory—such as the the­o­ry that sen­sa­tion and emo­tion come before reasoning—is not the same as mak­ing an Aris­totelian argu­ment.

But this is a 15-minute debate, not a philo­soph­i­cal trea­tise. There will, by nature of the forum and the edit­ing process, be eli­sions and some slip­pery uses of ter­mi­nol­o­gy. Still, when Gold­stein dis­miss­es the cri­tique of “logo­cen­trism” as an alle­ga­tion of “the crime of let­ting log­ic dom­i­nate our think­ing,” some philoso­phers may grind their teeth. The prob­lem of logo­cen­trism is not “too much log­ic” but the under­ly­ing influ­ence of Pla­ton­ic ide­al­ism and the so-called “meta­physics of pres­ence” on West­ern think­ing.

With­out the cri­tique of logo­cen­trism, argues philoso­pher Peter Grat­ton, “there is no 20th-cen­tu­ry con­ti­nen­tal phi­los­o­phy.” Hand­wav­ing away an entire body of thought seems rather hasty. Out­side of spe­cif­ic con­texts, ide­al­ized abstrac­tions like “rea­son” and “progress” may mean lit­tle to noth­ing at all in the messy real­i­ty of human affairs. This is the prob­lem Pinker alludes to in ask­ing whether rea­son can have moral ends if it is main­ly a tool we use to sat­is­fy short-term bio­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al needs and desires.

By the time the check arrives, Pinker has been per­suad­ed by Goldstein’s argu­ment that in the course of time, maybe a long time, rea­son is the key dri­ver of moral progress, pro­vid­ed that cer­tain con­di­tions are met: that rea­son­ers care about their well-being and that they belong to a com­mu­ni­ty of oth­er rea­son­ers who hold each oth­er account­able and pro­duce bet­ter out­comes than indi­vid­u­als can alone. Drop your assump­tions, watch their stim­u­lat­ing ani­mat­ed din­ner and see if, by the final course, you are per­suad­ed too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Pinker: “Dear Human­ists, Sci­ence is Not Your Ene­my”

What is the Good Life? Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Niet­zsche, & Kant’s Ideas in 4 Ani­mat­ed Videos

How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions on Ethics Nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er

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

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Steve Jobs Shares a Secret for Success: Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

in Apple, Business, Entrepreneurship, Life | April 26th, 2019

In 1994—the year Apple co-founder Steve Jobs filmed an inter­view with The Sil­i­con Val­ley His­tor­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion in which he encour­aged peo­ple to go for what they want by enlist­ing oth­ers’ assistance—there was no social media, no Kick­starter, no GoFundMe, no Patre­on…  email was just becom­ing a thing.

Back then, ask­ing for help meant engag­ing in a face-to-face or voice-to-voice real time inter­ac­tion, some­thing many peo­ple find intim­i­dat­ing.

Not so young Jobs, an elec­tron­ics nut who relat­ed more eas­i­ly to the adult engi­neers in his Sil­i­con Val­ley neigh­bor­hood than to kids his own age.

As he recounts above, his desire to build a fre­quen­cy counter spurred him to cold call Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett-Packard), to see if he’d give him some of the nec­es­sary parts.

(In light of the recent col­lege admis­sions scan­dal, let us rec­og­nize the 12-year-old Jobs not only had the gump­tion to make that call, he also appears to have had no parental assis­tance look­ing up Hewlett’s num­ber in the Palo Alto White Pages.)

Hewlett agreed to the young go-getter’s request for parts. Jobs’ chutz­pah also earned him a sum­mer job on a Hewlett Packard assem­bly line, putting screws into fre­quen­cy coun­ters. (“I was in heav­en,” Jobs said of this entry lev­el posi­tion.)

Per­haps the biggest les­son for those in need of help is to ask bold­ly.

Ask like it’s 1994.

No, ask like it’s 1968, and you’re a self-starter like Steve Jobs hell­bent on procur­ing those spe­cial­ty parts to build your fre­quen­cy counter.

(Let’s fur­ther pre­tend that lying around wait­ing for Mom to order you a DIY fre­quen­cy counter kit on Ama­zon is not an option…)

Need an extra push?

Psy­chol­o­gist Adam Grant’s best­selling Give and Take makes an effec­tive case for human inter­ac­tion as the path­way to suc­cess, whether you’re the kid plac­ing the call, or the big wig with the pow­er to grant the wish.

Social psy­chol­o­gist Hei­di Grant’s book, Rein­force­ments: How to Get Peo­ple to Help You, explains how to ask with­out snivel­ing, self-aggran­diz­ing, or putting the per­son on the receiv­ing end in an awk­ward posi­tion.

And that shy vio­let Aman­da Fuck­ing Palmer, author of The Art of Ask­ing and no stranger to the punk rock barter econ­o­my, details how her “nin­ja mas­ter-lev­el fan con­nec­tion” has result­ed in her every request being met—from hous­ing and meals to prac­tice pianos and a neti pot hand deliv­ered by an Aus­tralian nurse.

Just don’t for­get to say “please” and, even­tu­al­ly, “thank you.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Jobs on Life: “Stay Hun­gry, Stay Fool­ish”

A Young Steve Jobs Teach­es a Class at MIT (1992)

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this May for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Trivial Pursuit: The Shakespeare Edition Has Just Been Released: Answer 600 Questions Based on the Life & Works of William Shakespeare

in History, Literature, Theatre | April 26th, 2019

“The stan­dard thing to say is that each age makes a Shake­speare in its own image,” wrote The New York­er’s Adam Gop­nik on the the Bard’s 440th birth­day. But over the cen­turies, the bio­graph­i­cal and crit­i­cal por­tray­al of the play­wright of Ham­let, Romeo and Juli­et, Oth­el­lo, and King Lear has remained remark­ably con­sis­tent: “He was a genius at com­e­dy, a free-flow­ing nat­ur­al who would do any­thing for a joke or a pun, and whom life and abil­i­ty bent toward tragedy.” He evolved “a match­less all-sid­ed­ness and neg­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty, which could probe two ideas at once and nev­er quite come down on the ‘side’ of either: he was a man in whom a tem­pera­men­tal timid­i­ty and cau­tion blos­somed artis­ti­cal­ly into the near­est thing we have to uni­ver­sal­i­ty.”

But today, on Shake­speare’s 455th birth­day, we might still won­der how uni­ver­sal his work real­ly is. As luck would have it, the Shake­speare Birth­day Trust has just come up with a kind of test of that propo­si­tion: an all-Shake­speare edi­tion of the pop­u­lar board game Triv­ial Pur­suit.

“Devised by the Shake­speare Birth­place Trust, the inde­pen­dent and self-sus­tain­ing char­i­ty that cares for the world’s great­est Shake­speare her­itage sites in his home town of Strat­ford-upon-Avon, in part­ner­ship with games com­pa­ny, Win­ning Moves,” Triv­ial Pur­suit: The Shake­speare Edi­tion (which you can buy on the Shake­speare Birth­day Trust’s online shop) offers “600 ques­tions across six cat­e­gories — Come­dies, His­to­ries, Tragedies, Char­ac­ters, Biog­ra­phy and Lega­cy,” all “care­ful­ly craft­ed by Shake­speare schol­ars Dr Nick Wal­ton and Dr Anj­na Chouhan.”

One might assume that Shake­speare buffs and schol­ars will dom­i­nate this game. No doubt they will, but per­haps not as often as expect­ed, since its ques­tions give any­one with gen­er­al cul­tur­al aware­ness a fight­ing chance: “As well as ques­tions about Shakespeare’s life and works, there are oth­ers that link him to pop­u­lar cul­ture such as the Har­ry Pot­ter film series, TV shows Dr. Who and Upstart Crow, as well as actors Sir Patrick Stew­art, Sir Lau­rence Olivi­er, and Keanu Reeves, and the Bard’s less­er known influ­ence on the likes of Elvis Pres­ley and even the clas­sic car­toon Pop­eye.” As Wal­ton puts it, “there are all sorts of paths to Shake­speare,” not least because of his work’s still-unchal­lenged place as the most drawn-upon texts, delib­er­ate­ly or inad­ver­tent­ly, in the whole of the Eng­lish lan­guage. As for Shake­speare him­self, he remains “the reign­ing poet of the lan­guage,” in Gop­nik’s words, as well as “the ordi­nary poet of our com­pa­ny” — and now we have a game to play to keep him in our com­pa­ny.

Pick up your copy of the game here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 55 Hours of Shakespeare’s Plays: The Tragedies, Come­dies & His­to­ries Per­formed by Vanes­sa Red­grave, Sir John Giel­gud, Ralph Fiennes & Many More

30 Days of Shake­speare: One Read­ing of the Bard Per Day, by The New York Pub­lic Library, on the 400th Anniver­sary of His Death

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre

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

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David Bowie’s Mystical Appearances in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

in Film | April 25th, 2019

Younger fans might find it hard to believe, but David Bowie was not exact­ly at the height of cool­ness when he first appeared in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me in 1992. The overblown Glass Spi­der tour was five years ear­li­er, fol­lowed by a Great­est Hits tour in 1990. He had tried to rein­vent him­self with Tin Machine for two albums. In fact, with Ryko rere­leas­ing his cat­a­log on CD, it looked most­ly like Bowie would spend the rest of his career cash­ing in on nos­tal­gia.

The same crit­i­cisms were hurled at Lynch after the Cannes pre­miere of the Twin Peaks “pre­quel”. Quentin Taran­ti­no, who was at that Cannes pre­miere and heard the col­lec­tive boos from the audi­ence, said “David Lynch had dis­ap­peared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see anoth­er David Lynch movie until I hear some­thing dif­fer­ent.”

But whad­dya know? It turns out that the rest of the ‘90s were very good for both artists. Lynch went on to make some of his best work, and Fire Walk With Me is now con­sid­ered a clas­sic. Bowie wound up work­ing with Eno again on the uncom­pro­mis­ing and dense Out­side.

Now Bowie has only one scene in Fire Walk With Me, but god­damn if it isn’t one of the best in the movie. I dis­tinct­ly remem­ber the chill that shot up my spine just before Bowie’s Philip Jeffries–an FBI field agent who escapes the Black Lodge–makes his crazed appear­ance in Philadel­phia. Like a quan­tum par­ti­cle, he is both there and not there, walk­ing through a freeze frame of Agent Coop­er as the FBI’s secu­ri­ty cam­eras lock up.

“I’m not going to talk about Judy,” he says. “In fact we’re not gonna talk about Judy at all.”
The “Miss­ing Pieces” ver­sion on the FWWM DVD shows the entire scene as it plays out as shot, with Jef­fries break­ing down in pain before being tele­port­ed back to a hotel in Buenos Aires. It’s pret­ty straight­for­ward and a bit clunky.

In the offi­cial FWWM cut, Lynch and his edi­tor Mary Sweeney work some spe­cial Black Lodge alche­my.

“Who do you think that is there?” Jef­fries says, point­ing at Coop as blue sta­t­ic fades in over the scene. Two real­i­ties then vie for pow­er: Jef­fries’ gnom­ic warn­ings ver­sus his visions from a vis­it to the Black Lodge, the space above the con­ve­nience store, where all sorts of spir­its live, lurk, and wait. Ange­lo Badalamenti’s score groans and shrieks and runs back­wards. The scene is dense with clues and men­ace, and once things in the FBI office return to “nor­mal,” Jef­fries is gone.

“We live inside a dream,” Jef­fries had warned, and 25 years lat­er in Twin Peaks: The Return, Coop­er him­self would deliv­er a sim­i­lar line inside anoth­er police sta­tion, as two real­i­ties played over each oth­er, dou­ble-exposed.

David Bowie wouldn’t return to Lynch-world as an actor, but the direc­tor used his Out­side song, “I’m Deranged,” as the open­ing and clos­ing music to 1997’s Lost High­way, a track like that FWWM scene teeters on the brink of mad­ness, filled with cut-and-paste lyrics and Mike Garson’s insane piano runs.

When Lynch announced the return of Twin Peaks, and after the pass­ing of Bowie, fans won­dered if by some mir­a­cle Jef­fries would appear on the screen. Had Lynch man­aged to grab footage of the singer, like he had done for Cather­ine Coul­son, so close to their exit?

Instead, when Evil Coop­er final­ly met Jef­fries again, it was as a machine–fans jok­ing­ly called it a gigan­tic tea kettle–that both spoke in Eng­lish and puffed out numbers/clues in a cloud of steam.

Bowie report­ed­ly nev­er liked his 1992 per­for­mance because of his Louisiana accent, so when Lynch informed Bowie through his lawyer about his character’s return, Bowie asked for it to be redubbed by a real actor from Louisiana: Nathan Frizzell. (It may be authen­tic, but it ain’t no Bowie.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

Watch All of the Com­mer­cials That David Lynch Has Direct­ed: A Big 30-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Listen to Last Seen, a True-Crime Podcast That Takes You Inside an Unsolved, $500 Million Art Heist

in Art, Podcasts | April 25th, 2019

In the ear­ly morn­ing of March 18, 1990, two thieves entered the Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner Muse­um in Boston and stole 13 pieces of pre­cious art, includ­ing paint­ings by Ver­meer and Rem­brandt. To this day, those paint­ings, val­ued at $500 mil­lion dol­lars, have nev­er been recov­ered.

The sto­ry of the bold heist and the var­i­ous attempts to recov­er the paintings–they get told in a 10-part series of pod­casts called Last Seen. Cre­at­ed by WBUR and The Boston Globe, the true-crime pod­cast “takes us inside the ongo­ing effort to bring back the jew­els of the Gard­ner col­lec­tion.” You can lis­ten to the engross­ing episodes online, or via iTunes, Stitch­er and Spo­ti­fy. Or sim­ply stream the episodes below. And if you know any­thing that cracks the case, there’s a $5 mil­lion dol­lar reward.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Episode 6

Episode 7

Episode 8

Episode 9

Episode 10

To delve deep­er, you can also read two books on the mys­tery: Mas­ter Thieves: The Boston Gang­sters Who Pulled Off the World’s Great­est Art Heist and The Gard­ner Heist: The True Sto­ry of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft.

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:

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

Enter an Online Inter­ac­tive Doc­u­men­tary on Rembrandt’s The Night Watch and Learn About the Painting’s Many Hid­den Secrets

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

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