Mama Cass and John Denver Sing a Lovely Duet of “Leaving On a Jet Plane” (1972)

in Music, Politics | July 5th, 2022

My issue is that it’s all very well to sit back and com­plain but when it’s your coun­try you have a respon­si­bil­i­ty. — Cass Elliot

What could be more heav­en­ly than Cass Elliot of The Mamas & The Papas and singer-song­writer John Den­ver har­mo­niz­ing on Denver’s “Leav­ing on a Jet Plane,” a tune many con­ceived of as a protest to the Viet­nam War, owing large­ly to folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary’s cov­er ver­sion.

Maybe some vot­er reg­is­tra­tion added to the mix?

Before break­ing into their duet on the late night TV musi­cal vari­ety show The Mid­night Spe­cial, Den­ver invit­ed Mama Cass to share a few words on her efforts to get out the vote in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year:

I’ve been trav­el­ing around the coun­try for the past year or so, talk­ing on a lot of col­lege cam­pus­es and try­ing to find out exact­ly what peo­ple are think­ing, and the thing that’s impressed me the most is, there is still in this coun­try, believe it or not, after all the talk, a tremen­dous amount of apa­thy on the part of peo­ple who maybe don’t like the way things are going and maybe want to change it, but don’t do any­thing about it, y’know?

It was August 19, 1972. The war in Viet­nam and the upcom­ing con­test between Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon and his Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger George McGov­ern were the top sto­ries. June’s Water­gate break in was a mount­ing con­cern.

Ear­li­er in the day, the New York Times report­ed that “Sen­a­tor George McGov­ern expects (South Viet­namese) Pres­i­dent Nguyễn Văn Thiệu and his “cohorts” to flee Saigon into exile and a Com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed coali­tion to take con­trol of South Viet­nam if Mr. McGov­ern is elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States on Nov. 7.”

Cass Elliot, a McGov­ern sup­port­er, had become much more vocal about her polit­i­cal activism fol­low­ing the 1968 break up of The Mamas & The Papas, as in this inter­view with Rolling Stone:

I think every­body who has a brain should get involved in pol­i­tics.  Work­ing with­in. Not crit­i­ciz­ing it from the out­side.  Become an active par­tic­i­pant, no mat­ter how fee­ble you think the effort is.  I saw in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­ven­tion in Chica­go that there were more peo­ple inter­est­ed in what I was inter­est­ed in than I believed pos­si­ble.  It made me want to work.  It made me feel my opin­ion and ideas were not futile, that there would be room in an orga­nized move­ment of pol­i­tics for me to voice myself. 

She remained diplo­mat­ic on the Mid­night Spe­cial, telling view­ers that “I don’t think it’s so impor­tant who you vote for, you vote for who you believe in, but the impor­tant thing is to vote,” though it’s hard to imag­ine that any­one tun­ing in from home would mis­take her for a Nixon gal.

Ear­li­er in the year she had ush­ered at the Four For McGov­ern fundrais­ing con­cert at the LA Forum, was in the audi­ence at Madi­son Square War­ren Beatty’s Togeth­er for McGov­ern con­cert Gar­den, and attend­ed a par­ty Amer­i­cans Abroad for McGov­ern held in Lon­don.

Short­ly after the elec­tion (SPOILER: Her man lost), dur­ing an appear­ance on The Mike Dou­glas Show, above, she inti­mat­ed that she might be open to a career shift:

 I think I would like to be a Sen­a­tor or some­thing in twen­ty years.  I don’t think I real­ly know enough yet. I’m just 30 now and I would­n’t even be eli­gi­ble to run for office for anoth­er five years.  But I have a lot of feel­ings about things.  I know the way I would like to see things for this coun­try and in my trav­els, when I talk to peo­ple, every­body wants pret­ty much the same thing:  peace, enough jobs, no pover­ty and good edu­ca­tion.  And I’ve learned a lot.  It’s fun­ny.  So many peo­ple in show busi­ness go into pol­i­tics, and I used to say ‘What the heck do they know about it?’  But when you trav­el around, you real­ly do get to feel–not to be cliche–the pulse of the coun­try and what peo­ple want.  I’m con­cerned and it’s not good to be uncon­cerned and just sit there.

Lis­ten­ing to her dis­cuss Water­gate dur­ing her final vis­it to The Mike Dou­glas Show, short­ly before her 1974 death, real­ly makes us wish she was still here with us.

What we wouldn’t give to hear this out­spo­ken polit­i­cal observer’s take on the sit­u­a­tion our coun­try now finds itself in, espe­cial­ly with anoth­er five decades of expe­ri­ence under her belt.

Per­haps there’s an alter­nate uni­verse in which Cass Elliot is Pres­i­dent.

If you haven’t yet reg­is­tered to vote, now would be a great time to do so. It may not be too late to par­tic­i­pate in your state’s pri­ma­ry elec­tions. You know that’s what Cass would have want­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Tom Jones Per­forms “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audi­ence Away (1969)

Joni Mitchell Sings an Aching­ly Pret­ty Ver­sion of “Both Sides Now” on the Mama Cass TV Show (1969)

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Timeline of World War II (Month by Month) Told With Scenes Made from Dozens of WWII Movies

in Film, History | July 4th, 2022

We all learned a bit about the Sec­ond World War in school, or per­haps more than a bit. But for a great many of us, what we know of that peri­od of his­to­ry comes less from teach­ers and text­books than it does from movies. World War II as a cin­e­mat­ic genre has exist­ed since the ear­ly years of World War II itself, and at this point it has pro­duced so many films that not even the most avid his­tor­i­cal­ly-mind­ed cinephile could watch them all. Many such pic­tures, of course, take enor­mous lib­er­ties with their source mate­r­i­al. But if you con­cen­trate on just the most accu­rate parts of the most acclaimed movies about World War II, you can piece togeth­er a rea­son­ably truth­ful por­tray­al of its events.

Such is the premise, at any rate, of the video above, “Time­line of WW2 in Films.” Cre­at­ed by Youtu­ber Salokin, it arranges clips from dozens of films released over the past half-cen­tu­ry — Pat­ton, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Bat­tle of Britain, Dunkirk — in his­tor­i­cal order.

Open­ing with footage from Roman Polan­ski’s The Pianist refer­ring to the inva­sion of Poland in Sep­tem­ber 1939, it goes on to cov­er that year by draw­ing from the depic­tion of Sovi­et-Japan­ese bor­der con­flicts like the Bat­tles of Khalkhin Go and Nomon­han in Kang Je-gyu’s My Way, then from the depic­tion of the tit­u­lar fights on the Kare­lian Isth­mus in Pekka Parikka’s The Win­ter War.

As Kore­an and Finnish pro­duc­tions, respec­tive­ly, My Way and The Win­ter War offer per­spec­tives on World War II dif­fer­ent from the Amer­i­can one tak­en by Hol­ly­wood movies — Hol­ly­wood hav­ing once been the only motion-pic­ture indus­try with the resources to re-cre­ate the war in a con­vinc­ing man­ner. But the devel­op­ment of glob­al film pro­duc­tion in recent decades has also giv­en rise to wide­ly seen World War II movies from coun­tries like Aus­tralia, Ger­many, Den­mark, and Rus­sia, to name a few coun­tries whose films appear in this video. Not all of them agree per­fect­ly with his­to­ry as taught in the Unit­ed States, but then, Amer­i­can World War II movie enthu­si­asts have unre­solv­able con­flicts of their own: do you pre­fer Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan, for instance, or The Thin Red Line?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Inno­v­a­tive Film Visu­al­izes the Destruc­tion of World War II: Now Avail­able in 7 Lan­guages

Watch World War II Rage Across Europe in a 7 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1939 to 1945

Watch Footage of the Allies Rolling Through a Defeat­ed Ger­man Town in April, 1945: Restored & Col­orized with AI

Time Trav­el Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remark­ably High-Qual­i­ty 1940s Video

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less: How World War II Changed Cin­e­ma & Helped Cre­ate the French New Wave

Quentin Tarantino’s World War II Read­ing List

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Young Punk Rockers The Linda Lindas Play a Tiny Desk Concert Gig (at the Public Library)

in Music | July 1st, 2022

The last we checked in with teenage girl pow­er-punk band The Lin­da Lin­das, they were tear­ing up the Los Ange­les Pub­lic Library (Cypress Park branch) with their lock­down-hit “Racist, Sex­ist Boy.” After eleven-year-old drum­mer Mila de Garza recount­ed the xeno­pho­bic encounter that led to the song, the band unleashed some true noisy angst befit­ting a group twice their age. It was the song of rage we need­ed at the time, the clip went viral, and they soon got a record deal. Along the way, they’ve appeared in Amy Poehler’s doc­u­men­tary, con­tributed to a track by Best Coast, opened for Biki­ni Kill, played Jim­my Kim­mel Live, and received acco­lades from Thurston Moore and Tom Morel­lo of Rage Against the Machine.

Just over a year lat­er, and The Lin­da Lin­das are back in the library as part of NPR’s Tiny Desk con­cert series. Usu­al­ly Tiny Desk gigs fea­tures an artist play­ing in the very cramped offices of the radio sta­tion, but as things are still not 100% safe, The Lin­da Lin­das opt­ed for the place they know well, this time play­ing at the Los Ange­les Cen­tral Library branch.

This band is no one-off. The de Garza sis­ters, along with their cousin Eloise Wong and friend Bela Salazar, formed in 2018 and have been play­ing ever since. Com­pare the step up in con­fi­dence and band inter­play on this new­er ver­sion of “Racist, Sex­ist Boy,” with which they close the set.

Before that The Lin­da Lin­das per­form songs from their new album Grow­ing Up, includ­ing the pop­py Span­ish bal­lad “Cuán­tas Veces”, the pop-punk “Talk­ing to Myself,” and the title track. The band’s lyrics are hon­est, absent pre­ten­sion, and while many of the con­cerns are uni­ver­sal, the album is def­i­nite­ly born out of COVID-era anx­i­ety. If you’re won­der­ing how these years are affect­ing those com­ing of age at this time, the album is essen­tial.

And, hey kids, there’s still avail­able (not on the live playlist but as a sin­gle on band­camp) “Nino,” a har­mo­ny-filled ode to their pet cat.

By the way, there aren’t many oth­er rock bands play­ing in libraries, but we did find one while search­ing the inter­tubes: it’s The Clash’s Mick Jones play­ing a solo elec­tric set of his hits. It’s just one more reminder to sup­port your local library—you nev­er know who might turn up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Riot Grrrl Move­ment Cre­at­ed a Rev­o­lu­tion in Rock & Punk

Fear of a Female Plan­et: Kim Gor­don (Son­ic Youth) on Why Rus­sia and the US Need a Pussy Riot

Judy!: 1993 Judith But­ler Fanzine Gives Us An Irrev­er­ent Punk-Rock Take on the Post-Struc­tural­ist Gen­der The­o­rist

Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Con­certs: Inti­mate Per­for­mances from The Pix­ies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Sir Ben Kingsley Reads a Letter Written by Gandhi to Hitler (in the Voice of Mahatma Gandhi)

in History, Letters | July 1st, 2022

Sev­er­al years before Indi­an inde­pen­dence as World War loomed, Mahat­ma Gand­hi found he had lit­tle sway in inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics even as he built his move­ment at home. The phi­los­o­phy of satya­gra­ha did not sound noble to the British in 1939, for exam­ple, when the Indi­an leader wrote a let­ter exhort­ing them to let the Ger­mans take their coun­try, their homes, and even their lives rather than fight back. That same year, he wrote to Hitler, address­ing him as “Dear Friend” and writ­ing, “It is quite clear that you are today the one per­son in the world who can pre­vent a war which may reduce human­i­ty to a sav­age state.”

Gand­hi’s first 1939 let­ter to Hitler implies that the Führer was the only world leader who want­ed such a war. The Indi­an leader ful­ly under­stood the stakes. “My sym­pa­thies are all with the Jews,” he’d writ­ten in a 1938 arti­cle. “If there ever could be a jus­ti­fi­able war, in the name of and for human­i­ty, war against Ger­many to pre­vent the wan­ton per­se­cu­tion of a whole race would be com­plete­ly jus­ti­fied.” Still, he con­clud­ed, “I do not believe in any war.” He stuck to his prin­ci­ples even after Ger­many’s inva­sion of Poland in 1939.

“Not deterred by the out­break of war,” Alexan­der LaCasse writes at the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, “Gand­hi wrote to Hitler a sec­ond time.” Just above, you can see Sir Ben Kings­ley read that let­ter, in char­ac­ter as Gand­hi and per­haps sound­ing much like Gand­hi did when read­ing his let­ters aloud. Gand­hi “took cor­re­spon­dence very seri­ous­ly,” Nick Owen writes, and he “wrote — and was writ­ten to by — almost any­one.” In this much longer let­ter from 1940, Gand­hi extols the prac­ti­cal virtues of non-vio­lence and attempts some moral rea­son­ing:

If not the British, some oth­er pow­er will cer­tain­ly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. You are leav­ing no lega­cy to your peo­ple of which they would feel proud. They can­not take pride in a recital of a cru­el deed, how­ev­er skill­ful­ly planned. I, there­fore, appeal to you in the name of human­i­ty to stop the war.

“There is no evi­dence to sug­gest Hitler ever respond­ed to,” or even read, “either of Gand­hi’s let­ters,” writes LaCasse. And maybe lit­tle evi­dence that Gand­hi expect­ed a response. “I am aware that your view of life regards such spo­li­a­tions as vir­tu­ous acts,” he writes. “But we have been taught from child­hood to regard them as acts degrad­ing human­i­ty.” He con­tin­ues to pro­fess Hitler a friend, writ­ing “I own no foes. My busi­ness in life has been for the past 33 years to enlist the friend­ship of the whole of human­i­ty.”

Before his death in 1948, Gand­hi called the Holo­caust “the great­est crime of our time.” Accord­ing to a biog­ra­ph­er, he also added, “the Jews should have offered them­selves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown them­selves into the sea from cliffs. It would have aroused the world and the peo­ple of Ger­many.” Had he sug­gest­ed this in a let­ter to Europe’s Jews, it is unlike­ly they would have been per­suad­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Jung Psy­cho­an­a­lyzes Hitler: “He’s the Uncon­scious of 78 Mil­lion Ger­mans.” “With­out the Ger­man Peo­ple He’d Be Noth­ing” (1938)

When Mahat­ma Gand­hi Met Char­lie Chap­lin (1931)

Mahat­ma Gandhi’s List of the 7 Social Sins; or Tips on How to Avoid Liv­ing the Bad Life

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

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Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro Is Getting Adapted for the Stage by The Royal Shakespeare Company & Jim Henson’s Creature Shop

in Animation, Film, Theatre | July 1st, 2022

The films of Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li have won immense world­wide acclaim, in large part because they so ful­ly inhab­it their medi­um. Their char­ac­ters, their sto­ries, their worlds: all can come ful­ly to life only in ani­ma­tion. Still, it’s true that some of their mate­r­i­al did orig­i­nate in oth­er forms. The pre-Ghi­b­li break­out fea­ture Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, for instance, began as a com­ic book writ­ten and drawn by Miyaza­ki (who at first laid down the con­di­tion that it not be adapt­ed for the screen). Four years lat­er, by the time of My Neigh­bor Totoro, the nature of Ghi­b­li’s visions had become insep­a­ra­ble from that of ani­ma­tion itself.

Now, almost three and a half decades after Totoro’s orig­i­nal release, the pro­duc­tion of a stage ver­sion is well under­way. Play­bill’s Raven Brun­ner reports that the show “will open in Lon­don’s West End at The Bar­bi­can the­atre for a 15-week engage­ment Octo­ber 8‑January 21, 2023.

The pro­duc­tion will be pre­sent­ed by the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and exec­u­tive pro­duc­er Joe Hisaishi.” Japan’s most famous film com­pos­er, Hisaishi scored Totoro as well as all of Miyaza­k­i’s oth­er Ghi­b­li films so far, includ­ing Por­co Rosso, Princess Mononoke, and Spir­it­ed Away (itself adapt­ed for the stage in Japan ear­li­er this year).

As you can see in the video just above, the RSC pro­duc­tion of Totoro also involves Jim Hen­son’s Crea­ture Shop. “The pup­pets being built at Crea­ture Shop are based on designs cre­at­ed by Basil Twist, one of the UK’s most inno­v­a­tive pup­peteers,” writes Dead­line’s Baz Bamigboye, and they’ll be sup­ple­ment­ed by the work of anoth­er mas­ter, “Mervyn Mil­lar, of Britain’s cut­ting-edge Sig­nif­i­cant Object pup­pet stu­dio.” Even such an assem­bly of pup­pet-mak­ing exper­tise will find it a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge to re-cre­ate the denizens of the enchant­ed coun­try­side in which Totoro’s young pro­tag­o­nists find them­selves — to say noth­ing of the tit­u­lar wood spir­it him­self, with all his mass, mis­chief, and over­all benev­o­lence. As for how they’re rig­ging up the cat bus, Ghi­b­li fans will have to wait until next year to find out.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Cel­e­brat­ed in a Glo­ri­ous Con­cert Arranged by Film Com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki Teach­es You How to Draw Totoro in Two Min­utes

Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets in Vin­tage Primer From 1969

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

Hayao Miyaza­ki, The Mind of a Mas­ter: A Thought­ful Video Essay Reveals the Dri­ving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incred­i­ble Body of Work

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Take Graphic Design Courses to Launch Your Career as a Graphic Designer, Video Game Designer, UI Designer & More

in Design, Online Courses | June 30th, 2022

What can you do with graph­ic design skills? More and more, it seems, as emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies dri­ve new apps, soft­ware, and games. New design chal­lenges are every­where, from human-machine inter­faces, to 3D mod­el­ing in video games and ani­mat­ed films, to re-imag­in­ing clas­sic designs in print and on screen. In addi­tion to tra­di­tion­al jobs like art direc­tor, graph­ic design­er, pro­duc­tion artist, and ani­ma­tor, the past few years have seen a sharp rise in demand for User Expe­ri­ence (UX) and User Inter­face (UI) design­ers, roles that require a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent cre­ative and tech­ni­cal skill sets.

You could get a four-year degree in design to work in one of these fields, or you could take a Cours­era Spe­cial­iza­tion and be one step clos­er. Cours­era has met the demand for new job skills and tech edu­ca­tion by part­ner­ing with top arts insti­tu­tions and uni­ver­si­ties to offer online cours­es at low cost. All of these cours­es grant cer­tifi­cates that show poten­tial employ­ers you’re ready to put your learn­ing to use. If careers in art and con­tem­po­rary design, graph­ic design, web user expe­ri­ence and inter­face design, or video game design appeal to you, you can learn those skills in the five cer­tifi­cate-grant­i­ng Spe­cial­iza­tion pro­grams below.

Graph­ic design­ers can choose to be as spe­cial­ized or gen­er­al­ized as they like, but as in all cre­ative fields, they need a thor­ough under­stand­ing of the basics. A Cours­era Spe­cial­iza­tion is a series of cours­es intend­ed to lead stu­dents to mas­tery, build­ing on the his­to­ry and foun­da­tions of the field. You can enroll for free and try out any of the Spe­cial­iza­tions for 7 days. After that, you’ll be charged between $39-$49 per month until you com­plete the cours­es in a Spe­cial­iza­tion. (Finan­cial aid is avail­able).

The excit­ing Spe­cial­iza­tions from CALARTS and the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art will bring you many steps clos­er to a new career, or maybe even a new per­son­al pas­sion project.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Unveils a Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑Commerce Cer­tifi­cate: 7 Cours­es Will Help Pre­pare Stu­dents for an Entry-Lev­el Job in 6 Months       

Google & Cours­era Launch Career Cer­tifi­cates That Pre­pare Stu­dents for Jobs in 6 Months: Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment and UX Design

Become a Project Man­ag­er With­out a Col­lege Degree with Google’s Project Man­age­ment Cer­tifi­cate

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

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How to Get into a Creative “Flow State”: A Short Masterclass

in Life, Psychology | June 30th, 2022

Is “flow state” the new mind­ful­ness? The phrase has gained a lot of cur­ren­cy late­ly. You may have heard it spo­ken of in rar­i­fied terms that sound like you have to be a full-time artist, pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete, or Albert Ein­stein to access it. On the oth­er hand, we have award-win­ning jour­nal­ist, human per­for­mance expert, and Flow Research Col­lec­tive founder Steven Kotler explain­ing in a video that we fea­tured recent­ly how to achieve a flow state on com­mand. So, does flow require a lit­tle or a lot of us? It requires, first and fore­most, a shift in con­scious­ness.

In the field of pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy, flow is most asso­ci­at­ed with the­o­rist Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, whose Cre­ativ­i­ty: Flow the Psy­chol­o­gy of Dis­cov­ery and Inven­tion pro­vid­ed key con­tem­po­rary insights into the idea. For Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, direct­ing our activ­i­ty toward mate­r­i­al notions of secu­ri­ty sets us up for dis­ap­point­ment. Flow states are best under­stood as actu­al­ized cre­ativ­i­ty we can man­i­fest in almost any con­di­tions: we can be “hap­py, or mis­er­able, regard­less of what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing ‘out­side,’ just by chang­ing the con­tents of con­scious­ness,” he said.

For Taoists, flow means accord­ing with the nature of things as they are, which takes a lot of keep­ing still and let­ting be. Goethe used the phrase “effort­less effort” to describe cre­ative flow. Kotler’s def­i­n­i­tion is a bit more oper­a­tional: Flow, he says in his Mind­val­ley talk above, is an “opti­mal­ized state of con­scious­ness where we feel our best and we per­form our best.” One thing all notions of flow seem to share is a belief in the impor­tance of what Kotler calls “non-time,” or what the Taoist calls “the doing of non-doing,” a plea­sur­able rest­ing state with­out dis­trac­tion. (Kotler takes his “non-time” between 4 and 7:30 in the morn­ing.)

Kotler him­self arrived at the flow state “through an unusu­al door” — which he illus­trates in his talk with an MRI of a skull in pro­file and list titled “The Cost of Doing Busi­ness.” For an ambi­tious free­lance jour­nal­ist, that meant “2 frac­tured kneecaps, 2 shat­tered arms, 1 snapped wrist, 2 man­gled ankles,” and the list goes on (includ­ing 5 con­cus­sions): a descrip­tion of injuries incurred while fol­low­ing extreme ath­letes around the world. What he saw, he says, were peo­ple who had every­thing going against them — lit­tle edu­ca­tion, lit­tle nat­ur­al abil­i­ty, and his­to­ries of “destroyed homes.”

The ath­letes he fol­lowed were trau­ma­tized peo­ple who would not nec­es­sar­i­ly be can­di­dates for world-chang­ing inno­va­tion. Yet here they were, “extend­ing the lim­its of kines­thet­ic pos­si­bil­i­ty” — doing the pre­vi­ous­ly impos­si­ble by achiev­ing flow states. Kotler’s descrip­tions of flow are often very Yang, we might say, focus­ing on “peak per­for­mance” and favor­ing sports exam­ples. But his claims for flow also sound like deeply heal­ing med­i­cine. He talks about “trig­ger­ing” flow states to “over­come PTSD, addic­tion, and heart­break.” Like Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, he saw first­hand how flow states can heal trau­ma.

We can achieve this “altered state of con­scious­ness” by surf­ing or sky­div­ing. We can also achieve it while solv­ing equa­tions, trans­lat­ing for­eign lan­guages, or knit­ting scarves. As Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi points out, it is not the con­tent of an expe­ri­ence — or the expense in air­line tick­ets and bro­ken bones — that mat­ters so much as our state of absorp­tion in activ­i­ties we love and prac­tice reg­u­lar­ly, which take us away from thoughts about our ever-present prob­lems and open up the space for pos­si­bil­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Enter a ‘Flow State’ on Com­mand: Peak Per­for­mance Mind Hack Explained in 7 Min­utes

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

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

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Bars, Beer & Wine in Ancient Rome: An Introduction to Roman Nightlife and Spirits

in History | June 30th, 2022

When they final­ly get those kinks worked out of the time machine and we can take a tourist trip back to Rome—having signed the non-inter­ven­tion paper­work, of course—we’re going to need some­one to guide us. I pro­pose that should be Gar­rett Ryan, host of the Told In Stone YouTube chan­nel, PhD in Greek and Roman His­to­ry, and author of Naked Stat­ues, Fat Glad­i­a­tors, and War Ele­phants: Fre­quent­ly Asked Ques­tions about the Ancient Greeks and Romans. He has made it his job to answer the every­day ques­tions about these two ancient cul­tures that most his­to­ri­ans pass over. But these are the ques­tions we’re going to need as tourists if we think we’re going to go par­ty in Ancient Rome.

Because invari­ably some­body in our tourist group is going to ask “where’s the bars and night­clubs?” Fair ques­tion. Ryan has the answers, all told in the video above.

Much like Las Vegas or Dubai, the real par­ty­ing is hap­pen­ing at the elite lev­els, among the idle rich who could afford day long ban­quets, extrav­a­gant activ­i­ties such as live lion hunts, and import dancers from as far away as Spain. In Ryan’s recon­struc­tion of a debauched night out he fol­lows a typ­i­cal nou­veau riche who goes slum­ming in the grim­i­er parts of the city, picks fights that his body­guards sort out, and then lies his way into a par­ty at a man­sion by claim­ing to know a friend inside. (He also bribes the guards). And then it’s on and on until the break of dawn.

For the major­i­ty of Romans though, the cities weren’t bustling at night. Most peo­ple rose at dawn and slept at dusk. Bars and eater­ies did exist, how­ev­er. After the din­ner hour, these weren’t fam­i­ly-friend­ly estab­lish­ments. There was gam­bling and drink­ing, and har­ried wait­ress­es who didn’t have time for dum­mies, and the beer and wine was cheap and excep­tion­al­ly low qual­i­ty, and…wait, what exact­ly has changed? Not much, it seems.

Ryan’s oth­er videos offer quick his­to­ries on the beer and wine selec­tions you might find in Rome and in the larg­er empire. Although the upper class­es looked down their Roman noses at beer, a major­i­ty of future Europe pre­ferred it, includ­ing Gaul, also known as mod­ern day France. Tac­i­tus con­sid­ered beer (from Ger­many) as bad as spoiled wine. And indeed a lot of it was sour, improved with the addi­tion of sweet­en­ers. The physi­cian Dioscorides didn’t like beer because it caused exces­sive gas. And while that might be true, it’s not like Roman wine would win any gold medals these days.

Both the Greeks and the Romans pre­ferred their wine heav­i­ly watered down, which might have been nec­es­sary for its strong taste. Sweet­en­ers like hon­ey would also be added to improve the taste. And most wine, fer­ment­ed in vats, only last­ed up to a year before turn­ing to vine­gar.

There’s so much more to learn at these videos, you should just dive in. But when the time trav­el trip comes, please keep your 21st cen­tu­ry opin­ions to your­self until we’re safe­ly home.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An 8‑Minute Ani­mat­ed Flight Over Ancient Rome

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

The Chang­ing Land­scape of Ancient Rome: A Free Online Course from Sapien­za Uni­ver­si­ty of Rome

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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