Monty Python Pays Tribute to Terry Jones: Watch Their Montage of Jones’ Beloved Characters in Action

in Comedy | January 31st, 2020

The actor, come­di­an, direc­tor, and medieval his­to­ri­an Ter­ry Jones passed away last week, but Mr. Cre­osote will nev­er die. Nor will any of the oth­er char­ac­ters por­trayed by Jones in his work with Mon­ty Python, the cul­ture-chang­ing com­e­dy troupe he co-found­ed with Eric Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Gra­ham Chap­man, and Ter­ry Gilliam. You can get a sense of Jones’ range as a comedic per­former in the three-minute com­pi­la­tion above, which fea­tures a range of Jones’ char­ac­ters includ­ing the crunchy frog-deal­ing can­dy-shop own­er, the avi­a­tor-hel­met­ed Span­ish Inquisi­tor, one of the four York­shire­men, and of course, the Bish­op.

My own intro­duc­tion to Jones’ work came through the Spam wait­ress, a Mon­ty Python char­ac­ter beloved of many chil­dren not yet born when Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, the troupe’s BBC series, first ran in the late 1960s and ear­ly 70s.

Set in a din­er where near­ly every dish involves Spam as at least one ingre­di­ent, the sketch pokes fun at the cheap tinned meat’s per­sis­tence on British tables well after the aus­ter­i­ty of the Sec­ond World War, and more sub­tly at the even deep­er and longer-last­ing per­sis­tence of the British wartime mind­set. I nat­u­ral­ly knew lit­tle of all this when first I saw the Spam sketch, and had nev­er once tast­ed Spam itself, but Jones’ com­mit­ment to his char­ac­ter — and that char­ac­ter’s blithe seri­ous­ness about the word “Spam” — got me laugh­ing.

Gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren and adults alike will con­tin­ue to enjoy the Spam wait­ress, as well as all of Jones’ oth­er char­ac­ters and their often absurd inter­ac­tions with those played by the rest of the Pythons. And the more they learn about the troupe and its work, the more they’ll appre­ci­ate Jones’ spe­cial con­tri­bu­tions to its lega­cy. After co-direct­ing Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail with Gilliam, he sin­gle­hand­ed­ly direct­ed the next two Python fea­tures, Life of Bri­an and The Mean­ing of Life. It was in that last film that Jones man­aged to bal­ance his direc­to­r­i­al duties with those of play­ing the colos­sal­ly obese, fre­quent­ly vom­it­ing Mr. Cre­osote, whose sheer glut­tony results in his explo­sion. So yes, tech­ni­cal­ly, Mr. Cre­osote did die — but every time we watch The Mean­ing of Life he lives, and we laugh, once again.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones (RIP) Was a Come­di­an, But Also a Medieval His­to­ri­an: Get to Know His Oth­er Side

The His­to­ry & Lega­cy of Magna Car­ta Explained in Ani­mat­ed Videos by Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es: “The Philoso­phers’ Foot­ball Match,” “Philosopher’s Drink­ing Song” & More

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Mon­ty Python’s Eric Idle Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Char­ac­ters

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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Monty Python’s Terry Jones (RIP) Was a Comedian, But Also a Medieval Historian: Get to Know His Other Side

in Comedy, History, Television | January 24th, 2020

Mon­ty Python’s sur­re­al, slap­stick par­o­dies of his­to­ry, reli­gion, med­i­cine, phi­los­o­phy, and law depend­ed on a com­pe­tent grasp of these sub­jects, and most of the troupe’s mem­bers, four of whom met at Oxford and Cam­bridge, went on to demon­strate their schol­ar­ly acu­men out­side of com­e­dy, with books, guest lec­tures, pro­fes­sor­ships, and seri­ous tele­vi­sion shows.

Michael Palin even became pres­i­dent of the Roy­al Geo­graph­i­cal Soci­ety for a few years. And Palin’s one­time Oxford pal and ear­ly writ­ing part­ner Ter­ry Jones—who passed away at 77 on Jan­u­ary 21 after a long strug­gle with degen­er­a­tive aphasia—didn’t do so bad­ly for him­self either, becom­ing a respect­ed schol­ar of Medieval his­to­ry and an author­i­ta­tive pop­u­lar writer on dozens of oth­er sub­jects.

Indeed, as the Pythons did through­out their aca­d­e­m­ic and comedic careers, Jones com­bined his inter­ests as often as he could, either bring­ing his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge to absur­dist com­e­dy or bring­ing humor to the study of his­to­ry. Jones wrote and direct­ed the pseu­do-his­tor­i­cal spoofs Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Bri­an, and in 2004 he won an Emmy for his tele­vi­sion pro­gram Ter­ry Jones’ Medieval Lives, an enter­tain­ing, infor­ma­tive series that incor­po­rates sketch com­e­dy-style reen­act­ments and Ter­ry Gilliam-like ani­ma­tions.

In the pro­gram, Jones debunks pop­u­lar ideas about sev­er­al stock medieval Euro­pean char­ac­ters famil­iar to us all, while he vis­its his­tor­i­cal sites and sits down to chat with experts. These char­ac­ters include The Peas­ant, The Damsel, The Min­strel, The Monk, and The Knights. The series became a pop­u­lar book in 2007, itself a cul­mi­na­tion of decades of work. Jones first book, Chaucer’s Knight: The Por­trait of a Medieval Mer­ce­nary came out in 1980. There, notes Matthew Rozsa at Salon:

[Jones] argued that the con­cept of Geof­frey Chaucer’s knight as the epit­o­me of Chris­t­ian chival­ry ignored an ugli­er truth: That the Knight was a mer­ce­nary who worked for author­i­tar­i­ans that bru­tal­ly oppressed ordi­nary peo­ple (an argu­ment not dis­sim­i­lar to the scene in which a peas­ant argues for democ­ra­cy in The Holy Grail).

In 2003, Jones col­lab­o­rat­ed with sev­er­al his­to­ri­ans on Who Mur­dered Chaucer? A spec­u­la­tive study of the peri­od in which many of the fig­ures he lat­er sur­veyed in his show and book emerged as dis­tinc­tive types. As in his work with Mon­ty Python, he didn’t only apply his con­trar­i­an­ism to medieval his­to­ry. He also called the Renais­sance “over­rat­ed” and “con­ser­v­a­tive,” and in his 2006 BBC One series Ter­ry Jones’ Bar­bar­ians, he described the peri­od we think of as the fall of Rome in pos­i­tive terms, call­ing the city’s so-called “Sack” in 410 an inven­tion of pro­pa­gan­da.

Jones’ work as a pop­u­lar his­to­ri­an, polit­i­cal writer, and come­di­an “is not the full extent of [his] oeu­vre,” writes Rozsa, “but it is enough to help us fath­om the mag­ni­tude of the loss suf­fered on Tues­day night.” His lega­cy “was to try to make us more intel­li­gent, more well-edu­cat­ed, more thought­ful. He also strove, of course, to make us have fun.” Python fans know this side of Jones well. Get to know him as a pas­sion­ate inter­preter of his­to­ry in Ter­ry Jones’ Medieval Lives, which you can watch on YouTube here.

For an aca­d­e­m­ic study of Jones’ medieval work, see the col­lec­tion: The Medieval Python The Pur­po­sive and Provoca­tive Work of Ter­ry Jones.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry & Lega­cy of Magna Car­ta Explained in Ani­mat­ed Videos by Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones

John Cleese Revis­its His 20 Years as an Ivy League Pro­fes­sor in His New Book, Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years

Mon­ty Python’s Eric Idle Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Char­ac­ters

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

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Drunk History Takes on the Father of Prohibition: The Ban on Alcohol in the U.S. Started 100 Years Ago This Month

in Comedy, History | January 21st, 2020

There may be plen­ty of good rea­sons to restrict sales and lim­it pro­mo­tion of alco­hol. You can search the stats on traf­fic fatal­i­ties, liv­er dis­ease, alco­hol-relat­ed vio­lence, etc. and you’ll find the term “epi­dem­ic” come up more than once. Yet even with all the dan­gers alco­hol pos­es to pub­lic health and safe­ty, its total pro­hi­bi­tion has seemed “so hos­tile to Amer­i­cans’ con­tem­po­rary sen­si­bil­i­ties of per­son­al free­dom,” writes Mark Lawrence Schrad at The New York Times, “that we strug­gle to com­pre­hend how our ances­tors could have pos­si­bly sup­port­ed it.” Pro­hi­bi­tion in the Unit­ed States began 1oo years ago–on Jan­u­ary 17, 1920–and last­ed through 1933.

How did this hap­pen? Demand, of course, per­sist­ed, but pub­lic sup­port seemed wide­spread. Despite sto­ries of thou­sands rush­ing bars and liquor stores on the evening of Jan­u­ary 16, 1920 before the 18th Amend­ment ban­ning alco­hol nation­wide went into effect, “the final tri­umph of pro­hi­bi­tion was met with shrugs…. The Unit­ed States had already been ‘dry’ for the pre­vi­ous half-year thanks to the Wartime Pro­hi­bi­tion Act. And even before that, 32 of the 48 states had already enact­ed their own statewide pro­hi­bi­tions.”

We tend to think of pro­hi­bi­tion now as a wild over­re­ac­tion and a polit­i­cal mis­cal­cu­la­tion, and frankly, it’s no won­der, giv­en how bonkers some of its most promi­nent advo­cates were. Who bet­ter to pro­file one of the most fanat­i­cal than the irre­spon­si­bly drunk come­di­ans of Com­e­dy Central’s Drunk His­to­ry? See John Lev­en­stein and friends take on the leader of the Anti-Saloon League, Wayne Wheel­er, above,

Wheel­er indi­rect­ly killed tens of thou­sands of peo­ple when his ASL pushed to have poi­son added to indus­tri­al alco­hol to deter boot­leg­ging in the 20s. His pre-pro­hi­bi­tion tac­tics (he coined the term “pres­sure group”) recall those of the Moral Major­i­ty cam­paigns that took over local and state leg­is­la­tures nation­wide in the U.S. in recent decades, and it is large­ly due to the ASL that pro­hi­bi­tion gained such sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal ground.

They allied with pro­gres­sives in the North and racists in the South; with suf­frag­ists and with the Klan, whom Wheel­er secret­ly employed to smash up bars. As Daniel Okrent writes at Smith­son­ian:

Wheeler’s devo­tion to the dream of a dry Amer­i­ca accom­mo­dat­ed any num­ber of unlike­ly allies. Bil­ly Sun­day, meet pio­neer­ing social work­er Jane Addams: you’re work­ing togeth­er now. The evan­gel­i­cal cler­gy of the age were moti­vat­ed to sup­port Pro­hi­bi­tion because of their faith; reform­ers like Addams signed on because of the dev­as­tat­ing effect that drunk­en­ness had on the urban poor. Ku Klux Klan, shake hands with the Indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World (IWW): you’re on the same team. The Klan’s anti-liquor sen­ti­ment was root­ed in its hatred of the immi­grant mass­es in liquor-soaked cities; the IWW believed that liquor was a cap­i­tal­ist weapon used to keep the work­ing class­es in a stu­por.

Dogged, uncom­pro­mis­ing, shrewd, and seem­ing­ly amoral, Wheel­er was once described by the Cincin­nati Enquir­er as a cru­sad­er who “made great men his pup­pets.” Pro­hi­bi­tion may be impos­si­ble to imag­ine one hun­dred years lat­er, but we sure­ly rec­og­nize Wayne Wheel­er as a peren­ni­al fig­ure in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Don’t trust a drunk come­di­an to give you the straight sto­ry? Get a sober his­to­ry above in the excerpt from the Ken Burns’ doc­u­men­tary Pro­hi­bi­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

A Whiskey-Fueled Lin-Manuel Miran­da Reimag­ines Hamil­ton as a Girl on Drunk His­to­ry

Drunk His­to­ry: An Intox­i­cat­ed Look at the Famous Alexan­der Hamil­ton – Aaron Burr Duel

Ben Franklin’s List of 200 Syn­onyms for “Drunk”: “Moon-Ey’d,” “Ham­mer­ish,” “Stew’d” & More (1737)

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

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38 Major Pop Songs Played with the Exact Same Four Chords: Watch a Captivating Medley Performed by the Axis of Awesome

in Comedy, Music | January 3rd, 2020

When we call music a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, it’s usu­al­ly under­stood to be a metaphor. In its purest the­o­ret­i­cal form, music may be more like math—a tru­ly uni­ver­sal language—but in its man­i­fes­ta­tions in the real world, it resem­bles more the great diver­si­ty of tongues around the globe. Each region­al, nation­al, and glob­al music has its gram­mar of scales, rhythms, and chords, each its syn­tax of melodies and har­monies, though these share some impor­tant com­mon­al­i­ties.

The syn­tax of pop music, like its blues pre­de­ces­sor, con­sists of stan­dard chord pro­gres­sions, eas­i­ly swapped from song to song: repeat­able units that form a range of avail­able emo­tion­al expres­sion. Want to see that range on full dis­play, in a brava­do per­for­mance by an Aus­tralian com­e­dy rock band? Look no fur­ther: just above, the Axis of Awe­some per­form their live ren­di­tion of “4 Chord Song,” a stun­ning med­ley of pop hits from Jour­ney to Mis­sy Hig­gins that all use the same four-chord sequence.

With the excep­tion of an orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion, “Bird­plane,” the ensemble’s selec­tion of 38 songs includes some of the biggest hits of the past few decades. The tonal breadth is sur­pris­ing, as we leap from “Don’t Stop Believ­ing” to “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” to “With or With­out You” to Aqua’s “Bar­bie Girl” and Lady Gaga’s “Pok­er Face.” Imag­ine Natal­ie Imbruglia, Green Day, and Toto trad­ing licks, or Pink, the Bea­t­les, and A‑Ha. Maybe these artists have more in com­mon, lin­guis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, than we thought. Or, as one of the Axis of Awe­some band­mem­ber asks, mock-incred­u­lous­ly, “You can take those four chords, repeat them, and pop out every pop song ever?”

Well, maybe not every pop song. One could choose oth­er pro­gres­sions and make sim­i­lar com­pi­la­tions. These par­tic­u­lar four chords have some­thing of a melan­choly sound, and tend to come up music with an under­cur­rent of sad­ness (yes, even “Bar­bie Girl”). One can quib­ble with some of the par­tic­u­lars here. “Don’t Stop Believ­ing,” for exam­ple, throws a dif­fer­ent chord into the sec­ond phrase of its pro­gres­sion. But the ubiq­ui­ty of this melody in pop is quite reveal­ing, and amus­ing in this musi­cal mashup. See the Axis of Awe­some in a pol­ished video ver­sion of “4 Chord Song,” above, and con­sid­er all the oth­er ways pop music recy­cles and reuses the same ele­ments over and over to con­vey its range of feel­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Music Is Tru­ly a Uni­ver­sal Lan­guage: New Research Shows That Music World­wide Has Impor­tant Com­mon­al­i­ties

John Coltrane Talks About the Sacred Mean­ing of Music in the Human Expe­ri­ence: Lis­ten to One of His Final Inter­views (1966)

Alan Lomax’s Mas­sive Music Archive Is Online: Fea­tures 17,000 His­toric Blues & Folk Record­ings

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

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When Robin Williams & Steve Martin Starred in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot (1988)

in Comedy, Theatre | January 2nd, 2020

Despite the dourest demeanor in lit­er­ary his­to­ry and a series of plays and nov­els set in the bleak­est of con­di­tions, there’s no doubt that Samuel Beck­ett was fore­most a com­ic writer. Indeed, it is because of these things that he remains a sin­gu­lar­ly great com­ic writer. The deep­est laughs are found, as in that old Mel Brooks quote, in the most absurd­ly trag­ic places. In Beck­ett, how­ev­er, char­ac­ters don’t just tell jokes about the wretched exi­gen­cies of human life, they ful­ly embody all those qual­i­ties; just as the best com­ic actors do.

It’s true that some of Beckett’s char­ac­ters spend all of their time onstage immo­bi­lized, but the play­wright was also a great admir­er of phys­i­cal com­e­dy onscreen and drew lib­er­al­ly from the work of his favorite film come­di­ans. Vet­er­an vaude­ville com­ic Bert Lahr, best known as The Wiz­ard of Oz’s cow­ard­ly lion, starred in the orig­i­nal Broad­way pro­duc­tion of Wait­ing for Godot in 1956. “Beck­ett once wrote a film script for Buster Keaton,” notes the­ater crit­ic Michael Kuch­wara. Godot’s cen­tral char­ac­ters, Vladimir and Estragon, evoke one of the most renowned of com­e­dy duos, many of their ges­tures “obvi­ous deriva­tions from Lau­rel and Hardy,” as film his­to­ri­an Ger­ald Mast notes.

It is fit­ting then—and might meet with the approval of Beck­ett himself—that Robin Williams and Steve Mar­tin, two of the most riv­et­ing phys­i­cal come­di­ans of the sev­en­ties and eight­ies, should step into the roles of the bum­bling, bowler-hat­ted fren­e­mies of Godot. The pro­duc­tion, which took place in Octo­ber and Novem­ber 1988 at the 299-seat Mitzi E. New­hous The­ater on Broad­way, sold out almost imme­di­ate­ly. Williams and Mar­tin weren’t its only big draw. Mike Nichols direct­ed, and the rest of the cast includ­ed F. Mur­ray Abra­ham as Poz­zo, Bill Irwin as Lucky, and Lucas Haas as the absent Godot’s mes­sen­ger boy.

Sad­ly, we only have a few clips of the per­for­mance, which you can see in the grainy video above, inter­spersed with inter­views with Mar­tin and Irwin. These too will leave you want­i­ng more. “I saw it as a com­e­dy,” says Mar­tin of his read­ing of the play. What this meant, he says, is that the laughs “must be served, almost first…. The com­e­dy of the play won’t take care of itself unless it’s deliv­ered.” Robin Williams, writes Kuch­wara, deliv­ered laughs. “His Estragon is a mani­a­cal crea­ture, verg­ing out of con­trol at times.”

Williams also veered “into some stage antics and line twist­ings that Beck­ett nev­er would have dreamed of—giving hilar­i­ous imi­ta­tions of R2D2 and John Wayne, com­plete with an impro­vised machine gun.” For his part, Mar­tin had “a tougher assign­ment play­ing the sub­dued, almost straight man Vladimir to Williams’ more flam­boy­ant Estragon.” Mar­tin has always tend­ed to sub­merge his mani­a­cal com­ic ener­gy in straighter roles. Here he seems per­haps too restrained.

For rea­sons that have noth­ing to do with the play, the trag­ic heart of these clips is see­ing Williams as Estragon. Yet in the final few min­utes, trained mime Irwin shows why his Lucky may have been the most inspired piece of cast­ing in the show. We get a taste of his per­for­mance as he recites part of Lucky’s mono­logue.  “Every ges­ture has been care­ful­ly thought out, not only for the com­e­dy, but for the pain that lies under­neath the laughs,” Kuch­wara says.

Lucky is essen­tial­ly a slave to Abraham’s dom­i­neer­ing Poz­zo, who keeps him on a leash. He gives one speech, when his mas­ter orders him to “think.” But in his ver­biage and bear­ing, he con­veys the play’s deep­est pathos, in the form of the arche­typ­al tor­tured clown, who reap­pears in Alan Moore’s joke about Pagli­ac­ci. When Beck­ett was asked why he named the char­ac­ter Lucky, he replied, with mor­dant wit, “I sup­pose he is lucky to have no more expec­ta­tions….” It is as though, Mel Brooks would say, he had fall­en into an open sew­er and died

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Wait­ing for Godot, the Acclaimed 1956 Pro­duc­tion Star­ring The Wiz­ard of Oz’s Bert Lahr

Steve Mar­tin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Ein­stein & Picas­so in a Smart Com­e­dy Rou­tine

Steve Mar­tin Per­forms Stand-Up Com­e­dy for Dogs (1973)

Robin Williams Uses His Stand-Up Com­e­dy Genius to Deliv­er a 1983 Com­mence­ment Speech

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

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Steve Martin Performs Stand-Up Comedy for Dogs (1973)

in Comedy | December 31st, 2019

In what looks/sounds like his first appear­ance on The Tonight Show Star­ring John­ny Car­son, Steve Mar­tin per­forms a ground­break­ing com­e­dy rou­tine. As you’ll see, you might not get the jokes. But your dogs will. Although record­ed 46 years ago (Feb­ru­ary 15, 1973), the pooches will laugh as hard now as they did then.

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

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Mar­tin & Robin Williams Riff on Math, Physics, Ein­stein & Picas­so in a Heady Com­e­dy Rou­tine (2002)

Steve Mar­tin Teach­es His First Online Course on Com­e­dy

Watch Steve Mar­tin Make His First TV Appear­ance: The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour (1968)

Steve Mar­tin Writes a Hymn for Hymn-Less Athe­ists

 

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Sacha Baron Cohen Links the Decline of Democracy to the Rise of Social Media, “the Greatest Propaganda Machine in History”

in Comedy, Current Affairs | November 22nd, 2019

Pre­sent­ing a keynote address at an ADL con­fer­ence, come­di­an Sacha Baron Cohen was­n’t kid­ding around when he paint­ed a bleak pic­ture of our emerg­ing world: “Today … dem­a­gogues appeal to our worst instincts. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries once con­fined to the fringe are going main­stream. It’s as if the Age of Reason—the era of evi­den­tial argument—is end­ing, and now knowl­edge is dele­git­imized and sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus is dis­missed. Democ­ra­cy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autoc­ra­cy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surg­ing, as are mur­der­ous attacks on reli­gious and eth­nic minori­ties.”

What’s lead­ing to these desta­bi­liz­ing changes? Baron Cohen could cite many rea­sons. But if pushed, he’ll empha­size one:

But one thing is pret­ty clear to me. All this hate and vio­lence is being facil­i­tat­ed by a hand­ful of inter­net com­pa­nies that amount to the great­est pro­pa­gan­da machine in his­to­ry.

The great­est pro­pa­gan­da machine in his­to­ry.

Think about it. Face­book, YouTube and Google, Twit­ter and others—they reach bil­lions of peo­ple. The algo­rithms these plat­forms depend on delib­er­ate­ly ampli­fy the type of con­tent that keeps users engaged—stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trig­ger out­rage and fear. It’s why YouTube rec­om­mend­ed videos by the con­spir­acist Alex Jones bil­lions of times. It’s why fake news out­per­forms real news, because stud­ies show that lies spread faster than truth. And it’s no sur­prise that the great­est pro­pa­gan­da machine in his­to­ry has spread the old­est con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in history—the lie that Jews are some­how dan­ger­ous. As one head­line put it, “Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Face­book.”

On the inter­net, every­thing can appear equal­ly legit­i­mate. Bre­it­bart resem­bles the BBC. The fic­ti­tious Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion look as valid as an ADL report. And the rant­i­ngs of a lunatic seem as cred­i­ble as the find­ings of a Nobel Prize win­ner. We have lost, it seems, a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democ­ra­cy depends.

You can watch his sober­ing talk above, or read the tran­script here.

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

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Case for Delet­ing Your Social Media Accounts & Doing Valu­able “Deep Work” Instead, Accord­ing to Prof. Cal New­port

New Ani­ma­tion Explains Sher­ry Turkle’s The­o­ries on Why Social Media Makes Us Lone­ly

Lyn­da Bar­ry on How the Smart­phone Is Endan­ger­ing Three Ingre­di­ents of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Lone­li­ness, Uncer­tain­ty & Bore­dom

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Improv Comedy (Live and Otherwise) Examined on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #20

in Comedy, Film, Pretty Much Pop, Television, Theatre | November 20th, 2019

 

What role does improv com­e­dy play in pop­u­lar cul­ture? It shows up in the work of cer­tain film direc­tors (like Christo­pher Guest, Adam McK­ay, and Robert Alt­man) and has sur­faced in some of the TV work of Lar­ry David, Robin Williams, et al. But only in the rare case of a show like Whose Line Is It Any­way? is the pres­ence of impro­vi­sa­tion obvi­ous. So is this art form doomed to live on the fringes of enter­tain­ment? Is it maybe of more appar­ent ben­e­fit to its prac­ti­tion­ers than to audi­ences?

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an are joined by Tim Snif­f­en, announc­er on the pop­u­lar Hel­lo From the Mag­ic Tav­ern pod­cast, and a mem­ber of the Impro­vised Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and Baby Wants Can­dy (impro­vised musi­cals). He’s also writ­ten for Live From Here and oth­er things. We dis­cuss dif­fer­ent types of improv, a bit of the his­to­ry and struc­ture of Sec­ond City, improv’s alleged self-help ben­e­fits, how impro­vi­sa­tion relates to reg­u­lar act­ing, writ­ing, pod­cast­ing, and oth­er arts, and more.

Here are a few improv pro­duc­tions to check out:

For fur­ther read­ing, check out:

For musi­cal improv, try Naked­ly Exam­ined Music #30 with Paul Wer­ti­co and David Cain, and also #55 with Don Pre­ston (Zappa’s key­boardist) whom Mark quot­ed in this dis­cus­sion.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

 

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