“The Value of Culture” Revealed in a New BBC Radio Series by Melvyn Bragg

in History, Podcasts | January 8th, 2013

value of cultureYour pres­ence here indi­cates that you have an inter­est in cul­ture. But what, exact­ly is cul­ture? I’ve long addressed that per­haps too-broad ques­tion with a sim­ple work­ing def­i­n­i­tion: if Melvyn Bragg broad­casts about it, it’s prob­a­bly cul­ture. You may remem­ber the Eng­lish writer, pre­sen­ter, and House of Lords mem­ber from our posts on his doc­u­men­taries on Jack­son Pol­lock and Fran­cis Bacon, or from the men­tion of his long-run­ning BBC Radio 4 pro­gram In Our Time. But while that show cer­tain­ly has cov­ered sci­en­tif­ic top­ics — evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy, genet­ic muta­tion, the neu­tri­no — Bragg and his pan­els of experts spend even more air­time dis­cussing sub­jects claimed by the human­i­ties. Some of its most inter­est­ing moments hap­pen at the crossover, with sci­en­tif­ic angles on the human­is­tic and vice ver­sa; “Goethe and the Sci­ence of the Enlight­en­ment” comes to mind, to name but one exam­ple. Where con­ver­sa­tions like those can arise, I dare­say we have cul­ture at its most robust.

But I mere­ly cir­cle around the issue. Brag­g’s five-part Radio 4 series The Val­ue of the Cul­ture deals with the ques­tion of cul­ture’s nature head-on. Need we call cul­ture any­thing more spe­cif­ic than the body of things that mankind makes? Does cul­ture work as a force for good? What does cul­ture look like from an anthro­po­log­i­cal per­spec­tive? Must works reach a cer­tain stan­dard, or dis­play cer­tain qual­i­ties, to count as cul­ture? What does the gap between the sci­ences and the human­i­ties mean for cul­ture? How did “mass cul­ture” come about, as opposed to “high cul­ture”? And what does all this say about the cul­ture we have today? Assem­bling his typ­i­cal­ly impres­sive range of lumi­nar­ies from across the British intel­lec­tu­al land­scape, Bragg asks these ques­tions and many more besides, using as a point of depar­ture ninetheenth-cen­tu­ry poet, crit­ic, and school inspec­tor Matthew Arnold’s descrip­tion of cul­ture as “the best which has been thought and said” which pro­vides life its “sweet­ness and light.” But much has changed in how we regard cul­ture since the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, and here we have just the pro­gram to get us think­ing hard­er than ever about it.

All episodes of The Val­ue of Cul­ture: Cul­ture and Anar­chy (above), Cul­ture and the Anthro­pol­o­gists, Two Cul­tures, Mass Cul­ture, What’s the Val­ue of Cul­ture Today?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

Fran­cis Bacon on the South Bank Show: A Sin­gu­lar Pro­file of the Sin­gu­lar Painter

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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British Actors Read Poignant Poetry from World War I

in History, Literature, Poetry | January 3rd, 2013

The First World War (1914–1918) changed Britain to a degree that was unthink­able in 1914. Pre-war cer­tain­ties and val­ues such as hon­or, father­land and progress dis­in­te­grat­ed on the bat­tle­fields and trench­es in France and Bel­gium. New tech­nol­o­gy such as tanks, machine guns, grenades, flame throw­ers and poi­son gas were used to destroy the ene­my; con­stant fire for days on end was intend­ed to break the sol­diers in the trench­es. Unspeak­able hor­rors led to psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems of unknown pro­por­tions.

Cop­ing with these hor­rors dur­ing and after The Great War (as it’s still called in Britain today) seemed like a Her­culean task to poets — how do you put the unspeak­able into words? Some poets, e.g. Rupert Brooke, still cel­e­brat­ed the hero­ism of the Eng­lish sol­diers (e.g., 1914 II. Safe­ty), where­as oth­ers, such as Wil­fred Owen, tried to describe the hor­rors of this war (e.g., Dulce et Deco­rum Est).

Every year on the Sun­day clos­est to Novem­ber 11, Britain remem­bers the dead of the First World War. For Remem­brance Day 2012, famous British actors were asked to recite First World War poet­ry. The fin­ished clips were to be shown on TV that day. The video above shows three actors recit­ing four poems by Rupert Brooke and Wil­fred Owen (click the names of the actors for infor­ma­tion about them and the titles of the poems for the full text):

  1. Sean Bean reads Wil­fred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth”
  2. Gem­ma Arter­ton reads Wil­fred Owen’s “Arms and the Boy”
  3. Sophie Okone­do reads Rupert Brooke’s “The Sol­dier”
  4. Sean Bean reads Wil­fred Owen’s “The Last Laugh”

Bonus mate­r­i­al:

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Google Digitizes Ancient Copies of the Ten Commandments and Genesis

in Google, History, Religion | December 21st, 2012

If dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy pos­es any threat to the mar­ket for words print­ed on real paper—and the jury is still out on that one—then it must also be cred­it­ed for expos­ing us to texts from the ancient world.

Last fall we post­ed about how the Israel Muse­um dig­i­tized the Dead Sea Scrolls, near­ly 1,000 texts found on the north­west shore of the Dead Sea in 1946. They are the ear­li­est known sur­viv­ing man­u­scripts from what is called the Hebrew Bible. Dig­i­tiz­ing the texts—most were on parch­ment but some were writ­ten on bronze or papyrus—allows view­ers to zoom in to exam­ine the writ­ing and even the paper fibers of hun­dreds of frag­ments.

Now the Israel Antiq­ui­ties Author­i­ty has expand­ed upon the col­lec­tion. Housed in the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Dig­i­tal Library are the ear­li­est known copies of the Book of Deuteron­o­my (which includes the Ten Com­mand­ments) and Chap­ter One of the Book of Gen­e­sis.

Each scroll frag­ment was scanned using spec­tral imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy that allows for the recov­ery of writ­ing that had fad­ed to near invis­i­bil­i­ty over the years. The boon for schol­ars is clear, but for reg­u­lar folks this archive is bet­ter than a muse­um vis­it. The Leon Levy site is search­able by dis­cov­ery site, con­tent and ancient lan­guage.

Google is mak­ing its mark as a major facil­i­ta­tor of cul­tur­al preser­va­tion. Anoth­er recent project with ties to ancient texts and his­to­ry is Caminos de Sefarad, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Red de Jud­erías de España to cre­ate a dig­i­tal map of Spain’s Jew­ish her­itage.

More than 500 land­marks from the Sefarad—the Sephardic Jews before they were expelled from Spain and Por­tu­gal in 1492—are ful­ly anno­tat­ed with cur­rent pho­tos, text and spe­cial details. Vis­it Rib­a­davia, a once-pros­per­ous city in Spain’s north­west moun­tains, and learn about Jew­ish wed­ding tra­di­tions from the Mid­dle Ages. The Jew­ish Quar­ter of Léon is called the Bar­rio Húme­do (Wet Dis­trict) and is known today for its fine wine and food. Use the time­line to keep your­self ori­ent­ed in chrono­log­i­cal his­to­ry and click Street View to see this vibrant dis­trict as it is today.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Donald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Other Disney Propaganda Cartoons from World War II

in Animation, Film, History | December 18th, 2012

Dur­ing World War II, all hands were on deck, even in Hol­ly­wood. Many of Amer­i­ca and Britain’s finest film­mak­ers, from Hitch­cock to Frank Capra, were recruit­ed to cre­ate pro­pa­gan­da films to sup­port the war effort. And the same went for Walt Dis­ney, who turned his lov­able car­toon char­ac­ters into good patri­ots.

In 1942, Dis­ney released “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” an anti-Nazi pro­pa­gan­da movie that bol­stered sup­port for the war, and even­tu­al­ly won the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film. Then, a year lat­er, came The Spir­it of ’43, which fea­tures Don­ald Duck help­ing Amer­i­cans to under­stand why they need to pay their tax­es. Oth­er wartime Dis­ney shorts include Don­ald Gets Draft­ed (1942), The Old Army Game (1943), and Com­man­do Duck (1944). They all appear below.

The Spir­it of ’43

Don­ald Gets Draft­ed

The Old Army Game

Com­man­do Duck

Note: Der Fuehrer’s Face and The Spir­it of ’43 appear in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

How Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Disney’s Oscar-Win­ning Adven­tures in Music

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Chowda!: Three Centuries of Recipes Reveal the Rise of New England’s Finest Culinary Export

in History, Life, Random | December 14th, 2012

Say chow­der out loud: chow­der. The word sounds like food. Not an appe­tiz­er either. An entree in a small crock topped with bro­ken crack­ers.

As with so many things relat­ed to food, chow­der is a sto­ried dish. It hails from New Eng­land and north­east­ern Cana­da, its first writ­ten ref­er­ence dat­ing back to 1732 when a jour­nal­ist recalls din­ing on a “fine chow­dered cod.”

There are as many types of chow­der as there are soup, though a true chow­der is more like a stew than a soup. Some purists would rather eat slugs than a chow­der with toma­toes in it or whose name ref­er­ences New York. But all chow­ders must fea­ture the fol­low­ing: broth, salt pork, bis­cuit and seafood.

Aside from that, all bets are off. Chow down.

Of course a region­al dish with this long a his­to­ry and which leaves this much room for inter­pre­ta­tion deserves a his­to­ry of its own, and so the good peo­ple at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts, Amherst cre­at­ed the New Eng­land Chow­der Com­pendi­um, a col­lec­tion of recipes and ephemera explor­ing how chow­der rose to become a sta­ple of New Eng­land cook­ery.

Culled from cook­books held by the university’s Beat­rice McIn­tosh Cook­ery Col­lec­tion, the com­pendi­um chron­i­cles chow­der recipes from the 1700s to the 1970s, through lean times and fat, through recipes heavy with cream and with­out.

And so, as read­ers click through fea­tured chow­der recipes from the 1920s on through to the 1940s, they’re sure to notice the ways ingre­di­ents vary. Use evap­o­rat­ed milk and a lit­tle water, if cream is not avail­able. House­wives were wise in the 1940s to be thrifty while mak­ing fresh stock from knuck­les: Save that fat that rose to the top and sell it to your meat deal­er.

Chow­der may be one of the poster food for peo­ple who are mak­ing do. Don’t have fresh seafood? Canned tuna will do. Lima beans soaked overnight can sub­sti­tute for clams.

As with most hand­writ­ten recipes, the hand­writ­ing and illus­tra­tions are part of the fun. One rad­i­cal sug­gests adding a dash of papri­ka. This recipe, for the Kingston Yacht Club, may have fed the entire mem­ber­ship (three gal­lons of clams?!)

The archivists include a nice primer, trac­ing the devel­op­ment of chow­der (the word comes from French for “caul­dron”).

One recipe that doesn’t sound so good: diet chow­der from the 1970s.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and at thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Ghosts of History: Dutch Artist Eerily Superimposes Modern Street Scenes on World War II Photos

in History, Life, Photography | December 11th, 2012

We all have our fas­ci­na­tions. Some of us are enam­ored of a par­tic­u­lar his­tor­i­cal era. If I had to pick a time peri­od I’d want to vis­it, I’d say the 1930s—after the Depres­sion, before World War II—a “tween­er” decade if there ever was one.

Jo Hed­wig Teeuwisse takes her inter­est in the 1930s to extra­or­di­nary lengths. She wears vin­tage cloth­ing and attends 1930s-theme par­ties. She is also a his­tor­i­cal con­sul­tant and expert on dai­ly life from 1930–1945.

Teeuwisse lives in The Hague but once, while vis­it­ing Ams­ter­dam, she stum­bled upon a trea­sure on the street. It was a box filled with old pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tives. Some had iden­ti­fy­ing notes but most did not. A his­to­ry nut, Teeuwisse went to work imme­di­ate­ly try­ing to sort out where the shots were tak­en and, if pos­si­ble, the iden­ti­ties of peo­ple in the retro pho­tos.

The results are an impres­sive and amaz­ing archive Teeuwisse calls Ghosts of His­to­ry. More than sim­ply fig­ur­ing out which build­ing is fea­tured in a pic­ture, Teeuwisse cre­at­ed pho­to mash-ups by com­bin­ing ele­ments of a vin­tage image with an image of her own tak­en in the same place today.

We see mem­bers of the under­ground press march­ing down a main Ams­ter­dam thor­ough­fare in June, 1945 along­side shop­pers and tourists strolling down the same street today.

In a pow­er­ful jux­ta­po­si­tion of then and now, three Dutch scouts risk their lives cross­ing Amsterdam’s Dam Square in the after­math of a Nazi attack just two days after Ger­many sur­ren­dered. Note the hats left behind by peo­ple who had fled for their lives, and the con­tem­po­rary stu­dents walk­ing non­cha­lant­ly on.

This image shows the same scene, but with the Nazi recruit­ment office sign promi­nent in the back­ground.

What is so potent about Teeuwisse’s work is that it is so qui­et. She doesn’t have to point out irony because it is so imme­di­ate­ly evi­dent: Those same cob­bles that so many have trod on the way to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Muse­um are scuffed by the boots of sol­diers, fam­ished vic­tims of war aus­ter­i­ty and ordi­nary work­ing peo­ple on their way to the fac­to­ry.

Some make it more plain than oth­ers that his­to­ry is all around us all the time.

There are still many World War II images from that box that remain uniden­ti­fied. Teeuwisse loaded them all up to her flickr site. Take a look. Maybe you’ll find a famil­iar face from your own past.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Conan O’Brien Plays Charlie Rose, Talks Presidential History with Edmund Morris

in History, Television | November 30th, 2012

“This is my dream job,” Conan O’Brien says while in con­ver­sa­tion with pres­i­den­tial biog­ra­ph­er Edmund Mor­ris. He did­n’t say it when he brought Mor­ris onto Conan, his late-night talk show on TBS. He says it on Seri­ous Jib­ber-Jab­ber, an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent oper­a­tion. On Conan, he talked to Mor­ris for sev­en min­utes; on Seri­ous Jib­ber-Jab­ber, they talk for 47 min­utes. Offi­cial­ly described as a web series where­in “Conan O’Brien has lengthy, unin­ter­rupt­ed con­ver­sa­tions with inter­est­ing peo­ple on top­ics which fas­ci­nate him,” the show casts the icon of Gen‑X irrev­er­ence not as a pur­vey­or of intel­li­gent silli­ness, but as a con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist in the mold of Char­lie Rose. In any case, he does it prac­ti­cal­ly on the set of Char­lie Rose: a table, chairs, a back­ground of purest black, and no fur­ther dis­trac­tions. (If you’re going to bor­row, they say, bor­row from the best.) O’Brien’s fol­low­ers may not know he has a fer­vent inter­est in pres­i­den­tial his­to­ry, but after watch­ing his inter­view with the man who wrote three vol­umes on Theodore Roo­sevelt and one on Ronald Rea­gan, they’ll cer­tain­ly have found out.

Though the show’s title con­tains the word Seri­ous and O’Brien speaks with gen­uine curios­i­ty through­out, it also con­tains the words Jib­ber-Jab­ber, and I doubt he has it in him not to crack jokes. This is wel­come, and a rea­son why I’d like to see him direct all of Team Coco’s con­sid­er­able resources to these inter­views from now on. He even gets into the sub­ject of pres­i­den­tial sens­es of humor — evi­dent­ly pres­i­dents aren’t allowed to have them any­more — which he picks up again in the show’s sec­ond inter­view, with com­e­dy writer and film­mak­er Judd Apa­tow. Though we get a warn­ing that O’Brien will only tape more of these con­ver­sa­tions “when­ev­er time and fate allow,” I per­son­al­ly await the next one with bat­ed breath. Some­how, the man who gave the world the Horny Man­a­tee, the Coked-Up Were­wolf, and the immor­tal Mas­tur­bat­ing Bear real­ized the most impor­tant thing about view­ers like you and me: we’d much rather watch two peo­ple dis­cuss enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly and at length sub­jects that inter­est them rather than swift­ly man­gle sub­jects they guess might inter­est us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Writes Chica­go Blues Songs With School Kids

Conan O’Brien @ Google

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Moon Disaster That Wasn’t: Nixon’s Speech In Case Apollo 11 Failed to Return

in Astronomy, History | November 23rd, 2012

Endur­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries aside, the 1969 moon land­ing (above) was a rous­ing suc­cess for the gov­ern­ment space pro­gram known as NASA. After a decade-long space race, dur­ing which it seemed to all observers that the Sovi­ets had the edge, the U.S. land­ed Apol­lo 11–carrying Neil Arm­strong and Buzz Aldrin–at the Sea of Tran­quil­i­ty on July 20, 1969.  Nixon was pres­i­dent, the Viet­nam War and its oppo­si­tion raged, and Leonid Brezh­nev helmed a stag­nant Sovi­et empire.

On the great list of Cold War what-ifs, the near-miss of the Bay of Pigs is sure­ly num­ber one. But for all the space nerds out there, this one ranks pret­ty high: What if Aldrin and Arm­strong nev­er made it back? This was, of course, a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty, and one that the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion pre­pared for. While we were told dur­ing this last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion that Mitt Rom­ney failed to write a con­ces­sion speech, William Safire, speech­writer for Richard Nixon, did write a speech in the event that Apol­lo 11 couldn’t make the return trip. The speech, enti­tled IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER, is a some­thing of a terse and poignant mas­ter­piece. Below is an excerpt of Safire’s brief, hypo­thet­i­cal address:

These two men are lay­ing down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and under­stand­ing.

They will be mourned by their fam­i­lies and friends; they will be mourned by the nation; they will be mourned by the peo­ple of the world; they will be mourned by a Moth­er Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their explo­ration, they stirred the peo­ple of the world to feel as one; in their sac­ri­fice, they bind more tight­ly the broth­er­hood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the con­stel­la­tions. In mod­ern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Oth­ers will fol­low, and sure­ly find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the fore­most in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some cor­ner of anoth­er world that is for­ev­er mankind.

Would the space pro­gram have con­tin­ued had these two brave pio­neers died on the moon? Cer­tain­ly. But this moment of tri­umph would instead be remembered—like the Chal­lenger dis­as­ter of 1986—as a moment of great loss and a very seri­ous set­back for our for­ays into out­er space.

Read the full speech here at Let­ters of Note.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michio Kaku Schools Takes on Moon Land­ing-Con­spir­a­cy Believ­er on His Sci­ence Fan­tas­tic Pod­cast

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

First Orbit: Cel­e­brat­ing 50th Anniver­sary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight

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