Cave of Forgotten Dreams

in Art, Film, History | February 2nd, 2011

The first Wern­er Her­zog 3D film will hit the cin­e­ma screens this spring, and the new trail­er paves the way for it. The 89 minute doc­u­men­tary, Cave of For­got­ten Dreams, brings Her­zog down into the Chau­vet-Pont-d’Arc Cave dis­cov­ered in 1994. Locat­ed in South­ern France, this cave, nor­mal­ly kept off lim­its to the pub­lic, hous­es the old­est cave paint­ings ever dis­cov­ered. We’re talk­ing paint­ings dat­ing back over 30,000 years and all still pre­served in pris­tine con­di­tion. Just as Las­caux left Picas­so in awe, the Chau­vet cave paint­ings inspired Her­zog to use 3D tech­nol­o­gy to cap­ture the char­coal fig­ures, the ear­li­est expres­sion of our artis­tic yearn­ings.

Don’t miss our ear­li­er post, An Evening with Wern­er Her­zog.

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The King’s Speech 1938

in Film, History | February 2nd, 2011

You’ve prob­a­bly seen the film, The King’s Speech, which just land­ed 12 Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions, includ­ing Best Pic­ture, Best Direc­tor, Best Actor, Best Sup­port­ing Actor, and Best Sup­port­ing Actress. Now it’s time to rewind the video­tape and bring you back to 1938, when King George VI, for­mer­ly Prince Albert, Duke of York, makes a speech to open an exhi­bi­tion in Scot­land.

Take a quick hop, skip and jump to the British Path site to watch, and you will get a first­hand look at the King speak­ing in his own words…

Look­ing for a good read on your ebook read­er? Find a clas­sic in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. Books avail­able in mul­ti­ple for­mats. Enjoy!

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JFK’s Inauguration: 50 Years Ago Today

in History, Politics | January 20th, 2011

We have been going a lit­tle vin­tage late­ly, and we’ll have to do it one more day. For today marks the 50th anniver­sary of John F. Kennedy’s inau­gu­ra­tion, the begin­ing of a pres­i­den­cy that inspired many, even though it last­ed scarce­ly more than 1000 days. Kennedy’s inau­gur­al speech ran 1364 words and took 14 min­utes to deliv­er. That makes it sig­nif­i­cant­ly short­er than the longest inau­gur­al address (William Hen­ry Har­ri­son took 8,445 words in 1841) but longer than the ters­est one – George Wash­ing­ton spoke mere­ly 135 words dur­ing his sec­ond address. With 50 years of hind­sight, we still con­sid­er Kennedy’s speech one of the finest inau­gur­al address­es because, as E.J. Dionne writes this week, it chal­lenged the nation (and still does today) “to har­ness real­ism to ide­al­ism, patri­o­tism to ser­vice, nation­al inter­est to uni­ver­sal aspi­ra­tion,” espe­cial­ly with the eter­nal line: “And so, my fel­low Amer­i­cans: ask not what your coun­try can do for you — ask what you can do for your coun­try.” You can revis­it the speech in full above, and also find oth­er great archival footage with­in the new YouTube Chan­nel spon­sored by the JFK Pres­i­den­tial Library.

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Norman Mailer & Marshall McLuhan Debate the Electronic Age

in History, Literature, Media, Technology | January 18th, 2011

There’s noth­ing new about it. Major peri­ods of tech­no­log­i­cal change have always engen­dered dis­lo­ca­tion and debate. Some resist the changes wrought by new tech­nol­o­gy, and oth­ers embrace them. 1968 brings us back to one such moment, when the Amer­i­can nov­el­ist Nor­man Mail­er and com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­rist Mar­shall McLuhan appeared on the CBC pro­gram, The Sum­mer Way, to debate the rel­a­tive mer­its of our Electronic/Information Age. Are we alien­at­ing our­selves as we push the elec­tron­ic enve­lope? Or have we entered a val­ue neu­tral state (if not some­thing bet­ter)? The two big thinkers hash out the ques­tion for 28 min­utes. You can watch the con­ver­sa­tion in its entire­ty (28 min­utes) on YouTube.

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:

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

Mar­shall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Think­ing

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MLK’s Last Days and Final Speech

in History, Life | January 17th, 2011

Mar­tin Luther King Jr. deliv­ered his last speech, known col­lo­qui­al­ly as his “I’ve Been to the Moun­tain­top” speech, in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee on April 3, 1968. The next day, he would be assas­si­nat­ed. The full address (Part 1 & Part 2) ranges wide­ly. It sweeps through Euro­pean and Amer­i­can his­to­ry, even­tu­al­ly bring­ing us into 1960s Amer­i­ca, a moment fraught with ten­sion, when African-Amer­i­cans were fight­ing for equal rights at home, and a divi­sive Viet­nam War dragged on abroad. Trac­ing the impor­tant moments of the civ­il rights move­ment, the speech ends (high­light­ed above) with Mr. King prophet­i­cal­ly fore­see­ing his own death (see the Life gallery of his last day), but know­ing that his per­son­al sac­ri­fice had cre­at­ed some­thing bul­lets could nev­er stop. A great Amer­i­can and world cit­i­zen.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

I Have a Dream

What Would MLK Say About the USA Today?

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Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Inferno Inspired Galileo’s Physics

in History, Literature, Physics | January 17th, 2011

This com­ing fall, Mark Peter­son, a physics pro­fes­sor at Mount Holyoke Col­lege, will pub­lish a new book where he makes a rather curi­ous argu­ment: Back in 1588, a young Galileo pre­sent­ed two lec­tures before the Flo­ren­tine Acad­e­my. And there he laid the ground­work for his the­o­ret­i­cal physics when he called into ques­tion the accept­ed mea­sure­ments of Dan­te’s hell (as depict­ed in the Infer­no, the great epic poem from 1314). Did debates over a poem fig­ure into the unfold­ing of The Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion? The Boston Globe digs deep­er into the ques­tion with the video above and a longer arti­cle 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:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

The Sto­ry of Physics Ani­mat­ed in 4 Min­utes: From Galileo and New­ton, to Ein­stein

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William F. Buckley Threatens to “Smash” Noam Chomsky in the Face (1969)

in History, Politics | January 15th, 2011


So much for the Gold­en Age of Civil­i­ty in Amer­i­ca – but at least it was said with a lit­tle smile and the ensu­ing debate had some sub­stance…

Note: A read­er sug­gests in our com­ments that Buck­ley was jok­ing­ly allud­ing here to a pre­vi­ous con­fronta­tion­al moment with Gore Vidal, and it sounds about right. (“I’ll sock you in the god­damn face and you’ll stay plas­tered.”)

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A Journey Back in Time: Vintage Travelogues

in History, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | January 4th, 2011

The Trav­el Film Archive lets you “see the world the way it was.” Fea­tur­ing dozens of videos shot between 1900 and 1970, these short trav­el­ogues take you across the globe, to farflung places that many Amer­i­cans con­sid­ered “exot­ic” at the time. Above, we have a 1940s clip that revis­its the glo­ries of Ancient Greece, tak­ing you through the ruins of Athens. But you will also find count­less oth­er des­ti­na­tions — Asia (aka The Far East), India, Hawaii and the South Seas, the Mid­dle East, South Amer­i­ca, and Egypt and North Africa. Paris, Venice, and a sam­pling of Euro­pean loca­tions get cov­er­age too, as do the ear­ly days of com­mer­cial air trav­el. You can dig through the full list right here. Thanks @KirstinButler

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