The Man Who Quit Money — and Lived to Tell About It

in Books, Life | April 30th, 2012

If you’re get­ting ready to start yet anoth­er work week, let us give you some food for thought.

12 years ago, Daniel Sue­lo walked into a phone booth, left his only mon­ey there ($30), and has­n’t touched any since — no cash, no loans, no cred­it cards, no bank accounts, no wel­fare pay­ments — nada. Instead, he sleeps in caves in the Utah desert (rent free), lives the life of a hunter-gath­er­er, remains active in his Moab com­mu­ni­ty and proves that much of what we con­sid­er a neces­si­ty real­ly isn’t at all.

Sue­lo was pro­filed in a 2009 piece in Details. He’s now the sub­ject of Mark Sun­deen’s new book, The Man Who Quit Mon­ey.

via Laugh­ing Squid

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An Easy, Scientifically-Proven Way to Make Yourself Smarter. Go for a Good Walk or Swim Every Day

in Life, Science, Video - Science | April 21st, 2012

This week, The New York Times gave us some good news. Accord­ing to an arti­cle by Gretchen Reynolds, a decade of research by neu­ro­sci­en­tists and phys­i­ol­o­gists shows fair­ly con­vinc­ing­ly that exer­cise can make you smarter. She writes:

Using sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­nolo­gies to exam­ine the work­ings of indi­vid­ual neu­rons — and the make­up of brain mat­ter itself — sci­en­tists in just the past few months have dis­cov­ered that exer­cise appears to build a brain that resists phys­i­cal shrink­age and enhance cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty. Exer­cise, the lat­est neu­ro­science sug­gests, does more to bol­ster think­ing than think­ing does.

There’s appar­ent­ly a lot to be gained from a sim­ple dai­ly walk (assum­ing it checks out with your doc­tor). And, as the video below shows, the gains goes beyond cog­ni­tion itself:

The pho­to above was pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of Big­Stock­Pho­to

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John Cleese, Monty Python Icon, on How to Be Creative

in Comedy, Creativity, Life, Psychology, Video - Science | April 11th, 2012

A cou­ple of years ago, Maria Popo­va high­light­ed for us a 2009 talk by John Cleese that offered a hand­book for cre­at­ing the right con­di­tions for cre­ativ­i­ty. Of course, John Cleese knows some­thing about cre­ativ­i­ty, being one of the lead­ing forces behind Mon­ty Python, the beloved British com­e­dy group.

Now, we have anoth­er talk, record­ed cir­ca 1991, where Cleese uses sci­en­tif­ic research to describe what cre­ativ­i­ty is … and what cre­ativ­i­ty isn’t. He starts by telling us, cre­ativ­i­ty is not a tal­ent. It has noth­ing to do with IQ. It is a way of doing things, a way of being — which means that cre­ativ­i­ty can be learned. The rest he explains in 37 thought-filled min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

Amy Tan: The Sources of Cre­ativ­i­ty

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz & The Cre­ative Process

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The Tyranny of The New Yorker (And More Culture Around the Web)

in Life, Literature, Media | March 20th, 2012

I feel your pain, broth­er, I feel your pain.…

Now a semi seri­ous ques­tion: How long until some­one buys the url newyorkertyranny.com? We’ll keep an eye on it.

More Cul­ture Around the Web (all pre­vi­ous­ly aired on our Twit­ter Stream):

Here’s Your Brain on Fic­tion

Steven Spiel­berg Talks About the Influ­ence of Stan­ley Kubrick.

Cel­e­brate Nation­al Nov­el Edit­ing Month with Kurt Von­negut Sto­ry Grids

New York Times Series on the Art & Craft of Writ­ing Begins with Jhumpa Lahiri

A Boom Time for Edu­ca­tion Start-Ups. Sil­i­con Val­ley Final­ly Think­ing About Edu­ca­tion

Bob Dylan Released His Debut Album 50 Years Ago. Record­ed in 6 hours for $402.

The Life of Rumi in Rare Islam­ic Man­u­script Paint­ings from the 1590s

Paul McCart­ney Gives Bass Lessons

Why Fin­ish Books?

Andy Warhol Get­ting His 15 Min­utes in Asia

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ParaHawking in Nepal: What It’s Really Like to Fly with Birds

in Life, Random, Science | March 19th, 2012

We’ve always had the desire to leave our earth-bound bod­ies and take flight with the birds. We achieved the mir­a­cle of flight over a cen­tu­ry ago. But only recent­ly did we cre­ate a robot that can mechan­i­cal­ly repro­duce the beau­ty of birds in flight. And now we’ve tak­en the next step, actu­al­ly join­ing birds high in the air. Above you can watch Para­Hawk­ing in action, a fusion between fal­con­ry and paraglid­ing that lets you inter­act with birds of prey in their own envi­ron­ment. It all takes place in Nepal. And it’s all part of an effort to con­serve Asi­a’s threat­ened vul­ture pop­u­la­tion. Learn more about these con­ser­va­tion efforts and Para­Hawk­ing itself at, of course, Parahawking.com.

And if you want to see what hap­pens when a paraglid­er (not affil­i­at­ed with this project) acci­den­tal­ly runs into an eagle, watch below:

H/T Metafil­ter

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Hitchcock on Happiness

in Film, Life | March 17th, 2012

It’s a sim­ple recipe for hap­pi­ness. Elim­i­nate all neg­a­tive emo­tions, any­thing that cre­ates bad feel­ings and dis­tracts from the project at hand. Clear it all away, and what’s left? The space for cre­ativ­i­ty pure and sim­ple. That’s hap­pi­ness for Hitch. Watch 20 Free Hitch­cock Films online here.

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‘This Is Water’: Complete Audio of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon Graduation Speech (2005)

in Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | March 6th, 2012

Last month, on the occa­sion of the author’s 50th birth­day, we post­ed a large col­lec­tion of free essays and sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace. But we missed a rare item: the com­plete audio record­ing of the com­mence­ment address Wal­lace gave at Keny­on Col­lege, in Ohio, on May 21, 2005–three years before he took his own life. The text of the speech has been pub­lished on the Inter­net and as a book called This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Deliv­ered on a Sig­nif­i­cant Occa­sion, about Liv­ing a Com­pas­sion­ate Life, but the com­plete audio ver­sion has been hard to find.

In the speech, Wal­lace talks about the chal­lenge of mov­ing beyond the super­fi­cial kind of free­dom that can be acquired through pow­er and wealth, toward a truer lib­er­a­tion that aris­es only when we become more ful­ly con­scious of the world out­side our “tiny skull-sized king­doms.” He says:

The real­ly impor­tant kind of free­dom involves atten­tion, and aware­ness, and dis­ci­pline, and effort, and being able tru­ly to care about oth­er peo­ple and to sac­ri­fice for them, over and over, in myr­i­ad pet­ty lit­tle unsexy ways, every day. That is real free­dom. The alter­na­tive is uncon­scious­ness, the default set­ting, the “rat race”–the con­stant gnaw­ing sense of hav­ing had and lost some infi­nite thing.

You can lis­ten to the first half of the speech above. And to delve deep­er into Wal­lace’s world­view, be sure to watch the fas­ci­nat­ing 84-minute inter­view he gave in 2003 to a Ger­man tele­vi­sion sta­tion. H/T Avi Burstein.

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:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

The 321 Books in David Fos­ter Wallace’s Per­son­al Library: From Blood Merid­i­an to Con­fes­sions of an Unlike­ly Body­builder

David Fos­ter Wal­lace on What’s Wrong with Post­mod­ernism: A Video Essay

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How the Great George Carlin Showed Louis CK the Way to Success (NSFW)

in Comedy, Life | February 18th, 2012

There’s prob­a­bly not a standup come­di­an big­ger than Louis CK right now. His FX tele­vi­sion show, Louie, earned him two Emmy Award nom­i­na­tions in 2011, and his recent com­e­dy spe­cial, Live at the Bea­con The­ater, made his­to­ry when CK dis­trib­uted the show via the web (not HBO) and net­ted $1,000,000 in sales in a mat­ter of days.

Louis CK is rid­ing a good wave. But times weren’t always so easy. Back in 2010, CK spoke at a trib­ute to George Car­lin (host­ed at the ven­er­a­ble New York Pub­lic Library) and revis­it­ed his ear­ly days in the pro­fes­sion. For years — actu­al­ly 15 long years — CK per­formed the same old act and spun his wheels. Then he looked to Car­lin and turned his career around. As you might expect, the sto­ry is laced with some pro­fan­i­ty. (Come on, it’s Louis CK talk­ing about George Car­lin!) But, when you strip the lan­guage away, you get a good life les­son. Per­se­ver­ance counts. But so does per­spec­tive, get­ting the right per­spec­tive.

Louis CK’s talk appears above. You can find the full Car­lin trib­ute here. And don’t miss a very relat­ed video where Car­lin describes the turn­ing point in his own life — the moment when he learned “not to give a shit” and his com­ic genius came into full bloom.

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