10 Rules of Self Discipline from the 1930 Self Help/Business Guru Napoleon Hill

in Books, Business, Life, Philosophy | March 2nd, 2020

It seems ridicu­lous to refer to the Gold­en Rule as a “weapon,” but that is just what it is—a weapon that no resis­tance on earth can with­stand! —Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill—whose ear­ly books The Law of Suc­cess (1928), The Mag­ic Lad­der To Suc­cess (1930), and Think and Grow Rich (1937) helped estab­lish the self-help genre—would be con­sid­ered a life coach or moti­va­tion­al speak­er in today’s par­lance.

And were he alive today, he’d like­ly he’d be fac­ing charges, or at the very least, can­celled for some of the behav­iors, schemes, and whop­pers Matt Novak details in an exhaus­tive­ly researched essay for Gizmodo’s Pale­o­fu­ture blog.

We think it’s impor­tant to tip you off to that shady side, because Hill’s “10 Rules for Prof­itable Self Dis­ci­pline,” above, are so sun­ny, they could spur you to dis­sem­i­nate them imme­di­ate­ly, leav­ing you vul­ner­a­ble to harsh words from bet­ter informed friends and, more cru­cial­ly, social media fol­low­ers, who are already het up about any num­ber of things in this elec­tion year, and who enjoy the cathar­sis a good call out affords.

Ergo, if you’re inclined to share, inves­ti­gate the well from which they sprung, and then decide whether or not you want to pro­ceed.

Why did we pro­ceed?

Because prac­ticed with the purest of inten­tions, these rules con­sti­tute extreme­ly human­is­tic advice from a man whose out­ward phi­los­o­phy con­tin­ues to be a touch­stone for many in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

And as evi­denced by the com­ments left by grate­ful YouTube view­ers, many of whom stum­bled across his words by acci­dent, peo­ple are thirsty for such explic­it­ly pos­i­tive guide­posts to inter­per­son­al deal­ings.

(A good num­ber also seem quite tak­en with the Vir­ginia native’s old timey speech pat­terns and vin­tage lin­go.)

If noth­ing else, apply­ing these rules could sweet­en your next argu­ment with some­one you love, or serve as inspi­ra­tion if you’re ever called upon to give a com­mence­ment speech:

Napoleon Hill’s 10 Rules for Prof­itable Self Dis­ci­pline

  1. Keep a cool head around hot heads. Rage doesn’t have to be con­ta­gious,.
  2. Believe that there are three sides to every argu­ment. If you’re in a dust-up, don’t assume that the fault lays with the oth­er per­son, but rather that you both shoul­der a por­tion of the blame. This is a pret­ty com­pas­sion­ate way of ensur­ing that everyone’s ass will be par­tial­ly cov­ered for both bet­ter and worse.
  3. Nev­er give direc­tives to a sub­or­di­nate when you are angry. Giv­en that swift and deci­sive action is often required of those in lead­er­ship posi­tions, you’ll have to learn to ice your own hot head pret­ty quick­ly to put this one into con­sis­tent play.
  4. Treat every­one as if they were a rich rel­a­tive who might leave you a siz­able inher­i­tance. Which is kind of a gross way of putting it, but oth­er­wise, we agree with Napoleon Hill that treat­ing oth­ers with respect and lov­ing atten­tion is a real “hon­ey” of a con­cept, espe­cial­ly if the oth­er per­son can offer lit­tle beyond their friend­ship.
  5. When you find your­self in an unpleas­ant cir­cum­stance, imme­di­ate­ly start search­ing for the seed of an equiv­a­lent ben­e­fit with­in the expe­ri­ence. If Novak’s Giz­mo­do essay is any indi­ca­tion, Hill prob­a­bly had a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ty to put this one into prac­tice, squeez­ing lemon­ade from lemons of his own mak­ing.
  6. Ask ques­tions and lis­ten to the answer. If you find your­self inclined to dis­agree with a state­ment, employ the phrase, “How do you know?” to get the speak­er to do all the heavy lift­ing. For exam­ple, Napoleon Hill might say to Matt Novak, “How do you know?” which would be Matt Novak’s cue to pro­duce a moun­tain of doc­u­men­ta­tion.
  7. Nev­er say or do any­thing before think­ing if it will ben­e­fit some­one or hurt them. The goal is to refrain from hurt­ing oth­ers. Let those of us are with­out sin cast the first stone here. Hill’s karmic spin on this rule is that any injuries you cause that don’t imme­di­ate­ly come around to bite you in the ass, will bite you in the ass much hard­er at some future point, a la com­pound inter­est.
  8. Learn the dif­fer­ence between friend­ly analy­sis and unfriend­ly crit­i­cisms. His not entire­ly fool­proof method for dis­tin­guish­ing intent is to con­sid­er the nature of your rela­tion­ship with the one offer­ing the obser­va­tions, their tone of voice, man­ner of deliv­ery, and some­what quaint­ly, whether or not they throw in any epi­thets. If it’s friend­ly, you can set some store by it. Oth­er­wise, dis­re­gard.
  9. A good leader knows how to take orders cheer­ful­ly. This pairs nice­ly with Rule Num­ber 3, don’t you think?
  10. Be tol­er­ant of your fel­low humans. Always.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness?: Take “The Sci­ence of Well-Being,” a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

How Much Mon­ey Do You Need to Be Hap­py? A New Study Gives Us Some Exact Fig­ures

Har­vard Course on Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: Watch 30 Lec­tures from the University’s Extreme­ly Pop­u­lar Course

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City  for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY (March 5 — 28) Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Photos That Ended Child Labor in the US: See the “Social Photography” of Lewis Hine (1911)

in History, Life, Photography | February 28th, 2020

The aver­age per­son believes implic­it­ly that the pho­to­graph can­not fal­si­fy. Of course, you and I know that this unbound­ed faith in the integri­ty of the pho­to­graph is often rude­ly shak­en, for, while pho­tographs may not lie, liars may pho­to­graph.  —Lewis Wick­es Hine, “Social Pho­tog­ra­phy: How the Cam­era May Help in the Social Uplift” (1909)

Long before Bran­don Stanton’s wild­ly pop­u­lar Humans of New York project tapped into the public’s capac­i­ty for com­pas­sion by com­bin­ing pho­tos of his sub­jects with some telling nar­ra­tive about their lives, edu­ca­tor and soci­ol­o­gist Lewis Wick­es Hine was using his cam­era as a tool to pres­sure the pub­lic into demand­ing an end to child labor in the Unit­ed States.

In a time when the US Fed­er­al Cen­sus report­ed that one in five chil­dren under the age of 16—over 1.75 mil­lion—was gain­ful­ly employed, Hines tra­versed the coun­try under the aus­pices of the Nation­al Child Labor Com­mit­tee, gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion and mak­ing por­traits of the under­age work­ers.

His images, made between 1911 and 1916, intro­duced view­ers to young boys break­ing up coal in Penn­syl­va­nia mines, tiny Louisiana oys­ter shuck­ers and Maine sar­dine cut­ters, child pick­ers in Ken­tucky tobac­co fields and Mass­a­chu­setts cran­ber­ry bogs, and news­boys in a num­ber of cities.

Their employ­ers active­ly recruit­ed kids from poor fam­i­lies, wager­ing that they would per­form repet­i­tive, often dan­ger­ous tasks for a pit­tance, with lit­tle chance of union­iz­ing.

Hine was a scrupu­lous doc­u­men­tar­i­an, label­ing each pho­to with cru­cial infor­ma­tion gleaned from con­ver­sa­tions with the child pic­tured there­in: name, age, loca­tion, occu­pa­tion, wages, and—hor­rif­i­cal­ly—any work­place injuries.

In an essay in the anthol­o­gy Major Prob­lems in the Gild­ed Age and the Pro­gres­sive Era, his­to­ri­an Robert West­brook lauds Hines’ way of inter­act­ing with his sub­jects with “deco­rum and tact,” accord­ing them a dig­ni­ty that few of the period’s “con­de­scend­ing” mid­dle-class reform­ers did.

As the Vox Dark­room seg­ment, above, explains, Hine’s for­mal com­po­si­tions lent addi­tion­al pow­er to his images of smudged child work­ers pos­ing in their places of employ­ment. Shal­low depth of field to ensure that the viewer’s eyes would not become absorbed in the back­ground, but rather engage with those of his sub­ject.

But it was the accom­pa­ny­ing nar­ra­tives, which he referred to var­i­ous­ly as “pic­ture sto­ries” or “pho­to-inter­pre­ta­tions,” that he cred­it­ed with real­ly get­ting through to the hearts and minds of an indif­fer­ent pub­lic.

The text pre­vent­ed view­ers from eas­i­ly brush­ing the chil­dren off as anony­mous, scruffy urchins.

Here for instance is “Manuel, the young shrimp-pick­er, five years old, and a moun­tain of child-labor oys­ter shells behind him. He worked last year. Under­stands not a word of Eng­lish. Dun­bar, Lopez, Dukate Com­pa­ny. Loca­tion: Biloxi, Mis­sis­sip­pi.”

“Lau­ra Pet­ty, a 6 year old berry pick­er on Jenk­ins farm, Rock Creek near Bal­ti­more, Md. ‘I’m just begin­nin.’ Picked two box­es yes­ter­day. (2 cents a box).”

“Ange­lo Ross, 142 Pana­ma Street, Hughestown Bor­ough, a young­ster who has been work­ing in Break­er #9 Penn­syl­va­nia Co. for four months, said he was 13 years old, but very doubt­ful. He has a broth­er, Tony, prob­a­bly under 14 work­ing. Loca­tion: Pittston, Penn­syl­va­nia.”

Hine cor­rect­ly fig­ured that the com­bi­na­tion of pho­to and bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion was a “lever for the social uplift.”

Once the pic­tures were pub­lished in Pro­gres­sive mag­a­zines, state leg­is­la­tures came under immense pres­sure to impose min­i­mum age require­ments in the work­place, effec­tive­ly end­ing child labor, and return­ing many for­mer work­ers to school.

View the entire col­lec­tion of Lewis Hine’s Nation­al Child Labor Com­mit­tee pho­tos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Dorothea Lange Shot, Migrant Moth­er, Per­haps the Most Icon­ic Pho­to in Amer­i­can His­to­ry

Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Clem Albers & Fran­cis Stewart’s Cen­sored Pho­tographs of a WWII Japan­ese Intern­ment Camp

Meet Ger­da Taro, the First Female Pho­to­jour­nal­ist to Die on the Front Lines

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC this March, when her com­pa­ny, The­ater of the Apes, presents the world pre­miere of Tony Award win­ner Greg Kotis’ new low-bud­get, gui­tar-dri­ven musi­cal, I AM NOBODY.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Use the “Eisenhower Matrix” to Manage Your Time & Increase Your Productivity: The System Designed by the 34th President of the United States

in Life, Productivity | February 19th, 2020

“What is impor­tant is sel­dom urgent,” said Dwight D. Eisen­how­er, “and what is urgent is sel­dom impor­tant.” Or at least many believe Eisen­how­er said that, even if he might have been quot­ing some­one else. Whether or not the 34th Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca ever spoke those exact words, he must have had a high­ly effec­tive method of deal­ing with life’s tasks. Dur­ing Eisen­how­er’s two terms in office, writes Atom­ic Habits author James Clear, “he launched pro­grams that direct­ly led to the devel­op­ment of the Inter­state High­way Sys­tem in the Unit­ed States, the launch of the inter­net (DARPA), the explo­ration of space (NASA), and the peace­ful use of alter­na­tive ener­gy sources (Atom­ic Ener­gy Act).”

Eisen­how­er accom­plished all that after “plan­ning and exe­cut­ing inva­sions of North Africa, France, and Ger­many” as Supreme Com­man­der of the Allied Forces in Europe dur­ing World War II” (and while being the most avid golfer ever to reside in the White House).

Though we may nev­er boast such a range of accom­plish­ments our­selves, we can still inject a shot of Eisen­how­er­ian pro­duc­tiv­i­ty into our lives with the “Eisen­how­er Matrix” — or, in the plain­er phras­ing “Ike” might have pre­ferred, the “Eisen­how­er Box.”

Its ver­ti­cal axis of impor­tance and hor­i­zon­tal axis of urgency cre­ate four box­es for cat­e­go­riz­ing tasks. Clear explains these cat­e­gories as fol­lows:

  • Urgent and impor­tant (tasks you will do imme­di­ate­ly)
  • Impor­tant, but not urgent (tasks you will sched­ule to do lat­er)
  • Urgent, but not impor­tant (tasks you will del­e­gate to some­one else)
  • Nei­ther urgent nor impor­tant (tasks that you will elim­i­nate)

Impor­tant tasks, writes Life­hack­er’s Thorin Klosows­ki, “are things that con­tribute to our long-term mis­sion, val­ues, and goals,” pur­suits that put us into a “respon­sive mode, which helps us remain calm, ratio­nal, and open to new oppor­tu­ni­ties.” At Busi­ness Insid­er, Drake Baer pro­vides exam­ples of all four cat­e­gories of tasks. The urgent and impor­tant include “attend­ing to a cry­ing baby, tack­ling a cri­sis at work, and mail­ing your rent check.” The impor­tant but not urgent include “sav­ing for the future, get­ting enough exer­cise, sleep­ing your sev­en to nine hours a night.” The urgent but not impor­tant include “book­ing a flight, shar­ing an arti­cle, answer­ing a phone call.” The nei­ther urgent nor impor­tant include “watch­ing Game of Thrones, check­ing your Face­book, eat­ing cook­ies.”

Eisen­how­er had it easy, you may say: he lived before binge-watch­ing, before social media, and before cook­ies were quite so addic­tive. Hence the greater impor­tance today of a time-man­age­ment sys­tem with the stark clar­i­ty of the Eisen­how­er Matrix, and not just for pres­i­dents. (Barack Oba­ma, Baer points out, made time for din­ner with the fam­i­ly when he was in the White House as well as an hour’s work­out every evening, both impor­tant but not urgent tasks.) So as not to lose sight of what’s impor­tant, Clear rec­om­mends keep­ing in mind two ques­tions: “What am I work­ing toward?” and “What are the core val­ues that dri­ve my life?” And though Eisen­how­er did­n’t have to deal with nui­sances like app noti­fi­ca­tions, he also did­n’t get to see the day when a pro­duc­tiv­i­ty app (whose expla­na­tion of the Eisen­how­er Matrix appears at the top of the post) has his name on it.

via James Clear, author of Atom­ic Habits

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dai­ly Rou­tines of Famous Cre­ative Peo­ple, Pre­sent­ed in an Inter­ac­tive Info­graph­ic

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & More

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca: The First Polit­i­cal Adver­tise­ments on Amer­i­can TV (1952)

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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America’s First Drag Queen Was Also America’s First LGBTQ Activist and a Former Slave

in Gender, History, Life | February 14th, 2020

Negro Dive Raid­ed. Thir­teen Black Men Dressed as Women Sur­prised at Sup­per and Arrest­ed. —The Wash­ing­ton Post, April 13, 1888

Some­times, when we are engaged as either par­tic­i­pant in, or eye­wit­ness to, the mak­ing of his­to­ry, its easy to for­get the his­to­ry-mak­ers who came ear­li­er, who dug the trench­es that allow our mod­ern bat­tles to be waged out in the open.

Take America’s first self-appoint­ed “queen of drag” and pio­neer­ing LGBTQ activist, William Dorsey Swann, born into slav­ery around 1858.

30 years lat­er, Swann faced down white offi­cers bust­ing a drag ball in a “qui­et-look­ing house” on Wash­ing­ton, DC’s F street, near 12th.

“You is no gen­tle­man,” Swann alleged­ly told the arrest­ing offi­cer, while half the guests broke for free­dom, cor­rect­ly sur­mis­ing that any­one who remained would see their names pub­lished in the next day’s news­pa­per as par­tic­i­pants in a bizarre and unseem­ly rit­u­al.

A lurid Wash­ing­ton Post clip­ping about the raid caught the eye of writer, his­to­ri­an, and for­mer  Ober­lin Col­lege Drag Ball queen, Chan­ning Ger­ard Joseph, who was research­ing an assign­ment for a Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate lev­el inves­tiga­tive report­ing class:

An ani­mat­ed con­ver­sa­tion, car­ried on in effem­i­nate tones, was in progress as the offi­cers approached the door, but when they opened it and the form of Lieut. Amiss was vis­i­ble to the peo­ple in the room a pan­ic ensued. A scram­ble was made for the win­dows and doors and some of the peo­ple jumped to the roofs of adjoin­ing build­ings. Oth­ers stripped off their dress­es and danced about the room almost in a nude con­di­tion, while sev­er­al, head­ed by a big negro named Dorsey, who was arrayed in a gor­geous dress of cream-col­ored satin, rushed towards the offi­cers and tried to pre­vent their enter­ing.

Joseph’s inter­est did not flag when his report­ing class project was turned in. House of Swann: Where Slaves Became Queens will be pub­lished in 2021.

Mean­while you can bone up on Swann, Swann’s jail time for run­ning a broth­el, and the Wash­ing­ton DC drag scene of the Swann era in Joseph’s essay for The Nation, “The First Drag Queen Was a For­mer Slave.”

Please note that William Dorsey Swann does not appear in the pho­to at the top of the page. As per Joseph:

The dancers — one in striped pants, the oth­er in a dress — were record­ed in France by Louis Lumière. Though their names are lost, they are believed to be Amer­i­can. In the show, they per­formed a ver­sion of the cake­walk, a dance invent­ed by enslaved peo­ple, and the pre­cur­sor to vogue­ing.

via The Nation

Relat­ed Con­tent:

100 Years of Drag Queen Fash­ion in 4 Min­utes: An Aes­thet­ic Jour­ney Mov­ing from the 1920s Through Today

Before Broke­back: The First Same-Sex Kiss in Cin­e­ma (1927)

When John Waters Appeared on The Simp­sons and Changed America’s LGBTQ Views (1997)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City this March for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Artist Tricks Google Maps Into Creating a Virtual Traffic Jam, Using a Little Red Wagon & 99 Smartphones

in Google, Life, Maps, Technology, Travel | February 7th, 2020

Some­times the mirac­u­lous time-sav­ing con­ve­niences we’ve come to depend on can have the oppo­site effect, as artist Simon Wick­ert recent­ly demon­strat­ed, ambling about the streets of Berlin at a Huck Finn-ish pace, tow­ing a squeaky-wheeled red wag­on loaded with 99 sec­ond­hand smart­phones.

Each phone had a SIM card, and all were run­ning the Google Maps app.

The result?

A near-instan­ta­neous “vir­tu­al traf­fic jam” on Google Maps, even though bicy­clists seem to vast­ly out­num­ber motorists along Wick­ert’s route.

As a Google spokesper­son told 9to5 Google’s Ben Schoon short­ly after news of Wickert’s stunt began to spread:

Traf­fic data in Google Maps is refreshed con­tin­u­ous­ly thanks to infor­ma­tion from a vari­ety of sources, includ­ing aggre­gat­ed anonymized data from peo­ple who have loca­tion ser­vices turned on and con­tri­bu­tions from the Google Maps com­mu­ni­ty.

In oth­er words, had you checked your phone before head­ing out to the Baumhaus an der Mauer (Tree­house on the Wall), the Urban Art Clash Gallery, OMA’s Café, or some oth­er spot close to Wickert’s lit­tle red wagon’s trail of terror—like Google’s Berlin office—you might have thought twice about your intend­ed path, or even going at all, see­ing bridges and streets change from a free and easy green to an osten­si­bly grid­locked red.

As long as Wick­ert kept mov­ing, he was able to con­tin­ue fool­ing the algo­rithm into think­ing 99 humans were all using their phone’s Maps app for nav­i­ga­tion­al pur­pos­es in a small, con­gest­ed area.

Obvi­ous­ly, a cou­ple of bus­es could eas­i­ly be respon­si­ble for car­ry­ing 99 smart­phones in active use, but it’s unlike­ly those phones own­ers would be con­sult­ing the map app in the pas­sen­ger seats, when they could be scrolling through Insta­gram or play­ing Can­dy Crush.

Wick­ert also dis­cov­ered that his vir­tu­al traf­fic jam dis­ap­peared when­ev­er a car passed his wag­onload.

The spokesper­son who engaged with Schoon put a good-natured face on Google’s response to Wickert’s hack, say­ing, “We’ve launched the abil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish between cars and motor­cy­cles in sev­er­al coun­tries includ­ing India, Indone­sia and Egypt, though we haven’t quite cracked trav­el­ing by wag­on. We appre­ci­ate see­ing cre­ative uses of Google Maps like this as it helps us make maps work bet­ter over time.”

Mean­while, the artist’s puck­ish stunt, which he describes as a “per­for­mance and instal­la­tion,” seems anchored by sin­cere philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions, as evi­denced by the inclu­sion on his web­site of the below excerpt from “The Pow­er of Vir­tu­al Maps,” urban researcher Moritz Ahlert’s recent essay in the Ham­burg­er Jour­nal für Kul­tur­an­thro­polo­gie, :

The advent of Google’s Geo Tools began in 2005 with Maps and Earth, fol­lowed by Street View in 2007. They have since become enor­mous­ly more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced. Google’s vir­tu­al maps have lit­tle in com­mon with clas­si­cal ana­log maps. The most sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence is that Google’s maps are inter­ac­tive  – scrol­lable, search­able and zoomable. Google’s map ser­vice has fun­da­men­tal­ly changed our under­stand­ing of what a map is, how we inter­act with maps, their tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions, and how they look aes­thet­i­cal­ly.

In this fash­ion, Google Maps makes vir­tu­al changes to the real city. Appli­ca­tions such as Airbnb and Car­shar­ing have an immense impact on cities: on their hous­ing mar­ket and mobil­i­ty cul­ture, for instance. There is also a major impact on how we find a roman­tic part­ner, thanks to dat­ing plat­forms such as Tin­der, and on our self-quan­ti­fy­ing behav­ior, thanks to the nike jog­ging app. Or map-based food deliv­ery apps like deliv­eroo or foodo­ra. All of these apps func­tion via inter­faces with Google Maps and cre­ate new forms of dig­i­tal cap­i­tal­ism and com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion. With­out these maps, car shar­ing sys­tems, new taxi apps, bike rental sys­tems and online trans­port agency ser­vices such as Uber would be unthink­able. An addi­tion­al map­ping mar­ket is pro­vid­ed by self-dri­ving cars; again, Google has already estab­lished a posi­tion for itself.

With its Geo Tools, Google has cre­at­ed a plat­form that allows users and busi­ness­es to inter­act with maps in a nov­el way. This means that ques­tions relat­ing to pow­er in the dis­course of car­tog­ra­phy have to be refor­mu­lat­ed. But what is the rela­tion­ship between the art of enabling and tech­niques of super­vi­sion, con­trol and reg­u­la­tion in Google’s maps? Do these maps func­tion as dis­pos­i­tive nets that deter­mine the behav­ior, opin­ions and images of liv­ing beings, exer­cis­ing pow­er and con­trol­ling knowl­edge? Maps, which them­selves are the prod­uct of a com­bi­na­tion of states of knowl­edge and states of pow­er, have an inscribed pow­er dis­pos­i­tive. Google’s sim­u­la­tion-based map and world mod­els deter­mine the actu­al­i­ty and per­cep­tion of phys­i­cal spaces and the devel­op­ment of action mod­els.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Plan­e­tary Per­spec­tive: Tril­lions of Pic­tures of the Earth Avail­able Through Google Earth Engine

View and Down­load Near­ly 60,000 Maps from the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey (USGS)

Ancient Rome in 3D on Google Earth

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City this March for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Radical Women: Stream the Getty’s Podcast That Features Six Major 20th-Century Artists, All Female

in Art, History, Life, Museums, Podcasts | February 3rd, 2020


Only recent­ly has “actor” become an accept­able gen­der-neu­tral term for per­form­ers of stage and screen.

Pri­or to that, we had “actor” and “actress,” and while there may have been some prob­lem­at­ic assump­tions con­cern­ing the type of woman who might be drawn to the pro­fes­sion, there was arguably lin­guis­tic par­i­ty between the two words.

Not so for artists.

In the not-so-dis­tant past, female artists invari­ably found them­selves referred to as “female artists.”

Not great, when male artists were referred to as (say it with me) “artists.”

The new sea­son of the Getty’s pod­cast Record­ing Artists pays trib­ute to six sig­nif­i­cant post-war artists—two Abstract Expres­sion­ists, a por­traitist, a per­for­mance artist and exper­i­men­tal musi­cian, and a print­mak­er who pro­gressed to assem­blage and col­lage works with an overt­ly social mes­sage.

Hope­ful­ly you won’t need to reach for your smelling salts upon dis­cov­er­ing that all six artists are female:

Alice Neel

Lee Kras­ner

Betye Saar

Helen Franken­thaler

Yoko Ono

and Eva Hesse

Host Helen Molesworth is also female, and up until recent­ly, served as the much admired Chief Cura­tor of LA’s Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art. (Accord­ing to artist Lor­na Simp­son’s take on Molesworth’s abrupt dis­missal: “Women who have a point of view and stand by it are often pun­ished. Just because you get rid of Helen Molesworth doesn’t mean you have solved ‘the prob­lem.’”)

Molesworth, who is joined by two art world guests per episode—some of them (gasp!) non-female—is the per­fect choice to con­sid­er the impact of the Rad­i­cal Women who give this sea­son its sub­ti­tle.

We also hear from the artists them­selves, in excepts from taped ’60s and ’70s-era inter­views with his­to­ri­ans Cindy Nemser and Bar­bara Rose.

Their can­did remarks give Molesworth and her guests a lot to con­sid­er, from the dif­fi­cul­ties of main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent artis­tic prac­tice after one becomes a moth­er to racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. A lot of atten­tion is paid to his­tor­i­cal con­text, even when it’s warts and all.

The late Alice Neel, a white artist best remem­bered for her por­traits of her black and brown East Harlem neigh­bors and friends, cracks wise about butch les­bians in Green­wich Vil­lage, prompt­ing Molesworth to remark that she thinks she—or any artist of her acquaintance—could have “eas­i­ly” swayed Neel to can the homo­pho­bic remarks.

It’s also pos­si­ble that Neel, who died in 1984, would have kept step with the times and made the nec­es­sary cor­rec­tion unprompt­ed, were she still with us today.


A cou­ple of the sub­jects, Yoko Ono and Betye Saar, are alive …and active­ly cre­at­ing art, though it’s their past work that seems to be the source of great­est fas­ci­na­tion.

When New York City’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art reopened its doors fol­low­ing a major phys­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal reboot, vis­i­tors were treat­ed to The Leg­ends of Black Girl’s Win­dow, an exhi­bi­tion of the 94-year-old Saar’s work from the ‘60s and ‘70s. New York­er crit­ic Doreen St. Félix bemoaned the “absence of explic­it­ly black-fem­i­nist works,” par­tic­u­lar­ly The Lib­er­a­tion of Aunt Jemi­ma, a mixed media assem­blage, Molesworth dis­cuss­es at length in the pod­cast episode ded­i­cat­ed to Saar.

MoMA also played host to a mas­sive exhi­bi­tion of Ono’s ear­ly work in 2015, prompt­ing the New York Times crit­ic Hol­land Cot­ter to pro­nounce her “imag­i­na­tive, tough-mind­ed and still under­es­ti­mat­ed.”

This is a far cry bet­ter than New York Times crit­ic Hilton Kramer’s dis­missal of Neel’s 1974 ret­ro­spec­tive at the Whit­ney, when the artist was 74 years old:

… the Whit­ney, which can usu­al­ly be count­ed on to do the wrong thing, devot­ed a solo exhi­bi­tion to Alice Neel, whose paint­ings (we can be rea­son­ably cer­tain) would nev­er have been accord­ed that hon­or had they been pro­duced by a man. The pol­i­tics of the sit­u­a­tion required that a woman be giv­en an exhi­bi­tion, and Alice Neel’s paint­ing was no doubt judged to be suf­fi­cient­ly bizarre, not to say inept, to qual­i­fy as some­thing ‘far out.’”

Twen­ty six years lat­er, his opin­ion of Neel’s tal­ent had not mel­lowed, though he had the polit­i­cal sense to dial down the misog­y­ny in his scathing Observ­er review of Neel’s third show at the Whit­ney…or did he? In cit­ing cura­tor Ann Temkin’s obser­va­tion that Neel paint­ed “with the eye of a car­i­ca­tur­ist” he makes sure to note that Neel’s sub­ject Annie Sprin­kle, “the porn star who became a per­for­mance artist, is her­self a car­i­ca­ture, no mock­ery was need­ed.”

One has to won­der if he would have described the artist’s nude self-por­trait at the age of 80 as that of “a geri­atric ruin” had the artist been a man.

Lis­ten to all six episodes of Record­ing Artists: Rad­i­cal Women and see exam­ples of each subject’s work here.

And while nei­ther Saar nor Ono added any cur­rent com­men­tary to the pod­cast, we encour­age you to check out the inter­views below in which they dis­cuss their recent work in addi­tion to reflect­ing on their long artis­tic careers:

“‘It’s About Time!’ Betye Saar’s Long Climb to the Sum­mit” (The New York Times, 2019)

“The Big Read – Yoko Ono: Imag­ine The Future” (NME, 2018)

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Space of Their Own, a New Online Data­base, Will Fea­ture Works by 600+ Over­looked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Cen­turies

Women Who Draw: Explore an Open Direc­to­ry That Show­cas­es the Work of 5,000+ Female Illus­tra­tors

A New Archive Tran­scribes and Puts Online the Diaries & Note­books of Women Artists, Art His­to­ri­ans, Crit­ics and Deal­ers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York: The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Akira Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

in Film, Life | January 30th, 2020

In movies like Sev­en Samu­rai and High and Low, direc­tor Aki­ra Kuro­sawa took the cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage of Hol­ly­wood and improved on it, cre­at­ing a vig­or­ous, mus­cu­lar method of visu­al sto­ry­telling that became a styl­is­tic play­book for the likes of Mar­tin Scors­ese, George Lucas and Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la. In movies like Ikiru, The Bad Sleep Well and The Low­er Depths, Kuro­sawa relent­less­ly strug­gled to find the rays of light among the shad­ows of the human soul. This philo­soph­i­cal urgency com­bined with his visu­al bril­liance is what gives his work, espe­cial­ly his ear­ly films, such vital­i­ty.

“One thing that dis­tin­guish­es Aki­ra Kuro­sawa is that he didn’t just make a mas­ter­piece or two mas­ter­pieces,” Cop­po­la said dur­ing an inter­view. “He made eight mas­ter­pieces.”

So when Kuro­sawa comes out with a rec­om­mend­ed view­ing list, movie mavens every­where should take note. Such a list was pub­lished in his posthu­mous­ly pub­lished book Yume wa ten­sai de aru (A Dream is a Genius). His daugh­ter Kazuko Kuro­sawa described the list’s selec­tion process:

My father always said that the films he loved were too many to count, and to make a top ten rank. That explains why you can­not find in this list many of the titles of the films he regard­ed as won­der­ful. The prin­ci­ple of the choice is: one film for one direc­tor, entry of the unfor­get­table films about which I and my father had a love­ly talk, and of some ideas on cin­e­ma that he had cher­ished but did not express in pub­lic. This is the way I made a list of 100 films of Kurosawa’s choice.

Orga­nized chrono­log­i­cal­ly, the list starts with D.W. Griffith’s Bro­ken Blos­soms and ends with Takeshi Kitano’s Hana-Bi. In between is a remark­ably thor­ough and diverse col­lec­tion of films, mix­ing in equal parts Hol­ly­wood, art house and Japan­ese clas­sics. Many of the movies are exact­ly the ones you would see on any Film Stud­ies 101 syl­labus — Truffaut’s 400 Blows, Car­ol Reed’s The Third Man and DeSica’s Bicy­cle Thieves. Oth­er films are less expect­ed. Hayao Miyazaki’s utter­ly won­der­ful My Neigh­bor Totoro makes the cut, as does Ishi­ro Hon­da’s Goji­ra and Peter Weir’s Wit­ness. His pol­i­cy of one film per direc­tor yields some sur­pris­ing, almost will­ful­ly per­verse results. The God­fa­ther, Part 2 over The God­fa­ther? The King of Com­e­dy over Good­fel­las? Ivan the Ter­ri­ble over Bat­tle­ship Potemkin? The Birds over Ver­ti­go? Bar­ry Lyn­don over pret­ty much any­thing else that Stan­ley Kubrick did? And while I am pleased that Mikio Naruse gets a nod for Ukigu­mo – in a just world, Naruse would be as read­i­ly praised and cel­e­brat­ed as his con­tem­po­raries Yasu­jiro Ozu and Ken­ji Mizoguchi – I am also struck by the list’s most glar­ing, and curi­ous, omis­sion. There’s no Orson Welles.

You can see his 100 essen­tial movies below. Above we have the sec­ond film on the list, The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, which you can oth­er­wise find in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

1. Bro­ken Blos­soms or The Yel­low Man and the Girl (Grif­fith, 1919) USA
2. Das Cab­i­net des Dr. Cali­gari [The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari] (Wiene, 1920) Ger­many
3. Dr. Mabuse, der Spiel­er – Ein Bild der Zeit (Part 1 — Part 2) [Dr. Mabuse, the Gam­bler] (Lang, 1922) Ger­many
4. The Gold Rush (Chap­lin, 1925) USA
5. La Chute de la Mai­son Ush­er [The Fall of the House of Ush­er] (Jean Epstein, 1928) France
6. Un Chien Andalou [An Andalu­sian Dog] (Bunuel, 1928) France
7. Moroc­co (von Stern­berg, 1930) USA
8. Der Kongress Tanzt (Charell, 1931) Ger­many
9. Die 3groschenoper [The Three­pen­ny Opera] (Pab­st, 1931) Ger­many
10. Leise Fle­hen Meine Lieder [Lover Divine] (Forst, 1933) Austria/Germany
11. The Thin Man (Dyke, 1934) USA
12. Tonari no Yae-chan [My Lit­tle Neigh­bour, Yae] (Shi­mazu, 1934) Japan
13. Tange Sazen yowa: Hyaku­man ryo no tsubo [Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Mil­lion Ryo] (Yamana­ka, 1935) Japan
14. Akan­ishi Kaki­ta [Capri­cious Young Men] (Ita­mi, 1936) Japan
15. La Grande Illu­sion [The Grand Illu­sion] (Renoir, 1937) France
16. Stel­la Dal­las (Vidor, 1937) USA
17. Tsuzurika­ta Kyoshit­su [Lessons in Essay] (Yamamo­to, 1938) Japan
18. Tsuchi [Earth] (Uchi­da, 1939) Japan
19. Ninotch­ka (Lubitsch, 1939) USA
20. Ivan Groznyy I, Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky Zagov­or [Ivan the Ter­ri­ble Parts I and II] (Eisen­stein, 1944–46) Sovi­et Union
21. My Dar­ling Clemen­tine (Ford, 1946) USA
22. It’s a Won­der­ful Life (Capra, 1946) USA
23. The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946) USA
24. Ladri di Bici­clette [The Bicy­cle Thief] [Bicy­cle Thieves] (De Sica, 1948) Italy
25. Aoi san­myaku [The Green Moun­tains] (Imai, 1949) Japan
26. The Third Man (Reed, 1949) UK
27. Ban­shun [Late Spring] (Ozu, 1949) Japan
28. Orpheus (Cocteau, 1949) France
29. Karu­men kokyo ni kaeru [Car­men Comes Home] (Kinoshi­ta, 1951) Japan
30. A Street­car Named Desire (Kazan, 1951) USA
31. Thérèse Raquin [The Adul­tress] (Carne 1953) France
32. Saikaku ichidai onna [The Life of Oharu] (Mizoguchi, 1952) Japan
33. Viag­gio in Italia [Jour­ney to Italy] (Rosselli­ni, 1953) Italy
34. Goji­ra [Godzil­la] (Hon­da, 1954) Japan
35. La Stra­da (Felli­ni, 1954) Italy
36. Ukigu­mo [Float­ing Clouds] (Naruse, 1955) Japan
37. Pather Pan­chali [Song of the Road] (Ray, 1955) India
38. Dad­dy Long Legs (Neg­ule­sco, 1955) USA
39. The Proud Ones (Webb, 1956) USA
40. Baku­mat­su taiy­o­den [Sun in the Last Days of the Shogu­nate] (Kawashima, 1957) Japan
41. The Young Lions (Dmytryk, 1957) USA
42. Les Cousins [The Cousins] (Chabrol, 1959) France
43. Les Quarte Cents Coups [The 400 Blows] (Truf­faut, 1959) France
44. A bout de Souf­fle [Breath­less] (Godard, 1959) France
45. Ben-Hur (Wyler, 1959) USA
46. Oto­to [Her Broth­er] (Ichikawa, 1960) Japan
47. Une aus­si longue absence [The Long Absence] (Colpi, 1960) France/Italy
48. Le Voy­age en Bal­lon [Stow­away in the Sky] (Lam­or­isse, 1960) France
49. Plein Soleil [Pur­ple Noon] (Clement, 1960) France/Italy
50. Zazie dans le métro [Zazie on the Subway](Malle, 1960) France/Italy
51. L’Annee derniere a Marien­bad [Last Year in Marien­bad] (Resnais, 1960) France/Italy
52. What Ever Hap­pened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962) USA
53. Lawrence of Ara­bia (Lean, 1962) UK
54. Melodie en sous-sol [Any Num­ber Can Win] (Verneuil, 1963) France/Italy
55. The Birds (Hitch­cock, 1963) USA
56. Il Deser­to Rosso [The Red Desert](Antonioni, 1964) Italy/France
57. Who’s Afraid of Vir­ginia Woolf? (Nichols, 1966) USA
58. Bon­nie and Clyde (Penn, 1967) USA
59. In the Heat of the Night (Jew­i­son, 1967) USA
60. The Charge of the Light Brigade (Richard­son, 1968) UK
61. Mid­night Cow­boy (Schlesinger, 1969) USA
62. MASH (Alt­man, 1970) USA
63. John­ny Got His Gun (Trum­bo, 1971) USA
64. The French Con­nec­tion (Fried­kin, 1971) USA
65. El espíritu de la col­me­na [Spir­it of the Bee­hive] (Erice, 1973) Spain
66. Sol­yaris [Solaris] (Tarkovsky, 1972) Sovi­et Union
67. The Day of the Jack­al (Zin­ne­man, 1973) UK/France
68. Grup­po di famiglia in un inter­no [Con­ver­sa­tion Piece] (Vis­con­ti, 1974) Italy/France
69. The God­fa­ther Part II (Cop­po­la, 1974) USA
70. San­dakan hachiban­shokan bohkyo [San­dakan 8] (Kumai, 1974) Japan
71. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (For­man, 1975) USA
72. O, Thi­as­sos [The Trav­el­ling Play­ers] (Angelopou­los, 1975) Greece
73. Bar­ry Lyn­don (Kubrick, 1975) UK
74. Daichi no komo­ri­u­ta [Lul­la­by of the Earth] (Masumu­ra, 1976) Japan
75. Annie Hall (Allen, 1977) USA
76. Neokonchen­naya pye­sa dlya mekhanich­esko­go piani­no [Unfin­ished Piece for Mechan­i­cal Piano] (Mikhalkov, 1977) Sovi­et Union
77. Padre Padrone [My Father My Mas­ter] (P. & V. Taviani, 1977) Italy
78. Glo­ria (Cas­savetes, 1980) USA
79. Haruka­naru yama no yobi­goe [A Dis­tant Cry From Spring] (Yama­da, 1980) Japan
80. La Travi­a­ta (Zef­firelli, 1982) Italy
81. Fan­ny och Alexan­der [Fan­ny and Alexan­der] (Bergman, 1982) Sweden/France/West Ger­many
82. Fitz­car­ral­do (Her­zog, 1982) Peru/West Ger­many
83. The King of Com­e­dy (Scors­ese, 1983) USA
84. Mer­ry Christ­mas Mr. Lawrence (Oshi­ma, 1983) UK/Japan/New Zealand
85. The Killing Fields (Joffe 1984) UK
86. Stranger Than Par­adise (Jar­musch, 1984) USA/ West Ger­many
87. Dong­dong de Jiaqi [A Sum­mer at Grand­pa’s] (Hou, 1984) Tai­wan
88. Paris, Texas (Wen­ders, 1984) France/ West Ger­many
89. Wit­ness (Weir, 1985) USA
90. The Trip to Boun­ti­ful (Mas­ter­son, 1985) USA
91. Otac na sluzbenom putu [When Father was Away on Busi­ness] (Kus­turi­ca, 1985) Yugoslavia
92. The Dead (Hus­ton, 1987) UK/Ireland/USA
93. Khane-ye doust kod­jast? [Where is the Friend’s Home] (Kiarosta­mi, 1987) Iran
94. Bagh­dad Cafe [Out of Rosen­heim] (Adlon, 1987) West Germany/USA
95. The Whales of August (Ander­son, 1987) USA
96. Run­ning on Emp­ty (Lumet, 1988) USA
97. Tonari no totoro [My Neigh­bour Totoro] (Miyaza­ki, 1988) Japan
98. A un [Bud­dies] (Furuha­ta, 1989) Japan
99. La Belle Noiseuse [The Beau­ti­ful Trou­ble­mak­er] (Riv­ette, 1991) France/Switzerland
100. Hana-bi [Fire­works] (Kitano, 1997) Japan

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Did Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Make Such Pow­er­ful & Endur­ing Films? A Wealth of Video Essays Break Down His Cin­e­mat­ic Genius

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Discover the Disappearing Turkish Language That is Whistled, Not Spoken

in Language, Life | January 28th, 2020

We so often priv­i­lege indi­vid­u­als as the pri­ma­ry dri­vers of inno­va­tion. But what if tech­nol­o­gy is also self-orga­niz­ing, devel­op­ing as an evo­lu­tion­ary response to the envi­ron­ment? If we think of whis­tled lan­guage as a kind of tech­nol­o­gy, we have an excel­lent exam­ple of this self-orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple in the 42 doc­u­ment­ed whis­tled lan­guages around the world.

As we not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, reports of whis­tled lan­guages go back hun­dreds of years in cul­tures that would have had no con­tact with each oth­er: Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co, north­ern Africa’s Atlas Moun­tains, the Brazil­ian Ama­zon, north­ern Laos, and the Canary Islands.

These are “places with steep ter­rain or dense forests,” writes Michelle Nijhuis at The New York­er, “where it might oth­er­wise be hard to com­mu­ni­cate at a dis­tance.” Such is the case in the vil­lage of Kuşköy, in “the remote moun­tains of north­ern Turkey,” notes Great Big Sto­ry:

“For three cen­turies” farm­ers there “have com­mu­ni­cat­ed great dis­tances by whistling. It’s a lan­guage called kuş dili that is still used to this day, though few­er peo­ple are learn­ing it in the age of the cell phone.” Also called “bird lan­guage” by locals, “for obvi­ous rea­sons,” this sys­tem of vocal tele­pho­ny, like all oth­er exam­ples, is based on actu­al speech. Nijhuis explains:

Kuşköy’s ver­sion [of whis­tled lan­guage] adapts stan­dard Turk­ish syl­la­bles into pierc­ing tones that can be heard from more than half a mile away. The phrase “Do you have fresh bread?,” which in Turk­ish is “Taze ekmek var mı?,” becomes, in bird lan­guage, six sep­a­rate whis­tles made with the tongue, teeth, and fin­gers.

The method may be avian, but the mes­sages are human, albeit in sim­pli­fied lan­guage for ease of trans­mis­sion. In the video above Muazzez Köçek, Kuşköy’s best whistler, shows how she trans­lates Turk­ish vocab­u­lary into melodies—turning words into music, an act of cod­ing with­out a com­put­er.

That this bio-tech­no­log­i­cal feat arose spon­ta­neous­ly to solve the same prob­lem the world over shows how us how humans col­lec­tive­ly prob­lem-solve. But of course, indi­vid­u­al­ism has its advan­tages. Despite the huge amount of data they gath­er on us, mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies have met one par­tic­u­lar human need.

In Kuşköy, “bird lan­guage is rapid­ly dis­ap­pear­ing from dai­ly life,” writes Nijhuis. “In a small town filled with nosy neigh­bors, tex­ting affords a lev­el of pri­va­cy that whistling nev­er did.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Whis­tled Lan­guages of the Canary Islands, Turkey & Mex­i­co (and What They Say About the Human Brain)

Speak­ing in Whis­tles: The Whis­tled Lan­guage of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co

How Lan­guages Evolve: Explained in a Win­ning TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

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

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