Coffee Entrepreneur Renato Bialetti Gets Buried in the Espresso Maker He Made Famous

in Food & Drink, Life | February 22nd, 2016

At OC HQ you will find two Bialet­ti espres­so mak­ers on the stove–one small, the oth­er large–and togeth­er they pow­er us through the day. Invent­ed by Alfon­so Bialet­ti in 1933, the octag­o­nal, Art Deco-designed cof­fee mak­er even­tu­al­ly became a sta­ple in Ital­ian homes (90% of them), thanks to his son Rena­to, who died last week at the age of 93. A savvy mar­keter to the end, Bialet­ti went to the grave with his prod­uct, buried, as he was, in an espres­so mak­er that dou­bled as an urn. All in all, I can’t think of much bet­ter ways to spend eter­ni­ty.

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:

Paul Gia­mat­ti Plays Hon­oré de Balzac, Hopped Up on 50 Cof­fees Per Day

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

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Umberto Eco Dies at 84; Leaves Behind Advice to Aspiring Writers

in Life, Writing | February 19th, 2016

Umber­to Eco, the Ital­ian semi­oti­cian, philoso­pher, lit­er­ary crit­ic, and nov­el­ist — and, of course, author of Fou­cault’s Pen­du­lum — has died at his home in Milan. He was 84.

Eco’s pass­ing adds some poignan­cy to a video he record­ed just last year, on behalf of The Louisiana Chan­nel, a media out­let based, of all places, in Den­mark. In the clip above, Eco gives some coun­sel to aspir­ing writ­ers: Keep your ego in check, and your ambi­tions, real­is­tic. Put in the time and the hard work, and don’t shoot for the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture straight out of the gate. That, Eco says, kills every lit­er­ary career. And remem­ber that writ­ing is “10% inspi­ra­tion and 90% per­spi­ra­tion.” They’re truisms–you dis­cov­er after spend­ing decades as a writer–that turn out to be true. That con­fir­ma­tion is one of the gifts he leaves behind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Umber­to Eco’s How To Write a The­sis: A Wit­ty, Irrev­er­ent & High­ly Prac­ti­cal Guide Now Out in Eng­lish

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LIFE Magazine’s Guide to Kissing, Circa 1942

in Life | February 12th, 2016

Once upon a time, in the mid­dle of World War II, there was a right way to do it. And a wrong way to do it. Are there rules in 2016? And what would they look like? That’s your home­work assign­ment for this Valen­tine’s Day week­end.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Sto­ry Behind Rodin’s ‘The Kiss’

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

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This is Your Brain in Love: The Stanford Love Competition Shows What Love Looks Like on an MRI

in Life, Neuroscience, Stanford | February 12th, 2016

We hear it so often it’s almost a cliché, one I’m sure I’ve repeat­ed with­out giv­ing it much thought: You can’t mea­sure love in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. But we prob­a­bly can, in fact. Or at least neu­ro­sci­en­tists can. Last year, one joint Chi­nese and Amer­i­can team of neu­ro­sci­en­tists did just that, defin­ing the feel­ing we call love as “a moti­va­tion­al state asso­ci­at­ed with a desire to enter or main­tain a close rela­tion­ship with a spe­cif­ic oth­er per­son.” This doesn’t cov­er the love of pets, food, or sun­sets, but it gets at what we cel­e­brate with can­dy and red tchotchkes every year around this time, as well as the love we have for friends or fam­i­ly.

Using fMRI scans of three groups of 100 men and women, the researchers found that an “in-love group had more increased activ­i­ty across sev­er­al brain regions involved in reward, moti­va­tion, emo­tion, and social func­tion­ing,” reports Med­ical Dai­ly. The longer peo­ple had been “in love,” the greater the brain activ­i­ty in these regions. Whether the brain states cause the emo­tion, or the emo­tion caus­es the brain states, or they are one in the same, I can’t say, but the fact remains: love can be quan­tifi­ably mea­sured.

Mean­while, Brent Hoff sep­a­rate­ly decid­ed to exploit this fact for what he calls a “Love Com­pe­ti­tion.” With the help of Stanford’s Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal Imag­ing (CNI), Hoff enlist­ed sev­en con­tes­tants of vary­ing ages—from 10 to 75—and gen­ders to enter an fMRI machine and “love some­one as hard as they can” for five min­utes. Who­ev­er gen­er­ates the most activ­i­ty in regions “pro­duc­ing the neu­ro­chem­i­cal expe­ri­ence of love” wins. Gives you the warm fuzzies, right?

While “the idea that love can be mea­sured may seem deeply unro­man­tic,” writes Aeon mag­a­zine, “the results were any­thing but.” The con­tes­tants were not restrict­ed to roman­tic love. Ten-year-old Milo gives his love to a new baby cousin, because “she’s very cute.” Dr. Bob Dougher­ty of CNI pre­dicts ear­ly on that an “old­er guy” like him­self might win because expe­ri­ence would bet­ter help him con­trol the emo­tion. But at the begin­ning, it’s any­one’s game. Watch the com­pe­ti­tion above and find out who wins.

Giv­en that this is billed as the “1st Annu­al Love Com­pe­ti­tion,” might we expect anoth­er this year?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What is Love? BBC Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Fea­ture Sartre, Freud, Aristo­phanes, Dawkins & More

This Is Your Brain on Jane Austen: The Neu­ro­science of Read­ing Great Lit­er­a­ture

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

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

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1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: Stream a Huge Playlist of Songs Based on the Bestselling Book

in Life, Music | February 10th, 2016

love supreme list of 1000 recordings

Image by Hayeur­JF, via Flickr Com­mons

Though the buri­als of ancient Egypt­ian rulers offer at least one notable excep­tion, near­ly all the world’s reli­gions have agreed on one thing—if one thing only: you can’t take your stuff with you. You can leave it to the local church, mosque, or syn­a­gogue, your heirs, a char­i­ty of your choice, your dog; but your mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions will not go wher­ev­er you might when it’s over.



How­ev­er, should con­scious­ness some­how sur­vive the body, or get uploaded to a new one in some sci-fi future, per­haps you can take with you the expe­ri­ences, mem­o­ries, sen­sa­tions, and ideas you’ve accu­mu­lat­ed over a life­time. And if that’s the case, we should all be greedy for knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence rather than prop­er­ty and con­sumer goods. And the “1,000… Before You Die” series of books, might be con­sid­ered guides to curat­ing your after­life.

The series has rec­om­mend­ed 1,000 places to see, 1,000 foods to eat, and, in 2012, 1,000 record­ings to hear before you dent the buck­et. Musi­cian and crit­ic Tom Moon, author of 1,000 Record­ings to Hear Before You Die, has cre­at­ed a list that ranges far and wide, leav­ing seem­ing­ly no genre, region, or peri­od out: from gang­ster rap, to opera, to krautrock, to coun­try, to met­al, to blues, to Zim­bab­wean folk, to… well, you name it, it’s prob­a­bly in there some­where.

For all the songs, artists, and albums I might have added to my own ver­sion of such a list, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to find on Moon’s such indie clas­sics as Bon­nie “Prince” Billy’s haunt­ing I See a Dark­ness, hard­core mas­ter­pieces as Bad Brains’ i against i, and sem­i­nal elec­tron­i­ca as Aphex Twin’s Select­ed Ambi­ent Works. These less well-known record­ings sit next to those of John Coltrane (see A Love Supreme fea­tured above), Mar­i­an Ander­son, Son House, Pat­sy Cline, The Bea­t­les, Bach, Brahms, and vir­tu­al­ly any­one else you might think of, and dozens more you would­n’t.

One would have a very hard time mak­ing a case that Moon has any par­tic­u­lar bias against one form of music or anoth­er. (See the com­plete list here, and browse by genre, title, or artist at the 1,000 Record­ings web­site, where you can read Moon’s com­men­tary on each selec­tion.) When it came to select­ing songs or albums from artists with embar­rass­ing­ly rich cat­a­logs, Moon told NPR that he went with his gut. “I didn’t want to have a stan­dard cri­te­ria,” he said, “With­in any giv­en artist, you could go 10 dif­fer­ent direc­tions.” Agree or dis­agree with his choic­es, but mar­vel at his breadth and inclu­sive­ness.

In the past, it would have tak­en you a life­time just to track down all of these record­ings, much less find time to lis­ten to all of them. Now, you can hear 793 tracks from Moon’s 1,000 picks in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above. (Brought to us by Ulysses Clas­si­cal; down­load Spo­ti­fy here if you need it). Spend the rest of your life not only mulling them over, but dis­cov­er­ing 1,000s more. Despite the title’s ref­er­ence to mor­tal­i­ty, and my some­what face­tious intro­duc­tion, Moon real­ly means his “Listener’s Life List,” as he calls it, to be a guide for living—and for becom­ing immersed in music in a pro­found­ly expan­sive way. (For this same pur­pose, I also thor­ough­ly endorse The Guardian’s series “1,000 Albums to Hear Before You Die,” and its read­er-sourced adden­da. If any­one cares to turn the Guardian list into a Spo­ti­fy playlist, we’ll fea­ture it here too.)

As Moon sum­ma­rizes his intent, “the more you love music, the more music you love.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Music from 150+ Clas­si­cal Com­posers, Cour­tesy of Musopen.org

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

Music from Star Wars, Kubrick, Scors­ese & Tim Bur­ton Films Played by the Prague Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra: Stream Full Albums

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

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Hear Strung Out in Heaven, a Gorgeous Tribute to David Bowie by Amanda Palmer & Jherek Bischoff’s, Made with Help from Neil Gaiman

in Art, Life, Music | February 8th, 2016

Strung Out in Heaven

The last four weeks have seen thou­sands of trib­utes to rock­er David Bowie.

Strung Out In Heav­en: A Bowie String Quar­tet Trib­ute by Aman­da Palmer and her The­atre is Evil col­lab­o­ra­tor, pop poly­math Jherek Bischoff, is both gor­geous and ambi­tious.

It came togeth­er quick­ly. Bischoff arranged the album’s five tracks and spent three and a half hours record­ing the strings (Ser­e­na McK­in­ney and Alyssa Park​ on vio­lin, Ben Ullery​ on vio­la, and Jacob Braun on cel­lo).

Mean­while new moth­er Palmer lined up three days worth of babysit­ting in order to dive back into the stu­dio. She also tapped some famous friends, who con­tributed in small­er ways.

The record­ing, coor­di­na­tion, guest appear­ances… and babysit­ting were financed by a stock­pile from Palmer’s 7000-some sup­port­ers on the crowd­fund­ing site Patre­on.

It doesn’t sound like a whip out.

Here’s Palmer’s hus­band, author Neil Gaiman, count­ing down to lift-off on “Space Odd­i­ty:

And writer/director John Cameron Mitchell, who record­ed the “Heroes” call and response on an iPhone in his apart­ment…

…and chan­neled Hed­wig for the Ger­man ver­sion:

Gaiman ques­tioned Palmer’s choice to lead with the title track of Bowie’s final album, but as she told New Musi­cal Express, a lot of fresh­ly mint­ed mil­len­ni­al Bowie fans among her Patre­on sup­port­ers list­ed “Black­star” as a favorite. Singer Anna Calvi duets and plays gui­tar on this stripped down ver­sion:

Each tune is matched to a Bowie-cen­tric image by a visu­al artist. On Palmer’s Patre­on blog,“Blackstar” artist, ele­men­tary school teacher, and can­cer sur­vivor Cas­san­dra Long writes about dis­cussing Bowie’s death with a room­ful of kinder­garten­ers. Palmer plans to pro­vide a sim­i­lar plat­form to the oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing artists in the days to come.

The fin­ished prod­uct is both pro­fes­sion­al and a labor of love.

Music is the bind­ing agent of our mun­dane lives. It cements the moments in which we wash the dish­es, type the resumes, go to the funer­als, have the babies. The stronger the agent, the tougher the mem­o­ry, and Bowie was NASA-grade epoxy to a sprawl­ing span of freaked-out kids over three gen­er­a­tions. He bond­ed us to our weird selves…Bowie worked on music up to the end to give us a part­ing gift. So this is how we, as musi­cians, mourn: keep­ing Bowie con­stant­ly in our ears and brains. 

 — Aman­da Palmer

The com­plete track­list is below. You can lis­ten for free, but an ante-up will help Palmer cov­er 9¢ in licens­ing fees every time one of the songs is streamed. Any left­over pro­ceeds from sales through March 5th will be donat­ed to Tufts Med­ical Cen­ter’s can­cer research wing in mem­o­ry of David Bowie.

Strung Out in Heav­en:

01 “Black­star”  fea­tur­ing Anna Calvi

02 “Space Odd­i­ty” fea­tur­ing Neil Gaiman

03 “Ash­es to Ash­es”

04 “Heroes” fea­tur­ing John Cameron Mitchell

05 Helden” fea­tur­ing  John Cameron Mitchell

06 “Life on Mars?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech At Berklee Col­lege of Music: “Music Has Been My Door­way of Per­cep­tion” (1999)

David Bowie (RIP) Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Animated Interview: Sally Ride Tells Gloria Steinem About the Challenge of Being the First American Women in Space (1983)

in Animation, Life, Science | February 3rd, 2016

Blank on Blank returned this week with the lat­est episode in “The Exper­i­menters,” a minis­eries high­light­ing the icons of STEM. This new ani­ma­tion brings to life a 1983 inter­view fea­tur­ing one trail­blaz­er, Glo­ria Steinem, talk­ing with anoth­er, Sal­ly Ride, a physi­cist who became the first Amer­i­can woman in space, and endured a lot of gen­der stereo­typ­ing along the way. Oth­er episodes in “The Exper­i­menters” series have focused on Buck­min­ster Fuller, Richard Feyn­man, and Jane Goodall.

Note: Glo­ria Steinem recent­ly pub­lished a new mem­oir called My Life on the Road. You can down­load it as a free audio­book if you head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al. The tri­al lets you down­load two audio­books for free. Then, when the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it, and still keep the audio books. The choice is yours. Get more info here.

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:

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”

What Ignit­ed Richard Feynman’s Love of Sci­ence Revealed in an Ani­mat­ed Vide

Ani­mat­ed: The Inspi­ra­tional Sto­ry of Jane Goodall, and Why She Believes in Big­foot

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Alan Rickman Recites “If Death Is Not the End,” a Moving Poem by Robyn Hitchcock

in Film, Life, Music, Poetry, Theatre | February 1st, 2016

Odd­ball singer-song­writer Robyn Hitch­cock is a man who knows how to mark mile­stones. Back in 2003, he staged a con­cert at London’s Queen Eliz­a­beth Hall in hon­or of his own 50th birth­day, and in so doing, cre­at­ed a time release mile­stone of sorts for his friend, actor Alan Rick­man.

Mark­ing a half-cen­tu­ry with pas­sive aggres­sive-gag gifts and cards may suf­fice for the rab­ble, but a lyri­cist as gift­ed as Hitch­cock deserves bet­ter. No one can deny Rick­man of fail­ing to deliv­er, when he regaled the crowd in Queen Eliz­a­beth Hall with a recita­tion of Hitchcock’s own poem, “If Death Is Not the End,” above.

It’s an inim­itable per­for­mance that becomes all the more poignant when one lis­tens to it again, fol­low­ing Rickman’s recent death at the age of 69:

Life is what hap­pened to the dead.

For­ev­er we do not exist

Except for now.

Birth­day Boy Hitch­cock cap­tured Rickman’s appeal in a trib­ute post­ed to his Face­book page:

His morose erot­ic drawl and glo­ri­ous­ly dis­dain­ful demeanor shel­tered a pas­sion­ate artist and made for a charis­mat­ic per­former whom I was proud to have as a friend. I just can’t believe I’ll nev­er see him again.

As the poem says, he was made of life.

If Death Is Not the End

If death is not the end, I’d like to know what is.

For all eter­ni­ty we don’t exist,

except for now.

In my gumshoe mac, I shuf­fled to the clifftop,

Stood well back,

and struck a match to light my life;

And as it flared it fell in dark­ness

Light­ing noth­ing but itself.

I saw my life fall and thought:

Well, kiss my physics!

Time is over, or it’s not,

But this I know:

Life pass­es through us like the blade

Of bam­boo grow­ing through the pris­on­er pegged down in the glade

It pierces your blood, your scream­ing head -

Life is what hap­pened to the dead.

For­ev­er we do not exist

Except for now.

Life pass­es through us like a beam

Of char­coal green — a gold­en gleam,

The oppo­site of how it seems:

It’s not you that goes through life

- life is the knife that cuts your dream

Around the seam

And leaves you turned on in the stream, laugh­ing with your mouth

open,

Until the stream is gone,

Leav­ing you cracked mud,

Not even there to be absent,

From the heart­beat of a dying fish.

In bed, upstairs, I feel your pulse run with the clock

And reach your hand

And lock us with our fin­gers

As if we were bump­ing above the Pole.

Yet I know by dawn

Your hand will be dry bone

I’ll have slept through your good­bye, no mat­ter how long I wake.

Life winds on,

Through Cheri and Karl who can no longer smell choco­late,

Or see with won­der wind inflate the sail,

Or answer mail

Life flies on

Through Katy who was Cather­ine but is bound for Kate

Who looks over her shoul­der at the demon Azmodeus,

And sees the Dai­ly Mail

(I clutch my purse. I had it just now.)

Life slices through

The frozen but­ter in the Alpine wreck.

(I found your pho­to upside down

I nev­er kissed a girl so long,

So long, so love­ly or so wrong)

Life is what kills you in the end

And I can cry

But you won’t be there to be sor­ry

You were made of life

For ever we did not exist

We woke and for a sec­ond kissed.

via Audi­boom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Late, Great Alan Rick­man Reads Shake­speare, Proust & Thomas Hardy

Samuel Beck­ett Play Brought to Life in an Eerie Short Film Star­ring Alan Rick­man & Kristin Scott Thomas

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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