The Amazing Flights of Wingsuit Champion Espen Fadnes

in Life | October 26th, 2012

The 2011 video, Sense of Fly­ing (below), gave view­ers a remark­able look at Espen Fadnes fly­ing down moun­tain sides at speeds of 155 miles per hour. If you saw the video along with 2.5 mil­lion oth­ers, you per­haps won­dered: What could be going through this guy’s head? Well, now is your chance to find out. A new­ly-released video, Split of a Sec­ond (above), gets into the psy­che and moti­va­tion of the Nor­we­gian Wing­suit World Cham­pi­on. It also shows the extent to which this guy real­ly lives on a razor’s edge. Strap your­self in. Put on your crash hel­met. And enjoy the ride.

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In the Short Film Gisbert: Paradisola a Man Goes on Holiday, Digs a Cave, Turns it into Life

in Life | October 18th, 2012

Ours is a cul­ture dri­ven by, and to, extremes, and by ours I mean West­ern Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cap­i­tal­ism broadly—Euro-America, one might say. But much of the world also resem­bles this mod­el. Extremes of wealth and pover­ty. Extreme amounts of work and extreme amounts of unem­ploy­ment. Even the word most asso­ci­at­ed with the cri­sis of mar­kets con­jures an extrem­ism of an ear­li­er, medieval age: Aus­ter­i­ties. To get away from it all, we take vaca­tions (more often these days stay­ca­tions). Vaca­tions from our lives. Or as the Euro­peans call it, hol­i­day. And who hasn’t once asked them­selves, why isn’t life the hol­i­day? And the painful “aus­ter­i­ties” tem­po­rary incon­ve­niences? I sup­pose it’s a naïve ques­tion, or just a thought exper­i­ment. Every­one seems to have some sophis­ti­cat­ed answer or oth­er. But every­one still feels the need to escape the exhaus­tion.

Gis­bert, the man in the short film above, felt such a need. So 42 years ago he trav­eled to the town of Fil­icu­di in the Aeo­lian Islands, Sici­ly. He dug a cave into the hill­side with his bare hands, rein­forced it with cement and lime, and he’s been liv­ing there ever since in what he calls, in his coinage, Par­adis­o­la, or, most­ly just Par­adis­e­land.  Gis­bert is a stu­dent of his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy, physics… he’s no Rousseauean noble sav­age, igno­rant of the ways of mod­ern man. Maybe Thore­au in his Walden, but even Thore­au was an anx­ious char­ac­ter, always eager to explain him­self. No, Gis­bert has sim­ply found peace where he is, and he offers no elab­o­rate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for it. In his own words: “When you start a career, you have to respect every­thing, because you are respon­si­ble. So I thought I could enjoy a vaca­tion, to do what­ev­er I like. And I keep doing so.” Is he “irre­spon­si­ble” for choos­ing a life of what­ev­er he likes over a career? This is one ques­tion film com­pa­ny We Cross the Line asks us to pon­der. Gis­bert: Par­adis­o­la makes no judg­ments and offers no answers. It sim­ply shows us the life of a man who made his own choic­es and lives with them con­tent­ed­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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.

 

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Stephen Fry Friday: His Musings on Life, Swearing, Shakespeare, Nanoscience & More

in Books, Life, Literature, Philosophy, Science | October 12th, 2012

Stephen Fry is a man of many tal­ents. He’s a nov­el­ist, con­trib­u­tor to news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines, TV per­son­al­i­ty, come­di­an, pod­cast­er, lin­guist of sorts. And accord­ing to his Twit­ter pro­file, he’s also a “Lord of Dance, Prince of Swimwear & Blog­ger.” In short, Stephen Fry cov­ers a lot of ground, and, through­out the years, we’ve shown you Fry opin­ing on many sub­jects. But you can’t real­ly appre­ci­ate his intel­lec­tu­al range until you’ve seen his mus­ings placed next to one anoth­er. So we’re pro­claim­ing today “Stephen Fry Fri­day” and we’re pre­sent­ing our favorite Fry clips from years past. We start above with Fry’s take on “The Joys of Swear­ing” and the rest fol­lows:

The Strange New World of Nanoscience

What is nano? And how will nanoscience shape our future? It’s all explained in a snap­py 17 minute video —  NANO YOU — that Fry nar­rat­ed for Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty.

What I Wish I Knew When I Was 18 

It’s a peren­ni­al fan favorite — Fry reflect­ing on his life, all 55 years of it, and offer­ing up life lessons to young­sters. Truth be told, old­er folks will get some­thing out of this video too.

On Phi­los­o­phy and the Impor­tance of Unbe­lief

Get­ting into the nit­ty grit­ty of phi­los­o­phy, Fry gives us one more life les­son: If you assume there’s no after­life, you’ll like­ly have a fuller, more enrich­ing life.

A Kinet­ic Take on Lan­guage

For a brief time in 2008, Fry pro­duced a series of pod­casts – called “Pod­grams” – that drew on his writ­ings, speech­es and col­lec­tive thoughts. In one episode, he med­i­tat­ed on lan­guage — the Eng­lish lan­guage, his own lan­guage, Barthes, Chom­sky, and Pinker — and then Matthew Rogers took that med­i­ta­tion and ran with it, pro­duc­ing a “kinet­ic typog­ra­phy ani­ma­tion” that art­ful­ly illus­trates a six minute seg­ment of Fry’s longer talk.

Shake­speare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

It’s not sur­pris­ing that some­one this immersed in lan­guage would deeply admire the Shake­speare­an tra­di­tion.…

Why Fry Loves Joyce’s Ulysses

And Joyce’s Ulysses too (which you can down­load as a fine free audio book here).

Stay tuned, we’ll have more Stephen Fry in the months and years to come.…

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Comedian Tig Notaro’s “Truly Great” Cancer Stand-up Set Now Available on Louis C.K.‘s Website

in Comedy, Life | October 11th, 2012

Until a cou­ple months ago, it was kind of an open secret that Tig Notaro is one of the smartest, fun­ni­est female comics work­ing today. Notaro had a fierce­ly loy­al fan­base, a No. 1 pod­cast with writ­ing part­ner Kyle Dun­ni­gan (Pro­fes­sor Blastoff) and made reg­u­lar appear­ances on some of the usu­al com­e­dy cir­cuits, live and tele­vised (Com­e­dy Cen­tral Presents, The Sarah Sil­ver­man Pro­gram). She was doing pret­ty well, but had nowhere near the pro­file of, say, Louis C.K. Then some­thing extra­or­di­nary hap­pened. First, her life fell apart, and then her career blast­ed off: What changed? She got can­cer. Just the lat­est twist, a brush with death, in the life of a “mas­ter of the art of coun­ter­in­tu­itive com­e­dy.”

The can­cer, of course, was bad. But the four months lead­ing up to her diag­no­sis includ­ed a series of improb­a­bly awful events that could send the aver­age per­son into a depres­sive coma: she con­tract­ed pneu­mo­nia, then a near-fatal bac­te­r­i­al infec­tion, then her moth­er died sud­den­ly, then she went through an emo­tion­al breakup. All fol­lowed by… can­cer. So what’s the upside? Well, she is can­cer free now and appar­ent­ly doing well after a dou­ble mas­tec­to­my. But what made an impact pro­fes­sion­al­ly was the way she han­dled the com­pound­ing of per­son­al crises: she kept show­ing up, mak­ing great com­e­dy. And last August, instead of can­cel­ing an appear­ance at the L.A. club Largo, Notaro went onstage on the day she was diag­nosed with stage 2 breast can­cer, and deliv­ered a poignant, dead­pan mono­logue: “Hel­lo, I have can­cer. How are you?”

Louis C.K., who was there that night, tweet­ed that Notaro’s act was among the “tru­ly great, mas­ter­ful standup sets” he had seen in his 27 years in the busi­ness. Lat­er on his web­site C.K. wrote:

I was cry­ing and laugh­ing and lis­ten­ing like nev­er in my life. Here was this small woman stand­ing alone against death and sim­ply report­ing where her mind had been and what had hap­pened and employ­ing her gor­geous­ly acute stand-up voice to her own death.

C.K.’s noto­ri­ety sent Notaro trend­ing all over the inter­net, but the per­for­mance wasn’t made pub­lic, which only increased inter­est. Now, the uncut record­ing of that night has been released as her sec­ond com­e­dy album, Live, and it’s avail­able on C.K.’s web­site for the small price of $5.00. You can hear a short pre­view of the set above.

These days, Notaro’s first album Good One is No. 2 (in com­e­dy) on iTunes, she has a book deal, and is begin­ning a reg­u­lar gig on Com­e­dy Cen­tral. Reporters come call­ing fre­quent­ly. Notaro spoke to NPR’s Fresh Air a cou­ple days ago and told her sto­ry of that night. C.K. fol­lowed up in the same pro­gram with his ver­sion of events. Notaro’s inter­view is clas­sic her—she’s a nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed sto­ry­teller who seems to rise above mis­for­tune with envi­able poise and wit.

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.

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What If Money Was No Object?: Thoughts on the Art of Living from Eastern Philosopher Alan Watts

in Life, Philosophy | October 9th, 2012

Alan Watts came to San Fran­cis­co dur­ing the ear­ly 1950s, wrote his best­seller Way of Zen, and became one of the fore­most pop­u­lar­iz­ers of Zen Bud­dhism, Hin­duism, Tao­ism and var­i­ous forms of East­ern phi­los­o­phy. His TV show, East­ern Wis­dom and Mod­ern Life (1960), intro­duced Amer­i­cans to the seem­ing­ly exot­ic con­cept of med­i­ta­tion (watch here). And his radio show and lec­tures forced lis­ten­ers to pause and look at their lives from a fresh per­spec­tive. Again and again, Watts chal­lenged the West­ern empha­sis on mon­ey-mak­ing to the exclu­sion of all else. We’ve heard Watts rail against this soul-crush­ing val­ue in a lec­ture ani­mat­ed by the cre­ators of South Park. (I’m not kid­ding you.) And, in the new­ly-pro­duced video above, he con­tin­ues along the same tra­jec­to­ry. So, as you drink your morn­ing cof­fee and pon­der your day, ask your­self: Are you putting mon­ey-mak­ing before hap­pi­ness itself? Or are you pur­su­ing the pas­sions that bring hap­pi­ness, achiev­ing excel­lence, and then let­ting the mon­ey fol­low? With that, I’ll let you con­tin­ue with your day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Liv­ing: A Free Stan­ford Course Explores Time­less Ques­tions

Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Tech­nol­o­gy Can’t Grasp Real­i­ty

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

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Miranda July Teaches You How to Avoid Procrastination

in Film, Life, Psychology | October 8th, 2012

I’ve always thought of writer, actor and film­mak­er Miran­da July as some­one who cre­ates her own oppor­tu­ni­ties. Long before her sto­ries in The New York­er, and before Me and You and Every­one We Know, the award-win­ning first fea­ture that cement­ed her indie dar­ling sta­tus, she was cir­cu­lat­ing video chain let­ters fea­tur­ing her own work and that of oth­er young, female film­mak­ers. She record­ed LPs and toured orig­i­nal per­for­mance art pieces.

What a relief to find out she’s a pro­cras­ti­na­tor, too.

July insists that her chat­ter­ing mon­key mind near­ly deprived her of the con­cen­tra­tion nec­es­sary to fin­ish writ­ing The Future, her sec­ond full-length film. One of its most com­pelling parts actu­al­ly wound up on the cut­ting room floor. In it (above), we see Sophie, the under-employed would-be dancer played by July, com­ing to grips with her own self-sab­o­tag­ing ten­den­cy toward pro­cras­ti­na­tion.

Of course, the rea­son we’re able to see it at all is that July, whose indus­tri­ous­ness sure­ly has earned her the right to spend a decade or so doing noth­ing but watch­ing YouTube and Googling her own name, repur­posed it as a short, instruc­tion­al film (A Handy Tip for the Eas­i­ly Dis­tract­ed), which offers an anti­dote for those of us who share her afflic­tion.

(Admit it. You’re pro­cras­ti­nat­ing now, aren’t you?)

In addi­tion to the sound­ness of her advice, her method­ol­o­gy is endear­ing­ly low-tech. As one who’s been known to attribute a lack of cre­ative out­put to a less than ide­al work­space, I found the clut­tered, shab­by apart­ment set both famil­iar and gal­va­niz­ing. If we’re going to make excus­es, we may as well own them. July takes yet anoth­er step by har­ness­ing them and forc­ing them to work for her.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Life-Affirm­ing Talks by Cul­tur­al Mav­er­icks (Includ­ing Miran­da July) Pre­sent­ed at The School of Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of any num­ber of books includ­ing The Zinester’s Guide to NYC and No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late.

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William Faulkner Quits His Post Office Job in Splendid Fashion with a 1924 Resignation Letter

in Life, Literature | September 30th, 2012

Long before William Faulkn­er got his big break in lit­er­a­ture, he, like many of us, had a good old-fash­ioned day job. Faulkn­er had a series of odd jobs in fact. But, most famous­ly, he worked from 1921 to 1924 as the post­mas­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi, where, accord­ing to leg­end, he did the fol­low­ing: some­times threw mail in the garbage, oth­er times read mag­a­zines before bring­ing them to peo­ple’s homes, often played cards and wrote fic­tion dur­ing work­ing hours, occa­sion­al­ly went golf­ing instead of deliv­er­ing mail, and gen­er­al­ly ignored his col­leagues and cus­tomers. But, who could blame him? Espe­cial­ly when he earned $20,000 in today’s mon­ey and had great lit­er­ary ambi­tions to pur­sue. Even­tu­al­ly, when a postal inspec­tor came to inves­ti­gate, Faulkn­er resigned. The res­ig­na­tion let­ter, recent­ly high­light­ed by Let­ters of Note, is short (a mere 56 words) and cut­ting. But, scathing as it was, it did­n’t stop the US postal sys­tem from issu­ing a com­mem­o­ra­tive Faulkn­er stamp in 1987.

Octo­ber, 1924

As long as I live under the cap­i­tal­is­tic sys­tem, I expect to have my life influ­enced by the demands of mon­eyed peo­ple. But I will be damned if I pro­pose to be at the beck and call of every itin­er­ant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp.

This, sir, is my res­ig­na­tion.

(Signed by Faulkn­er)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Drink­ing with William Faulkn­er

William Faulkn­er Audio Archive Goes Online

William Faulkn­er Reads from As I Lay Dying

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How to Make Better Decisions, a Thought-Provoking Documentary by the BBC

in Life, Psychology, Television | September 28th, 2012

“In this pro­gram,” says nar­ra­tor Peter Capal­di at the out­set, “we’re going to show you how to be more ratio­nal, and deal with some of life’s biggest deci­sions.” It’s a pret­ty big claim, and you may doubt that it’s true (espe­cial­ly dur­ing the sil­ly open­ing scene involv­ing a group of nerds try­ing to score a date) but give this 2008 BBC Hori­zon pro­gram a lit­tle time and you might come away with a few things to think about. How to Make Bet­ter Deci­sions takes us inside cog­ni­tive sci­ence lab­o­ra­to­ries and out on the streets to demon­strate how the emo­tion­al part of our brain gets the bet­ter of the ratio­nal part. The film intro­duces a num­ber of intrigu­ing con­cepts, includ­ing Prospect The­o­ry,  “the fram­ing effect,” and “prim­ing.” More con­tro­ver­sial­ly, it high­lights some research that sug­gests the pos­si­bil­i­ty that our intu­ition may have some­thing to do with an abil­i­ty to sense future events. How to Make Bet­ter Deci­sions is 49 min­utes long, and we’ve decid­ed to add it to our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Neu­ro­science and Free Will

Dan Ariely’s Ani­mat­ed Talk on How and Why We’re Dis­hon­est

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