Benedict Cumberbatch Reads a Letter to a Man Blow-Drying His Balls at the Gym

We have fea­tured Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch read­ing let­ters by Kurt Von­negut, Alan Tur­ing, Albert Camus, and Nick Cave, along with pas­sages from Kafka’s Meta­mor­pho­sis and Melville’s Moby Dick. It’s all pret­ty heady stuff. And now it’s time for some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. Above, we have Mr. Cum­ber­batch read­ing, with clas­sic British under­state­ment, a com­i­cal let­ter writ­ten by Ross Bee­ley, back in 2011. The read­ing will help you get through anoth­er dystopi­an day.

Cum­ber­batch read this let­ter at an event called Let­ters Live, held in Lon­don’s Roy­al Albert Hall, in Decem­ber 2024.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Let­ter of Advice to Peo­ple Liv­ing in the Year 2088

Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entire­ty by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Til­da Swin­ton, John Waters, Stephen Fry & More

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Nick Cave’s Beau­ti­ful Let­ter About Grief

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Comedic Take on the History of Simon and Garfunkel

Dur­ing their days film­ing Doc­u­men­tary Now!, a mock­u­men­tary series that aired on IFC, Fred Armisen and Bill Had­er teamed up and cre­at­ed a fic­tion­al­ized “his­to­ry” of Simon and Gar­funkel, telling the “real” sto­ry behind the mak­ing of “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” and “Mrs. Robinson”–stories you’ve assured­ly nev­er heard before. Have a laugh. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Fred Armisen Teach­es a Short Sem­i­nar on the His­to­ry of Punk

Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970)

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

Art Gar­funkel Lists 1195 Books He Read Over 45 Years, Plus His 157 Favorites (Many Free)

Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time

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Mary Tyler Moore Accidentally Nails a Perfect Pool Shot on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1962)

Let’s rewind the video­tape and revis­it a clas­sic moment in The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the 1962 episode called “Hus­tling the Hus­tler,” Mary Tyler Moore (as Lau­ra Petrie) plays pool and sinks three balls in a sin­gle shot. The orig­i­nal plan was to splice in footage of a pro­fes­sion­al pool play­er mak­ing the shot, but Moore sur­prised every­one, includ­ing her­self, by nail­ing it on the first try. Watch­ing Moore and Van Dyke recov­er from their aston­ish­ment and impro­vise through the scene is priceless—a per­fect way to start your Mon­day.

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!

via Zaibat­su and Slash Film

Relat­ed Con­tent

Joan Jett and the Black­hearts Per­form a Rol­lick­ing Cov­er of the Mary Tyler Moore Theme Song (1996)

Jack Ker­ouac Plays Pool, 1967

Dick Van Dyke Still Danc­ing at 96!

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Join Us on Bluesky. We Will Have Fun Together

There’s an eXo­dus tak­ing place, and mil­lions are find­ing a new home on Bluesky. In recent days, the decen­tral­ized social media plat­form has been gain­ing 10,000 new users every 10–15 min­utes, or about 1 mil­lion new users per day. Open Cul­ture is already there, shar­ing the cul­tur­al posts you once enjoyed on Twit­ter. We hope you will join us. Find us at @openculture.bsky.social, or just click here.

PS. If you’re are on Threads, you can also find us there too.

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When Samuel Beckett Drove Young André the Giant to School

Are your idle moments spent invent­ing imag­i­nary con­ver­sa­tions between strange bed­fel­lows? The sort of con­ver­sa­tion that might tran­spire in a pick­up truck belong­ing to Samuel Beck­ett, say, were the Irish play­wright to chauf­feur the child André Rene Rous­si­moff—aka pro wrestler André the Giant—to school?

Too sil­ly, you say? Non­sense. This isn’t some wack­adoo ran­dom pair­ing, but an actu­al his­toric meet­ing of the minds, as André’s Princess Bride co-star and soon-to-be-pub­lished film his­to­ri­an, Cary Elwes, attests above.

In 1958, when 12-year-old André’s acromegaly pre­vent­ed him from tak­ing the school bus, the author of Wait­ing for Godot, whom he knew as his dad’s card bud­dy and neigh­bor in rur­al Moulien, France, vol­un­teered for trans­port duty. André recalled that they most­ly talked about crick­et, but sure­ly they dis­cussed oth­er top­ics, too, right? Right!?

Even if they did­n’t, it’s deli­cious­ly fun to spec­u­late.

In the  bare­bones entry above, Bing­ham­ton, New York’s Därk­horse Drä­ma­tists play­wright Ron Burch has Beck­ett dis­pens­ing roman­tic advice in much the same way that he wrote dia­logue, to cre­ate a dialec­tic.  (“So I should embrace the nega­tion of the act in order to get the oppo­site reac­tion?” André asks, re: a girl he’s eager to kiss.)

Burch is not the only drama­tist to tack­le these mys­tery rides. Chica­go play­wright Rory Job­st was inspired to write Samuel Beck­ett, Andre the Giant, and the Crick­ets after lis­ten­ing to They Might Be Giants’ John Flans­burgh and John Lin­nell par­tic­i­pat­ing in a 3‑question André the Giant triv­ia quiz on NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me.

Car­toon­ist Box Brown is anoth­er to take a stab at the unlike­ly car­pool bud­dies’ chit chat, with his graph­ic biog­ra­phy, Andre the Giant. In his ver­sion, Beck­ett asks André why he’s so big, André asks Beck­ett if he plays foot­ball, and Beck­ett gives him his first cig­a­rette. (“Well, y’know, they stunt your growth so,” Beck­ett hes­i­tates, “…eh, okay.”)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

The Books That Samuel Beck­ett Read and Real­ly Liked (1941–1956)

Neil deGrasse Tyson, High School Wrestling Team Cap­tain, Once Invent­ed a Physics-Based Wrestling Move

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Samuel Beck­ett, Absur­dist Play­wright, Nov­el­ist & Poet

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is inter­est­ed in hear­ing about unortho­dox pro­duc­tions of Wait­ing for Godot @AyunHalliday.

Nick Cave Narrates an Animated Film about the Cat Piano, the Twisted 18th Century Musical Instrument Designed to Treat Mental Illness

What do you imag­ine when you hear the phrase “cat piano”? Some kind of whim­si­cal fur­ry beast with black and white keys for teeth, maybe? A rel­a­tive of My Neigh­bor Totoro’s cat bus? Or maybe you pic­ture a piano that con­tains sev­er­al caged cats who shriek along an entire scale when keys are pressed that slam sharp­ened nails into their tails. If this is your answer, you might find peo­ple slow­ly back­ing away from you at times, or gen­tly sug­gest­ing you get some psy­chi­atric help.

But then, imag­ine that such a per­verse odd­i­ty was in use by psy­chi­a­trists, like the 18th-cen­tu­ry Ger­man physi­cian Johann Chris­t­ian Reil, who—reports David McNamee at The Guardian—“wrote that the device was intend­ed to shake men­tal patients who had lost the abil­i­ty to focus out of a ‘fixed state’ and into ‘con­scious aware­ness.’”

So long, meds. See you, med­i­ta­tion and man­dala col­or­ing books.… I joke, but appar­ent­ly Dr. Reil was in earnest when he wrote in an 1803 man­u­al for the treat­ment of men­tal ill­ness that patients could “be placed so that they are sit­ting in direct view of the cat’s expres­sions when the psy­chi­a­trist plays a fugue.”

A baf­fling­ly cru­el and non­sen­si­cal exper­i­ment, and we might rejoice to know it prob­a­bly nev­er took place. But the bizarre idea of the cat piano, or Katzen­klavier, did not spring from the weird delu­sions of one sadis­tic psy­chi­a­trist. It was sup­pos­ed­ly invent­ed by Ger­man poly­math and Jesuit schol­ar Athana­sius Kircher (1602–1680), who has been called “the last Renais­sance man” and who made pio­neer­ing dis­cov­er­ies in the fields of micro­bi­ol­o­gy, geol­o­gy, and com­par­a­tive reli­gion. He was a seri­ous schol­ar and a man of sci­ence. Maybe the Katzen­klavier was intend­ed as a sick joke that oth­ers took seriously—and for a very long time at that. The illus­tra­tion of a Katzen­klavier above dates from 1667, the one below from 1883.

Kircher’s biog­ra­ph­er John Glassie admits that, for all his undoubt­ed bril­liance, sev­er­al of his “actu­al ideas today seem wild­ly off-base; if not sim­ply bizarre” as well as “inad­ver­tent­ly amus­ing, right, wrong, half-right, half-baked, ridicu­lous….” You get the idea. He was an eccen­tric, not a psy­chopath. McNamee points to oth­er, like­ly apoc­ryphal, sto­ries in which cats were sup­pos­ed­ly used as instru­ments. Per­haps, cru­el as it seems to us, the cat piano seemed no cru­el­er in pre­vi­ous cen­turies than the way we taunt our cats today to make them per­form for ani­mat­ed GIFs.

But to the cats these dis­tinc­tions are mean­ing­less. From their point of view, there is no oth­er way to describe the Katzen­klavier than as a sin­is­ter, ter­ri­fy­ing tor­ture device, and those who might use it as mon­strous vil­lains. Per­son­al­ly I’d like to give cats the last word on the sub­ject of the Katzen­klavier—or at least a few fic­tion­al ani­mat­ed, walk­ing, talk­ing, singing cats. Watch the short ani­ma­tion at the top, in which Nick Cave reads a poem by Eddie White about tal­ent­ed cat singers who mys­te­ri­ous­ly go miss­ing, scooped up by a human for a “harp­si­chord of harm, the cru­elest instru­ment to spawn from man’s gray cere­bral soup.” The sto­ry has all the dread and intrigue of Edgar Allan Poe’s best work, and it is in such a milieu of goth­ic hor­ror that the Katzen­klavier belongs.

The Cat Piano nar­rat­ed by Nick Cave will be added to our list of Free Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Peo­ple Named Their Cats in the Mid­dle Ages: Gyb, Mite, Méone, Pan­gur Bán & More

Cats in Japan­ese Wood­block Prints: How Japan’s Favorite Ani­mals Came to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Art

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

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

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David Bowie Sends a Christmas Greeting in the Voice of Elvis Presley (and Sings “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You”)

After David Bowie died in 2016, we dis­cov­ered that the musi­cian had a knack for doing impres­sions of fel­low celebri­ties. Could he sing a song in the style of Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and Bruce Spring­steen? Turns out, he could. And yes, he could do an Elvis impres­sion too.

The clip above aired back in 2013 on “This Is Radio Clash,” a radio show host­ed by the Clash’s Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Top­per Head­on. “Hel­lo every­body,” this is David Bowie mak­ing a tele­phone call from the US of A. At this time of the year I can’t help but remem­ber my British-ness and all the jol­ly British folk, so here’s to you and have your­selves a Mer­ry lit­tle Christ­mas and a Hap­py New Year. Thank you very much.”

It’s maybe not as mem­o­rable as his 1977 Christ­mas duet with Bing Cros­by, but, hey, it’s still a fun lit­tle way to get the hol­i­day sea­son in swing.

Bonus: Below hear Bowie sing Pres­ley’s clas­sic “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” I had­n’t heard it before, and it’s a treat.

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:

David Bowie Sings Impres­sions of Bruce Spring­steen, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits & More In Stu­dio Out­takes (1985)

Watch Bing Crosby’s Final Christ­mas Spe­cial, Fea­tur­ing a Famous Duet with Bowie, and Bowie Intro­duc­ing His New Song, “Heroes” (1977)

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

 

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Threads Now Available in Europe & UK (Plus the US): Get Our Daily Culture Posts There at @OpenCulture

Threads is on the rise. After get­ting released in over 100 coun­tries (includ­ing the US and UK) ear­li­er this year, Meta has just made Threads avail­able in the EU. And that’s where we’re now shar­ing our dai­ly posts, along with oth­er objects of cul­tur­al inter­est. If you sign up, please search for @openculture, and give us a fol­low. Or just click right 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!

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