Playing an Instrument Is a Great Workout For Your Brain: New Animation Explains Why

in Animation, Biology, Health, Music, Science | August 1st, 2014

Get me a piano teacher, stat!

When I was a child, my father, enchant­ed by the notion that I might some­day pro­vide live piano accom­pa­ni­ment to his evening cock­tails, signed me up for lessons with a mild-man­nered wid­ow who—if mem­o­ry serves—charged 50¢ an hour.

Had I only been forced to prac­tice more reg­u­lar­ly, I’d have no trou­ble remem­ber­ing the exact price of these lessons. My mem­o­ry would be a supreme­ly robust thing of beau­ty. Dit­to my math skills, my cog­ni­tive func­tion, my abil­i­ty to mul­ti­task.

Instead, my dad even­tu­al­ly con­ced­ed that I was not cut out to be a musi­cian (or a bal­le­ri­na, or a ten­nis whiz…) and Mrs. Arnold was out a pupil.

Would that I stuck with it beyond my halt­ing ver­sions of “The Enter­tain­er” and “Für Elise.” Accord­ing to the TED-Ed video above, play­ing an instru­ment is one of the very best things you can do for your brain. Tal­ent does­n’t mat­ter in this con­text, just ongo­ing prac­tice.

Neu­ro­sci­en­tists using fMRI (Func­tion­al Mag­net­ic Res­o­nance Imag­ing) and PET (Positron Emis­sion Tomog­ra­phy) tech­nol­o­gy to mon­i­tor the brain activ­i­ty of sub­jects lis­ten­ing to music saw engage­ment in many areas, but when the sub­jects trad­ed in head­phones for actu­al instru­ments, this activ­i­ty mor­phed into a grand fire­works dis­play.

(The ani­mat­ed expla­na­tion of the inter­play between var­i­ous musi­cal­ly engaged areas of the brain sug­gests the New York City sub­way map, a metaphor I find more apt.)

This mas­sive full brain work­out is avail­able to any­one will­ing to put in the time with an instru­ment. Read­ing the score, fig­ur­ing out tim­ing and fin­ger­ing, and pour­ing one’s soul into cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tion results in an interof­fice cere­bral com­mu­ni­ca­tion that strength­ens the cor­pus calos­sum and exec­u­tive func­tion.

 Vin­di­ca­tion for drum­mers at last!

Though to bring up the specter of anoth­er stereo­type, stay away from the hard stuff, guys…don’t fry those beau­ti­ful minds.

If you’d like to know more about the sci­en­tif­ic impli­ca­tions of music lessons, WBUR’s series “Brain Mat­ters” has a good overview here. And good luck break­ing the good news to your chil­dren.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a New Music Video Shot Entire­ly With­in an MRI Machine

TED-Ed Brings the Edgi­ness of TED to Learn­ing

“Hum­ming­bird,” A New Form of Music Nota­tion That’s Eas­i­er to Learn and Faster to Read

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

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Why Tattoos Are Permanent? New TED Ed Video Explains with Animation

in Art, Life, Science | July 20th, 2014

For the last three decades my right ankle has been the site of a deeply botched tat­too. It was sup­posed to be a yin yang, but with every pass­ing year, it looks more and more like a can­cer­ous mole. The drunk­en Viet­nam Vet who admin­is­tered it bare­ly glanced at the design tak­ing shape on my once vir­gin skin as he chat­ted with a pal. I was too intim­i­dat­ed to say, “Um…is it just me or are you fill­ing in the white cir­cle?” (I con­vinced myself that he knew what he was doing, and the ink would recede as it healed. Need­less to say…)

My pathet­ic, lit­tle yin-ya’ is an embar­rass­ment in an era of intri­cate four-col­or sleeves and souped up rock­a­bil­ly gor­geous­ness, but I con­fess, I’ve grown fond of it. The fact that I have an out-of-bal­ance sym­bol for bal­ance per­ma­nent­ly engraved onto my body is far more appro­pri­ate than the poor­ly grasped  flash art could have been. It’ll be with me til the day I die.

Longer, actu­al­ly, to judge by the dec­o­ra­tive mark­ings of an 8000 ‑year-old Peru­vian mum­my.

I feel for­tu­nate to have devel­oped ten­der feel­ings for my bush league mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Clau­dia Aguir­re’s TED-Ed les­son “What Makes Tat­toos Per­ma­nent,” above, does not make an easy case for removal.

In the words of your grand­ma, don’t embell­ish your birth­day suit with any old junk.

Your gang affil­i­a­tion may feel like a for­ev­er-thing now, but what if you decide to switch gangs in a few years? Eras­ing those mem­o­ries can be painful. Ask John­ny “Winona For­ev­er” Depp.

Dol­phins may strike you as peace­ful, spir­i­tu­al crea­tures, but I’ll bet there are ways to appre­ci­ate them that don’t involve hav­ing one punc­tured through your epi­der­mis at 50–3000 micro-wounds per minute. 

Choose wise­ly! If you’re veer­ing toward a Tas­man­ian dev­il or a rose, do your­self a favor and browse the Muse­um of Online Muse­ums. Feel a kin­ship with any­thing there? Good! Once you’ve fig­ured out how to best fea­ture it on your hide, take Aguir­re’s anato­my-based quiz. See if it’s true that you’ll be barred from bur­ial in a Jew­ish ceme­tery. Your tat­too artist will like­ly be impressed that you cared enough to do some research. Watch a cou­ple of episodes of the Smith­so­ni­an’s Tat­too Odyssey for good mea­sure.

Then lay in a tube of Prepa­ra­tion H, and pre­pare to love what­ev­er you wind up with. It’s a lot eas­i­er than the pain of regret.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Get Ancient Advice on Los­ing Weight, Sober­ing Up, Remov­ing a Tat­too & More at Ask The Past

TED ED Ani­ma­tion Gives You a Glimpse of What Life Was Like for Teenagers in Ancient Rome

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is up to her eye­balls in Bye Bye Birdie and so should you be. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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What Does the Spleen Do? A Music Video Starring Harvard School of Medicine’s Class of 2016

in Biology, Comedy, Harvard, K-12, Science | July 7th, 2014

Accord­ing to Har­vard Med­ical School’s Admis­sions depart­ment, “to study med­i­cine at Har­vard is to pre­pare to play a lead­ing role” in the “quest to improve the human con­di­tion.”

It might also pre­pare you to play a giant spleen, as Richard Ngo, Class of 2016, does in this video for the Har­vard Med­ical School and Har­vard School of Den­tal Med­i­cine’s 107th Annu­al Sec­ond Year Show. 

In this anatom­i­cal homage to  “The Fox,” Nor­we­gian com­e­dy duo Ylvis’ delib­er­ate­ly bizarre hit, the Crim­sonites demon­strate a pret­ty straight­for­ward grasp of their stud­ies:

Lungs go whoosh

Help you breathe

Kid­neys fil­ter

Make your pee

If, as they freely admit,  they’re a bit murky on sple­net­ic func­tion, well, that’s why they’re at the top ranked med­ical school in the coun­try, right? To learn?

And to dance?

Their par­ents, par­tic­u­lar­ly the hard work­ing immi­grant ones, must have been so relieved to learn that music videos are a fall­back should the doc­tor thing not work out.

Though why would­n’t it? Secret male uterus? Ves­ti­gial fin? Pos­si­bly a back­up tongue?

They may be guess­es, but they’re edu­cat­ed guess­es!

For com­par­ison’s sake, here are two of the win­ning entries in the Med­ical and Den­tal School’s Organ Chal­lenge, an anato­my-based music video con­test for kids K‑12: Oak­land’s Pacif­ic Boy­choir Acad­e­my’s Miley Cyrus-inspired take on the Diges­tive Sys­tem (above) and Poolesville, Mary­land’s local high school’s  “Hap­py”-fla­vored anthem to healthy car­diac func­tion (below).

I’d say those kids stand a good chance of get­ting into Har­vard.

(Don’t be embar­rassed if you remain a bit shaky on what exact­ly the spleen’s there to do. This sim­ple, non-musi­cal primer on the “Queen of Clean,” com­pli­ments of I Heart Guts, should clear things up right away.

spleen1

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 100,000+ Images From The His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, All Free Cour­tesy of The Well­come Library

The Stan­ford Mini Med School: The Com­plete Col­lec­tion

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es

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

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In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet, 3D Printers and Trained Monkey Servants

in Literature, Science | June 6th, 2014

“If by some mir­a­cle some prophet could describe the future exact­ly as it was going to take place, his pre­dic­tions would sound so absurd, so far-fetched that every­one would laugh him to scorn.”

That was Sir Arthur C. Clarke, sci­ence fic­tion author best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey, describ­ing the inher­ent fol­ly of pre­dict­ing the future in a 1964 BBC doc­u­men­tary. Of course, he then goes on to do exact­ly that – with remark­able, unnerv­ing accu­ra­cy. Part one of the doc­u­men­tary is above. Part two is below.

The piece opens with a gener­ic nar­ra­tion that describes a dio­ra­ma of future soci­ety at the GM pavil­ion at the 1964 World Fair. Per­haps because it was a more inno­cent time or maybe because it was spon­sored by an automak­er, this vision of the future is touch­ing­ly obliv­i­ous to any­thing relat­ed to cli­mate change. Machines with laser guns will clear jun­gles in hours flat and peo­ple will live in domed com­mu­ni­ties on the ice caps. (Ice caps in the future. Hilar­i­ous.)

Then the reedy, bespec­ta­cled author appears and starts to describe how he thinks the world in fifty years (i.e. 2014) will look. And this is where the movie starts to feel uncan­ny. He talks about how the advance­ment of tran­sis­tors and satel­lites will rad­i­cal­ly alter our under­stand­ing of phys­i­cal space.

These things will make pos­si­ble a world in which we can be in instant con­tact wher­ev­er we may be. Where we can con­tact our friends any­where on earth, even if we don’t know their actu­al phys­i­cal loca­tion. It will be pos­si­ble in that age, pos­si­bly 50 years from now, for a man to con­duct his busi­ness from Tahi­ti or Bali just as well as he could from Lon­don.

For the record, I’m writ­ing this post in a cof­fee shop in Los Ange­les, hun­dreds of miles from the mas­sive Open Cul­ture head­quar­ters in Palo Alto, but I could just as eas­i­ly be writ­ing this on a beach in Sri Lan­ka or a hotel room in Dubrovnik. Clarke sounds here less like some pie-in-the-sky futur­ist than an aspi­ra­tional lifestyle guru like Tim Fer­ris.

Clarke then describes how med­i­cine might change. “One day, we might have brain sur­geons in Edin­burgh oper­at­ing on patients in New Zealand.” The long-dis­tance vir­tu­al surgery first was pio­neered back in 2001 and it con­tin­ues to improve as inter­net speeds increase.

And he pre­dicts that at some point sci­ence will invent a “repli­cat­ing device” that would cre­ate an exact copy of any­thing. That sounds an awful lot like a 3D print­er. Clarke warns that this inven­tion might cause mas­sive soci­etal dis­rup­tion. “Con­front­ed by such a device, our present soci­ety would prob­a­bly sink into a kind of glut­to­nous bar­barism. Since every­one would want unlim­it­ed quan­ti­ties of every­thing.” In oth­er words, 3D print­ers might turn the world into Black Fri­day at Wal­mart.

Some of his oth­er ideas are just weird. Clarke pro­pos­es to tame and train armies of chim­panzees to cook, clean and do society’s grunt work. “We can cer­tain­ly solve our ser­vant prob­lem with the help of the mon­key king­dom. “ Plan­et of the Apes wouldn’t come out for anoth­er four years so Clarke could be for­giv­en for not real­iz­ing that that is one ter­ri­ble idea. On the oth­er hand, it’s hard to see how hir­ing mon­keys could pos­si­bly make the cus­tomer ser­vice at Time Warn­er Cable any worse than it already is.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arthur C. Clarke Nar­rates Film on Mandelbrot’s Frac­tals; David Gilmour Pro­vides the Sound­track

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

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.

 

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The Animals of Chernobyl: An Inside Look at the Toll That Radiation Took on Animals & Wildlife

in Biology, Science | May 10th, 2014

On April 26, 1986, the num­ber 4 reac­tor at the Cher­nobyl nuclear pow­er plant blew up in what is now Ukraine. The site spewed a cloud of radioac­tive mate­r­i­al that spread over much of Europe. The area imme­di­ate­ly around Cher­nobyl received more than 400 times the radi­a­tion as Hiroshi­ma and won’t be safe­ly inhab­it­able for about 20,000 years. The gov­ern­ment set up a 1,000 square mile exclu­sion zone around the site. While short vis­its to the zone are pos­si­ble with­out too much dan­ger, liv­ing there is not advis­able. Can­cer is a real prob­lem for the cou­ple hun­dred elder­ly stal­warts who still make the zone their home.

With­in the zone, nature has tak­en its own course, dis­man­tling the Sovi­et-era bru­tal­ist ten­e­ments of the sur­round­ing aban­doned cities and turn­ing it into what at first blush looks more and more like a prelap­sar­i­an Eden. The truth proves to be more com­pli­cat­ed.

Dr. Tim­o­thy Mousseau, a biol­o­gist from the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, has been exam­in­ing the wildlife around Cher­nobyl for fif­teen years. He’s dis­cov­ered that the radi­a­tion that has been bathing the area for almost 30 years is chang­ing nature. As you can see in the New York Times Op-Doc video above, birds are devel­op­ing tumors, bugs have abnor­mal spots and spi­der webs seem much more freeform than usu­al. Get more on the sto­ry over at the Times.

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:

Scenes from HBO’s Cher­nobyl v. Real Footage Shot in 1986: A Side-By-Side Com­par­i­son

Joseph Stal­in, a Life­long Edi­tor, Wield­ed a Big, Blue, Dan­ger­ous Pen­cil

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Tarkovsky Films Now Free Online

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.

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Carl Sagan Writes a Letter to 17-Year-Old Neil deGrasse Tyson (1975)

in Science, Television | April 29th, 2014

sagan letter to tyson

Carl Sagan, the turtle­neck-sport­ing astro­physi­cist from Cor­nell, was the great­est com­mu­ni­ca­tor of sci­ence of his gen­er­a­tion. Not only did he pub­lish hun­dreds of sci­en­tif­ic papers and was instru­men­tal in putting togeth­er that gold­en record on the Voy­ager space­crafts but he also wrote twen­ty crit­i­cal­ly praised best sell­ers on sci­ence, appeared reg­u­lar­ly on the Tonight Show, and even had a catch phrase — “bil­lions and bil­lions.” But Sagan is per­haps best known for his land­mark 1980 series Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age (watch it here). He took view­ers through a tour of the uni­verse, show­ing them things from the mind-bog­gling big to the infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small and every­thing in between. The show proved to be a huge hit; close to a half-bil­lion peo­ple tuned in world­wide.

Even before the reboot of Cos­mos pre­miered on FOX in March, Neil deGrasse Tyson — who hosts the show — was already seen as Sagan’s suc­ces­sor. Not only does he serve as the direc­tor of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in New York City and was instru­men­tal in kick­ing Plu­to out of the broth­er­hood of plan­ets, but he also authored numer­ous books, appears reg­u­lar­ly on The Dai­ly Show, and fre­quent­ly hosts AMAs on Red­dit. He’s also one of Amer­i­ca’s most vocal defend­ers of sci­ence at a time, unlike Sagan’s hey­day, when Cre­ation­ism, cli­mate change denial, and anti-vac­ci­na­tion hys­te­ria seem to be mak­ing inroads in our cul­ture.

Any­one who saw Tyson’s heart felt trib­ute to Sagan at the begin­ning of the first episode of Cos­mos knows that Sagan’s influ­ence on his younger coun­ter­part extend­ed much fur­ther than his media appear­ances. It was per­son­al. In 1975, Sagan, who was already famous at that time, was so impressed by Tyson’s col­lege appli­ca­tion that he per­son­al­ly reached out to him, hop­ing to con­vince the high school stu­dent to attend Cor­nell. He even offered to per­son­al­ly show Tyson around his lab.

You can read Sagan’s let­ter, dat­ed Novem­ber 12, 1975, below.

Dear Neil:

Thanks for your let­ter and most inter­est­ing resume. I was espe­cial­ly glad to see that, for a career in astron­o­my, you intend to do your under­grad­u­ate work in physics. In this way, you will acquire the essen­tial tools for a wide range of sub­se­quent astro­nom­i­cal endeav­ors.

I would guess from your resume that your inter­ests in astron­o­my are suf­fi­cient­ly deep and your math­e­mat­i­cal and phys­i­cal back­ground suf­fi­cient­ly strong that we could prob­a­bly engage you in real astro­nom­i­cal research dur­ing your under­grad­u­ate career here, if the pos­si­bil­i­ty inter­ests you. For exam­ple, we hope to be bring­ing back to Itha­ca in late cal­en­dar year 1976 an enor­mous array of Viking data on Mars both from the orbiters and from the lan­ders.

I would be delight­ed to meet with you when you vis­it Itha­ca. Please try and give as much advance notice of the date as you can because my trav­el sched­ule is quite hec­tic right now and I real­ly would like to be in Itha­ca when you drop by.

With all good wish­es,

Carl Sagan

Tyson was deeply moved by Sagan’s kind­ness and sin­cer­i­ty. He did ven­ture out to Itha­ca from the Bronx on a snowy after­noon. As Tyson recalled years lat­er, “I thought to myself, who am I? I’m just some high school kid.” In the end, Sagan’s per­son­al plea wasn’t quite enough to con­vince young Tyson to attend his school. As you can read in his response below, dat­ed April 30, 1976, Tyson decid­ed to go to Har­vard.

Dear Prof. Sagan

Thank you for your offer con­cern­ing the Viking Mis­sions. After long thought and deci­sion mak­ing I have cho­sen to attend Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty this Sep­tem­ber. I chose it not sim­ply because of its “valu­able” name but because they have a larg­er astron­o­my depart­ment in addi­tion to the Smith­son­ian Astro­phys­i­cal Obser­va­to­ry, so while I am major­ing in physics I will have more sur­round­ing me in the way of on-going research in astron­o­my.

I want to say that I did enjoy meet­ing you and I am very grate­ful for your hos­pi­tal­i­ty and the time you spent with me while at Cor­nell. I will through­out my under­grad­u­ate years keep you informed on any note­wor­thy news con­cern­ing astron­o­my-relat­ed work that I’m involved in. I do plan to apply again for the Viking Intern­ship next sum­mer.

Thanks again

Neil D. Tyson

You can see Tyson talk about his after­noon with Sagan. 40 years lat­er, he still seems incred­u­lous that it hap­pened.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

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.

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I F***ing Love Science: The New, Uncensored Song by Hank Green

in Science | April 26th, 2014

If you’re a reg­u­lar OC read­er, you’re famil­iar with John Green, the best­selling author who has pro­duced a series of edu­ca­tion­al videos — most notably, A Crash Course in World His­to­ry, A Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture, and the new PBS video series, The Art Assign­ment. John often pro­duces videos with his broth­er Hank — a musi­cian, bio­chemist and vlog­ger — who put his tal­ents togeth­er to pro­duce this new song, “I F***ing Love Sci­ence.” Be warned, the ver­sion above is uncen­sored. As are the lyrics, found below the jump. A clean, tame, cen­sored ver­sion of the song can be found here.

(more…)

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1955 Psychology Experiment Sees What Happens When You Ask an Artist to Paint Under the Influence of LSD

in Science | April 22nd, 2014


A few months ago, we fea­tured the increas­ing­ly abstract por­traits drawn by an artist after peri­od­ic dos­es of LSD. It hap­pened in the late 1950s, a time when you might well imag­ine such an activ­i­ty going down in, say, a bohemi­an quar­ter of New York, but also a time when hal­lu­cino­genic drugs rode a wave of pop­u­lar­i­ty among legit­i­mate sci­en­tists. Those osten­si­bly straight-laced researchers (some­times fund­ed by CIA mon­ey) had a fas­ci­na­tion not with the tak­ing of hal­lu­cino­genic drugs — not nec­es­sar­i­ly, any­way — but with what, exact­ly, these hal­lu­cino­genic drugs did to those who do take them. Par­tic­u­lar­ly artists draw­ing por­traits. Those por­traits drawn on LSD came out under the close watch of Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine psy­chi­a­trist Oscar Janiger. Above, you can watch the fruit of anoth­er, much more ver­bal 1950s exper­i­ment con­duct­ed just down the coast by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Nicholas A. Ber­cel, M.D.: “Schiz­o­phrenic Mod­el Psy­chosis Induced by LSD 25.”

Here we also have an artist exam­ined: this time, a Los Ange­les painter named Bill. As Bill floats through his altered state, Ber­cel asks him to describe, in as rig­or­ous detail as pos­si­ble, his per­cep­tions of objects in the room, of items of food and drink brought in, and of their inter­ac­tions them­selves. This 24-minute film of the four-hour process, punc­tu­at­ed by elec­troen­cephalo­graph­ic scans, comes as a pro­duc­tion of San­doz, the Swiss phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny who orig­i­nal­ly iso­lat­ed LSD and who appar­ent­ly had an inter­est in bring­ing a form of it to mar­ket. (One pro­posed phar­ma­co­log­i­cal des­ig­na­tion: “Phan­tastium.”) Though that did­n’t hap­pen, the Hun­gar­i­an-born Ber­cel went on through­out his long career to con­duct more research of the kind that ulti­mate­ly earned him a lega­cy as a pio­neer in neu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gy. He also, when not in the lab, wrote over a dozen nov­els and film treat­ments. Clear­ly he had an impres­sive cre­ative streak, whether or not he ever per­son­al­ly had his doors of per­cep­tion opened by the sub­stances his sub­jects like Bill so enjoyed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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