The Genius of Charles Darwin Revealed in Three-Part Series by Richard Dawkins

in Biology, Television | January 1st, 2013

Evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins has, over the past decade or so, grown close­ly asso­ci­at­ed in the pub­lic mind with athe­ism, and specif­i­cal­ly with the cause of tak­ing down cre­ation­ism. While he has no doubt court­ed this fame by writ­ing books like The God Delu­sion (wher­aeas thir­ty years ago he wrote books like The Self­ish Gene), we for­get at our own per­il that Dawkins can argue for things as well or bet­ter than he can argue against them. If Dawkins’ intel­lec­tu­al bête noire, the notion that an intel­li­gent design­er delib­er­ate­ly cre­at­ed life on Earth, already holds no appeal for you, you’ll enjoy The Genius of Charles Dar­win, his cel­e­bra­tion of the father of evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry, all the more. Even hard­core cre­ation­ists, in refer­ring to the accep­tance of evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry as “Dar­win­ism,” acknowl­edge the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry nat­u­ral­ist’s exten­sive influ­ence. Dawkins, an even more ardent Dar­win admir­er than he is a cre­ation­ism detrac­tor, lays it unam­bigu­ous­ly out at the begin­ning: “This series is about per­haps the most pow­er­ful idea ever to occur to a human mind. The idea is evo­lu­tion by nat­ur­al selec­tion, and the genius who thought of it was Charles Dar­win.”

This British Broad­cast Award-win­ning Chan­nel 4 doc­u­men­tary series comes in three parts: “Life, Dar­win & Every­thing” (the title a nod to Dawkins’ late friend, Hitch­hik­ers’ Guide to the Galaxy author and biol­o­gy fan Dou­glas Adams), “The Fifth Ape,” and “God Strikes Back.” Begin­ning with the basics, it has Dawkins explain how, exact­ly, species evolve by way of nat­ur­al selec­tion, at one point to a dubi­ous high school class­room. After tak­ing the stu­dents on a field trip to check out the fos­sil record for them­selves, he returns to his colo­nial birth­place of Nairo­bi, Kenya — coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the geo­graph­i­cal ori­gin of homo sapi­ens itself. He explores the reli­gious impli­ca­tions of of evo­lu­tion, the wrong­head­ed nature of what’s called “social Dar­win­ism,” and the even wronger-head­ed nature of eugen­ics. He inter­views fig­ures like evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist Steven Pinker, Cre­ation Research pres­i­dent John Mack­ay, and Con­cerned Women for Amer­i­ca pres­i­dent Wendy Wright. All have some­thing to say about Dar­win’s obser­va­tion, whether for or against, and if against, Dawkins has a response. Call him over­con­fi­dent if you must, but in a show like this, he cer­tain­ly does take pains to approach his sub­ject from every pos­si­ble angle.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Darwin’s Lega­cy, a Stan­ford course in our col­lec­tion of 650 Free Online Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen Take Phone Calls on New York Cable TV (1978)

in Music, Television | December 28th, 2012

I don’t know about you, but when I think of Sid Vicious, I pic­ture a young Gary Old­man. The Sex Pis­tols bassist cer­tain­ly made an out­sized cul­tur­al mark in his 21 short years, and Old­man’s per­for­mance in the Alex Cox-direct­ed Sid and Nan­cy has become, for those too young or dis­tant to catch the band at the time, the author­i­ta­tive­ly vivid depic­tion of him. Though argu­ments rou­tine­ly erupt about the license Cox may have tak­en with the facts of Vicious’ life and death, you need only watch a clip of the gen­uine arti­cle to under­stand how expert­ly Old­man cap­tured his dis­tinc­tive kind of surly vital­i­ty. I rec­om­mend the above late-sev­en­ties broad­cast from The Efrom Allen Show on New York cable tele­vi­sion (part one, part two, part three), which finds the shirt­less Vicious sit­ting on a pan­el with his girl­friend Nan­cy Spun­gen (the tit­u­lar Nan­cy of the film), Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys, and Cyn­thia Ross of the B Girls. “THAT’S SID VICIOUS ON YOUR SCREENS, FOLKS,” scrolling text tells the view­ers. “IS SID VICIOUS? WHO CARES? CALL 473‑5386 TO SPEAK TO THE PUNK OF YOUR CHOICE.”

And call they do. Vicious responds with the same oscil­la­tion between artic­u­la­cy and inar­tic­u­la­cy you may recall from Old­man’s por­tray­al, and Spun­gen seems to pos­sess the same behav­ioral­ly con­cealed core of intel­li­gence that Chloe Webb gave her in the movie. She takes up the role of his defend­er when, lit cig­a­rette in hand, she unhesi­tat­ing­ly shoots down a caller who asks the faint­ly zoned-out punk icon why he’s “so deriv­a­tive”: “He’s as orig­i­nal as you get! He’s not deriv­a­tive of any­thing!” As the show goes on, this proves not to be the only accu­sa­tion of its kind. Oth­er calls include inquiries about post-Pis­tols projects, a sug­ges­tion to col­lab­o­rate with Ron Wood (of all peo­ple), and prompts for pre­dic­tions about the direc­tion of punk rock. “How should I know?” Vicious blurts. “I live my life day by day. I don’t plan years ahead.” Indeed, he did­n’t need to. The pro­gram aired on Sep­tem­ber 18, 1978, eight months after the Sex Pis­tols dis­solved. Less than a month lat­er, Spun­gen would be gone, and less than five months lat­er, so too would he.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Acoustic His­to­ry of Punk Rock Sheds Light on NYC’s Low­er East Side (NSFW)

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of CBGB, the Ear­ly Home of Punk and New Wave

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Jim Henson Teaches You How to Make Puppets in Vintage Primer From 1969

in Art, Television | December 27th, 2012

Give Jim Hen­son 15 min­utes of your time, and the father of the Mup­pets will teach you how to make your own pup­pets, using noth­ing oth­er than house­hold items – socks, pota­toes, tacks, ten­nis balls, rub­ber bands, wood­en spoons, and the rest. This primer orig­i­nal­ly aired on Iowa Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion back in 1969, not long before Hen­son joined a fledg­ling TV pro­duc­tion, Sesame Street, where he helped cre­ate the most famous pup­pets of our gen­er­a­tion: Oscar, Ernie, Ker­mit, Bert, Cook­ie Mon­ster, Big Bird and the rest. Though record­ed 40+ years ago, the advice is sim­ple and time­less. When you’re done watch­ing this old favorite of ours, you can go deep­er into Jim Hen­son’s imag­i­nary world with these var­ied clips.

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show (1975)

Watch Jim Henson’s Vio­lent Wilkins Cof­fee Com­mer­cials (1957–1961)

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

Jim Henson’s Ani­mat­ed Film, Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, Pre­sent­ed by John­ny Car­son (1974)

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire’: Nat King Cole Sings ‘The Christmas Song,’ 1957

in Music, Television | December 25th, 2012

It is, arguably, the most beau­ti­ful ver­sion of the most pop­u­lar hol­i­day tune: Nat King Cole singing “The Christ­mas Song” in his vel­vety-smooth bari­tone voice. Cole actu­al­ly record­ed the song four times between 1946 and 1961, but it’s the last record­ing that is most often played on the radio and in stores dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son.

“The Christ­mas Song” was writ­ten on a swel­ter­ing sum­mer day in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia by the croon­er Mel Tor­mé and his writ­ing part­ner, Robert Wells. Tor­mé and Wells had been hired to write a pair of movie scores. Com­plain­ing about the heat one day, the two men began talk­ing about win­ter at high­er lat­i­tudes. Wells jot­ted down a few men­tal images. “I saw a spi­ral pad on his piano with four lines writ­ten in pen­cil, “writes Tor­mé in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy It Was­n’t All Vel­vet. “They start­ed, ‘Chest­nuts roast­ing … Jack Frost nip­ping … Yule­tide car­ols … Folks dressed up like Eski­mos.’ Bob did­n’t think he was writ­ing a song lyric. He said he thought if he could immerse him­self in win­ter, he could cool off.”

When the song was com­plet­ed, Tor­mé imme­di­ate­ly thought of his friend Cole, accord­ing to Ace Collins in his book Sto­ries Behind the Great­est Hits of Christ­mas. The two song­writ­ers drove to Cole’s house in Los Ange­les and played it for him. Cole liked the song, and asked the writ­ers to hold it for him while he made arrange­ments to record it. Cole first record­ed “The Christ­mas Song” with his jazz trio in New York on June 14, 1946. Lat­er arrange­ments includ­ed strings and grew pro­gres­sive­ly more lush. The scene above is from the very last episode of The Nat King Cole Show, broad­cast live on Decem­ber 17, 1957. Cole is accom­pa­nied by Nel­son Rid­dle and his orches­tra.

For those cel­e­brat­ing today, we can think of no bet­ter way to send you our greet­ings than with this mov­ing per­for­mance, which ends with the mem­o­rable lines:

And so I’m offer­ing this sim­ple phrase
To kids from one to nine­ty-two
Although it’s been said many times
Many ways, Mer­ry Christ­mas to you

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Watch The Snowman, the Classic Animated Children’s Tale Introduced by David Bowie

in Animation, Film, Television | December 23rd, 2012

Thir­ty years ago the British tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny Chan­nel Four pre­miered this enchant­i­ng, lyri­cal film based on the award-win­ning Ray­mond Brig­gs chil­dren’s book, The Snow­man.

The tale bears some resem­blance to the ear­li­er Amer­i­can sto­ry, “Frosty the Snow­man,” but probes deep­er into the psy­chol­o­gy of chil­dren, con­vey­ing the fear and won­der they feel in a mys­te­ri­ous world, and their long­ing for friend­ship and mag­ic. It’s more ele­gant­ly told, too, using only pic­tures and music to con­vey the sto­ry. And just as Mau­rice Sendak said “I refuse to lie to chil­dren,” Brig­gs refus­es to pro­vide a Hol­ly­wood end­ing.

The orig­i­nal ver­sion of The Snow­man includes an intro­duc­tion by Brig­gs. A lat­er ver­sion (see above) has a sim­i­lar intro­duc­tion by David Bowie, who plays the grownup boy from the sto­ry. As the intro­duc­tion ends, Bowie opens a draw­er and pulls out a scarf that was giv­en to him dur­ing his adven­ture with the snow­man, prov­ing that it was not just a dream.

In 1983, The Snow­man was nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award. It ranks 71st on the British Film Insti­tute’s list of the 100 great­est British tele­vi­sion pro­grams and was vot­ed num­ber four in UKTV Gold’s “Great­est TV Christ­mas Moments.” Watch­ing The Snow­man has become a hol­i­day tra­di­tion in the UK in much the same way that watch­ing A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas has in Amer­i­ca. Tonight in Britain, Chan­nel 4 will pre­miere the long-await­ed sequel, The Snow­man and the Snow­dog, set 30 years lat­er at the same house but with a dif­fer­ent boy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Bowie and Bing Cros­by Sing ‘The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy’ in 1977

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Annie Leibovitz, Photographer of Icons and Iconic Photographer, Profiled on American Masters

in Photography, Television | December 14th, 2012

One must take care, when writ­ing about well-con­nect­ed cul­tur­al fig­ures, not to abuse the word icon­ic. But when one writes about the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Annie Lei­bovitz, one almost has to abuse it. Here we have a woman who took two of the most mem­o­rable pho­tos of John Lennon, col­lab­o­rat­ed (to the extent pos­si­ble) with Hunter S. Thomp­son, went on tour with the Rolling Stones, fol­lowed Richard Nixon out of the White House the last time he left it, con­vinced Whoopi Gold­berg to get into a bath­tub of milk, and loved Susan Son­tag. This whole post could­n’t pos­si­bly con­tain a com­plete list of her pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al involve­ment with the, yes, icons of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry pop­u­lar cul­ture. Her por­traits of them became icons them­selves, which, in turn, made Lei­bovitz her­self icon­ic. For a visu­al­ly rich sense of the scope of her life and career, look no fur­ther than the doc­u­men­tary above, Life Through a Lens.

This 2008 pro­duc­tion comes from the PBS-dis­trib­uted Amer­i­can Mas­ters tele­vi­sion series, which we fea­tured on Tues­day. Direct­ed by Lei­bovitz’s own sis­ter and there­fore pos­sessed of the unusu­al famil­ial insight you’d expect, Life Through a Lens also includes a great many of the hard-to-inter­view lumi­nar­ies with­out which no pro­file of this pho­tog­ra­ph­er could be com­plete. We hear from Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, Jann Wen­ner, Hillary Clin­ton, Glo­ria Steinem, Pat­ti Smith, Mick Jag­ger, Kei­th Richards, Bette Midler, Yoko Ono, and George Clooney, to name but a few of her admir­ers who’ve held their own at the busi­ness end of her cam­era. In the four years since this doc­u­men­tary, Lei­bovitz’s pho­tographs — now of 21st-cen­tu­ry celebri­ties like Miley Cyrus, Sasha Baron Cohen, Lady Gaga, Rihan­na, and LeBron James —  have con­tin­ued to impress in the pages of Vogue and Van­i­ty Fair. When­ev­er some­one ris­es toward icon­ic sta­tus, Annie Lei­bovitz’s visu­al imag­i­na­tion can’t be far behind.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch PBS’ Amer­i­can Mas­ters Doc­u­men­taries (Includ­ing Scorsese’s Homage to Kazan) Free Online

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son and the Deci­sive Moment

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Watch PBS’ American Masters Documentaries (Including Scorsese’s Homage to Kazan) Free Online

in Television | December 11th, 2012

Each new Amer­i­can Mas­ters broad­cast, when it debuts on tele­vi­sion, tends to receive a hero’s wel­come. The poten­tial for hero­ism on the part of a bio­graph­i­cal doc­u­men­tary may, of course, seem lim­it­ed, but their astute­ness and atten­tion to detail does put them on a lev­el above. Pro­duced by New York City’s Thirteen/WNET and dis­trib­uted by the Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice, the show has for 26 years told the life sto­ries of cre­ators of all types, Amer­i­can-born and oth­er­wise, who have made an impact on U.S. cul­ture. Last month, we fea­tured Woody Allen answer­ing thir­teen unusu­al ques­tions from Robert B. Wei­de, direc­tor of the series’ recent Woody Allen: A Doc­u­men­tary. That episode stirred up quite a flur­ry of admi­ra­tion, as did the more recent Invent­ing David Gef­fen, a por­trait of the enter­tain­ment indus­try titan direct­ed by Amer­i­can Mas­ters cre­ator Susan Lacy — which you can watch free at PBS.org.

And that’s not the only one. Any self-respect­ing fan of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma will want to watch the pro­gram above, A Let­ter to Elia. It show­cas­es a qual­i­ty often cit­ed as one of Amer­i­can Mas­ters’ great strengths: its match­es of sub­ject and doc­u­men­tar­i­an. In this case, we get the life of Elia Kazan, direc­tor of clas­sic pic­tures like On the Water­front and East of Eden, as described by Mar­tin Scors­ese, direc­tor of such promis­ing can­di­dates for clas­sic sta­tus as Taxi Dri­ver and Rag­ing Bull. The doc­u­men­tary exam­ines not only Kazan’s life and work but Scors­ese’s rela­tion­ship to it, and from there, any young artist’s rela­tion­ship to art itself. PBS has also made freely avail­able their broad­casts on John­ny Car­son, Jeff Bridges, Charles and Ray Eames, and quite a few oth­ers besides. If the cul­ture of a coun­try as vast and young as the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca remains dif­fi­cult to pin down, it cer­tain­ly isn’t for Amer­i­can Mas­ters’ lack of try­ing.

Var­i­ous episodes have been added to our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Ein­stein Doc­u­men­tary Offers A Reveal­ing Por­trait of the Great 20th Cen­tu­ry Sci­en­tist

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Schoolhouse Rock: Revisit a Collection of Nostalgia-Inducing Educational Videos

in Animation, Education, K-12, Television | December 6th, 2012

Some­times a tune lives in your head and you hum it now and again with­out any rec­ol­lec­tion of where it orig­i­nal­ly came from. Chances are, if you grew up in the Unit­ed States watch­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toons, that tune came from School­house Rock.

Like so many of its biggest fans, School­house Rock is now offi­cial­ly in its 40s. This year marks the 40th anniver­sary of the pilot seg­ment, Three is a Mag­ic Num­ber, whose melody and lyrics ooze the type of hip­pie Sun­shine Fam­i­ly whole­some­ness so abun­dant in ‘70s children’s pro­gram­ming.

Man and a woman had a lit­tle baby,

Yes they did.

They had three in the fam­i­ly.

And that’s a mag­ic num­ber

Fol­low that up with School­house Rock’s win­ning for­mu­la: sim­ple, hum­ma­ble tunes mixed with math fact lyrics.

3–6‑9, 12–15-18, 21–24-27, 30.
3–6‑9, 12–15-18, 21–24-27, 30.

School­house Rock start­ed out as an adver­tis­ing ven­ture on ABC, dreamed up by an exec­u­tive whose son was strug­gling to mem­o­rize his mul­ti­pli­ca­tion tables. But it grew into the most pop­u­lar inter­sti­tial pro­gram­ming (short vignettes shown between TV seg­ments) in mod­ern tele­vi­sion.

One of the most mem­o­rable melodies is Blos­som Dearie’s sweet and melan­choly Fig­ure Eight, broad­cast in Feb­ru­ary, 1973. This one was cov­ered by Eliot Smith in a decid­ed­ly less upbeat ver­sion.

With­out a doubt these three-minute ani­ma­tions (by Loonie Tunes ani­ma­tor Chuck Jones) are some of the best mod­ern edu­ca­tion­al videos around. Whose social stud­ies teacher didn’t show this tune­ful expla­na­tion of the leg­isla­tive process dur­ing class?

And this one about the Con­sti­tu­tion, well I have to admit that it still chokes me up.

The man behind the vast major­i­ty of the music is Bob Dor­ough, a pianist who worked with Miles Davis and Allen Gins­berg before becom­ing the voice and main com­pos­er for School­house Rock.


The series took on near­ly every sub­ject, from mul­ti­pli­ca­tion and gram­mar to sci­ence and Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment. Today’s edu­ca­tion­al soft­ware devel­op­ers would kill to make gram­mar as fun as Con­junc­tion Junc­tion and Lol­ly, Lol­ly, Lol­ly Get Your Adverbs Here.  The pro­duc­ers didn’t shy away from more weighty issues either. Take a lis­ten to this lit­tle dit­ty on the theme of Amer­i­can ter­ri­to­r­i­al expan­sion.

The series took a break dur­ing the 1980s but picked up again in the mid-’90s with Mon­ey Rock. In 2009 came Earth Rock. Both fea­tured a more gloom-and-doom feel than the inspir­ing tone of the ear­li­er School­house Rock iter­a­tions.

Some­times the orig­i­nal real­ly is the best.

You can pur­chase the com­plete set of School­house Rock videos on Ama­zon. We’ve also added a link to this post in our new col­lec­tion: 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com. 

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