The Ideas of Noam Chomsky: An Introduction to His Theories on Language & Knowledge (1977)

in Philosophy, Television | May 29th, 2012

We’ve fea­tured the lin­guist and polemi­cist Noam Chom­sky here before, and not two weeks ago we post­ed about philoso­pher-broad­cast­er Bryan Magee. The Ideas of Noam Chom­sky brings the two men togeth­er for a chat about lin­guis­tics, the phi­los­o­phy of lan­guage, human cog­ni­tive pro­gram­ming, and the phi­los­o­phy of sci­ence. Though Magee intro­duces Chom­sky, a high­ly non­tra­di­tion­al intel­lec­tu­al to his adher­ents and detrac­tors alike, as “some­thing of a jok­er in the pack, as far as phi­los­o­phy is con­cerned,” he inter­views him with all the atten­tive­ness and respect he brings to dis­cus­sions with pure­ly philo­soph­i­cal lumi­nar­ies. Clear­ly, Magee wants to know more about Chom­sky’s the­o­ries of lan­guage, and espe­cial­ly about their impli­ca­tions for what he calls the dom­i­nant philo­soph­i­cal prob­lem: “that of the rela­tion­ship between lan­guage and the world.”

Rarely ques­tioned along these lines in the media, Chom­sky responds thought­ful­ly and in detail. This ulti­mate­ly leads to a con­ver­sa­tion about the divide between where mean­ing­ful sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries can devel­op, and where our cog­ni­tive lim­i­ta­tions might pre­vent them from devel­op­ing. You’ll notice that none of this has to do with pol­i­tics, and polit­i­cal guid­ance is what most of Chom­sky’s fans have expect­ed from him over the decades. While even Chom­sky him­self has admit­ted to see­ing no con­nec­tion between his aca­d­e­m­ic and activist careers, Magee pur­sues a line of inquiry late in the broad­cast meant to tie them togeth­er. Magee asks astute ques­tions and Chom­sky pro­vides hon­est answers, but find­ing a com­mon root between ideas like deep gram­mar and anar­chist social­ism per­haps remains an intel­lec­tu­al stunt best not tried at home.

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:

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

Bryan Magee’s In-Depth, Uncut TV Con­ver­sa­tions With Famous Philoso­phers (1978–87)

Ali G and Noam Chom­sky Talk Lin­guis­tics

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

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Bryan Magee’s In-Depth, Uncut TV Conversations With Famous Philosophers (1978–87)

in Philosophy, Television | May 18th, 2012

Bryan Magee comes from a tra­di­tion that pro­duced some of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s most impres­sive media per­son­al­i­ties: that of the schol­ar­ship-edu­cat­ed, Oxbridge-refined, intel­lec­tu­al­ly omniv­o­rous, occa­sion­al­ly office-hold­ing, radio- and tele­vi­sion-savvy man of let­ters. Stu­dents and pro­fes­sors of phi­los­o­phy prob­a­bly know him from his large print oeu­vre, which includes vol­umes on Pop­per and Schopen­hauer as well as sev­er­al guides to west­ern phi­los­o­phy and the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Con­fes­sions of a Philoso­pher. He also wrote anoth­er mem­oir called The Tele­vi­sion Inter­view­er, and philo­soph­i­cal­ly inclined lay­men may fond­ly remem­ber him as just that. When Magee played to both these strengths at once, he came up with two philo­soph­i­cal tele­vi­sion shows in the span of a decade: Men of Ideas, which began in 1978, and The Great Philoso­phers, which ran in 1987. Both series brought BBC view­ers in-depth, uncut con­ver­sa­tions with many of the day’s most famous philoso­phers.

You can watch select inter­views of Men of Ideas and The Great Philoso­phers on YouTube, includ­ing:

At the top of the post, you’ll find Magee talk­ing with A.J. Ayer, a well-known spe­cial­ist in “log­i­cal pos­i­tivism,” about the devel­op­ment of, and chal­lenges to, that philo­soph­i­cal sub-field. Two philoso­phers, relaxed on a couch, some­times smok­ing, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly engaged in a com­mer­cial-free back-and-forth about the most impor­tant thinkers and thoughts in the field — watch some­thing like that, and you can’t pos­si­bly think of now as a gold­en age of tele­vi­sion.

Note: Oodles of phi­los­o­phy cours­es, many thought by famous philoso­phers, can be found in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our list of Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

105 Ani­mat­ed Phi­los­o­phy Videos from Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy: A Project Spon­sored by Yale, MIT, Duke & More

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

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Morgan Freeman Teaches Kids to Read in Vintage Electric Company Footage from 1971

in Education, K-12, Television | May 17th, 2012

Every actor has to start some­where, and Mor­gan Free­man (Dri­ving Miss Daisy, The Shaw­shank Redemp­tion, and Mil­lion Dol­lar Baby) could have done worse than join­ing the cast of The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny, the PBS chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion series that aired from 1971 to 1977. The orig­i­nal cast includ­ed Bill Cos­by and Rita Moreno (not bad com­pa­ny), and the ver­sa­tile Free­man played a series of char­ac­ters: “Mel Mounds,” “Vin­cent the Veg­etable Vam­pire,” and then, of course, Easy Read­er. If you’re of my gen­er­a­tion, you might rec­og­nize his theme song above. Below, we show you Easy Read­er (a pun on the 1969 film Easy Rid­er) in action, teach­ing kids to read in his effort­less­ly cool, hip­ster way. H/T Metafil­ter

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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John Cleese Plays the Devil, Makes a Special Appeal for Hell, 1966

in Comedy, Television | May 13th, 2012

Hell. We tend to take it for grant­ed. Have you ever stopped to think about the heat­ing bills, or the stu­pen­dous over­head?

John Cleese plays a cash-strapped Prince of Dark­ness in this clas­sic sketch from The Frost Report, the show that launched Cleese as a tele­vi­sion star in Britain. He was 26 years old at the time. The pro­gram was host­ed by David Frost, who is per­haps best known for his 1977 inter­views of Richard Nixon. There were four oth­er future Mon­ty Python come­di­ans on the writ­ing staff of The Frost Report–Gra­ham Chap­man, Ter­ry Jones, Michael Palin and Eric Idle–but only Cleese was a cast mem­ber. The show was broad­cast in 1966 and 1967, with each week­ly episode cen­tered around a par­tic­u­lar theme, like love, leisure, class and author­i­ty. The “Souls in Tor­ment Appeal” is from a March 24, 1966 pro­gram about sin. It’s a fun­ny sketch.

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: 

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python’s Away From it All: A Twist­ed Trav­el­ogue with John Cleese

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The Original Episode of Dark Shadows, the 1960s TV Series That Inspired Tim Burton’s New Film

in Film, Television | May 11th, 2012

For mil­lions of Amer­i­can kids grow­ing up in the late 1960s, it was a thrill to run home from school and flip on the TV in time to hear the creepy theremin music at the begin­ning of Dark Shad­ows. A soap opera with a vam­pire! There was some­thing strange­ly sub­ver­sive about it. As a head­line writer for The New York Times recent­ly put it, Barn­abas Collins (the undead star of the show) was “The Vam­pire Who Came Out in the After­noon.”

Tim Bur­ton was one of those kids who ran home to watch the show. “I should prob­a­bly have been doing home­work or play­ing sports after school instead of watch­ing ‘Dark Shad­ows,’ ” Bur­ton told Ter­rence Raf­fer­ty for the Times arti­cle. “But see­ing that show every after­noon, at home, in Bur­bank, it just does­n’t get much weird­er than that.”

It might get just a lit­tle weird­er tonight, with the Amer­i­can open­ing of Bur­ton’s campy new film adap­ta­tion of Dark Shad­ows, star­ring John­ny Depp as Barn­abas Collins. The movie has been get­ting pos­i­tive reviews. Manohla Dar­gis in The New York Times calls it “Mr. Bur­ton’s most plea­sur­able film in years.” To help get you in the spir­it, so to speak–and to add perspective–we’re tak­ing you back to the very first episode of the orig­i­nal series (above) from June, 1966. Alas, Barn­abas Collins did­n’t make his appear­ance until episode num­ber 211, a year lat­er. The actor who played Collins, Jonathan Frid, died last month at the age of 87. He makes a cameo appear­ance in Bur­ton’s movie. For a pre­view of the film, see below. You can pur­chase the com­plete Dark Shad­ows TV series on DVD here, which comes in a nice pack­age of 131 discs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Franken­wee­nie: Tim Bur­ton Turns Franken­stein Tale into Dis­ney Kids Film (1984)

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

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The Making of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” The Beatles’ Song That Aired on an Historic Episode of Mad Men

in Music, Television | May 10th, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkirE9uH5SE

On Sun­day night, The Bea­t­les made his­to­ry again when Don Drap­er slipped a copy of Revolver onto his turntable and start­ed lis­ten­ing to “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows.” Accord­ing to Matthew Wein­er, the cre­ator of Mad Men, this marked the first time a Bea­t­les song appeared on a tele­vi­sion show (exclud­ing the band’s live TV per­for­mances dur­ing the 1960s). And the priv­i­lege of play­ing a Bea­t­les tune came at a cost — a report­ed $250,000.

If you’re not famil­iar with “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” (lis­ten below), we’ll tell you a few sim­ple things about it. Accord­ing to Steve Turn­er, author of A Hard Day’s Write, this was John Lennon’s “attempt to cre­ate in words and sounds a suit­able track for the LSD expe­ri­ence” (John dis­cuss­es his first encounter with the drug here), and it was also the “weird­est and most exper­i­men­tal piece of music to appear under the Bea­t­les’ name at the time.” With­out a doubt, this psy­che­del­ic tune would have fit hand-in-glove with Mad Men’s fifth episode of the sea­son, when Roger and Jane drop acid at a psy­chi­a­trist’s din­ner par­ty. But it sits com­fort­ably too in Episode 8. Just as the song marked a tun­ing point in the band’s sound, so too does it presage a turn­ing point in Mad Men’s nar­ra­tive. We begin to see indi­vid­ual char­ac­ters mov­ing in new per­son­al direc­tions and the show itself enter­ing the lat­er rad­i­cal 60s.

Above, we’ve includ­ed a clip where Paul McCart­ney, George Har­ri­son and George Mar­tin talk about the mak­ing of “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows.” Wikipedia actu­al­ly offers some more good details on the song’s struc­ture and record­ing. Below you’ll also find the orig­i­nal track.

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Jim Henson’s Commercials for Wilkins Coffee: 15 Twisted Minutes of Muppet Coffee Ads (1957–1961)

in Comedy, Television | May 3rd, 2012

Drink our cof­fee. Or else. That’s the mes­sage of these curi­ous­ly sadis­tic TV com­mer­cials pro­duced by Jim Hen­son between 1957 and 1961.

Hen­son made 179 ten-sec­ond spots for Wilkins Cof­fee, a region­al com­pa­ny with dis­tri­b­u­tion in the Bal­ti­more-Wash­ing­ton D.C. mar­ket, accord­ing to the Mup­pets Wiki: “The local sta­tions only had ten sec­onds for sta­tion iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, so the Mup­pet com­mer­cials had to be lightning-fast–essentially, eight sec­onds for the com­mer­cial pitch and a two-sec­ond shot of the prod­uct.”

With­in those eight sec­onds, a cof­fee enthu­si­ast named Wilkins (who bears a resem­blance to Ker­mit the frog) man­ages to shoot, stab, blud­geon or oth­er­wise do grave bod­i­ly harm to a cof­fee hold­out named Won­tkins. Hen­son pro­vid­ed the voic­es of both char­ac­ters.

Up until that time, TV adver­tis­ers typ­i­cal­ly made a direct sales pitch. “We took a dif­fer­ent approach,” said Hen­son in Christo­pher Finch’s Of Mup­pets and Men: The Mak­ing of the Mup­pet Show. “We tried to sell things by mak­ing peo­ple laugh.”

The cam­paign for Wilkins Cof­fee was a hit. “In terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty of com­mer­cials in the Wash­ing­ton area,” said Hen­son in a 1982 inter­view with Judy Har­ris, “we were the num­ber one, the most pop­u­lar com­mer­cial.” Hen­son’s ad agency began mar­ket­ing the idea to oth­er region­al cof­fee com­pa­nies around the coun­try. Hen­son re-shot the same spots with dif­fer­ent brand names. “I bought my con­tract from that agency,” said Hen­son, “and then I was pro­duc­ing them–the same things around the coun­try. And so we had up to about a dozen or so clients going at the same time. At the point, I was mak­ing a lot of mon­ey.”

You can watch many of the Wilkins Cof­fee com­mer­cials above. If you’re a glut­ton for pun­ish­ment, there are more on YouTube. And a word of advice: If some­one ever asks you if you drink Wilkins Cof­fee, just say yes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Jim Hen­son Pilots The Mup­pet Show with Adult Episode, “Sex and Vio­lence” (1975)

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The Art of Film and TV Title Design

in Art, Film, Television | April 26th, 2012

PBS’ web series Off Book talks to artists work­ing hard, whether they’re doing so in the street, in tat­too par­lors, on Etsy, or on film and tele­vi­sion title sequences. In the lat­est install­ment above, Karin Fong and Peter Frank­furt dis­cuss their now-icon­ic Mad Men title sequence, as well as their ear­li­er and more trou­bling open­ing cred­its for David Fincher’s Se7en. Ben Con­rad explains how his title work inte­grat­ed into the phys­i­cal world of Ruben Fleis­cher’s Zom­bieland, allow­ing zom­bies to ram­page right through float­ing let­ters announc­ing things like “Colum­bia Pic­tures” and “Pro­duced by Gavin Polone,” and spelling out the num­bered rules of post-apoc­a­lyp­tic sur­vival even as the pro­tag­o­nists observed, bent, and broke them. Jim Hel­ton tells the sto­ry of his back-and-forth with direc­tor Derek Cian­france in design­ing the titles for Blue Valen­tine, which take explod­ing-fire­work imagery and aes­thet­i­cal­ly uni­fy it with the scat­tered mem­o­ries that make up the movie. All of them face the chal­lenge of simul­ta­ne­ous­ly invit­ing audi­ences into a sto­ry, reflect­ing its sen­si­bil­i­ty, and on top of that, mak­ing an orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tion to the pro­duc­tion as a whole.

Though the meet­ing of design, film, and tele­vi­sion has nev­er been more enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly exam­ined than in this era of inter­net video, this line of work has a rich his­to­ry. After this episode of Off Book’s end cred­its, the inter­vie­wees all give props to title design­er Saul Bass — “Saint Saul,” Frank­furt calls him — who, if you believe them, ele­vat­ed title sequences, cor­po­rate logos, and oth­er pre­vi­ous­ly plain and straight­for­ward means of visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion into art forms unto them­selves. Watch Bass’ cre­ations in North By North­west, The Man With the Gold­en Arm, and West Side Sto­ry, some of the ear­li­est title sequences to show­case the for­m’s capac­i­ty for impli­ca­tion and abstrac­tion, and you’ll under­stand his impor­tance to these mod­ern-day design­ers. Per­haps this brief visu­al intro­duc­tion to Bass’ designs, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture, will inspire you to get into the busi­ness your­self.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

For­get the Films, Watch the Titles

Cin­e­ma His­to­ry by Titles & Num­bers

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

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