Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and More on the Classic Jazz 625 Show

in Music, Television | February 22nd, 2012

In April of 1964, the British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion launched BBC Two as a high­brow alter­na­tive to its main­stream TV chan­nel. One of the new chan­nel’s first pro­grams was Jazz 625, which spot­light­ed many of the great­est Jazz musi­cians of the day. Dizzy Gille­spie, Thelo­nious Monk, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans and oth­ers per­formed on the show, which fea­tured straight-for­ward cam­era work and a min­i­mal­ist set. The focus was on the music.

The title of the show referred to the chan­nel’s 625-line UHF band­width, which offered high­er res­o­lu­tion than the 405-line VHF trans­mis­sion on BBC One. Among the sur­viv­ing episodes is Thelo­nious Monk’s March 14, 1965 per­for­mance at the Mar­quee Club in Lon­don. You can watch a 35-minute excerpt above. The quar­tet fea­tures Monk on piano, Char­lie Rouse on tenor sax­o­phone, Lar­ry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums. They per­form four num­bers:

  1. Straight No Chas­er
  2. Hack­en­sack
  3. Rhythm-A-Ning
  4. Epistro­phy

You can learn the sto­ry behind Jazz 625 by read­ing an arti­cle by Louis Barfe at Trans­d­if­fu­sion. And to see more from the shows, scroll down.

The Oscar Peter­son Trio:

Above is a 25-minute excerpt from the Oscar Peter­son Tri­o’s Octo­ber 1, 1964 per­for­mance. The orig­i­nal show, like oth­er episodes of Jazz 625, was over an hour long. The trio fea­tures Peter­son on piano, Ray Brown on bass and Ed Thig­pen on drums.

The Bill Evans Trio:

Above are two 35-minute episodes, shown back-to-back, fea­tur­ing the Bill Evans Trio. The two sets were record­ed on March 19, 1965 and fea­ture Evans on piano, Chuck Israels on bass and Lar­ry Bunker on drums.

The Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet:

The Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet per­formed for Jazz 625 on April 28, 1964. Above is a 27-minute except, fea­tur­ing the Quar­tet’s musi­cal direc­tor John Lewis on piano, Milt Jack­son on vibra­phone, Per­cy Heath on bass and Con­nie Kay on drums. Brazil­ian gui­tarist Lau­rindo Almei­da makes a spe­cial appear­ance.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

30 Free Essays & Stories by David Foster Wallace on the Web

in e-books, Literature | February 22nd, 2012

Image by Steve Rhodes, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We start­ed the week expect­ing to pub­lish one David Fos­ter Wal­lace post. Then, because of the 50th birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, it turned into two. And now three. We spent some time track­ing down free DFW sto­ries and essays avail­able on the web, and they’re all now list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. But we did­n’t want them to escape your atten­tion. So here they are — 23 pieces pub­lished by David Fos­ter Wal­lace between 1989 and 2011, most­ly in major U.S. pub­li­ca­tions like The New York­er, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. Enjoy, and don’t miss our oth­er col­lec­tions of free writ­ings by Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Read 17 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

How Woody Allen Discovered Ingmar Bergman, and How You Can Too

in Film | February 22nd, 2012

An Ing­mar Bergman ret­ro­spec­tive begins next month here in Los Ange­les, and as I mark my cal­en­dar, I reflect on what turned me on to his films in the first place. Who can approach Bergman now with­out first run­ning a cul­tur­al gaunt­let of know­ing ref­er­ences, gush­ing appre­ci­a­tions, and con­trar­i­an broad­sides? What young cinephile could resist the temp­ta­tion to inflate an opin­ion about The Sev­enth Seal, or Wild Straw­ber­ries, or Per­sona after see­ing them for the first time — or indeed, before? We could all ben­e­fit from some­one to show us the way into the “Swedish mas­ter’s” loaded, time-con­sum­ing fil­mog­ra­phy, and as this BBC inter­view by film crit­ic Mark Ker­mode reveals (watch Part 1 above, and Part 2 here), Woody Allen could well be it.

Allen holds a sur­pris­ing­ly plau­si­ble claim to the title of Bergman’s num­ber-one fan, or at least his most promi­nent one. How to square his ded­i­ca­tion to these solemn Swedish med­i­ta­tions on mor­tal­i­ty, emo­tion­al iso­la­tion, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of faith with his cre­ation of beloved light come­dies like Bananas, Sleep­er, and Annie Hall? But watch Allen’s fil­mog­ra­phy in full, espe­cial­ly pic­tures like Love and Death, Crimes and Mis­de­meanors, and Shad­ows and Fog, and the answer comes into view. Mor­tal­i­ty, emo­tion­al iso­la­tion, the impos­si­bil­i­ty of faith — Bergman’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tions are Allen’s, but Allen grap­ples with the unan­swer­able ques­tions by mak­ing jokes about them. What Allen describes as a “the­mat­ic con­nec­tion” to Bergman ulti­mate­ly becomes a much more com­pli­cat­ed entan­gle­ment: his hir­ing of Bergman’s cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Sven Nykvist to shoot Anoth­er Woman, Crimes and Mis­de­meanors, and Celebri­ty, for instance, sug­gests some­thing beyond sim­ple influ­ence.

In con­ver­sa­tion with Ker­mode, Allen remem­bers join­ing the van­guard of New York Bergman enthu­si­asm after see­ing Sum­mer with Moni­ka and The Naked Night, films that, to his mind, dis­played an obvi­ous­ly high­er lev­el of craft than any­thing else play­ing in town. The days when dis­cov­er­ing Bergman real­ly meant dis­cov­er­ing Bergman have long passed, but it will nev­er be too late to feel the same excite­ment Allen did about Bergman’s abil­i­ty to express inter­nal con­flicts — “inner states of anx­i­ety,” Allen calls them — so rich­ly and dra­mat­i­cal­ly on film. The Woody Allen-approved points of entry for the Bergman novice: The Sev­enth Seal, Wild Straw­ber­ries, and Cries and Whis­pers “for sure.” And maybe The Magi­cian. H/T @opedr

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its Dick Cavett, 1971

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen

Also don’t miss Hubert Drey­fus’ course on Exis­ten­tial­ism & Film (iTunes) in our col­lec­tion of 400 Free Cours­es Online.

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Times They Are a‑Changin’: 1964 Broadcast Gives a Rare Glimpse of the Early Bob Dylan

in Music, Television | February 21st, 2012

In ear­ly 1964, Bob Dylan was at the apex of his jour­ney as a social­ly con­scious folk singer. The fleet­ing moment is pre­served in this rare half-hour TV pro­gram, record­ed on Feb­ru­ary 1 of that year. With­in a week the Bea­t­les would land in Amer­i­ca. In a lit­tle over a month, Dylan would rent an elec­tric gui­tar.

The tele­vi­sion per­for­mance is from Quest, a Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion series that ran between 1961 and 1964 and show­cased a wide range of lit­er­ary and per­form­ing arts. It was pro­duced in Toron­to by Daryl Duke, who went on to direct Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion pro­grams and fea­ture films.

Dylan appears in his clas­sic Woody Guthrie mode on a set made to look like a west­ern bunkhouse. He plays six songs–half from The Times They Are a‑Changin’, his third album released just a few weeks before, and half from his pre­vi­ous album, The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan. In order of appear­ance:

  1. The Times They Are A Changin’
  2. Talkin’ World War III Blues
  3. Lone­some Death of Hat­tie Car­roll
  4. Girl From the North Coun­try
  5. A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall
  6. Rest­less Farewell

“The Times They Are a‑Changin’,” as the pro­gram is titled, offers a unique glimpse of the ear­ly Bob Dylan, just before his music turned from social issues to per­son­al ones, just before he put away the blue jeans and work shirts and began wear­ing Bea­t­le boots and sun­glass­es. “Dylan’s appear­ance on Quest,” says writer and film­mak­er Erek Barsczews­ki, “pro­vides the clos­est approx­i­ma­tion avail­able of what his ear­ly per­for­mances in Green­wich Vil­lage would have looked and sound­ed like.”

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 16 ) |

Peter Greenaway Looks at the Day Cinema Died — and What Comes Next

in Film | February 21st, 2012

Cin­e­ma went into its death throes on Sep­tem­ber 31, 1983. The instru­ment of its demise? The video remote con­trol. When the “zap­per” endowed the view­er with the abil­i­ty to play, pause, stop, fast-for­ward, and rewind at will, the medi­um’s artists lost their absolute con­trol over the rhythm, dura­tion, and oth­er chrono­log­i­cal sub­tleties of the cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence. Or so film­mak­er Peter Green­away claims in this lec­ture at UC Berke­ley. Any­one fan enough to read all the inter­views the direc­tor has grant­ed — and I count myself in the group — will by now be famil­iar with, even weary of, Green­away’s ideas about cin­e­ma’s tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic strait­jack­et­ing, its arbi­trary aes­thet­ic bound­aries, and its squan­dered poten­tial as a free­stand­ing art form. Nowhere else, though, does he explain and elab­o­rate upon these ideas in such detail, or in such an enter­tain­ing­ly ora­tor­i­cal man­ner.

“The death of cin­e­ma,” though? Real­ly? Know­ing how dra­mat­ic that sounds, Green­away frames what’s hap­pened in anoth­er way: per­haps cin­e­ma has yet to be born. What if the last cen­tu­ry or so has offered only the pro­logue to cin­e­ma, and mod­ern film­mak­ers must take it upon them­selves to bring the real thing into the world? These may strike you as the thoughts of a crack­pot, and maybe they are, but watch and lis­ten as Green­away recounts the stunt­ed devel­op­ment of the art form in which he works. We’ve grown so accus­tomed to the lim­i­ta­tions of cin­e­ma, so his argu­ment goes, that we don’t even feel the pres­sure of the “four tyran­nies” that have lord­ed over it since the begin­ning: the frame, the text, the actor, and the cam­era. Even if you loathe Green­away’s films, can you help ask­ing your­self whether the rarely ques­tioned dom­i­nance of an elite class of essen­tial­ly the­atri­cal per­form­ers, fol­low­ing tex­tu­al­ly con­ceived instruc­tions, viewed from one per­spec­tive at a time through a sim­ple rec­tan­gle, holds the movies back?

Since his fea­ture-length debut The Falls in 1980, Green­away has strug­gled against what he sees as the bar­ri­ers put up by cin­e­ma’s unhealthy entan­gle­ment with the nar­ra­tive-dri­ven forms of the­ater and lit­er­a­ture. Trained orig­i­nal­ly as a painter, he won­ders explic­it­ly in pub­lic and implic­it­ly through his work why films can’t enjoy the same free­dom to explore the cre­ative space at their dis­pos­al that paint­ings do. All his pic­tures, even the best-known like The Draughts­man­’s Con­tract; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; and 8½ Women, use set­tings, actors, images, words, and sounds like col­ors on a palette, apply­ing them with infini­tude of strokes, cre­at­ing a whole from which no one ele­ment can be eas­i­ly sep­a­rat­ed. In this lec­ture, Green­away mar­shals footage from his projects con­duct­ed even far­ther out at the medi­um’s edge: his trans­for­ma­tion of an actu­al Ital­ian palace into one big non-nar­ra­tive film, his col­lab­o­ra­tions with avant-garde com­pos­er David Lang, and, of course, his VJ-ing ses­sions.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dar­win, A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

The David Foster Wallace Audio Archive: A Little Gift For the Novelist’s 50th Birthday

in Literature | February 21st, 2012

When we fea­tured David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s big, uncut inter­view yes­ter­day, one impor­tant detail escaped us — the fact that the nov­el­ist would have turned 50 years old today. Kind of a stun­ning thought, espe­cial­ly if you vivid­ly remem­ber the wun­derkind tak­ing the lit­er­ary world by storm with Infi­nite Jest in 1996. Seems like only yes­ter­day.

To cel­e­brate his 50th, we’re high­light­ing for you The David Fos­ter Wal­lace Audio Project — a site that brings togeth­er most of the mean­ing­ful DFW audio avail­able on the web. Built in 2009 by Jor­dyn Bonds and Ryan Walsh, a short while after the nov­el­ist com­mit­ted sui­cide, the audio site is divid­ed into four sec­tions:

As you sift through the col­lec­tion, you will find 70+ clips, includ­ing a seg­ment of DFW’s 2005 com­mence­ment speech at Keny­on Col­lege, his first and sec­ond appear­ances on the Char­lie Rose Show, his read­ing from “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster” at UCLA, and the author con­tem­plat­ing the play of Roger Fed­er­er. Dive into the full col­lec­tion here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Animated: Robert Johnson’s Classic Blues Tune Me and the Devil Blues

in Animation, Music | February 20th, 2012


Last year, we fea­tured a slick ani­ma­tion of Cross Road Blues by the leg­endary blues­man Robert John­son. This morn­ing, one of our Twit­ter friends high­light­ed for us a 2007 ani­ma­tion of John­son’s Me and the Dev­il Blues, cre­at­ed by Dutch artist Ineke Goes. Record­ed in 1937 in only two takes, the song helped cement the leg­end of the blues­man. Accord­ing to the old tale, John­son made a Faus­t­ian bar­gain with the dev­il, sell­ing his soul in exchange for bound­less musi­cal tal­ent. And that he had. But, of course, the dev­il even­tu­al­ly demands his pay­back. John­son died in 1938.

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!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

David Foster Wallace: The Big, Uncut Interview (2003)

in Books, Politics, Television | February 20th, 2012

In 2003, an inter­view­er from Ger­man pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion ZDF sat down with nov­el­ist David Fos­ter Wal­lace in a hotel room. The ensu­ing con­ver­sa­tion, whose raw, unedit­ed 84 min­utes (find links to the com­plete inter­view below) made it to the inter­net after Wal­lace’s sui­cide, remains the most direct, expan­sive, and dis­arm­ing­ly rough-hewn media treat­ment of his themes, his per­son­al­i­ty, and the fas­ci­nat­ing (if at times chill­ing) feed­back loop between them.

You can also expe­ri­ence this con­ver­sa­tion in short, the­mat­i­cal­ly orga­nized clips; above, we have “David Fos­ter Wal­lace on Polit­i­cal Think­ing in Amer­i­ca.” Wal­lace express­es his con­cerns about the strong influ­ence of tele­vi­sion ads on elec­tions, which means, he says, “we get can­di­dates who are behold­en to large donors and become, in some ways, cor­rupt, which dis­gusts the vot­ers, makes them even less inter­est­ed in pol­i­tics, less will­ing to read and do the work of cit­i­zen­ship.” This he sees cou­pled with an indi­vid­u­al­is­tic mar­ket­ing cul­ture which stokes “that feel­ing of hav­ing to obey every impulse and grat­i­fy every desire” — “a strange kind of slav­ery.”

But as his pained, self-ques­tion­ing expres­sion reveals — espe­cial­ly when it retreats into strange­ly endear­ing post-answer cringes — Wal­lace did not believe he pos­sessed the cure for, or even a pre­cise­ly accu­rate diag­no­sis of, a sick soci­ety. Offer­ing social crit­i­cism at a vast remove from the avun­cu­lar con­dem­na­tion of a Noam Chom­sky or the raised mid­dle fin­ger of a Bill Hicks, Wal­lace dis­cuss­es his fears through a nov­el­ist’s con­scious­ness that longs to, as he explains the desire else­where in the inter­view, “jump over the wall of self and inhab­it some­one else.” When the inter­view­er tells him about her peers’ frus­tra­tion at feel­ing edu­cat­ed but “not being able to do any­thing with it,” Wal­lace puts him­self in the mind of stu­dents who go from study­ing “the lib­er­al arts: phi­los­o­phy, clas­si­cal stuff, lan­guages, all very much about the nobil­i­ty of the human spir­it and broad­en­ing the mind” to “a spe­cial­ized school to learn how to sue peo­ple or to fig­ure out how to write copy that will make peo­ple buy a cer­tain kind of SUV” to “jobs that are finan­cial­ly reward­ing, but don’t have any­thing to do with what they got taught — and per­sua­sive­ly taught — was impor­tant and worth­while.”

Under­neath Wal­lace’s respons­es rush­es a cur­rent of the ques­tions his writ­ing leads read­ers to think — and think hard — about: How far has enter­tain­ment evolved toward pure anes­thet­ic? Can we still sep­a­rate our needs from our wants, if we try? Has post-Gen X irony made us not just col­lec­tive­ly inef­fec­tu­al but that much eas­i­er to sell things to? Can we ever again use terms like “cit­i­zen­ship” with­out instinc­tive­ly sneer­ing at our­selves? To the David Fos­ter Wal­lace novice, these clips make for a help­ful the­mat­ic primer, but the full record­ing (see below) will there­after become required view­ing. The inter­view brims with the kind of asides that make it feel like a page from the note­book of one of Wal­lace’s own favorite lit­er­ary crafts­men, Jorge Luis Borges. Wal­lace won­ders aloud how much of what he says will get edit­ed out, if he can dis­cuss his all-con­sum­ing sus­pi­cion that “there’s some­thing real­ly good on anoth­er chan­nel and I’m miss­ing it” while he’s actu­al­ly on tele­vi­sion, and how to talk to the media about how dif­fi­cult it is to talk to the media while pre­tend­ing you don’t know you’re talk­ing to the media. As he admits after unpack­ing one par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult issue, “It’s all… com­pli­cat­ed.”

The com­plete inter­view can be viewed up top.

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 12 ) |

Remembering John Glenn’s Historic Space Flight, 50 Years Ago Today

in History | February 20th, 2012

On this day a half cen­tu­ry ago, Mer­cury Astro­naut John Glenn became the first Amer­i­can to orbit the Earth. On the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 20, 1962, an anx­ious nation watched as Glenn climbed into his cramped Friend­ship 7 space cap­sule and was pro­pelled by an Atlas 6 rock­et high above the atmos­phere. He cir­cled the Earth three times before re-enter­ing the atmos­phere and splash­ing down in the Atlantic Ocean. As the vet­er­an space pro­gram reporter John Noble Wil­ford wrote last week in The New York Times, “Per­haps no oth­er spaceflight–all 4 hours, 55 min­utes and 23 sec­onds of it–has been fol­lowed by so many with such par­a­lyz­ing appre­hen­sion.”

You can get a sense of the dra­ma and excite­ment of that day by watch­ing the news­reel above, and by read­ing Wil­ford’s inter­est­ing piece in the Times. Also, NASA has put togeth­er an inter­ac­tive online fea­ture on the mis­sion. At a time when Amer­i­ca’s manned space pro­gram depends on Russ­ian space­craft to car­ry astro­nauts to and from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, it’s all the more poignant to look back on the day 50 years ago when Glenn became, as writer Tom Wolfe put it, “the last true nation­al hero Amer­i­ca has ever had.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“First Orbit”: Cel­e­brat­ing 50th Anniver­sary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

How the Great George Carlin Showed Louis CK the Way to Success (NSFW)

in Comedy, Life | February 18th, 2012

There’s prob­a­bly not a standup come­di­an big­ger than Louis CK right now. His FX tele­vi­sion show, Louie, earned him two Emmy Award nom­i­na­tions in 2011, and his recent com­e­dy spe­cial, Live at the Bea­con The­ater, made his­to­ry when CK dis­trib­uted the show via the web (not HBO) and net­ted $1,000,000 in sales in a mat­ter of days.

Louis CK is rid­ing a good wave. But times weren’t always so easy. Back in 2010, CK spoke at a trib­ute to George Car­lin (host­ed at the ven­er­a­ble New York Pub­lic Library) and revis­it­ed his ear­ly days in the pro­fes­sion. For years — actu­al­ly 15 long years — CK per­formed the same old act and spun his wheels. Then he looked to Car­lin and turned his career around. As you might expect, the sto­ry is laced with some pro­fan­i­ty. (Come on, it’s Louis CK talk­ing about George Car­lin!) But, when you strip the lan­guage away, you get a good life les­son. Per­se­ver­ance counts. But so does per­spec­tive, get­ting the right per­spec­tive.

Louis CK’s talk appears above. You can find the full Car­lin trib­ute here. And don’t miss a very relat­ed video where Car­lin describes the turn­ing point in his own life — the moment when he learned “not to give a shit” and his com­ic genius came into full bloom.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Bertrand Russell’s ABC of Relativity: The Classic Introduction to Einstein (Free Audio)

in Audio Books, Books, Philosophy, Physics, Science | February 18th, 2012

“Every­body knows that Ein­stein did some­thing aston­ish­ing,” writes Bertrand Rus­sell in the open­ing pas­sage of ABC of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, “but very few peo­ple know exact­ly what it was. It is gen­er­al­ly rec­og­nized that he rev­o­lu­tion­ized our con­cep­tion of the phys­i­cal world, but the new con­cep­tions are wrapped up in math­e­mat­i­cal tech­ni­cal­i­ties. It is true that there are innu­mer­able pop­u­lar accounts of the the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty, but they gen­er­al­ly cease to be intel­li­gi­ble just at the point where they begin to say some­thing impor­tant.”

Eighty-sev­en years after it was writ­ten, ABC of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty still stands as one of the most intel­li­gi­ble intro­duc­tions to Albert Ein­stein’s the­o­ries. Rus­sell wrote the book in 1925 as a com­pan­ion to his ear­li­er vol­ume, ABC of Atoms. The project of writ­ing books for a gen­er­al read­er­ship was born of neces­si­ty. Rus­sell had no aca­d­e­m­ic appoint­ment, and need­ed the mon­ey. But as Peter Clark explains in his intro­duc­tion to the Rout­ledge fifth edi­tion to ABC of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty, the ear­ly 1920s were also a time when Rus­sell was becom­ing increas­ing­ly pre­oc­cu­pied with social and polit­i­cal issues. He believed that many of the social ills of the peri­od, includ­ing the rise of nation­al­ism, were con­se­quences of a wide­spread and entrenched irra­tional­i­ty, born of igno­rance and a lack of edu­ca­tion. Writes Clark:

It was cer­tain­ly a hero­ic peri­od in Rus­sel­l’s life, when he earnest­ly believed that the sort of blind unthink­ing prejudice–which he con­ceived to be fun­da­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble for the hor­rors of the First World War–could be tran­scend­ed by the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge and the exer­cise in crit­i­cal rea­son­ing pow­er by all class­es of soci­ety. His huge out­put in this peri­od was designed to bring with­in, as far as pos­si­ble, every­one’s grasp the free­dom of thought and action which knowl­edge and learn­ing brings. That spir­it of enlight­en­ment cer­tain­ly per­vades the ABC of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty.

Thanks to UbuWeb, you can lis­ten to an abridged audio ver­sion of ABC of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty online. The book is read by Eng­lish actor Derek Jaco­bi (who also starred in the film we fea­tured last week on Alan Tur­ing: Break­ing the Code). Jaco­bi reads one of the lat­er edi­tions of ABC of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty. In 1959, and again in 1969, Rus­sell con­sent­ed to revi­sions by physi­cist Felix Pirani. Chap­ter 11 was rewrit­ten by Pirani to incor­po­rate the expan­sion of the uni­verse, which was­n’t announced by Edwin Hub­ble until four years after the first edi­tion of Rus­sel­l’s book. The one trou­bling thing about the text, as it now stands, is that Pirani did­n’t lim­it him­self to the revi­sions made under Rus­sel­l’s super­vi­sion. He made more changes in 1985, fif­teen years after Rus­sel­l’s death.

Stel­lar cours­es focus­ing on Ein­stein’s physics can also be found in our big col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online. Just scroll down to the Physics sec­tion.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast