The Book of Leaves: A Beautiful Stop Motion Film Featuring 12,000 Pressed Leaves

in Nature | December 29th, 2022

Brett Foxwell metic­u­lous­ly col­lect­ed over 12,000 leaves while walk­ing through forests and parks. Then he care­ful­ly arranged the leaves, many at dif­fer­ent stage of devel­op­ment, into a stop motion sequence. He says:

While col­lect­ing leaves, I con­ceived that the leaf shape [of] every sin­gle plant type I could find would fit some­where into a con­tin­u­ous ani­mat­ed sequence of leaves if that sequence were expan­sive enough. If I did­n’t have the per­fect shape, it meant I just had to col­lect more leaves.

Above, you can see the result of his painstak­ing work. You can also watch anoth­er exact­ing Foxwell ani­ma­tion, The Woodswim­mer, 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!

via Petapix­el/Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch “The Woodswim­mer,” a Stop Motion Film Made Entire­ly with Wood, and “Bru­tal­ly Tedious” Tech­niques

Stun­ning­ly Elab­o­rate Ottoman Cal­lig­ra­phy Drawn on Dried Leaves

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

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Watch You Suck at Cooking, a Hilarious Source for Tasty Recipes and Food Hacks of Questionable Veracity

in Comedy, Food & Drink, Video - Arts & Culture | December 29th, 2022

Is it just us, or did half of Gen Z teach them­selves how to cook on Tik­Tok dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic?

The recipes that go viral have more in com­mon with gonzo sci­ence exper­i­ments than Julia Child’s Coq au Vin.

Hacks are gold­en in this forum — whether or not they actu­al­ly work — and run­ning time is of the essence.

There’s an unmis­tak­able visu­al vocab­u­lary, too — from the god shots of man­i­cured hands dump­ing pre-mea­sured ingre­di­ents into mix­ing bowls to the reveal of the com­plet­ed dish just sec­onds lat­er.

One has to be con­ver­sant in these tropes to sub­vert them as glee­ful­ly as the anony­mous cre­ator of the sev­en year old online series You Suck at Cook­ing.

Unlike such Tik­Tok heavy hit­ters as cloud bread or whipped cof­fee, most of You Suck at Cook­ing’s dish­es are things you might con­sid­er prepar­ing on a reg­u­lar basis, how­ev­er trendy they may be at the moment.

The respon­si­ble par­ty’s cook­ing and edit­ing skills are sol­id, but his writ­ing is the real star here. We also appre­ci­ate the mas­sive amount of plan­ning and care that goes into every five minute episode.

He’s an unabashed coin­er of vocab­u­lary and elab­o­rate ways to refer to straight­for­ward appli­ances and ingre­di­ents. His deliv­ery is mild man­nered, but he doesn’t mince words when it comes to culi­nary bias­es — e.g., condi­ment­ing only one side of the bun is a cer­ti­fi­able burg­er crime and if you don’t like pick­les, one thing you can do is seek help.

Sim­ple dish­es such as overnight oats require so lit­tle instruc­tion, he’s freed up to skew­er the ques­tion­able claims of food-focused well­ness “experts” by lean­ing all the way in.

The spir­it of the project car­ries over into his writ­ten step-by-steps on the rare occa­sions when mere video demon­stra­tion will not suf­fice.

(His cook­book, You Suck at Cook­ing: The Absurd­ly Prac­ti­cal Guide to Suck­ing Slight­ly Less at Mak­ing Food, was pub­lished anony­mous­ly in 2019.)

To get the most from your expe­ri­ence, we rec­om­mend you first watch his deep fried Kore­an-style corn­dog How To, then fol­low the writ­ten recipe:

1. Go to the store 

2. Buy corn dogs 

3. Enjoy 

If you insist on mak­ing corn dogs your­self, first read these fry­ing safe­ty tips

The rea­son home fry­ers are safer than doing it on the stove­top is because they lim­it the heat of your oil so it won’t catch fire. It’s easy to let it get too hot which is very bad news. 

Bat­ter

    • 1 ¼ cups flour 
    • 2 table­spoon sug­ar 
    • ½ tea­spoon salt 
    • 1.3 tea­spoon yeast 
    • 1 egg 
    • 100 ml warm water

Wang­jan­gle until your wrist is furi­ous (I did it for a few min­utes tops)

Let it sit for half an hour 

Dry off any­thing you’re rolling in it 

Peg your dogs 

Roll ‘em 

Roll them in arti­san Ital­ian bread crumbs (okay seri­ous­ly this is a fla­vor game chang­er and I can’t rec­om­mend them enough. Kor­tal­ian food just has such depth. 

Fry for 3 min­utes 

Cool for a few min­utes 

I think any­thing else is pret­ty straight for­ward

When it comes to cook­ing hacks, our hero is a cham­pi­on fab­u­list.

It’s safe to assume that the first tip is legit, after which… well, let’s just say that some of his orange peel­ing meth­ods remind us in the best pos­si­ble way of our old pal Shel Silverstein’s Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book.

Enjoy a playlist of all 150 episodes of You Suck at Cook­ing here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Michael Pol­lan Explains How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life; Rec­om­mends Cook­ing Books, Videos & Recipes

10,000 Vin­tage Recipe Books Are Now Dig­i­tized in The Inter­net Archive’s Cook­book & Home Eco­nom­ics Col­lec­tion

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Make Roman Concrete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Lasting Building Materials

in Architecture, History | December 28th, 2022

More than a mil­len­ni­um and a half after its fall, we still look back with won­der on the accom­plish­ments of the ancient Roman Empire. Few ele­ments of its lega­cy impress us as much as its built envi­ron­ment — or in any case, what’s left of its built envi­ron­ment. Still, the fact that any­thing remains at all of the struc­tures built by the Romans tells us that they were doing some­thing right: specif­i­cal­ly, they were doing con­crete right. Just how they made that aston­ish­ing­ly durable build­ing mate­r­i­al has been a sub­ject of research even in recent years, and we even fea­tured it here on Open Cul­ture back in 2017. But could we make Roman con­crete today?

Such is the task of Shawn Kel­ly, host of the Youtube chan­nel Cor­po­ral’s Cor­ner, in the video above. Using mate­ri­als like vol­canic ash, pumice and lime­stone, he makes a brick that looks more than sol­id enough to go up against any mod­ern con­crete.

As of this writ­ing, this sim­ple video has racked up more than three mil­lion views, a num­ber that reflects our endur­ing fas­ci­na­tion with the ques­tion of how the ancient Romans cre­at­ed their world — as well as the ques­tion addressed in the high­er-tech Prac­ti­cal Engi­neer­ing video below, “Was Roman Con­crete Bet­ter?”

The fact of the mat­ter is that, despite pos­sess­ing tech­nolo­gies the Romans could hard­ly have imag­ined, their con­crete lasts longer than ours. Why that should be the case comes down, in large part, to water: we put a great deal more of it into our con­crete than the Romans did, in order to pour it more cheap­ly and eas­i­ly. But this makes it more frag­ile and sub­ject to dete­ri­o­ra­tion over time (as seen in the ear­ly dilap­i­da­tion of cer­tain Bru­tal­ist build­ings), even despite our use of chem­i­cal addi­tives and steel rein­force­ment. Roman con­crete was also mixed with sea­wa­ter, which caused the for­ma­tion of crys­tals with­in the mate­r­i­al that actu­al­ly strength­ened it as it aged — thus cement­ing, as one wag in the com­ments puts it, the Romans’ place in his­to­ry.

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:

How Did the Romans Make Con­crete That Lasts Longer Than Mod­ern Con­crete? The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved

The Roman Roads and Bridges You Can Still Trav­el Today

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course from Yale

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How Fast Food Began: The History of This Thoroughly American (and Now Global) Form of Dining

in Food & Drink, History | December 28th, 2022

What is the most Amer­i­can insti­tu­tion of all? The mind first goes in the direc­tions of church, of the mil­i­tary, of foot­ball. But if we con­sid­er only the sys­tems of mod­ern life devel­oped on Unit­ed States soil, the most influ­en­tial must sure­ly be fast food. That influ­ence man­i­fests in not just the home­land but the rest of the world as well, and like every robust Amer­i­can cre­ation, fast food both changes and adapts to the for­eign lands in which it takes root. Though unknown in the U.S., the yel­low motor­cy­cles of McDon­ald’s deliv­ery­men are an every­day sight in the cap­i­tal of South Korea, where I live. That could hard­ly have fig­ured in even the far­thest-reach­ing visions Richard and Mau­rice McDon­ald had for the entire­ly new mod­el of ham­burg­er stand they launched in San Bernardi­no, Cal­i­for­nia, in 1948.

Back in post­war Amer­i­ca, “car cul­ture reigns supreme. Dri­ve-in movies and dri­ve-in restau­rants become all the rage, tak­ing con­ve­nience to anoth­er lev­el.” So says the nar­ra­tor of the clip above, from the fast-food episode of the Net­flix series His­to­ry 101. But before long, dri­ve-ins would be rel­e­gat­ed to the sta­tus of his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty, and fast food on the McDon­ald’s mod­el would become near­ly omnipresent.

As with much else in Amer­i­can indus­tri­al his­to­ry, the key was effi­cien­cy. Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly run a dri­ve-in, the McDon­ald broth­ers under­stood well how cum­ber­some such oper­a­tions could be, and how they encour­aged cus­tomers to linger rather than spend their mon­ey and be on their way. The stripped-down menu, the stream­lined cook­ing process: every ele­ment was now engi­neered for speed above all.

McDon­ald’s did not, how­ev­er, invent the dri­ve-through. That hon­or goes to a Texas estab­lish­ment called Pig Stand, which first erect­ed that pil­lar of the Amer­i­can way of life back in 1921. In Fast Food: The Fast Lane of Life, the His­to­ry Chanel doc­u­men­tary above, the pres­i­dent of Texas Pig Stands says that the chain’s founder Jessie G. Kir­by “was famous for his quote of say­ing that peo­ple with cars are so lazy that they don’t want to get out of them to go eat. That prophe­cy proved to be very true.” Even as the spread of car own­er­ship across Amer­i­ca and then the world made dri­ve-through fast food into a viable propo­si­tion, it put (and con­tin­ues to put) greater and greater pres­sure on the busi­ness­es to deliv­er their prod­uct in short­er and short­er times.

“Beyond the chal­lenges of tech­ni­cal hard­ware that deliv­ered things fast, the indus­try had to deliv­er a pipeline to deliv­er the food,” says the doc­u­men­tary’s nar­ra­tor. “Through­out the eight­ies, the burg­er giants set about design­ing a net­work of sup­pli­ers that could deliv­er mil­lions of tons of foods to thou­sands of restau­rants at exact­ing stan­dards of uni­for­mi­ty.” This uni­for­mi­ty — ham­burg­ers that cost and taste exact­ly the same, every­where — enchant­ed Andy Warhol, that maven of Amer­i­can mass cul­ture. It has also, arguably, done its part to triv­i­al­ize the rit­u­als of prepar­ing and con­sum­ing food, to say noth­ing of the health dan­gers posed by fre­quent indul­gence in salty, sug­ary, oily meals, espe­cial­ly in the con­text of a seden­tary auto­mo­tive lifestyle. But if you don’t under­stand fast food — and all the tech­no­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and social fac­tors that have made it not just pos­si­ble but world-dom­i­nant — can you claim under­stand Amer­i­ca?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Andy Warhol Eat an Entire Burg­er King Whop­per — While Wish­ing the Burg­er Came from McDonald’s (1981)

30,000 Peo­ple Line Up for the First McDonald’s in Moscow, While Gro­cery Store Shelves Run Emp­ty (1990)

How Eat­ing Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en Became a Christ­mas Tra­di­tion in Japan

The Hertel­la Cof­fee Machine Mount­ed on a Volk­swa­gen Dash­board (1959): The Most Euro­pean Car Acces­so­ry Ever Made

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

McDonald’s Opens a Tiny Restau­rant — and It’s Only for Bees

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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American Gothic Explained: How Grant Wood Created His Iconic American Painting (1930)

in Art, History | December 27th, 2022

“We should fear Grant Wood. Every artist and every school of artists should be afraid of him, for his dev­as­tat­ing satire.” Gertrude Stein wrote those words after see­ing Amer­i­can Goth­ic, the 1930 paint­ing that would become one of the most icon­ic images cre­at­ed in the Unit­ed States. Yet Wood him­self “said he paint­ed Amer­i­can Goth­ic to extol rur­al Amer­i­can val­ues, real peo­ple in their well-ordered world: an image of reas­sur­ance dur­ing the onset of the Great Depres­sion.” That’s how Art His­to­ry School host Paul Priest­ley puts it in the video above, which asks of the paint­ing, “Is it a satire, or a pos­i­tive state­ment of Amer­i­can rur­al life?”

It could be nei­ther; then again, it could be both. That very ambi­gu­i­ty goes some way to explain­ing Amer­i­can Goth­ic’s suc­cess — as well as its per­sis­tence in the cul­ture through fre­quent and unceas­ing par­o­dy. Yet in its day, the paint­ing also angered some of its view­ers: “An Iowan farmer’s wife who’d seen the pic­ture in the papers in 1930 tele­phoned Wood to express her anger,” says Priest­ly.

“She claimed she wished to come over and smash his head for depict­ing her coun­try­men as grim Bible-thumpers.” Wood main­tained that he was one of them, “dress­ing in rugged over­alls after the paint­ing was com­plet­ed and telling the press, ‘All the real­ly good ideas I’d ever had come to me while I was milk­ing a cow.’

Yet Wood was no farmer. A son of Cedar Rapids, he trav­eled exten­sive­ly to Europe to study Impres­sion­ism and post-Impres­sion­ism. There he first saw the work of Jan van Eyck, whose com­bi­na­tion of visu­al clar­i­ty and com­plex­i­ty inspired him to devel­op the sig­na­ture look and feel of the move­ment that would come to be known as Region­al­ism. He became “half Euro­pean artiste, half Iowan farm boy,” as Vox’s Phil Edwards puts it in the video just above, all the bet­ter to strad­dle his home­land’s widen­ing divide between town and coun­try. “In 1880, almost half of all Amer­i­cans were on the farm,” but by 1920 more than half the pop­u­la­tion lived in cities. Amer­i­can Goth­ic came a decade lat­er, and most of a cen­tu­ry there­after, it still makes Amer­i­cans ask them­selves — earnest­ly or sar­don­ical­ly — just what kind of peo­ple they are.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What’s the Key to Amer­i­can Goth­ic’s Endur­ing Fame? An Intro­duc­tion to the Icon­ic Amer­i­can Paint­ing

The Mod­els for “Amer­i­can Goth­ic” Pose in Front of the Icon­ic Paint­ing (1942)

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

Whit­ney Muse­um Puts Online 21,000 Works of Amer­i­can Art, By 3,000 Artists

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmar­shall or on Face­book.

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The Making of Modern Ukraine: A Free Online Course from Yale University, Featuring 23 Lectures

in Current Affairs, Online Courses, Yale | December 27th, 2022

Back in Sep­tem­ber, we men­tioned that Yale his­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der had start­ed teach­ing a course, The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Ukraine, and putting the lec­tures online. With the fall semes­ter now over, you can watch 23 lec­tures on YouTube. All of the lec­tures appear above, or on this playlist. Key ques­tions explored by the course include:

What brought about the Ukrain­ian nation?  Ukraine must have exist­ed as a soci­ety and poli­ty on 23 Feb­ru­ary 2022, else Ukraini­ans would not have col­lec­tive­ly resist­ed Russ­ian inva­sion the next day.  Why has the exis­tence of Ukraine occa­sioned such con­tro­ver­sy?  In what ways are Pol­ish, Russ­ian, and Jew­ish self-under­stand­ing depen­dent upon expe­ri­ences in Ukraine?  Just how and when did a mod­ern Ukrain­ian nation emerge?  Just how for that mat­ter does any mod­ern nation emerge?  And why some nations and not oth­ers?  What is the bal­ance between struc­ture and agency in his­to­ry?  Can nations be cho­sen, and does it mat­ter?  Can the choic­es of indi­vid­u­als influ­ence the rise of much larg­er social orga­ni­za­tions?  If so, how?  Ukraine was the coun­try most touched by Sovi­et and Nazi ter­ror: what can we learn about those sys­tems, then, from Ukraine?  Is the post-colo­nial, mul­ti­lin­gual Ukrain­ian nation a holdover from the past, or does it hold some promise for the future?

A syl­labus for the course can be found on Sny­der’s Sub­stack.

The Mak­ing of Mod­ern Ukraine will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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

20 Lessons from the 20th Cen­tu­ry About How to Defend Democ­ra­cy from Author­i­tar­i­an­ism, Accord­ing to Yale His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

A Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion of On Tyran­ny: Twen­ty Lessons from the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry, the Best­selling Book by His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der

Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online: 1,000+ Librar­i­ans Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­serve Arti­facts of Ukrain­ian Civ­i­liza­tion Before Rus­sia Can Destroy Them

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

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How a Lavish 17th-Century Study of Fish Almost Prevented the Publication of Newton’s Principia, One of the Most Important Science Books Ever Written

in Books, History, Nature, Science | December 26th, 2022

The exalt­ed sta­tus of Isaac New­ton’s Philosophiæ Nat­u­ralis Prin­cip­ia Math­e­mat­i­ca is reflect­ed by the fact that every­body knows it as, sim­ply, the Prin­cip­ia. Very few of us, by con­trast, speak of the His­to­ria when we mean to refer to John Ray and Fran­cis Willugh­by’s De His­to­ria Pis­ci­um, which came out in 1686, the year before the Prin­cip­ia. Both books were pub­lished by the Roy­al Soci­ety, and as it hap­pens, the for­mi­da­ble cost of Willugh­by and Ray’s lav­ish work of ichthy­ol­o­gy near­ly kept New­ton’s ground­break­ing trea­tise on motion and grav­i­ta­tion from the print­ing press.

Accord­ing to the Roy­al Soci­ety’s web site, “Ray and Willughby’s His­to­ria did not prove to be the pub­lish­ing sen­sa­tion that the Fel­lows had hoped and the book near­ly bank­rupt­ed the Soci­ety. This meant that the Soci­ety was unable to meet its promise to sup­port the pub­li­ca­tion of Isaac New­ton’s mas­ter­piece.”

For­tu­nate­ly, “it was saved from obscu­ri­ty by Edmund Hal­ley, then Clerk at the Roy­al Soci­ety” — and now bet­ter known for his epony­mous comet — “who raised the funds to pub­lish the work, pro­vid­ing much of the mon­ey from his own pock­et. ”

Hal­ley’s great reward, in lieu of the salary the Roy­al Soci­ety could no longer pay, was a pile of unsold copies of De His­to­ria Pis­ci­um. That may not have been quite the insult it sounds like, giv­en that the book rep­re­sent­ed a tri­umph of pro­duc­tion and design in its day. You can see a copy in the episode of Adam Sav­age’s Test­ed at the top of the post, and you can close­ly exam­ine its imagery at your leisure in the dig­i­tal archive of the Roy­al Soci­ety. In the words of Jonathan Ash­more, Chair of the Roy­al Society’s Library Com­mit­tee, a brows­ing ses­sion should help us “appre­ci­ate why ear­ly Fel­lows of the Roy­al Soci­ety were so impressed by Willughby’s stun­ning illus­tra­tions of piscine nat­ur­al his­to­ry.”

Though Sav­age duly mar­vels at the Roy­al Soci­ety’s copy of the His­to­ria — a recon­struc­tion made up of pages long ago cut out and sold sep­a­rate­ly, as was once com­mon prac­tice with books with pic­tures  suit­able for fram­ing — it’s clear that much of the moti­va­tion for his vis­it came from the prospect of close prox­im­i­ty to New­to­ni­ana, up to and includ­ing the man’s death mask. But then, New­ton lays fair claim to being the most impor­tant sci­en­tist who ever lived, and the Prin­cip­ia to being the most impor­tant sci­ence book ever writ­ten. Almost three and a half cen­turies lat­er, physics still holds mys­ter­ies for gen­er­a­tions of New­ton’s suc­ces­sors to solve. But then, so do the depths of the ocean.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

Beau­ti­ful & Out­landish Col­or Illus­tra­tions Let Euro­peans See Exot­ic Fish for the First Time (1754)

The Bril­liant Col­ors of the Great Bar­ri­er Revealed in a His­toric Illus­trat­ed Book from 1893

How Isaac New­ton Lost $3 Mil­lion Dol­lars in the “South Sea Bub­ble” of 1720: Even Genius­es Can’t Pre­vail Against the Machi­na­tions of the Mar­kets

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Dave Grohl, Jack Black & Greg Kurstin Sing Rush’s “The Spirit Of Radio” for Hanukkah

in Music | December 26th, 2022

Once again, Foo Fight­ers front­man Dave Grohl and pro­duc­er Greg Kurstin have teamed up to cel­e­brate Hanukkah by per­form­ing songs cre­at­ed by musi­cians with Jew­ish roots. Above, they perform–along with Jack Black–Rush’s “The Spir­it Of Radio.” (Ged­dy Lee’s par­ents were both Jews who sur­vived Auschwitz and Dachau. Lee tells their sto­ry below.) Oth­er songs fea­tured in this year’s cel­e­bra­tion include Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” “Spin­ning Wheel” by Blood, Sweat & Tears, Janis Ian’s “At Sev­en­teen” and more. Find per­for­mances from pri­or Hanukkah cel­e­bra­tions in the Relat­eds below.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop” to Cel­e­brate Han­nukah: Hey! Oy! Let’s Goy!

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er 8 Songs by Famous Jew­ish Artists for Hanukkah: Bob Dylan, Beast­ie Boys, Vel­vet Under­ground & More

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er Van Halen’s “Jump,” Cel­e­brat­ing David Lee Roth, One of the Hard­est Rock­ing Jews, on the Fourth Night of Han­nukah

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Behold! The Very First Christmas Card (1843)

in Art, Design, History, Museums | December 23rd, 2022

Christ­mas cards aren’t just an anachro­nism.

They’re almost an endan­gered species, the vic­tim of the Inter­net, postal rate increas­es, and the jet­ti­son­ing of any time con­sum­ing tra­di­tion whose exe­cu­tion has been found to bring the oppo­site of joy.

Above, Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um cura­tors Alice Pow­er and Sarah Beat­tie take us on a back­wards trip to a time when the exchange of Christ­mas cards was a source of true social mer­ri­ment.

Christ­mas cards must hold a spe­cial place in both the V&A’s col­lec­tions and heart, giv­en that the museum’s founder, Hen­ry Cole, inad­ver­tent­ly invent­ed them in 1843.

As a well respect­ed man about town, he received a great many more hol­i­day let­ters than he had time or incli­na­tion to respond to, but nei­ther did he wish to appear rude.

So he enlist­ed his friend, painter J.C. Hors­ley, to cre­ate a fes­tive illus­tra­tion with a built-in hol­i­day greet­ing, leav­ing just enough space to per­son­al­ize with a recipient’s name and per­haps, a hand­writ­ten line or two.

He then had enough post­card-sized repro­duc­tions print­ed up to send to 1000 of his friends.

(It’s hell being pop­u­lar…)

Talk about zeit­geist: Charles Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol was first pub­lished that very same hol­i­day sea­son.

No won­der every­one want­ed in on the fun.

Part of the rea­son the cards in the V&A’s col­lec­tion are so well pre­served is that their recip­i­ents prized them enough to keep them in sou­venir albums.

Under­stand­ably. They’re very appeal­ing lit­tle arti­facts.

The upper crust could afford such fan­cy design ele­ments as clever die-cut shapes, pop up ele­ments, and translu­cent win­dows that encour­aged the recip­i­ents to hold them up to actu­al win­dows.

Tech­no­log­i­cal advances in the print­ing indus­try, and the cre­ation of the cost-effec­tive Pen­ny Post allowed those whose bud­gets were more mod­est than Mr. Cole’s to par­tic­i­pate too.

Their cards tend­ed to be sim­pler in exe­cu­tion, though not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­cept.

In addi­tion to the views we’ve come to expect — win­ter, Father Christ­mas, hol­ly — the Vic­to­ri­ans had a thing for jol­ly anthro­po­mor­phized food and some tru­ly shame­less puns.

Enjoy these Ghosts of Christ­mas Past, dear read­ers. We’re almost inspired to revive the tra­di­tion!

Read more about the advent of this tra­di­tion, includ­ing how it jumped the pond, in Smith­son­ian Magazine’s His­to­ry of the Christ­mas Card.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

J.R.R. Tolkien Sent Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from Father Christ­mas to His Kids Every Year (1920–1943)

Langston Hugh­es’ Home­made Christ­mas Cards From 1950

Watch Ter­ry Gilliam’s Ani­mat­ed Short, The Christ­mas Card (1968)

Hear Neil Gaiman Read A Christ­mas Car­ol Just Like Charles Dick­ens Read It

An Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion of Charles Dick­ens’ Clas­sic Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol (1971)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Old-Time Radio Yuletide: Hear 20+ Hours of Vintage Christmas Radio Shows (1938–1956)

in Radio | December 23rd, 2022

As Christ­mas approach­es, we reach for our book­shelves and pull down Charles Dick­ens’ beloved tale of hard­ship, rev­e­la­tion, and a mis­er’s redemp­tion in the hol­i­day sea­son. I speak, of course, of The Crick­et on the Hearth, pub­lished in 1845 as the third of what would be Dick­ens’ five Christ­mas books. (The first, of which you may have heard, was A Christ­mas Car­ol.) From the very year of its pub­li­ca­tion, The Crick­et on the Hearth found great suc­cess as a stage pro­duc­tion, and it con­tin­ued to be adapt­ed even in the age of radio. The sto­ry was a cen­tu­ry old by the time it aired on NBC, in the broad­cast that opens the five-and-a-half-hour com­pi­la­tion of Christ­mas old-time radio above.

That video is just one of three uploaded in the past few weeks by the Youtube chan­nel An Evening of Old-Time Radio. It col­lects a vari­ety of Christ­mas-themed spe­cials and broad­casts from shows like Lux Radio The­atre, The Coro­net Lit­tle Show, and CBS Ceil­ing Unlim­it­ed (an avi­a­tion-pro­mot­ing wartime effort cre­at­ed by Orson Welles).

The sec­ond vol­ume fea­tures more than six hours of hol­i­day episodes from the hit series of the Gold­en Age of Radio, includ­ing sit­coms like Our Miss Brooks, The Life of Riley, Fib­ber McGee and Mol­ly, and its spin­off The Great Gilder­sleeve. Their char­ac­ters, much like their lis­ten­ers, strug­gle to do their shop­ping and orga­nize their par­ties — and amid it all, of course, find their way to the true mean­ing of Christ­mas.

The lat­est video in An Evening of Old Time Radio’s “Yule­tide OTR” series includes radio adap­ta­tions of It’s a Won­der­ful Life, which now defines the genre of the Christ­mas movie, fol­lowed by one of Dick­ens’ Christ­mas Car­ol. Sched­uled for release this Christ­mas day, the fourth install­ment promis­es yet more sea­son­al­ly appro­pri­ate sto­ries — with the req­ui­site gags, com­pli­ca­tions, and final swells of good cheer — from such mid-cen­tu­ry domes­tic come­dies as The Aldrich Fam­i­ly, Lum and Abn­er, and The Adven­tures of Ozzie and Har­ri­et. But as you’ll hear, nei­ther could thriller, mys­tery, and west­ern shows like The Man Called X, The New Adven­tures of Nero Wolfe, and The Six Shoot­er resist telling a Christ­mas tale — nor can we, all these decades lat­er, resist hear­ing one.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear The Cin­na­mon Bear, the Clas­sic Hol­i­day Radio Series That Has Aired Between Thanks­giv­ing and Christ­mas for 80 Years

Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas” On His Hol­i­day Radio Show (2006)

Hear 149 Vin­tage Hal­loween Radio Shows from the Gold­en Age of Radio

Hear 90+ Episodes of Sus­pense, the Icon­ic Gold­en Age Radio Show Launched by Alfred Hitch­cock

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

Free: Lis­ten to 298 Episodes of the Vin­tage Crime Radio Series Drag­net

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Tom Lehrer Puts His Songs into the Public Domain & Makes Them Free to Download (for a Limited Time)

in Music | December 22nd, 2022

“Christ­mas time is here, by gol­ly / Dis­ap­proval would be fol­ly / Deck the halls with hunks of hol­ly / Fill the cup and don’t say ‘when.’ ” So sings musi­cal satirist Tom Lehrer on his hit 1959 album An Evening Wast­ed with Tom Lehrer — which was record­ed in March of that year, not that it stopped him from tak­ing an out-of-sea­son jab at the hol­i­days. “Kill the turkeys, ducks and chick­ens / Mix the punch, drag out the Dick­ens / Even though the prospect sick­ens / Broth­er, here we go again.” If it seems to you that he takes a dim view of Christ­mas, you should hear how he sings about every­thing else.

Now, more eas­i­ly than ever, you can hear how Lehrer sings about every­thing else, by sim­ply down­load­ing his music from his web site. “All copy­rights to lyrics or music writ­ten or com­posed by me have been relin­quished, and there­fore such songs are now in the pub­lic domain,” he writes. “All of my songs that have nev­er been copy­right­ed, hav­ing been avail­able for free for so long, are now also in the pub­lic domain.” In short, he adds, “I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs.” We post­ed about the release of those songs them­selves into the Pub­lic Domain a cou­ple years ago, but last month Lehrer made the songs avail­able online–for a lim­it­ed time.

Not only is An Evening Wast­ed with Tom Lehrer free to stream or down­load on TomLehrerSongs.com — com­plete with tracks not avail­able even on Spo­ti­fy — so is its fol­low-up Revis­it­ed, That Was the Year That Was (fea­tur­ing per­for­mances of the songs he wrote for the Amer­i­can ver­sion of That Was the Week That Was) and the three-disc col­lec­tion The Remains of Tom Lehrer. Togeth­er these albums con­tain all the music Lehrer record­ed before he stood up from the piano and became a pro­fes­sor, first of polit­i­cal sci­ence and lat­er of math­e­mat­ics (though he did teach some musi­cal the­ater as well.)

Giv­en his sec­u­lar Jew­ish ori­gins and his obvi­ous dis­dain for the Mam­monis­tic hol­i­day sea­son (at least “as we cel­e­brate it in the Unit­ed States”) Lehrer would sure­ly get a laugh from us tak­ing this free release of all his music as a Christ­mas gift. And yet, like all the best Christ­mas gifts, it has both a sur­face val­ue and a deep­er one. Despite their top­i­cal late-fifties-ear­ly-six­ties ref­er­ences to things like “new math” and Vat­i­can II, his songs can still make us laugh today. But they can also show younger gen­er­a­tions a satir­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty they’ve nev­er known: cul­tur­al­ly lit­er­ate, dry with well-placed plunges into the low­brow, trans­gres­sive with­out cheap cru­di­ty, all sup­port­ed by musi­cal aplomb. Maybe Lehrer decid­ed to make his music free because now, in his tenth decade, he can be sure that nobody will sur­pass him. Find his music here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tom Lehrer Releas­es His All of Catchy and Sav­age Musi­cal Satire Into the Pub­lic Domain

Hear Tom Lehrer Sing the Names of 102 Chem­i­cal Ele­ments to the Tune of Gilbert & Sul­li­van

Tom Lehrer’s Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly and Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Inclined Singing and Song­writ­ing, Ani­mat­ed

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune “The Ele­ments”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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