Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entirety by Tilda Swinton, Stephen Fry, John Waters & Many Others

in Audio Books, Literature | October 26th, 2022

“Moby-Dick is the great Amer­i­can nov­el. But it is also the great unread Amer­i­can nov­el. Sprawl­ing, mag­nif­i­cent, deliri­ous­ly digres­sive, it stands over and above all oth­er works of fic­tion, since it is bare­ly a work of fic­tion itself. Rather, it is an explo­sive expo­si­tion of one man’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the world of the whale, and the way humans have relat­ed to it. Yet it is so much more than that.”

That’s how Ply­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty intro­duces Her­man Melville’s clas­sic tale from 1851. And it’s what set the stage for their web project launched back in 2012. Called The Moby-Dick Big Read, the project fea­tured celebri­ties and less­er known fig­ures read­ing all 135 chap­ters from Moby-Dick — chap­ters that you can start down­load­ing (as free audio files) on iTunes, Sound­cloud, RSS Feed, or the Big Read web site itself.

The project start­ed with the first chap­ters being read by Til­da Swin­ton (Chap­ter 1), Cap­tain R.N. Hone (Chap­ter 2), Nigel Williams (Chap­ter 3), Caleb Crain (Chap­ter 4), Musa Okwon­ga (Chap­ter 5), and Mary Nor­ris (Chap­ter 6). John Waters, Stephen Fry, Simon Cal­low, Mary Oliv­er and even Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron read lat­er ones.

If you want to read the nov­el as you go along, find the text over at Project Guten­berg.

Til­da Swin­ton’s nar­ra­tion of Chap­ter 1 appears right below:

An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

An Illus­tra­tion of Every Page of Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick

How Ray Brad­bury Wrote the Script for John Huston’s Moby Dick (1956)

Hear a Com­plete 24-Hour Read­ing of Moby-Dick, Record­ed at the South­bank Cen­tre in Lon­don (2015)

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Discover Nüshu, a 19th-Century Chinese Writing System That Only Women Knew How to Write

in History, Language, Writing | October 25th, 2022


Lit­er­a­cy in Chi­nese may now be wide­ly attained, but it isn’t eas­i­ly attained. Just a cen­tu­ry ago it was­n’t wide­ly attained either, at least not by half of the Chi­nese speak­ers alive. As a rule, women once weren’t taught the thou­sands of logo­graph­ic char­ac­ters nec­es­sary to read and write in the lan­guage. But in one par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of the land, Jiangy­ong Coun­ty in Hunan province, some did mas­ter the 600 to 700 char­ac­ters of a pho­net­ic script made to reflect the local dialect and now called Nüshu (女书), or “wom­en’s writ­ing.”

In its hey­day, Nüshu’s users had a vari­ety of names for it, “includ­ing ‘mos­qui­to writ­ing,’ because it is a lit­tle slant­ed and with long ‘legs,’ ” writes Ilar­ia Maria Sala in a Quartz piece on the scrip­t’s his­to­ry. Its great­est con­cen­tra­tion of prac­ti­tion­ers lived in “the vil­lage of Shangjiangxu, where young girls exchanged small tokens of friend­ly affec­tion, such as fans dec­o­rat­ed with cal­lig­ra­phy or hand­ker­chiefs embroi­dered with a few aus­pi­cious words.”

Oth­er, more for­mal occa­sions for the use of Nüshu, includ­ed when girls decid­ed to “make a full-fledged pact of close­ness with one anoth­er that they were ‘best friends’ — jiebai zimei or ‘sworn sis­ters’ — a rela­tion­ship that was rec­og­nized as valu­able and even nec­es­sary for them in the local social sys­tem. Such a once-obscure chap­ter of Chi­nese his­to­ry has proven irre­sistible to read­ers from a vari­ety of cul­tures in recent decades.

“Most inter­pre­ta­tions and head­lines have been about a ‘secret lan­guage’ that women used, prefer­ably to com­mu­ni­cate their pain,” writes Sala, which struck her as evi­dence of peo­ple tak­ing the sto­ry of Nüshu and “read­ing into it what they want­ed, regard­less of what it meant.” Yet such an inter­pre­ta­tion has sure­ly done its part to spread inter­est in the near-extinc­t’s scrip­t’s revival, described by BBC.com’s Andrew Loft­house as orig­i­nat­ing in “the tiny vil­lage of Puwei, which is sur­round­ed by the Xiao riv­er and only acces­si­ble via a small sus­pen­sion bridge.” After three Nüshu writ­ers were dis­cov­ered there in the eight­ies, “it became the focal point for Nüshu research. In 2006, the script was list­ed as a Nation­al Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage by the State Coun­cil of Chi­na, and a year lat­er, a muse­um was built on Puwei Island.”

There train­ing is pro­vid­ed to the few select “inter­preters or ‘inher­i­tors’ of the lan­guage, learn­ing to read, write, sing and embroi­der Nüshu.” Iron­i­cal­ly, Loft­house adds, “much of what we know about Nüshu is due to the work of male researcher Zhou Shuoyi” who hap­pened to hear of it in the nine­teen-fifties and was lat­er per­se­cut­ed dur­ing Mao Zedong’s Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion — a treat­ment that includ­ed 21 years in a labor camp — for hav­ing researched such an arti­fact of the feu­dal past. Once a use­ful tool for express­ing emo­tions and per­form­ing social rit­u­als social­iza­tion, Nüshu had become polit­i­cal­ly dan­ger­ous. What it becomes now, half a cen­tu­ry lat­er and with its renew­al only just begin­ning, is up to its new learn­ers.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Chi­nese Lessons

The Improb­a­ble Inven­tion of Chi­nese Type­writ­ers & Com­put­er Key­boards: Three Videos Tell the Tech­no-Cul­tur­al Sto­ry

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

How Writ­ing Has Spread Across the World, from 3000 BC to This Year: An Ani­mat­ed Map

How to Write in Cuneiform, the Old­est Writ­ing Sys­tem in the World: A Short, Charm­ing Intro­duc­tion

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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There Are Eight Forms of Intelligence, Not Just One: Which Apply to You?

in Psychology | October 25th, 2022

Intel­li­gence is a fraught sub­ject of dis­cus­sion, and only becom­ing more so. Among the frame­works devel­oped safe­ly to approach it, one has gained spe­cial promi­nence: the the­o­ry cham­pi­oned by devel­op­men­tal psy­chol­o­gist Howard Gard­ner, author of the book Frames of Mind: The The­o­ry of Mul­ti­ple Intel­li­gences. And how many such intel­li­gences are there? In the Big Think video above — post­ed in 2016, 33 years after Frames of Mind — he names ten: lan­guage, log­ic and math­e­mat­ics, musi­cal, spa­tial, bod­i­ly-kines­thet­ic, inter­per­son­al, intrap­er­son­al, nat­u­ral­ist, teach­ing, and exis­ten­tial. 

Some of these may strike you as only tan­gen­tial­ly relat­ed to intel­li­gence, tra­di­tion­al­ly defined. Gard­ner has con­sid­ered this: “Peo­ple say, ‘Well, music’s a tal­ent, it’s not an intel­li­gence.’ And I say, ‘Well, why, if you’re good with words, is that an intel­li­gence, but if you’re good with tones and rhythms and tim­bres…”

Nobody, in his telling, has ever come up with a con­vinc­ing response. Hence his mis­sion to expand the def­i­n­i­tion of intel­li­gence beyond the aggre­gate mea­sure of brain­pow­er long known as the gen­er­al intel­li­gence fac­tor — or more com­mon­ly, “g fac­tor” — to encom­pass the sort of skills whose use­ful­ness we can see in the real world, away from the con­struct­ed rig­ors of psy­cho­me­t­ric tests.

“Whether there’s eight intel­li­gences or ten or twelve is less impor­tant to me than hav­ing bro­ken the monop­oly of a sin­gle intel­li­gence, which sort of labels you for all time,” says Gard­ner. You can see eight of his intel­li­gences bro­ken down in more detail — and per­haps even iden­ti­fy your own strongest suit — in the Prac­ti­cal Psy­chol­o­gy video just above. Gard­ner also express­es opti­mism about our abil­i­ty to devel­op dif­fer­ent intel­li­gences: you can choose to con­cen­trate on a spe­cif­ic one, but “if you want to be a jack of all trades and be very well-round­ed, then you’re prob­a­bly going to want to nur­ture the intel­li­gences which aren’t that strong.” What­ev­er your own view on mul­ti­ple intel­li­gences, don’t for­get how the old say­ing orig­i­nal­ly went in full: “Jack of all trades, mas­ter of none, though often bet­ter than a mas­ter of one.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Secret to High Per­for­mance and Ful­fil­ment: Psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Gole­man Explains the Pow­er of Focus

How Read­ing Increas­es Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence & Brain Func­tion: The Find­ings of Recent Sci­en­tif­ic Stud­ies

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

You Don’t “Find” Your Pas­sion in Life, You Active­ly Devel­op It, Explains Psy­chol­o­gist Car­ol Dweck, The­o­rist of the “Growth Mind­set”

Why Incom­pe­tent Peo­ple Think They’re Amaz­ing: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son from David Dun­ning (of the Famous “Dun­ning-Kruger Effect”)

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 Breaking Bad-O-Verse — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #135 Considers “Better Call Saul”

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | October 25th, 2022

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Giv­en the end of Bet­ter Call Saul, your Pret­ty Much Pop host Mark Lin­sen­may­er, plus NY Times enter­tain­ment writer/philosophy pro­fes­sor Lawrence Ware, novelist/writing pro­fes­sor Sarahlyn Bruck, and philosopher/musician Al Bak­er dis­cuss this strange TV “fran­chise” that amaz­ing­ly pro­duced a pre­quel that was arguably bet­ter than the orig­i­nal. We cov­er the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and pac­ing, nov­el­is­tic TV vs. not hav­ing a plot roadmap in advance, and whether we want to see anoth­er install­ment in this world.

A few arti­cles we con­sult­ed includ­ed:

Fol­low us @law_writes, @sarahlynbruck, @ixisnox, @MarkLinsenmayer.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. Sup­port the show and hear bonus talk­ing for this and near­ly every oth­er episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

 

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The Internet Archive Launches Democracy’s Library, a Free Online Library of 500,000 Documents Supporting Democracy

in Archives, Politics | October 24th, 2022

“Democ­ra­cy is the worst form of gov­ern­ment except all those oth­er forms that have been tried from time to time.” So said Win­ston Churchill, per­haps not sus­pect­ing how fre­quent­ly the remark would be quot­ed in the decades there­after. Time and expe­ri­ence con­tin­ue to reveal to us democ­ra­cy’s lia­bil­i­ties, but also — at least in cer­tain soci­eties — the nature of its sur­pris­ing stay­ing pow­er. Since well before Churchill’s time, democ­ra­cy and its work­ings have been objects of fas­ci­na­tion the world over. So have its cen­tral ques­tions, not least the one of just how to main­tain the “informed cit­i­zen­ry” on which its oper­a­tion sup­pos­ed­ly depends.

The Inter­net Archive has just launched its own kind of answer in the form of Democ­ra­cy’s Library. “A free, open, online com­pendi­um of gov­ern­ment research and pub­li­ca­tions from around the world,” the site offers cit­i­zens a way to “lever­age use­ful research, learn about the work­ings of their gov­ern­ment, hold offi­cials account­able, and be more informed vot­ers.”

Col­lect­ed from a vari­ety of gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies like the Unit­ed States’ Nation­al Agri­cul­tur­al Library, For­eign Broad­cast Infor­ma­tion Ser­vice, and Nation­al Insti­tute of Stan­dards and Tech­nol­o­gy Research Library — as well as Sta­tis­tics Cana­da and Pub­lic Accounts of Cana­da — its mate­ri­als were osten­si­bly pro­duced for the pub­lic, but haven’t always been easy to find. It total, there are more than 500,000 doc­u­ments in the col­lec­tion.

“Gov­ern­ments have cre­at­ed an abun­dance of infor­ma­tion and put it in the pub­lic domain, but it turns out the pub­lic can’t eas­i­ly access it,” says Brew­ster Kahle, founder of the Inter­net Archive. He gives one of the series of talks that com­prise “Build­ing Democ­ra­cy’s Library,” the launch cel­e­bra­tion that took place last week and that you can still watch in the video above. Its pro­ceed­ings go into quite a bit of detail about the efforts of acqui­si­tion and orga­ni­za­tion that went into this project, as well as the nature of its mis­sion. For this isn’t just an effort to doc­u­ment democ­ra­cy, but to strength­en it by mak­ing the infor­ma­tion it pro­duces avail­able as con­ve­nient­ly as pos­si­ble to as many cit­i­zens as pos­si­ble. And no mat­ter the coun­try of which you count your­self a cit­i­zen, you can start brows­ing Democ­ra­cy’s Library here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

His­to­ri­an Tim­o­thy Sny­der Presents 20 Lessons for Defend­ing Democ­ra­cy Against Tyran­ny in a New Video Series

Why Socrates Hat­ed Democ­ra­cies: An Ani­mat­ed Case for Why Self-Gov­ern­ment Requires Wis­dom & Edu­ca­tion

Han­nah Arendt Explains Why Democ­ra­cies Need to Safe­guard the Free Press & Truth … to Defend Them­selves Against Dic­ta­tors and Their Lies

Does Democ­ra­cy Demand the Tol­er­ance of the Intol­er­ant? Karl Popper’s Para­dox

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

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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Meet Little Amal, the 12-Foot Puppet of a 10-Year-Old Syrian Girl, Who Has Been Touring the World

in Current Affairs, K-12, Theatre | October 24th, 2022

Lit­tle Amal is a 10-year-old Syr­i­an girl from a small vil­lage near Alep­po, a refugee and unac­com­pa­nied minor, who’s trav­eled over 9,000 kilo­me­ters over the last 15 months, hop­ing to reunite with her moth­er.

Lit­tle Amal is also a 12-foot tall rod pup­pet, oper­at­ed by three per­form­ers — one on stilts inside her mold­ed cane tor­so, to oper­ate her head, face and legs, with two more tak­ing charge of her hands.

As her cre­ators, Hand­spring Pup­pet Com­pa­ny co-founders Adri­an Kohler and Basil Jones, explain above, Amal’s pup­peteers must enter a group mind state when inter­act­ing with the crowds who turn out to meet her at free, com­mu­ni­ty-cre­at­ed events:

If the per­son inside on the stilts decides to turn left, the oth­er two have to respond imme­di­ate­ly as the arms would, so they all think the same thought.

Amal, who trav­els with three times as many pup­peteers as are required for any giv­en appear­ance and two back up ver­sions of her­self in case of mal­func­tion, is tru­ly a mir­a­cle of non-ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

As a child who doesn’t speak the lan­guage of the coun­tries she has vis­it­ed, she express­es her­self with ges­tures, and seem­ing­ly invol­un­tary micro-move­ments.

She bows gra­cious­ly in both greet­ing and farewell, tak­ing extra time to touch hands with lit­tle chil­dren.

She swivels her head, eager­ly, if a bit appre­hen­sive­ly, tak­ing in her sur­round­ings.

Her lips part in won­der, reveal­ing a row of pearly teeth.

Her big, expres­sive eyes are oper­at­ed by the per­former on stilts, using a track­pad on a tiny com­put­er.

The light­weight rib­bons that make up her long hair, pulled none too tidi­ly away from her face with a flop­py bow, catch the breeze as she tow­ers above her well wish­ers.

After stops in Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzer­land, Ger­many, Bel­gium, France and the UK, Lit­tle Amal land­ed in New York City, where mem­bers of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera Orches­tra and Children’s Cho­rus ser­e­nad­ed her with Evening Song from Philip Glass’ opera Satya­gra­ha as she passed through John F. Kennedy Inter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The New York Times’ Matt Stevens described the scene as Amal came into view:

As her head peeked out from above met­al bar­ri­ers, Lit­tle Amal widened her eyes as she took in the arrivals ter­mi­nal at Kennedy Inter­na­tion­al Air­port on Wednes­day. She looked left, then right, clutch­ing her big green suit­case with its rain­bow and sun stick­ers. She was, as new­com­ers to New York City so often are, a lit­tle ner­vous, and a lit­tle lost…(she) appeared trans­fixed by the music — much like the many trav­el­ers strolling by with their suit­cas­es appeared trans­fixed by the 12-foot-tall pup­pet sud­den­ly tow­er­ing before them. Still, she was trep­i­da­tious, a tad reluc­tant to approach the orches­tra. At least, that is, until a cho­rus mem­ber — a girl wear­ing a sun­flower yel­low shirt — went up to her and took her by the hand.

With 50 events in 20 days, Lit­tle Amal had a packed sched­ule that includ­ed a nigh­t­ime vis­it to Jane’s Carousel in Brook­lyn Bridge Park and an ear­ly morn­ing trip along Coney Island’s board­walk. Unlike most first time vis­i­tors, she spent time in Queens, Stat­en Island and The Bronx.

A New Orleans style sec­ond line pro­ces­sion­al escort­ed her a lit­tle over a dozen blocks, from Lin­coln Cen­ter, where she inter­act­ed with dancers and per­for­mance artist Machine Daz­zle, to the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry, above.

New York’s immi­grant his­to­ry was evi­dent in Lit­tle Amal’s tour of the Low­er East Side and Chi­na­town, with stops at the Ten­e­ment Muse­um and the Clemente Soto Vélez Cul­tur­al & Edu­ca­tion­al Cen­ter.

With every appear­ance, Amal’s incred­i­bly life­like move­ments and dig­ni­fied reserved turned adults as well as chil­dren turned into believ­ers, while bring­ing atten­tion to the tens of thou­sands of chil­dren who have fled war and per­se­cu­tion in their home coun­tries.

See pho­tos and read more about Lit­tle Amal’s past and future trav­els here.

Down­load a free Lit­tle Amal activ­i­ty and edu­ca­tion pack here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

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

The Hand Pup­pets That Bauhaus Artist Paul Klee Made for His Young Son

Albert Ein­stein Hold­ing an Albert Ein­stein Pup­pet (Cir­ca 1931)

- 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 Did They Build the Great Pyramid of Giza?: An Animated Introduction

in Animation, Architecture, History | October 21st, 2022

The Great Pyra­mid of Giza is a mir­a­cle of geom­e­try, con­struc­tion, and plan­ning ahead.

Pharaoh Khu­fu’s rel­a­tive — like­ly nephew — Hemienu, was put in charge of the project as soon as Khu­fu suc­ceed­ed his father, Pharaoh Sne­feru cir­ca 2550 B.C.E.

Hemienu, an engi­neer, priest and magi­cian whose hon­orifics includ­ed Mem­ber of the Elite, Vizier, King’s Seal-Bear­er, Priest of Bastet, Priest of Shes­me­tet, High Priest of Thoth, and, most impor­tant­ly, Over­seer of All Con­struc­tion Projects of the King, picked wise­ly when choos­ing the Great Pyra­mid’s site  - a rocky plateau on the Nile’s west bank made for a far stur­dier foun­da­tion than shift­ing sands.

His­to­ri­an Soraya Field Fio­rio’s ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son, above, details how the 25,000 work­ers who took 20 years to make Hemienu’s vision a real­i­ty were not enslaved labor, as they have so often been por­trayed — a rumor start­ed by Greek his­to­ri­an Herodotus — but rather, ordi­nary Egypt­ian cit­i­zens ful­fill­ing a peri­od of manda­to­ry gov­ern­ment ser­vice.

Some toiled on the admin­is­tra­tive end or in a sup­port capac­i­ty, while oth­ers got to spend ten hours a day haul­ing lime­stone on mas­sive cedar sleds.

A team of 500 ham­mered out the Pyramid’s gran­ite sup­port beams using dolerite rocks, a task so time con­sum­ing that Hemienu put them to work imme­di­ate­ly, antic­i­pat­ing that it would take them 12 years to pro­duce the nec­es­sary mate­ri­als.

Con­struc­tion sched­ules are always an iffy bet, but Hemienu had the added stress of know­ing that Khu­fu could take his leave well before his glo­ri­ous, gold­en tipped tomb was ready to receive him.

This is why there are three bur­ial cham­bers with­in the Great Pyra­mid. The last and grand­est of these, known as the King’s Cham­ber, is an impres­sive pink gran­ite room at the heart of pyra­mid, where its roof sup­ports over four hun­dred tons of mason­ry. An enor­mous red gran­ite sar­coph­a­gus weigh­ing well over 3 tons is locat­ed in the mid­dle of this cham­ber, but alas, the lid has been ajar for cen­turies.

Khu­fu is not with­in.

What became of him is a mys­tery, but if Scoo­by-Doo taught us any­thing of val­ue in our pre-TED-Ed child­hood, it’s that mys­ter­ies exist to be solved.

Sev­er­al years ago, an inter­na­tion­al team of archi­tects and sci­en­tists Egypt sur­veyed the Great Pyra­mid and its Giza neigh­bors at sun­rise and sun­set, using infrared ther­mog­ra­phy, which seemed to indi­cate the exis­tence of an as yet unex­plored cham­ber.

TED-Ed’s les­son plan directs those inter­est­ed in plumb­ing these and oth­er mys­ter­ies fur­ther to the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic doc­u­men­tary, Unlock­ing the Great Pyra­mid and Egyp­tol­o­gist Bob Brier’s book, The Secret of the Great Pyra­mid: How One Man’s Obses­sion Led to the Solu­tion of Ancient Egypt’s Great­est Mys­tery, both of which are root­ed in the work of French archi­tect Jean-Pierre Houdin, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

Take a 3D Tour Through Ancient Giza, Includ­ing the Great Pyra­mids, the Sphinx & More

What the Great Pyra­mid of Giza Would’ve Looked Like When First Built: It Was Gleam­ing, Reflec­tive White

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ancient Pyra­mids of Egypt, Sudan & Mex­i­co

Pyra­mids of Giza: Ancient Egypt­ian Art and Archaeology–a Free Online Course from Har­vard

- 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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The French Designed a Fake Replica of Paris to Fool German Bombers During World War I

in History | October 21st, 2022

Paris counts among the most beloved cities on Earth, a sta­tus that owes in part to the rel­a­tive lack of dam­age tak­en in dur­ing both World Wars. The desire to pro­tect and pre­serve Paris thus runs high today, but then, it also did a cen­tu­ry ago. The prospect of the city’s oblit­er­a­tion dur­ing what was then called the Great War inspired an espe­cial­ly ambi­tious defen­sive scheme. “At the begin­ning of 1917, a wild idea was float­ed,” writes the Dai­ly Beast­’s Alli­son McN­ear­ney. “Why not build a repli­ca of Paris just out­side of the city and fool Ger­man bombers into drop­ping their destruc­tive loads where only the decoys made of wood and fab­ric could be harmed.”

This Paris leurre (decoy) is the sub­ject of the 35-minute British Pathé doc­u­men­tary above, Illu­sion: The City That Nev­er Was. Its detailed plan “called for the con­struc­tion of three sep­a­rate ‘sham’ neigh­bor­hoods just out­side of the city”: a large train sta­tion mod­eled after Gare du Nord, a repli­ca city cen­ter with its own Champs-Élysées, and a “faux indus­tri­al zone with fac­to­ries and oth­er indi­ca­tions of wartime pro­duc­tion.”

Built most­ly out of wood and fab­ric, these remote unin­hab­it­ed quar­ters were to be equipped with ele­ments like work­ing street light­ing — designed by Fer­nand Jacopozzi, lat­er famed for his illu­mi­na­tion of the Eif­fel Tow­er — and a mov­ing train.

As it turned out, the train was one of the few ele­ments of this elab­o­rate fake City of Light actu­al­ly con­struct­ed. “In 1918, before the project could be com­plet­ed, the war came to an end and the gov­ern­ment quick­ly moved to dis­man­tle their secret project and sup­press all infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing its exis­tence,” writes McN­ear­ney. Only in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry has this World War I‑era push to build a fake Paris come to light. Though nev­er com­plet­ed, its sheer ambi­tion speaks to France’s own con­cep­tion of its cap­i­tal as a store of price­less cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal her­itage. In a sense, Paris is civ­i­liza­tion, or at least French civ­i­liza­tion. One must ask: would human­i­ty go to the same lengths to pro­tect it today?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Albert Camus, Edi­tor of the French Resis­tance News­pa­per Com­bat, Writes Mov­ing­ly About Life, Pol­i­tics & War (1944–47)

Col­or Footage of the Lib­er­a­tion of Paris, Shot by Hol­ly­wood Direc­tor George Stevens (1944)

How France Hid the Mona Lisa & Oth­er Lou­vre Mas­ter­pieces Dur­ing World War II

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less: How World War II Changed Cin­e­ma & Helped Cre­ate the French New Wave

See Berlin Before and After World War II in Star­tling Col­or Video

Time Trav­el Back to Tokyo After World War II, and See the City in Remark­ably High-Qual­i­ty 1940s Video

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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Futurist Makes Weirdly Accurate Predictions in 1922 About What the World Will Look Like in 2022: Wireless Telephones, 8‑Hour Flights to Europe & More

in History, Technology | October 20th, 2022

Ear­li­er this year, we revis­it­ed a set of pre­dic­tions made in 1922 about what life would look like 100 years hence, in 2022. In the pages of the New York Her­ald, Eng­lish nov­el­ist W.L. George imag­ined a world in which “com­mer­cial fly­ing will have become entire­ly com­mon­place,” and “wire­less teleg­ra­phy and wire­less tele­phones will have crushed the cable sys­tem,” result­ing in gen­er­a­tions who’ll nev­er have seen “a wire out­lined against the sky.” As for the cin­e­ma, “the fig­ures on the screen will not only move, but they will have their nat­ur­al col­ors and speak with ordi­nary voic­es. Thus, the stage as we know it to-day may entire­ly dis­ap­pear, which does not mean the doom of art, since the movie actress of 2022 will not only need to know how to smile but also how to talk.” Above, you can hear a read­ing of W.L. George’s uncan­ny fore­casts. The read­ing comes cour­tesy of the YouTube Chan­nel Voic­es of the Past.  You can read the orig­i­nal text of the arti­cle here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

In 1922, a Nov­el­ist Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2022: Wire­less Tele­phones, 8‑Hour Flights to Europe & More

In 1953, a Tele­phone-Com­pa­ny Exec­u­tive Pre­dicts the Rise of Mod­ern Smart­phones and Video Calls

Jules Verne Accu­rate­ly Pre­dicts What the 20th Cen­tu­ry Will Look Like in His Lost Nov­el, Paris in the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry (1863)

In 1900, Ladies’ Home Jour­nal Pub­lish­es 28 Pre­dic­tions for the Year 2000

Futur­ist from 1901 Describes the World of 2001: Opera by Tele­phone, Free Col­lege & Pneu­mat­ic Tubes Aplen­ty

In 1911, Thomas Edi­son Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2011: Smart Phones, No Pover­ty, Libraries That Fit in One Book

In 1926, Niko­la Tes­la Pre­dicts the World of 2026

9 Sci­ence-Fic­tion Authors Pre­dict the Future: How Jules Verne, Isaac Asi­mov, William Gib­son, Philip K. Dick & More Imag­ined the World Ahead

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Hear a Great Radio Documentary on William S. Burroughs Narrated by Iggy Pop

in Literature | October 20th, 2022

wsb pop

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

William S. Bur­roughs is one of the most mythol­o­gized Amer­i­can authors of the 20th cen­tu­ry. When you recall the details of his life, they read like the biog­ra­phy of a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter. He was an unabashed hero­in addict yet he dressed like a dap­per insur­ance sales­man. He was open­ly, mil­i­tant­ly gay at a time when homo­sex­u­al­i­ty wasn’t even men­tioned in polite soci­ety. He shot his wife, Joan Vollmer, in Mex­i­co City while play­ing an ill-con­ceived game of William Tell and then spent years in Tang­iers indulging in every pos­si­ble vice while writ­ing Naked Lunch, which hap­pened to be one of the most con­tro­ver­sial books of the cen­tu­ry. And his writ­ing influ­enced just about every­one you con­sid­er cool.

Back in 2015, to com­mem­o­rate the 101st birth­day of Bur­roughs, This Amer­i­can Life aired a BBC doc­u­men­tary on Burroughs’s life. The show is nar­rat­ed by Iggy Pop whose voice, in announc­er mode, bears an uncan­ny resem­blance to Sam Elliot. Pop relates how Bur­roughs influ­enced Kurt Cobain, punk rock and Bob Dylan, and how he him­self lift­ed lyrics from Bur­roughs for his most pop­u­lar song, and unlike­ly Car­ni­val Cruise jin­gle, “Lust for Life.”

As Ira Glass notes, the doc­u­men­tary paints a clear pic­ture of why he is such a revered fig­ure – going into detail about his writ­ing, his huge­ly influ­en­tial “Cut Up” method, his obses­sion with cats – while nev­er buy­ing into his mys­tique. In fact, one of the most inter­est­ing parts of the doc is a damn­ing appraisal of Burroughs’s cool junkie per­sona by author Will Self, who was him­self an addict for a cou­ple of decades. You can lis­ten to the whole episode above.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

When Iggy Pop Pub­lished an Essay, “Cae­sar Lives,” in an Aca­d­e­m­ic Jour­nal about His Love for Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1995)

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

Famous Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buck­ley, Christo­pher Walken, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful & More

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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What the Rosetta Stone Actually Says

in History, Language | October 19th, 2022

When most of us think of the words “Roset­ta Stone” — or, at least, when those of us past a cer­tain age do — we also think of at-home lan­guage-learn­ing cours­es. This must count as a tri­umph of brand­ing, but not one with­out a gen­uine basis in his­to­ry. For the Roset­ta Stone, the real Roset­ta Stone, did pro­vide human­i­ty with a means of great­ly expand­ing its store of lin­guis­tic knowl­edge. The stone’s text, orig­i­nal­ly carved dur­ing the Hel­lenis­tic peri­od, turned out to be use­ful indeed after the stone’s redis­cov­ery about twen­ty cen­turies lat­er. Its con­tent, and more specif­i­cal­ly its con­tent’s hav­ing been writ­ten three times in three dif­fer­ent scripts, unlocked the mys­tery of Ancient Egypt­ian hiero­glyphs.

But what, exact­ly, is that con­tent? In the video above, you can hear the nature of the Roset­ta Stone’s mes­sage explained by British Muse­um cura­tor Ilona Regul­s­ki. “It was a priest­ly decree that was drawn up on the 22nd of March, 196 BC,” she says. Issued by a coun­cil of priests who’d trav­eled to the ancient cap­i­tal of Mem­phis, it lists “hon­ors that they want to give to the king” Ptole­my V Epiphanes, going so far as “to com­pare him with a god.” These hon­ors include his stat­ue being placed in the tem­ple and car­ried dur­ing pro­ces­sions, his birth­day being cel­e­brat­ed in the tem­ple, and the date of his suc­ces­sion being added to offi­cial doc­u­ments — all of them enu­mer­at­ed in “one big sen­tence.”

The text also stip­u­lates that this decree had to be “writ­ten in stone, in sacred writ­ing, which is hiero­glyphs, in native writ­ing, which is the Demot­ic that we see in the mid­dle, and the writ­ing of the Greeks. And the stele would have to be put up in all impor­tant tem­ples of Egypt,” which means that there would have been many copies all over the coun­try. (And indeed, more have been found since the ini­tial dis­cov­ery in 1799.) Nor is the Roset­ta Stone the only known exam­ple of such a priest­ly decree from Ancient Egypt. More recent research has turned toward the ques­tion of who wrote such texts, as well as who trans­lat­ed them.

“In the time the Roset­ta Stone was inscribed, Egypt was a very mul­ti­cul­tur­al place, with many for­eign­ers and peo­ple who could speak more than one lan­guage,” says Regul­s­ki. “For Egypt­ian priests and scribes, who were work­ing for the cen­tral­ized admin­is­tra­tion for the states, it prob­a­bly would­n’t have been so dif­fi­cult to com­pose the text in Greek and then trans­late it into their own Egypt­ian native lan­guage. In fact, this prob­a­bly would have been eas­i­er for them, because they worked on a dai­ly basis in the Greek lan­guage.” At the time, the task of trans­la­tion would sure­ly have seemed rou­tine, even triv­ial beside the roy­al exal­ta­tion per­formed by the mes­sage itself. But today, when few of us wor­ship kings as gods, we exalt the Roset­ta Stone’s for­got­ten trans­la­tor instead.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

How Schol­ars Final­ly Deci­phered Lin­ear B, the Old­est Pre­served Form of Ancient Greek Writ­ing

The British Muse­um Is Now Open To Every­one: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour and See 4,737 Arti­facts, Includ­ing the Roset­ta Stone

A 4,000-Year-Old Stu­dent ‘Writ­ing Board’ from Ancient Egypt (with Teacher’s Cor­rec­tions in Red)

What Ancient Egypt­ian Sound­ed Like & How We Know It

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

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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