“Downton Abbey” and the Allure of Historical Drama — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #127

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | July 14th, 2022

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We dis­cuss the appeal of this Julian-Fel­lowes-penned British his­tor­i­cal dra­ma in light of the new film. Is this real­ly “a new era” or just more of the same, and is that bad?

Your Pret­ty Much Pop host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by return­ing guest Jon Lam­ore­aux (host of The Hus­tle music pod­cast), plus a cou­ple: for­mer news­cast­er Cor­rinne MacLeod (whom Mark SCANDOLOUSLY went on one date with at age 12) and her hus­band, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Michael MacLeod.

We talk about the excel­lent cast­ing and how such a big cast gets jug­gled, the appeal of this par­tic­u­lar his­tor­i­cal set­ting, rev­o­lu­tions against the class sys­tem in the show, and the soapy plots. How can a film give us enough of such a big cast? We also touch on The Gild­ed Age, Bridger­ton, Howard’s End, Gos­ford Park, The Great, Poldark, and more.

A few rel­e­vant arti­cles we looked at include:

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop, includ­ing recent episodes on Jack­ass, This Is Us, and The Expanse. Sup­port the show 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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John Waters’ Comical & Inspiring Commencement Speech: “You Too Can Fail Upwards” (2022)

in Art, Film | July 13th, 2022

John Waters has­n’t made a movie in quite some time, but that does­n’t mean he’s gone qui­et. In fact he’s remained as vis­i­ble a cul­tur­al fig­ure as ever by work­ing in oth­er forms: writ­ing a new nov­el, act­ing on tele­vi­sion, deliv­er­ing com­mence­ment address­es. His ded­i­ca­tion to that last pur­suit is such that he even kept it up in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. That year he deliv­ered his com­mence­ment speech for New York’s School of Visu­al Arts not at Radio City Music Hall, as sched­uled, but in front of a green screen in Bal­ti­more — which, of course, only enriched the Waters­esque sen­si­bil­i­ty of the pro­ceed­ings.

Hav­ing been forced into the role of “vir­tu­al keynote speak­er,” Waters made up for it this year by deliv­er­ing, in per­son, a make-up com­mence­ment address for the SVA class­es of both 2020 and 2021. And he did it onstage at Radio City, a venue “known for fam­i­ly movies and the Rock­ettes. What the hell am I doing here?” As usu­al in this phase of his career, Waters express­es sur­prise to find him­self in the role of elder states­man.

“In 2020, the School of Visu­al Arts gave me an hon­orary degree for, I guess, caus­ing trou­ble,” he says. “This year, the Nation­al Film Reg­istry — yes, that’s part of the Library of Con­gress, the U.S. Gov­ern­ment, for god’s sake — select­ed my film Pink Flamin­gos, which New York mag­a­zine once called ‘beyond pornog­ra­phy,’ to its annu­al list of 25 cul­tur­al­ly his­toric films.”

Safe to say that, half a cen­tu­ry after its release, Waters’ most noto­ri­ous motion pic­ture does­n’t repel the estab­lish­ment as it once did. And indeed, here in the 2020s, how can an artist get trans­gres­sive at all? Waters has much encour­age­ment and advice for young peo­ple in search of new bound­aries to vio­late. “Out­sider old mas­ter paint­ings, nar­ra­tive abstract expres­sion­ism, impen­e­tra­ble pop, dec­o­ra­tive min­i­mal­ism, non-con­cep­tu­al­ism, video folk art, appro­pri­at­ed NFT”: these are just a few of the artis­tic ven­tures not yet attempt­ed that could turn their pop­u­lar­iz­ers into cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na. “You too can fail upwards, if you try,” Waters insists, but you’ve got to do it with a sense of humor. “Mock your­self first. Then you can be as crazi­ly right­eous as you want.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth Is Life With­out A*Holes

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

David Lynch Gives Uncon­ven­tion­al Advice to Grad­u­ates in an Unusu­al Com­mence­ment Address

John Waters Talks About His Books and Role Mod­els in a Whim­si­cal Ani­mat­ed 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The First Photographs Taken by the Webb Telescope: See Faraway Galaxies & Nebulae in Unprecedented Detail

in Astronomy, Technology | July 13th, 2022


Late last year we fea­tured the amaz­ing engi­neer­ing of the James Webb Space Tele­scope, which is now the largest opti­cal tele­scope in space. Capa­ble of reg­is­ter­ing phe­nom­e­na old­er, more dis­tant, and fur­ther off the vis­i­ble spec­trum than any pre­vi­ous device, it will no doubt show us a great many things we’ve nev­er seen before. In fact, it’s already begun: ear­li­er this week, NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter released the first pho­tographs tak­en through the Webb tele­scope, which “rep­re­sent the first wave of full-col­or sci­en­tif­ic images and spec­tra the obser­va­to­ry has gath­ered, and the offi­cial begin­ning of Webb’s gen­er­al sci­ence oper­a­tions.”

The areas of out­er space depict­ed in unprece­dent­ed detail by these pho­tos include the Cari­na Neb­u­la (top), the South­ern Ring Neb­u­la (2nd image on this page), and the galaxy clus­ters known as Stephan’s Quin­tet (the home of the angels in It’s a Won­der­ful Life) and SMACS 0723 (bot­tom).

That last, notes Petapix­el’s Jaron Schnei­der, “is the high­est res­o­lu­tion pho­to of deep space that has ever been tak­en,” and the light it cap­tures “has trav­eled for more than 13 bil­lion years.” What this com­pos­ite image shows us, as NASA explains, is SMACS 0723 “as it appeared 4.6 bil­lion years ago” — and its “slice of the vast uni­verse cov­ers a patch of sky approx­i­mate­ly the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by some­one on the ground.”

All this can be a bit dif­fi­cult to get one’s head around, at least if one is pro­fes­sion­al­ly involved with nei­ther astron­o­my nor cos­mol­o­gy. But few imag­i­na­tions could go un-cap­tured by the rich­ness of the images them­selves. Sharp, rich in col­or, var­ied in tex­ture — and in the case of the Cari­na Neb­u­la or “Cos­mic Cliffs,” NASA adds, “seem­ing­ly three-dimen­sion­al” — they could have come straight from a state-of-the-art sci­ence-fic­tion movie. In fact they out­do even the most advanced sci-fi visions, as NASA’s Earth­rise out­did even the uncan­ni­ly real­is­tic-in-ret­ro­spect views of the Earth from space imag­ined by Stan­ley Kubrick and his col­lab­o­ra­tors in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But these pho­tos are the fruits of a real-life jour­ney toward the final fron­tier, one you can fol­low in real time on NASA’s “Where Is Webb?” track­er. “Webb was designed to spend the next decade in space,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert. “How­ev­er, a suc­cess­ful launch pre­served sub­stan­tial fuel, and NASA now antic­i­pates a trove of insights about the uni­verse for the next twen­ty years.” That’s quite a long run by the cur­rent stan­dards of space explo­ration — but then, by the scale of space and time the Webb tele­scope has new­ly opened up, even 100 mil­len­nia is the blink of an eye.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Amaz­ing Engi­neer­ing of James Webb Tele­scope

How to Take a Pic­ture of a Black Hole: Watch the 2017 Ted Talk by Katie Bouman, the MIT Grad Stu­dent Who Helped Take the Ground­break­ing Pho­to

How Sci­en­tists Col­orize Those Beau­ti­ful Space Pho­tos Tak­en By the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope

The Very First Pic­ture of the Far Side of the Moon, Tak­en 60 Years Ago

The First Images and Video Footage from Out­er Space, 1946–1959

The Beau­ty of Space Pho­tog­ra­phy

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The German Cast of Hamilton Sings the Title Track, “Alexander Hamilton” in German

in Music, Theatre | July 12th, 2022

Lin-Manuel Miran­da’s Hamil­ton is com­ing to Ham­burg in Octo­ber 2022. And this video gives audi­ences a taste of what awaits them: The title track “Alexan­der Hamil­ton” sung in Ger­man. Enjoy…

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!

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent

“Alexan­der Hamil­ton” Per­formed with Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage

Lin-Manuel Miran­da Breaks Down How He Wrote Hamilton‘s Big Hit, “My Shot”

Watch Lin-Manuel Miran­da Per­form the Ear­li­est Ver­sion of Hamil­ton at the White House, Six Years Before the Play Hit the Broad­way Stage (2009)

A Whiskey-Fueled Lin-Manuel Miran­da Reimag­ines Hamil­ton as a Girl on Drunk His­to­ry

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What Americans Ate for Breakfast & Dinner 200 Years Ago: Watch Re-Creations of Original Recipes

in Food & Drink, History | July 12th, 2022

For all the oth­er faults of the 2020s, most of human­i­ty now enjoys culi­nary vari­ety the likes of which it has nev­er before known. Two cen­turies ago, the selec­tion was con­sid­er­ably nar­row­er. Back then the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, yet to become the high­ly devel­oped leader of “the free world,” remained for the most part a fair­ly hard­scrab­ble land. This comes through in a book like Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca, which Alex­is de Toc­queville wrote after trav­el­ing across the coun­ty in the 1830s — or on a Youtube chan­nel like Ear­ly Amer­i­can, which re-cre­ates life as lived by Amer­i­cans of decades before then.

Not long ago, Ear­ly Amer­i­can’s view­er­ship explod­ed. This seems to have owed to cook­ing videos like the one at the top of the post, “A Reg­u­lar Folks’ Sup­per 200 Years Ago.” The menu, on this imag­ined March day in 1820 Mis­souri, includes beef, mashed turnips, car­rots, rolls, and boiled eggs: not a bad-look­ing spread, as it turns out, though its fla­vors may leave some­thing to be desired for the twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry palate.

Many of Ear­ly Amer­i­can’s new com­menters, writes chan­nel co-cre­ator Jus­tine Dorn, are telling her “to add this sea­son­ing and this and that,” but “then it would no longer be loy­al to the actu­al orig­i­nal recipe, which is why you all are here to begin with.”

In the case of the reg­u­lar folks’ sup­per, its recipes come straight from an 1803 vol­ume called The Fru­gal House­wife. As for the john­ny­cakes fea­tured in “Mak­ing a Work­ing Class Break­fast in 1820,” you’ll find their recipe in Amelia Sim­mons’ Amer­i­can Cook­ery from 1796, the first known cook­book writ­ten by an Amer­i­can. The meal also includes a yeast­less bread for which no prop­er recipe exists. How­ev­er, Dorn writes, “there are sev­er­al men­tions of work­ing class peo­ple who baked bread with­out yeast in the auto­bi­ogra­phies of trav­el­ers in the eigh­teenth and ear­ly nine­teenth cen­turies. Because of this we know that it was a com­mon prac­tice.”

Made from a mod­i­fied fam­i­ly recipe passed down since the 1750s, this yeast­less bread looks appeal­ing enough, espe­cial­ly toast­ed over the fire and served with apple but­ter. But we must acknowl­edge that tastes have changed over the cen­turies. “I am not claim­ing that this food is good,” Dorn writes. “Some­times it isn’t. A lot of the foods and sea­son­ings that we take for grant­ed today were very hard to get back then or were only sea­son­al­ly avail­able.” But with sea­son­al, “local­ly sourced” ingre­di­ents in vogue these days, it’s worth exam­in­ing what, 200 years ago, real­ly went into a sim­ple Indi­an meal pud­ding or an ear­ly mac­a­roni and cheese — albeit one pre­pared, in true 2020s fash­ion, ASMR-style.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Amer­i­can Cook­book: Sam­ple Recipes from Amer­i­can Cook­ery (1796)

Tast­ing His­to­ry: A Hit YouTube Series Shows How to Cook the Foods of Ancient Greece & Rome, Medieval Europe, and Oth­er Places & Peri­ods

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

A Data­base of 5,000 His­tor­i­cal Cookbooks–Covering 1,000 Years of Food History–Is Now Online

Archive of Hand­writ­ten Recipes (1600 – 1960) Will Teach You How to Stew a Calf’s Head and More

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

Real Inter­views with Peo­ple Who Lived in the 1800s

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Listen to Earth.fm, a Free Archive of Natural Soundscapes That Can Re-Connect You with Nature & Improve Your Wellbeing

in Nature | July 12th, 2022

“Just lis­ten. Silence is the poet­ics of space. What it means to be in a place…. Silence isn’t the absence of some­thing, but the pres­ence of every­thing.” – acoustic ecol­o­gist Gor­don Hemp­ton

The study of acoustic ecol­o­gy does­n’t get much main­stream atten­tion. But if you’ve been a read­er of Open Cul­ture, you’ve like­ly come across a post about pre­serv­ing nat­ur­al sounds by stream­ing record­ings of the world’s many envi­ron­ments. These projects all, in one way or anoth­er, con­tribute to goals artic­u­lat­ed by Cana­di­an com­pos­er and writer R. Mur­ray Schafer, the “self-declared father” of acoustic ecol­o­gy, which involves the study, con­ser­va­tion, and appre­ci­a­tion of envi­ron­men­tal sound.

As Neil Clarke notes at Earth.fm, Schaf­fer­’s com­plex dis­ci­pline can seem dif­fi­cult to grasp, as it “strad­dles ‘acoustics, archi­tec­ture, lin­guis­tics, music, psy­chol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy and urban plan­ning.’ ” Maybe all we need to know to appre­ci­ate the goals of Earth.fm — anoth­er excel­lent entry in a grow­ing list of nat­ur­al-sound stream­ing sites – comes through in Clarke’s descrip­tion of Schaffer’s World Sound­scape Project (WSP):

It was hoped that, even­tu­al­ly, the WSP would be able to cre­ate a bal­ance “between the human com­mu­ni­ty and its son­ic envi­ron­ment.” To this end, lis­ten­ing and “ear-clean­ing” prac­tices, includ­ing “sound­walks” – a walk­ing med­i­ta­tion where a high son­ic aware­ness is main­tained – were designed to increase indi­vid­u­als’ con­scious­ness of the sounds around them. By prompt­ing engage­ment with the real­i­ties of con­tem­po­rary sound­scapes, lis­ten­ers were intend­ed to gain aware­ness of their part in these sound­scapes’ cre­ation, and there­fore appre­ci­ate their respon­si­bil­i­ty towards them.

Schaf­fer began record­ing sound­scapes (a word he coined) in Van­cou­ver in the ear­ly 70s. Since then, his work has inspired and com­ple­ment­ed that of oth­er field recordists/acoustic theorists/sound archivists like Bernie Krauss and Gor­don Hemp­ton. Although the ear­ly acoustic ecol­o­gists could not have fore­seen stream­ing media, it has with­out a doubt become for many of us a dom­i­nant vehi­cle for sound in our dai­ly lives, includ­ing sounds of the nat­ur­al world.

With­out an appre­ci­a­tion for the sounds of nat­ur­al silence (which we know, since John Cage, does not mean absolute qui­et), our under­stand­ing of rain­forests, deserts, and oceans as liv­ing, breath­ing real­i­ties can become dulled, just as much as we lose touch with the green spaces out­side our win­dows. Recon­nect­ing through sound has the dual effect of calm­ing our inner states and attun­ing us more close­ly to the out­er world as it is, with­out the dis­trac­tions of record­ed music and video laid over­top.

Billing itself as “like Spo­ti­fy, but for nat­ur­al sound­scapes,” Earth.fm, offers not a rival stream­ing ser­vice, but an alter­na­tive in which users can make their own playlists, The Verge explains, “zip­ping from Brazil to Egypt in a mat­ter of min­utes.” New sounds are added every three days. “You can lis­ten to bird species in Malaysia or India or for­est sounds in Ghana. The sounds are gath­ered from numer­ous con­trib­u­tors who have expe­ri­ence record­ing the nat­ur­al world in places includ­ing Brazil, Spain, Nor­way, New Zealand, and the Unit­ed King­dom.”

We can intu­it Earth.fm’s mis­sion not only as ther­a­peu­tic and preser­va­tion­ist but also as an eth­i­cal attempt to approach the cri­sis stream­ing media has intro­duced in the arts. Human-made sounds (or “anthro­pophy”) are just as much a part of our envi­ron­ment as those made by frogs, rivers, and ante­lope. Our con­stant, often mind­less stream­ing, how­ev­er — made pos­si­ble by infi­nite dig­i­tal repos­i­to­ries and cheap (for now) ener­gy — can be seen as a form of noise pol­lu­tion, and a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to ener­gy over­con­sump­tion.

The ethics of stream­ing must account for the impact on the beings (in this case, us) who make these sounds. Big Tech com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of music requires a “vast con­ver­sa­tion,” argues an essay on the Earth.fm site, that includes “the for­mat’s impact on those at the heart of this whole under­tak­ing: those who cre­ate music.” By impli­ca­tion, Earth.fm and oth­er sites that stream acoustic record­ings of nat­ur­al sounds (like those in the links below), offer an eth­i­cal alter­na­tive to music stream­ing — one that recon­nects us, Eliz­a­beth Wadding­ton writes on the site, to “the music of a chang­ing world.” Learn more about Earth.fm’s activ­i­ties here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Down­load the Sub­lime Sights & Sounds of Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park

Sounds of the For­est: A Free Audio Archive Gath­ers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World

Tune Into Tree.fm: An Online Radio Sta­tion That Streams the Sooth­ing Sounds of Forests from Around the World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch the Titanic Sink in This Real-Time 3D Animation

in Animation, History | July 11th, 2022

Minute by minute time­lines have become a sta­ple of dis­as­ter report­ing.

Know­ing how the sto­ry ends puts the pub­lic in the posi­tion of help­less bystander, espe­cial­ly at those crit­i­cal junc­tures when some­one in a posi­tion of author­i­ty exer­cised poor judg­ment, result­ing in a larg­er loss of life.

Youtu­ber Phillip W, cre­ator of Titan­ic Ani­ma­tions, allows us to expe­ri­ence the famed lux­u­ry liner’s final two and half hours as a time­stamped hor­ror show, above, with­out resort­ing to the­atrics, or a crowd pleas­ing fic­tion­al romance.

Ver­i­fied crew orders, CQD reports, and vacant lifeboat seats pro­vide ample dra­ma along­side mes­mer­iz­ing CGI recre­ations of the doomed lux­u­ry lin­er, its light­ed port­holes reflect­ed in the dark water.

It took around 2 and a half hours for the Titan­ic to sink, just four days into her maid­en voy­age, after strik­ing an ice­berg around 11:40 pm.

As the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry recounts:

The berg scraped along the star­board or right side of the hull below the water­line, slic­ing open the hull between five of the adja­cent water­tight com­part­ments. If only one or two of the com­part­ments had been opened, Titan­ic might have stayed afloat, but when so many were sliced open, the water­tight integri­ty of the entire for­ward sec­tion of the hull was fatal­ly breached. 

Titan­ic Ani­ma­tions tracks myr­i­ad crew mem­bers from this moment on, using fac­tu­al titles, light­ly sup­ple­ment­ed with sound effects of ocean nois­es, alarm bells, and peri­od tunes that would’ve been in the reper­toire of the band that famous­ly did (or didn’t) play on. The head bak­er directs staff to car­ry arm­loads of bread to pro­vi­sion the lifeboats. These morsels of infor­ma­tion and the rel­a­tive­ly placid views affords our imag­i­na­tion free rein to fill in the con­fu­sion, pan­ic and mount­ing des­per­a­tion of those aboard.

This real time sink­ing ani­ma­tion is ren­dered with­out human fig­ures, but Titan­ic Animation’s Twit­ter indi­cates that Phillip W has been hard at work on a new project that places crew and pas­sen­gers on deck, a — for­give us — titan­ic under­tak­ing that also finds him striv­ing to recre­ate every riv­et and rip­ple. A sta­tus update from ear­li­er this spring reads, “2.5 months in. 52,035 frames completed.178,364 left to go.”

The orig­i­nal ani­ma­tion, above, took mul­ti­ple years to com­plete:

A friend and I start­ed work­ing on the first ver­sion back in 2012/2013 and it was released in 2015. It’s been updat­ed over the years, and now I’m the only one left after my friend depart­ed after los­ing inter­est. So around 8–9 years, give or take, and about $8000 in research and ren­der­farms to com­plete.


If you’re inclined to mess around with your own Titan­ic ani­ma­tions, Philip W. has shared a Cin­e­mat­ic Film­ing Mod­el of the Titanic’s exte­ri­or, fea­tur­ing accu­rate port­hole place­ments, telegraphs, fun­nels, rig­ging, ven­ti­la­tion equip­ment place­ments, lifeboats, and approx­i­mate­ly 95,000 riv­ets.

Sub­scribe to Titan­ic Ani­ma­tions here. Those with an inter­est in 3D ani­ma­tion will appre­ci­ate archived livestreams that give a peek at the process.

Nav­i­gate to key moments in real time sink­ing ani­ma­tion using the links below.

00:00:00 — Intro

00:05:00 — Ice­berg Col­li­sion

00:10:00 — 10 Degree List to Star­board

00:11:00 — Steam begins to escape the Fun­nels

00:15:45 — Mail Room begins to flood

00:25:00 — Mid­night

00:30:00 — Squash Court begins to flood

00:37:15 — Lifeboats ordered to be read­ied

00:42:00 — Band Begins Play­ing

00:49:40 — Thomas Andrews relays news to Capt. Smith

00:51:40 — First Dis­tress Call is Sent

01:01:18 — Dis­tress Coor­di­nates are Cor­rect­ed

01:01:38 — Carpathia Makes Con­tact

01:04:00 — Boat 7 (First Boat) is Launched

01:06:00 — The Straus’ Refuse Entry to Boat 8

01:07:00 — Grand Stair­case F‑Deck Begins Flood­ing

01:08:10 — Boat 5 is Launched

01:10:00 — Box­hall & Smith spot Carpathia

01:12:10 — 1st Dis­tress Rock­et Fired

01:15:00 — Grand Stair­case E‑Deck Begins Flood­ing

01:20:00 — Boat 3 is Launched

01:21:00 — Titan­ic Begins Send­ing SOS

01:25:00 — 1AM Boat 8 is Launched

01:30:00 — Boat 1 is Launched

01:35:00 — Boat 6 is Launched

01:35:15 — Boil­er Room 5 Floods

01:40:00 — Water Climbs Grand Stair­case

01:44:30 — Boil­er Room 4 is Aban­doned

01:45:00 — Boat 16 is Launched

01:50:00 — Boat 14 is Launched

01:55:15 — Boats 9 and 12 are Launched

02:00:00 — Boat 11 is Launched

02:04:00 — Titan­ic lists to Port

02:05:00 — Boat 13 is Launched

02:06:00 — Boat 15 is Launched

02:09:00 — D‑deck Recep­tion Room Floods

02:10:00 — Boat 2 is Launched

02:12:00 — Well Deck is Awash

02:14:00 — D‑Deck Recep­tion Room Goes

02:15:00 — Boat 10 is Launched

02:15:10 — Boat 4 is Launched

02:25:00 — 2AM Boat C is Launched

02:26:10 -  Pow­er Begins to Fade

02:29:00 — Boat D is Launched

02:37:15 — Near­er My God to Thee

02:40:00 — Final Plunge

02:42:00 — Breakup

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Titan­ic Sur­vivor Inter­views: What It Was Like to Flee the Sink­ing Lux­u­ry Lin­er

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

“Titan­ic Sink­ing; No Lives Lost” and Oth­er Ter­ri­bly Inac­cu­rate News Reports from April 15, 1912

- 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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Benedict Cumberbatch Reads Nick Cave’s Beautiful Letter About Grief

in Letters, Life | July 11th, 2022

We would rather not grieve. Because we avoid it, death can leave us numb, and we may not know how to talk about it with­out turn­ing loss into a les­son. “Even when it’s expect­ed, death or loss still comes as a sur­prise,” writes psy­chother­a­pist Megan Devine in her book on griev­ing, It’s OK That You’re Not OK. And in grief, it can so hap­pen that “oth­er­wise intel­li­gent peo­ple have start­ed spout­ing slo­gans and plat­i­tudes, try­ing to cheer you up. Try­ing to take away your pain.” Every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son, they’re in a bet­ter place, they’d want you to be hap­py, this will make you stronger….! How­ev­er well-inten­tioned, “plat­i­tudes and cheer­lead­ing solve noth­ing.”

Is loss a prob­lem to be solved? Can we avoid grief with­out shut­ting out the inti­ma­cy of love? There are many sage answers to these ques­tions. Few, for exam­ple, have writ­ten as ele­gant­ly or ago­nized as pub­licly about love and loss as singer Nick Cave of The Birth­day Par­ty and The Bad Seeds. These are sub­jects to which he returns on album after album and in entries of his cult-favorite blog The Red Hand Files, where Cave pub­lish­es answers to an assort­ment of fan ques­tions.

Mus­ing in 2019 on whether arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence will ever pro­duce a great song, for exam­ple, Cave states one of his major themes plain­ly: “A sense of awe is almost exclu­sive­ly pred­i­cat­ed on our lim­i­ta­tions as human beings. It is entire­ly to do with our audac­i­ty as humans to reach beyond our poten­tial.” From this capac­i­ty come our great­est imag­i­na­tive feats, Cave writes: our abil­i­ty to con­jure “bright phan­toms” in our deep­est grief.

Cave wrote these last words in 2018 to a fan named Cyn­thia who told him about her fam­i­ly’s loss­es and asked the singer if he and his wife Susie com­mu­ni­cat­ed with their son Arthur, who died trag­i­cal­ly in 2015. In answer, Cave avoids the clich­es that Devine says do noth­ing for us. He nei­ther denies the real­i­ty of Cyn­thi­a’s pain, nor does he leave her with­out hope for “change and growth and redemp­tion.”

Dear Cyn­thia,

This is a very beau­ti­ful ques­tion and I am grate­ful that you have asked it. It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are for­ev­er inter­twined. Grief is the ter­ri­ble reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-nego­tiable. There is a vast­ness to grief that over­whelms our minus­cule selves. We are tiny, trem­bling clus­ters of atoms sub­sumed with­in grief’s awe­some pres­ence. It occu­pies the core of our being and extends through our fin­gers to the lim­its of the uni­verse. With­in that whirling gyre all man­ner of mad­ness­es exist; ghosts and spir­its and dream vis­i­ta­tions, and every­thing else that we, in our anguish, will into exis­tence. These are pre­cious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spir­it guides that lead us out of the dark­ness.

I feel the pres­ence of my son, all around, but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me, par­ent me, guide me, though he may not be there. He vis­its Susie in her sleep reg­u­lar­ly, speaks to her, com­forts her, but he may not be there. Dread grief trails bright phan­toms in its wake. These spir­its are ideas, essen­tial­ly. They are our stunned imag­i­na­tions reawak­en­ing after the calami­ty. Like ideas, these spir­its speak of pos­si­bil­i­ty. Fol­low your ideas, because on the oth­er side of the idea is change and growth and redemp­tion. Cre­ate your spir­its. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impos­si­ble and ghost­ly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jet­ti­soned; bet­ter now and unimag­in­ably changed.

With love, Nick

Cave’s full let­ter, above, is as elo­quent a piece of writ­ing on grief and loss, in its way, as John Don­ne’s famous med­i­ta­tion (a poet for whom Nick Cave has a “soft spot,” he writes in anoth­er entry). At the top, you can hear a very mov­ing read­ing of the text by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch for Let­ters Live. Read more of Cave’s brief-but-deep med­i­ta­tions and lyri­cal replies at The Red Hand Files.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

How Do You Help a Griev­ing Friend? Acknowl­edge Their Pain and Skip the Plat­i­tudes & Facile Advice

An Ani­mat­ed Leonard Cohen Offers Reflec­tions on Death: Thought-Pro­vok­ing Excerpts from His Final Inter­view

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch an 8‑Part Film Adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina Free Online

in Film, Literature | July 10th, 2022

Ear­li­er this week we fea­tured Sergei Bon­darchuk’s four-part film adap­ta­tion of Leo Tol­stoy’s War and Peace. You can watch that most ambi­tious of all filmed ver­sions of War and Peace free online on the Youtube chan­nel of Mos­film, the Sovi­et Union’s nation­al stu­dio. Though the U.S.S.R. may have gone, Mos­film has­n’t. Under the direc­tion of film­mak­er Karen Shakhnazarov, the stu­dio has sol­diered on as a qua­si-pri­vate pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny and put out a vari­ety of films, many of them root­ed in Russ­ian his­to­ry and lit­er­a­ture. Five years ago, Shakhnazarov him­self direct­ed an eight-part adap­ta­tion of anoth­er beloved Tol­stoy nov­el, Anna Karen­i­na.

War and Peace (watch here) has been made into four dif­fer­ent films. But that’s noth­ing beside the at least sev­en­teen Anna Karen­i­na movies in exis­tence, not count­ing Shakhnazarov’s. It was first released in a rel­a­tive­ly short cut, its run­time trun­cat­ed to a bit over two and a half hours, as Anna Karen­i­na: Vron­sky’s Sto­ry.

That ver­sion’s nar­ra­tive focused, as you may have guessed, on the life of Anna’s irre­sistible aris­to­crat­ic lover. Lat­er, Russia‑1 tele­vi­sion broad­cast Shakhnazarov’s work in full as an eight-episode series sim­ply titled Anna Karen­i­na, which you can now watch free online, in full, at Mos­film’s Youtube chan­nel. Stream all parts above.

In a sense, this ser­i­al for­mat is well suit­ed to Tol­stoy’s nov­el, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as it was in install­ments between 1875 and 1877. But even those who’ve read Anna Karen­i­na’s thou­sand pages over and over again will have rea­sons to be sur­prised by Shakhnazarov’s ver­sion, which takes the sto­ry of fam­i­ly, class, infi­deli­ty, faith, and feu­dal­ism in direc­tions of its own. It also incor­po­rates mate­r­i­al from out­side Tol­stoy’s oeu­vre, such as “Dur­ing the Japan­ese War” and “Sto­ries About the Japan­ese War” by Viken­ty Vere­saev, a doc­tor, writer, and Tol­stoy schol­ar who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Rus­so-Japan­ese War of 1904. Like any “free adap­ta­tion,” Shakhnazarov’s ver­sion of Anna Karen­i­na, will send its view­ers back to the book — and ensure that they nev­er read it quite the same way again.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Huge­ly Ambi­tious Sovi­et Film Adap­ta­tion of War and Peace Free Online (1966–67)

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Leo Tol­stoy, and How His Great Nov­els Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

The Art of Leo Tol­stoy: See His Draw­ings in the War & Peace Man­u­script & Oth­er Lit­er­ary Texts

Free: Watch Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and Oth­er Films by Sergei Eisen­stein, the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Sovi­et Film­mak­er

Free Online: Watch Stalk­er, Mir­ror, and Oth­er Mas­ter­works by Sovi­et Auteur Andrei Tarkovsky

Watch 70 Movies in HD from Famed Russ­ian Stu­dio Mos­film: Clas­sic Films, Beloved Come­dies, Tarkovsky, Kuro­sawa & 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964: Artificial Intelligence, Instantaneous Global Communication, Remote Work, Singularity & More

in Science | July 8th, 2022

Are you feel­ing con­fi­dent about the future? No? We under­stand. Would you like to know what it was like to feel a deep cer­tain­ty that the decades to come were going to be filled with won­der and the fan­tas­tic? Well then, gaze upon this clip from the BBC Archive YouTube chan­nel of sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke pre­dict­ing the future in 1964.

Although we best know him for writ­ing 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 1964 tele­vi­sion view­ing pub­lic would have known him for his futur­ism and his tal­ent for calm­ly explain­ing all the great things to come. In the late 1940s, he had already pre­dict­ed telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion satel­lites. In 1962 he pub­lished his col­lect­ed essays, Pro­files of the Future, which con­tains many of the ideas in this clip.

Here he cor­rect­ly pre­dicts the ease with which we can be con­tact­ed wher­ev­er in the world we choose to, where we can con­tact our friends “any­where on earth even if we don’t know their loca­tion.” What Clarke doesn’t pre­dict here is how “loca­tion” isn’t a thing when we’re on the inter­net. He imag­ines peo­ple work­ing just as well from Tahi­ti or Bali as they do from Lon­don. Clarke sees this advance­ment as the down­fall of the mod­ern city, as we do not need to com­mute into the city to work. Now, as so many of us are doing our jobs from home post-COVID, we’ve also dis­cov­ered the dystopia in that fan­ta­sy. (It cer­tain­ly has­n’t dropped the cost of rent.)

Next, he pre­dicts advances in biotech­nol­o­gy that would allow us to, say, train mon­keys to work as ser­vants and work­ers. (Until, he jokes, they form a union and “we’d be back right where we start­ed.) Per­haps, he says, humans have stopped evolving—what comes next is arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (although that phrase had yet to be used) and machine evo­lu­tion, where we’d be hon­ored to be the “step­ping stone” towards that des­tiny. Make of that what you will. I know you might think it would be cool to have a mon­key but­ler, but c’mon, think of the ethics, not to men­tion the cost of bananas.

Point­ing out where Clarke gets it wrong is too easy—-nobody gets it right all of the time. How­ev­er, it is fas­ci­nat­ing that some things that have nev­er come to pass—-being able to learn a lan­guage overnight, or eras­ing your memories—have man­aged to resur­face over the years as fic­tion films, like Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind. His ideas of cryo­genic sus­pen­sion are sta­ples of numer­ous hard sci-fi films.

And we are still wait­ing for the “Repli­ca­tor” machine, which would make exact dupli­cates of objects (and by so doing cause a col­lapse into “glut­to­nous bar­barism” because we’d want unlim­it­ed amounts of every­thing.) Some com­menters call this a pre­cur­sor to 3‑D print­ing. I’d say oth­er­wise, but some­thing very close to it might be around the cor­ner. Who knows? Clarke him­self agrees about all this conjecture-—it’s doomed to fail.

“That is why the future is so end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. Try as we can, we’ll nev­er out­guess it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Arthur C. Clarke Read 2001: A Space Odyssey: A Vin­tage 1976 Vinyl Record­ing

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts the Future on The David Let­ter­man Show (1980)

How Pre­vi­ous Decades Pre­dict­ed the Future: The 21st Cen­tu­ry as Imag­ined in the 1900s, 1950s, 1980s, and Oth­er Eras

Octavia Butler’s Four Rules for Pre­dict­ing the Future

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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An Introduction to the Voynich Manuscript, the World’s Most Mysterious Book

in Books, History | July 8th, 2022

“The Voyn­ich man­u­script is a real medieval book, and has been car­bon-dat­ed to the ear­ly 1400s.” No mod­ern hoax, this noto­ri­ous­ly bizarre text has in fact “passed through the hands of many over the years,” includ­ing “sci­en­tists, emper­ors, and col­lec­tors.” Though “we still don’t know who actu­al­ly wrote it, the illus­tra­tions hint at the book’s orig­i­nal pur­pose,” hav­ing “much in com­mon with medieval herbals, astrol­o­gy guides, and bathing man­u­als.” Hence the like­li­hood of the Voyn­ich man­u­script being “some sort of med­ical text­book, although a very strange one by any mea­sure. Then there’s the writ­ing.”

This sum­ma­ry of the known his­to­ry and nature of the most mys­te­ri­ous man­u­script in exis­tence comes from the Youtube video above, “Secrets of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script.” Its chan­nel Hochela­ga has pre­vi­ous­ly been fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for episodes on medieval mon­sters, a guide to super­nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na from renais­sance Ger­many, Hoku­sai’s ghost art, and the Bib­li­cal apoc­a­lypse.

In short, the Voyn­ich man­u­script could hard­ly find a more accom­mo­dat­ing wheel­house. And as in Hochela­ga’s oth­er videos, the sub­ject is approached not with total creduli­ty, but rather a clear and straight­for­ward dis­cus­sion of why gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of enthu­si­asts have kept try­ing to fig­ure it out.

No aspect of the Voyn­ich man­u­script fas­ci­nates as much as its hav­ing been “writ­ten in a mys­tery lan­guage with a unique alpha­bet and gram­mat­i­cal rules.” It could be an exist­ing lan­guage ren­dered in code; it could be one cre­at­ed entire­ly and only for this book. Though attempts are made with some fre­quen­cy, “no one has been able to defin­i­tive­ly solve the Voyn­ich man­u­scrip­t’s lan­guage.” It could, of course, be that “we’ve fall­en for one big medieval prank,” but the video’s cre­ator does­n’t buy that expla­na­tion. Even in its incom­pre­hen­si­bil­i­ty, the text appears to pos­sess great com­plex­i­ty. If it were to be decod­ed, “would the mag­ic and mys­tery dis­ap­pear? Or would we uncov­er a whole new set of ques­tions and embark on anoth­er jour­ney entire­ly?”

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to “the World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book,” the 15th-Cen­tu­ry Voyn­ich Man­u­script

The Mys­te­ri­ous Voyn­ich Man­u­script Gets Dig­i­tized: Explore the 15th-Cen­tu­ry Text That Lin­guists & Code-Break­ers Can’t Under­stand

The Voyn­ich Man­u­script: A New Doc­u­men­tary Takes a Deep Dive Into the Mys­ter­ies of the Bizarre Man­u­script

Has the Voyn­ich Man­u­script Final­ly Been Decod­ed?: Researchers Claim That the Mys­te­ri­ous Text Was Writ­ten in Pho­net­ic Old Turk­ish

The Writ­ing Sys­tem of the Cryp­tic Voyn­ich Man­u­script Explained: British Researcher May Have Final­ly Cracked the Code

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence May Have Cracked the Code of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script: Has Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy Final­ly Solved a Medieval Mys­tery?

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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