The 150 Best Podcasts to Enrich Your Mind

in | May 24th, 2020

Feed your brain with great pod­casts on art, music, his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy, plus cap­ti­vat­ing true and imag­ined sto­ries. This is a soft launch of a new page. If we’re miss­ing impor­tant pod­casts, please let us know here.

Art, Design & Fashion

99 Per­cent Invis­i­ble — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Design is every­where in our lives, per­haps most impor­tant­ly in the places where we’ve just stopped notic­ing. 99% Invis­i­ble is a week­ly explo­ration of the process and pow­er of design and archi­tec­ture. From award win­ning pro­duc­er Roman Mars.

A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — This pod­cast uses the British Muse­um’s col­lec­tion to tell an epic his­to­ry of human­i­ty span­ning over two mil­lion years. This 100-part series is nar­rat­ed by Neil Mac­Gre­gor, Direc­tor of the British Muse­um, and was orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast on BBC Radio 4.

Arti­cles of Inter­est — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A show about what we wear. It’s a six-part series from 99% Invis­i­ble, look­ing at cloth­ing.

ArtCu­ri­ous — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Think art his­to­ry is bor­ing? Think again. It’s weird, fun­ny, mys­te­ri­ous, enthralling, and lib­er­at­ing. Join us as we cov­er the strangest sto­ries in art. Is the Mona Lisa fake? Did Van Gogh actu­al­ly kill him­self? And why were the Impres­sion­ists so great?

Art Detec­tive — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Under­stand­ing art allows us to under­stand his­to­ry: to pin it with images, and pep­per it with the faces, col­ors, dra­ma and expres­sion of its time. This series is designed to give bite-sized insights into the world of Art His­to­ry, bring­ing one image to life across 20 min­utes through dis­cus­sion with experts.

Art His­to­ry for All — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — From art lovers to art haters to art-is-just-okay-ers, Art His­to­ry for All aims to get all kinds of peo­ple think­ing about art and what it means to them. Each episode, Allyson Healey tack­les a sin­gle work of art and its his­to­ry and larg­er sig­nif­i­cance, always ask­ing the ques­tion: so what? Art His­to­ry for All takes you beyond the art his­tor­i­cal canon and helps you find the way in which art speaks to you (even if it’s nev­er spo­ken to you before).

Design Mat­ters — Apple — Google — Web Site —  Host­ed by Deb­bie Mill­man, Design Mat­ters is the world’s first pod­cast about design and an inquiry into the broad­er world of cre­ative cul­ture through wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tions with design­ers, writ­ers, artists, cura­tors, musi­cians, and oth­er lumi­nar­ies of con­tem­po­rary thought.

Dressed: The His­to­ry of Fash­ion — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — With over 7 bil­lion peo­ple in the world, we all have one thing in com­mon. Every day we all get dressed. Join Dressed as they explore the social and cul­tur­al his­to­ries behind the who, what, when of why we wear.

Last Seen — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS —  It remains the most valu­able — and con­found­ing — art heist in his­to­ry: 13 art­works stolen from Boston’s Isabel­la Stew­art Gard­ner Muse­um. Twen­ty-eight years lat­er, not a sin­gle piece in a haul worth half a bil­lion dol­lars has sur­faced. The art, and the thieves who made off with it, remain at large. With first-ever inter­views, unprece­dent­ed access, and more than a year of inves­tiga­tive report­ing, “Last Seen” takes us into the biggest unsolved art heist in his­to­ry. A joint pro­duc­tion from WBUR and The Boston Globe. Read more here.

Raw Mate­r­i­al — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Raw Mate­r­i­al is an arts and cul­ture pod­cast from the San Fran­cis­co Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (SFMOMA). Each sea­son focus­es on a dif­fer­ent top­ic, fea­tur­ing voic­es of artists work­ing in all media and explor­ing the inspi­ra­tion and sto­ries behind mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary art.

Record­ing Artists — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — What was it like to be a woman mak­ing art as the fem­i­nist and civ­il rights move­ments were trans­form­ing Amer­i­can soci­ety? In this first sea­son of Record­ing Artists, from the Get­ty, this pod­cast uses archival inter­views to explore the lives of six women artists—Alice Neel, Lee Kras­ner, Betye Saar, Helen Franken­thaler, Yoko Ono, and Eva Hesse. Read more here.

The Lone­ly Palette — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The Lone­ly Palette returns art his­to­ry to the mass­es, one paint­ing at a time. Each episode, host Tamar Avishai picks a paint­ing du jour, inter­views unsus­pect­ing muse­um vis­i­tors in front of it, and then dives deeply into the object, the move­ment, the social con­text, and any­thing and every­thing else that will make it as neat to you as it is to her.

The Mod­ern Art Notes Pod­cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — A week­ly, hour-long inter­view pro­gram fea­tur­ing artists, his­to­ri­ans, authors, cura­tors and con­ser­va­tors. Pulitzer Prize-win­ning art crit­ic Sebas­t­ian Smee called The MAN Pod­cast “one of the great archives of the art of our time.”

Audio Dramas

Alice Isn’t Dead — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A truck dri­ver search­es across Amer­i­ca for the wife she had long assumed was dead. In the course of her search, she will encounter not-quite-human ser­i­al mur­der­ers, towns lit­er­al­ly lost in time, and a con­spir­a­cy that goes way beyond one miss­ing woman.

Ask­ing for It — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A queer con­tem­po­rary take of the Goldilocks tale: about love, music, and break­ing the cycle of abuse. Goldie escapes a chaot­ic child­hood only to go from a part­ner who starves her of love to a part­ner who near­ly drowns her in it, before learn­ing to be just right on her own. From CBC Pod­casts and Mer­maid Palace.

Black­out — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Acad­e­my Award win­ner Rami Malek stars in this apoc­a­lyp­tic thriller as a small-town radio DJ fight­ing to pro­tect his fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty after the pow­er grid goes down nation­wide, upend­ing mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion.

LifeAfter/The Mes­sage — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — The Mes­sage and its sequel, LifeAfter, take lis­ten­ers on jour­neys to the lim­its of tech­nol­o­gy. n The Mes­sage, an alien trans­mis­sion from decades ago becomes an urgent puz­zle with life or death con­se­quences. In LifeAfter, Ross, a low lev­el employ­ee at the FBI, spends his days con­vers­ing online with his wife Char­lie – who died eight months ago. But the tech­nol­o­gy behind this dig­i­tal res­ur­rec­tion leads Ross down a dan­ger­ous path that threat­ens his job, his own life, and maybe even the world. Win­ner of the Cannes Gold Lion.

Home­com­ing — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Home­com­ing cen­ters on a case­work­er at an exper­i­men­tal facil­i­ty, her ambi­tious super­vi­sor, and a sol­dier eager to rejoin civil­ian life — pre­sent­ed in an enig­mat­ic col­lage of tele­phone calls, ther­a­py ses­sions, and over­heard con­ver­sa­tions. Star­ring Cather­ine Keen­er, Oscar Isaac, David Schwim­mer, David Cross, Amy Sedaris, Michael Cera, Mer­cedes Ruehl, Alia Shawkat, Chris Geth­ard, and Spike Jonze.

Lime­town — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The premise: Ten years ago, over three hun­dred men, women and chil­dren dis­ap­peared from a small town in Ten­nessee, nev­er to be heard from again. In this pod­cast, Amer­i­can Pub­lic Radio reporter Lia Had­dock asks the ques­tion once more, “What hap­pened to the peo­ple of Lime­town?”

Moth­er­hack­er — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The plot: Bridget’s life is a series of dropped calls. With a gift for gab, an ex-hus­band in rehab, and down to her last dol­lar, Bridget’s life takes a des­per­ate turn when she starts vish­ing over the phone for a shady iden­ti­ty theft ring in order to sup­port her fam­i­ly.

Pas­sen­ger List — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Atlantic Flight 702 has dis­ap­peared mid-flight between Lon­don and New York with 256 pas­sen­gers on board. Kaitlin Le (Kel­ly Marie Tran), a col­lege stu­dent whose twin broth­er van­ished with the flight, is deter­mined to uncov­er the truth.

San­dra — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Co-stars Kris­ten Wiig, Alia Shawkat, and Ethan Hawke. Here’s the plot: Helen’s always dreamed of ditch­ing her home­town, so when she lands a job at the com­pa­ny that makes San­dra, every­one’s favorite A.I., she fig­ures it’s the next-best thing. But work­ing behind the cur­tain isn’t quite the escape from real­i­ty that Helen expect­ed.

The Angel of Vine — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A present day jour­nal­ist uncov­ers the audio tapes of a 1950s pri­vate eye who cracked the great­est unsolved mur­der mys­tery Hol­ly­wood has ever known… and didn’t tell a soul. Star­ring Joe Man­ganiel­lo, Alfred Moli­na, Con­stance Zim­mer, Alan Tudyk, Camil­la Lud­ding­ton, and more.

The Bright Ses­sions — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A sci­ence fic­tion pod­cast that fol­lows a group of ther­a­py patients. But these are not your typ­i­cal patients — each has a unique super­nat­ur­al abil­i­ty. The show doc­u­ments their strug­gles and dis­cov­er­ies as well as the moti­va­tions of their mys­te­ri­ous ther­a­pist, Dr. Bright.

The Orbit­ing Human Cir­cus — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Dis­cov­er a won­drous­ly sur­re­al world of mag­ic, music, and mys­tery. This immer­sive, cin­e­mat­ic audio spec­ta­cle fol­lows the adven­tures of a lone­ly, stage-struck jan­i­tor who is drawn into the larg­er-than-life uni­verse of the Orbit­ing Human Cir­cus, a fan­tas­ti­cal, wild­ly pop­u­lar radio show broad­cast from the top of the Eif­fel Tow­er. WNYC Stu­dios presents a spe­cial director’s cut of this joy­ous, mov­ing break from real­i­ty. Star­ring John Cameron Mitchell, Julian Koster, Tim Rob­bins, Drew Callan­der, Susan­nah Flood, and fea­tur­ing Mandy Patinkin and Char­lie Day.

The Truth — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The Truth makes movies for your ears. They’re short sto­ries that are some­times dark, some­times fun­ny, and always intrigu­ing. Every sto­ry is dif­fer­ent, but they all take you to unex­pect­ed places using only sound. If you’re new, some good start­ing places are: Sil­vi­a’s Blood, That’s Democ­ra­cy, Moon Graf­fi­ti, Tape Delay, or what­ev­er’s most recent. Lis­ten­ing with head­phones is encour­aged!

The Walk — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — “Dystopi­an thriller, The Walk, is a tale of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty, ter­ror­ism, and a life-or-death mis­sion to walk across Scot­land. But the for­mat of this sto­ry is — unusu­al. The Walk is an immer­sive fic­tion pod­cast, and the cre­ators want you to lis­ten to it while walk­ing. It begins with a ter­ror­ist attack at a train sta­tion; you are the pro­tag­o­nist, known only as Walk­er, and the police think you’re a mem­ber of a shad­owy ter­ror group called The Burn.” “Author Nao­mi Alder­man, whose lat­est nov­el was a best­seller called The Pow­er, is the cre­ator of The Walk.”

We’re Alive — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — An award-win­ing audio dra­ma, orig­i­nal­ly released in pod­cast form. Its sto­ry fol­lows a large group of sur­vivors of a zom­bie apoc­a­lypse in down­town Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia.

Wel­come to Night Vale — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Twice-month­ly com­mu­ni­ty updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, where every con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry is true. Turn on your radio and hide. Nev­er lis­tened before? It’s an ongo­ing radio show. Start with the cur­rent episode, and you’ll catch on in no time.

Wolf 359 — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — A sci­ence fic­tion pod­cast cre­at­ed by Gabriel Urbina. Fol­low­ing in the tra­di­tion of Gold­en Age radio dra­mas, Wolf 359 tells the sto­ry of a dys­func­tion­al space sta­tion crew orbit­ing the star Wolf 359 on a deep space sur­vey mis­sion.

Audio Reads: Fiction & Non-Fiction

LeVar Bur­ton Reads — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The best short fic­tion, hand­picked by the best voice in pod­cast­ing. In every episode, host LeVar Bur­ton (Roots, Read­ing Rain­bow, Star Trek) invites you to take a break from your dai­ly life, and dive into a great sto­ry. LeVar’s nar­ra­tion blends with gor­geous sound­scapes to bring sto­ries by Neil Gaiman, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Octavia But­ler, Ray Brad­bury and more to life. So, if you’re ready, let’s take a deep breath.

New York­er Fic­tion Pod­cast — Apple — Web Site — This pod­cast fea­tures read­ings of clas­sic fic­tion pub­lished in The New York­er.

Select­ed Shorts — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Great actors read great fic­tion in front of a live audi­ence.

Books & Language

A Way with Words — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A fun and fun­ny radio show and pod­cast about lan­guage. Co-hosts Martha Bar­nette and Grant Bar­rett talk with callers from around the world about lin­guis­tics, slang, new words, jokes, rid­dles, word games, gram­mar, old say­ings, word ori­gins, region­al dialects, fam­i­ly expres­sions, books, lit­er­a­ture, folk­lore, and speak­ing and writ­ing well.

Lex­i­con Val­ley - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — RSS — A show about lan­guage, from pet peeves, syn­tax, and ety­mol­o­gy to neu­rolin­guis­tics and the death of lan­guages. Host­ed by lin­guist John McWhort­er.

Lit­er­a­ture and His­to­ry — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — A pod­cast cov­er­ing Anglo­phone lit­er­a­ture and its roots, from ancient times to the present! Each episode cov­ers an influ­en­tial work of world lit­er­a­ture, fea­tur­ing sum­maries of the texts, his­tor­i­cal analy­sis of the cul­tures that pro­duced them, and some orig­i­nal music and goofi­ness thrown in to keep you enter­tained.

The Allu­sion­ist — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The Allu­sion­ist scratch­es the sur­face of why we say the things we say. Eng­lish is a big messy mutt of a lan­guage, formed by mil­i­tary inva­sion after mil­i­tary inva­sion, plus count­less tiny idio­syn­crat­ic deci­sions made by its users along the way. The Allu­sion­ist is the lat­est from award-win­ning host Helen Zaltz­man. Based in Lon­don, UK.

The His­to­ry of Eng­lish Pod­cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — A chrono­log­i­cal his­to­ry of the Eng­lish lan­guage exam­ined through the lens of his­tor­i­cal events that shaped the devel­op­ment and spread of the lan­guage from the Eurasian steppe to the entire world.

The Pen­guin Pod­cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — The Pen­guin Pod­cast fea­tures con­ver­sa­tions with some our of lead­ing authors and cre­ative thinkers, as we seek to under­stand how they write and where their ideas come from. Guests bring to the inter­view a hand­ful of objects that have inspired their work. Recent guests include Noam Chom­sky, Paul McCart­ney, William Gib­son, Arund­hati Roy and more.

Ideas

Against the Rules with Michael Lewis — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site —  Jour­nal­ist and best­selling author Michael Lewis (Liar’s Pok­er, Mon­ey­ball) takes a sear­ing look at what’s hap­pened to fair­ness. It feels like there’s less of it every day—whether it comes to lend­ing prac­tices, col­lege admis­sions, pro­fes­sion­al sports, or psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being. Who are the peo­ple try­ing to lev­el the play­ing field, and are they mak­ing an impact? Lewis inter­views ref­er­ees (Sea­son 1) and coach­es (Sea­son 2) from many walks of life, bring­ing his trade­mark insight and wry humor to their sto­ries of (in)equality today.

Akim­bo — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Akim­bo is an ancient word, from the bend in the riv­er or the bend in an archer’s bow. It’s become a sym­bol for strength, a pos­ture of pos­si­bil­i­ty, the idea that when we stand tall, arms bent, look­ing right at it, we can make a dif­fer­ence. Seth God­in’s Akim­bo is a pod­cast about our cul­ture and about how we can change it. About see­ing what’s hap­pen­ing and choos­ing to do some­thing. The cul­ture is real, but it can be changed. You can bend it.

Ben­ja­men Walk­er’s The­o­ry of Every­thing — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The­o­ry of Every­thing plunges lis­ten­ers into a whirl of jour­nal­ism, fic­tion, art, inter­views, and the occa­sion­al explod­ing pipe dream. Host Ben­ja­men Walk­er con­nects the dots in a hyper-con­nect­ed world, fea­tur­ing con­ver­sa­tions with philoso­phers, friends, and the occa­sion­al too-good-to-be-real guest.

Com­plex­i­ty — Apple — Google — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Far-reach­ing con­ver­sa­tions with a world­wide net­work of sci­en­tists and math­e­mati­cians, philoso­phers and artists devel­op­ing new frame­works to explain our uni­verse’s deep­est mys­ter­ies. Cre­at­ed by the San­ta Fe Insti­tute.

Enti­tled Opin­ions — Apple — Google — Web Site — Enti­tled Opin­ions is a lit­er­ary talk show on Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Radio, KZSU, in which Pro­fes­sor Robert Har­ri­son inter­views guests about issues that range from lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy to pol­i­tics and sports. Read more here.

Flash For­ward — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — A show about pos­si­ble (and not so pos­si­ble) future sce­nar­ios. What would the war­ran­ty on a sex robot look like? How would diplo­ma­cy work if we couldn’t lie? Host­ed and pro­duced by award win­ning sci­ence jour­nal­ist Rose Eveleth, each episode com­bines audio dra­ma and jour­nal­ism to go deep on poten­tial tomor­rows, and uncov­ers what those futures might real­ly be like.

Freako­nom­ics Radio — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Dis­cov­er the hid­den side of every­thing with Stephen J. Dub­n­er, co-author of the Freako­nom­ics books. Each week, Freako­nom­ics Radio tells you things you always thought you knew (but didn’t) and things you nev­er thought you want­ed to know (but do) — from the eco­nom­ics of sleep to how to become great at just about any­thing. Dub­n­er speaks with Nobel lau­re­ates and provo­ca­teurs, intel­lec­tu­als and entre­pre­neurs, and var­i­ous oth­er under­achiev­ers.

Fresh Air — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Fresh Air from WHYY, the Peabody Award-win­ning week­day mag­a­zine of con­tem­po­rary arts and issues, is one of pub­lic radio’s most pop­u­lar pro­grams. Host­ed by Ter­ry Gross, the show fea­tures inti­mate con­ver­sa­tions with today’s biggest lumi­nar­ies.

Here’s the Thing — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Alec Bald­win takes lis­ten­ers into the lives of artists, pol­i­cy mak­ers and per­form­ers. Alec side­steps the pre­dictable by going inside the dress­ing rooms, apart­ments, and offices of peo­ple we want to under­stand bet­ter: Ira Glass, Pat­ti Smith, David Brooks, Roz Chast, Chris Rock and oth­ers.

Hid­den Brain — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — NPR’s Shankar Vedan­tam uses sci­ence and sto­ry­telling to reveal the uncon­scious pat­terns that dri­ve human behav­ior, shape our choic­es and direct our rela­tion­ships.

Imag­i­nary Worlds — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Sound­Cloud — A bi-week­ly pod­cast about sci­ence fic­tion and oth­er fan­ta­sy gen­res. Host Eric Molin­sky talks with nov­el­ists, screen­writ­ers, com­ic book artists, film­mak­ers, and game design­ers about their craft of cre­at­ing fic­tion­al worlds. The show also looks at the fan expe­ri­ence, explor­ing what makes us sus­pend our dis­be­lief, and what hap­pens when that spell is bro­ken.

In Our Time - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — In Our Time is a live BBC radio dis­cus­sion series explor­ing the his­to­ry of ideas, pre­sent­ed by Melvyn Bragg since Octo­ber 1998. It is one of BBC Radio 4’s most suc­cess­ful dis­cus­sion pro­grams, acknowl­edged to have “trans­formed the land­scape for seri­ous ideas at peak lis­ten­ing time.’” Read more here.

Intel­li­gence Squared — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — The world’s lead­ing forum for debate and intel­li­gent dis­cus­sion. Live and online we take you to the heart of the issues that mat­ter, in the com­pa­ny of some of the world’s sharpest minds and most excit­ing ora­tors.

Long­form — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Inter­views with writ­ers, jour­nal­ists, film­mak­ers, and pod­cast­ers about how they do their work. Host­ed by Aaron Lam­mer, Max Lin­sky, and Evan Ratliff.

Mak­ing Sense Pod­cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Join Sam Harris—neuroscientist, philoso­pher, and best-sell­ing author—as he explores some of the most impor­tant ques­tions about the human mind, soci­ety, and cur­rent events.

On Being — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Ground­break­ing Peabody Award-win­ning con­ver­sa­tion about the big ques­tions of mean­ing — spir­i­tu­al inquiry, sci­ence, social heal­ing, and the arts. Each week a new dis­cov­ery about the immen­si­ty of our lives. Host­ed by Krista Tip­pett.

Revi­sion­ist His­to­ry — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Mal­colm Glad­well’s jour­ney through the over­looked and the mis­un­der­stood. Every episode re-exam­ines some­thing from the past—an event, a per­son, an idea, even a song—and asks whether we got it right the first time.

Radi­o­lab — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A two-time Peabody Award-win­ner, Radi­o­lab is an inves­ti­ga­tion told through sounds and sto­ries, and cen­tered around one big idea. In the Radi­o­lab world, infor­ma­tion sounds like music and sci­ence and cul­ture col­lide. Host­ed by Jad Abum­rad and Robert Krul­wich, the show is designed for lis­ten­ers who demand skep­ti­cism, but appre­ci­ate won­der.

Sean Car­rol­l’s Mind­scape — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Ever want­ed to know how music affects your brain, what quan­tum mechan­ics real­ly is, or how black holes work? Do you won­der why you get emo­tion­al each time you see a cer­tain movie, or how on earth video games are designed? Then you’ve come to the right place. Each week, Sean Car­roll will host con­ver­sa­tions with some of the most inter­est­ing thinkers in the world. From neu­ro­sci­en­tists and engi­neers to authors and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­ers, Sean and his guests talk about the biggest ideas in sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, cul­ture and much more.

Solv­able — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — RSS —  Solv­able show­cas­es the world’s most inno­v­a­tive thinkers and their pro­posed solu­tions to the world’s most daunt­ing prob­lems. The inter­views, con­duct­ed by jour­nal­ists like Mal­colm Glad­well and Jacob Weis­berg, will launch a dia­logue that both acknowl­edges the com­plex­i­ty of the issues while inspir­ing hope that the prob­lems are, in fact, solv­able

TED Radio Hour — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — TED Radio Hour inves­ti­gates the biggest ques­tions of our time with the help of the world’s great­est thinkers. Can we pre­serve our human­i­ty in the dig­i­tal age? Where does cre­ativ­i­ty come from? And what’s the secret to liv­ing longer? In each episode, host Manoush Zomoro­di explores a big idea through a series of TED Talks and orig­i­nal inter­views, inspir­ing us to learn more about the world, our com­mu­ni­ties, and most impor­tant­ly, our­selves.

The Joy of X — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Host­ed by Steven Stro­gatz, The Joy of X pod­cast opens a win­dow into the inner worlds of top-tier sci­en­tists and math­e­mati­cians while shin­ing light on uni­ver­sal themes like cre­ativ­i­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion or nav­i­gat­ing pro­fes­sion­al chal­lenges.

The New York­er Radio Hour — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site —  David Rem­nick is joined by The New Yorker’s award-win­ning writ­ers, edi­tors and artists to present a week­ly mix of pro­files, sto­ry­telling, and insight­ful con­ver­sa­tions about the issues that mat­ter.

The Wild — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Chris Mor­gan takes lis­ten­ers around the world to Italy, Ger­many and his own back­yard of the Pacif­ic North­west to explore the beau­ty and won­der of the out­doors and its inhab­i­tants. From beavers to wolves to griz­zly bears we expe­ri­ence up close the resilient pow­er of nature and our rela­tion­ship with it.

WTF — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Marc Maron wel­comes come­di­ans, actors, direc­tors, writ­ers, authors, musi­cians and folks from all walks of life to his home for amaz­ing­ly reveal­ing con­ver­sa­tions. Mar­c’s prob­ing, com­pre­hen­sive inter­view style allows guests to express them­selves in ways lis­ten­ers have nev­er heard.

History

1619 — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — In August of 1619, a ship car­ry­ing more than 20 enslaved Africans arrived in the Eng­lish colony of Vir­ginia. Amer­i­ca was not yet Amer­i­ca, but this was the moment it began. No aspect of the coun­try that would be formed here has been untouched by the 250 years of slav­ery that fol­lowed. On the 400th anniver­sary of this fate­ful moment, it is time to tell the sto­ry.

Back­Sto­ry — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — There’s the his­to­ry you had to learn, and the his­to­ry you want to learn — that’s where Back­Sto­ry comes in. Each week Back­Sto­ry takes a top­ic that peo­ple are talk­ing about and explores it through the lens of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Through sto­ries, inter­views, and con­ver­sa­tions with our lis­ten­ers, Back­Sto­ry makes his­to­ry engag­ing and fun. Based at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, it’s cre­at­ed by U.S. his­to­ri­ans Ed Ayers, Bri­an Balogh, Nathan Con­nol­ly and Joanne Free­man.

Hope, Through His­to­ry — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Host­ed by Pulitzer Prize win­ning his­to­ri­an Jon Meacham, this pod­cast explores some of the most his­toric and try­ing times in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, and how this nation dealt with these moments, the impact of these moments and how we came through these moments a uni­fied nation. Sea­son One takes a look at crit­i­cal moments around the 1918 Flu Pan­dem­ic, the Great Depres­sion, World War II, the polio epi­dem­ic and the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis.

Rev­o­lu­tions — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS —  A week­ly pod­cast explor­ing great polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions. It’s cre­at­ed by the New York Times best sell­ing author Mike Dun­can.

The Dol­lop — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — RSS — Come­di­ans Dave Antho­ny and Gareth Reynolds pick a sub­ject from his­to­ry and exam­ine it.

The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A pod­cast telling the sto­ry of the Roman (Byzan­tine) Empire from 476 AD to 1453.

The His­to­ry of Rome — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — 192 episodes trac­ing the his­to­ry of the Roman Empire, begin­ning with Aeneas’s arrival in Italy and end­ing with the exile of Romu­lus Augus­tu­lus, last Emper­or of the West­ern Roman Empire. Now com­plete!

The Bow­ery Boys — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — New York City his­to­ry is Amer­i­ca’s his­to­ry. It’s the home­town of the world, and most peo­ple know the city’s famil­iar land­marks, build­ings and streets. Why not look a lit­tle clos­er and have fun while doing it? Now has 300+ episodes.

The Last Archive — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — A pod­cast about his­to­ry and epis­te­mol­o­gy by New York­er con­trib­u­tor and Har­vard his­to­ri­an Jill Lep­ore. It’s​ is a show about the his­to­ry of truth, and the his­tor­i­cal con­text for our cur­rent fake news, post-truth moment. It’s a show about how we know what we know, and why it seems, these days, as if we don’t know any­thing at all any­more.

This Day in Eso­teric Polit­i­cal His­to­ry — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — From a glob­al pan­dem­ic upend­ing soci­ety to an espe­cial­ly intense U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycle, we’re liv­ing in an unprece­dent­ed time. Maybe. In this show, Jody Avir­gan, polit­i­cal his­to­ri­an Nicole Hem­mer, and spe­cial guests res­cue sto­ries from the entire­ty of U.S. polit­i­cal his­to­ry to map our jour­ney through this era. Each episode takes one moment, big or small, from that day in the past and explores how it might inform our present –– and it does so in under ten min­utes.

Through­line — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — The past is nev­er past. Every head­line has a his­to­ry. Join NPR’s Through­line every week as they go back in time to under­stand the present. These are sto­ries you can feel and sounds you can see from the moments that shaped our world.

Unciv­il — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Amer­i­ca is divid­ed, and it always has been. We’re going back to the moment when that split turned into war. This is Unciv­il: Gim­let Medi­a’s new his­to­ry pod­cast, host­ed by jour­nal­ists Jack Hitt and Chen­jerai Kumanyi­ka. We ran­sack the offi­cial ver­sion of the Civ­il War, and take on the his­to­ry you grew up with. We bring you untold sto­ries about covert oper­a­tions, cor­rup­tion, resis­tance, mutiny, coun­ter­feit­ing, ante­bel­lum drones, and so much more. And we con­nect these for­got­ten strug­gles to the polit­i­cal bat­tle­field we’re liv­ing on right now.

You’re Dead To Me — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — From the BBC. The his­to­ry pod­cast for peo­ple who don’t like his­to­ry… and those who do. Greg Jen­ner brings togeth­er the best names in com­e­dy and his­to­ry to learn and laugh about the past.

Music, TV & Film

All Songs Con­sid­ered - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Hosts/nerds Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton are your friend­ly music bud­dies with the week’s best new music dis­cov­er­ies, includ­ing con­ver­sa­tions with emerg­ing artists, icons and more. Hear songs that can com­plete­ly change your day, with humor, heart and (some­times) a whole lot of noise. Direc­tions for use: Morn­ing com­mute, the gym, or alone time. (If rash per­sists, dis­con­tin­ue use.)

Bro­ken Record — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Bro­ken Record is host­ed by pro­duc­er Rick Rubin, the writer Mal­colm Glad­well, and New York Times for­mer edi­tor Bruce Head­lam. It fea­tures musi­cians you love talk­ing about their life, inspi­ra­tion, and craft.

Hit Parade — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — What makes a song a smash? Tal­ent? Luck? Tim­ing? All that—and more. Chris Molan­phy, pop-chart ana­lyst and author of Slate’s “Why Is This Song No. 1?” series, tells tales from a half-cen­tu­ry of chart his­to­ry. Through sto­ry­telling, triv­ia and song snip­pets, Chris dis­sects how that song you love—or hate—dominated the air­waves, made its way to the top of the charts and shaped your mem­o­ries for­ev­er.

Mogul - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site- An engag­ing show about hip hop’s most icon­ic moments, told by the peo­ple who lived them.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music — Apple — Web Site — Why do musi­cians cre­ate what they do? Why do they cre­ate in that par­tic­u­lar way? Mark Lin­sen­may­er (aka song­writer Mark Lint, and host of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life) talks to song­writ­ers and com­posers about spe­cif­ic record­ings, which are played in full. They cov­er lyric mean­ings, writ­ing and record­ing tech­niques, arrange­ments, band dynam­ics, the sto­ries behind the songs, and even music the­o­ry.

Office Ladies — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — The Office co-stars and best friends, Jen­na Fis­ch­er and Angela Kin­sey, are doing the ulti­mate The Office re-watch pod­cast for you. Each week Jen­na and Angela will break down an episode of The Office and give exclu­sive behind-the-scenes sto­ries that only two peo­ple who were there, can tell you.

Pop Cul­ture Hap­py Hour — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A fun and free­wheel­ing chat about the lat­est movies, tele­vi­sion, books, and music.

Pret­ty Much Pop — Apple — Web Site — RSS — A philoso­pher, an actor/musician, and a sci-fi writer (often with enter­tain­ment indus­try guests) talk about media and how we con­sume it: TV, film, music, nov­els, games, comics, com­e­dy, the­ater, pod­casts, online video, and more. Most of what (oth­er) peo­ple like is pret­ty weird when you think about it, so think­ing about it is what they do.

Set­tling the Score — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Join Jon and Andy as they explore the world of film music, one score at a time. Each episode is an in-depth dis­cus­sion of a clas­sic film score: what makes it tick, how it serves the movie, and whether it’s, you know, any good. It’s a free­wheel­ing, opin­ion­at­ed con­ver­sa­tion with an ana­lyt­i­cal bent, rich­ly illus­trat­ed with musi­cal exam­ples. No exper­tise required.

Slash Film — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — In the Slash­film­cast, hard­core geeks David Chen, Devin­dra Hardawar, and Jeff Can­na­ta debate, pon­tif­i­cate, and delve into the lat­est films, TV shows, and oth­er enter­tain­ment-relat­ed items from the past week. Week­ly guests include every­day blog­gers, web­mas­ter lumi­nar­ies, film direc­tors, and movie stars from all walks of life

Soda­jerk­er on Song­writ­ing — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — A pro­gram devot­ed to the art and craft of song­writ­ing. The show, cre­at­ed and host­ed by the UK song­writ­ing team Soda­jerk­er, fea­tures inter­views with some of the most suc­cess­ful song­writ­ers and musi­cians in the world.

Song Exploder — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A pod­cast where musi­cians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the sto­ry of how they were made.

Sound Opin­ions — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — The world’s only rock and roll talk show, host­ed by Jim DeRo­gatis and Greg Kot.

Sound­track­ing with Edith Bow­man — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — In a unique week­ly pod­cast, Edith Bow­man sits down with a vari­ety of film direc­tors, actors, pro­duc­ers and com­posers to talk about the music that inspired them and how they use music in their films, from their cur­rent release to key moments in their career.

Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash — Spo­ti­fy — The rise and fall of the punk band, The Clash, nar­rat­ed by Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D. Read more here.

Switched on Pop — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A Vox pod­cast that reveals the secret for­mu­las that make pop songs so infec­tious. Every Tues­day, musi­col­o­gist Nate Sloan and song­writer Char­lie Hard­ing pull back the cur­tain on how pop hits work their mag­ic. You’ll fall in love with songs you didn’t even know you liked.

Talk­ing Sopra­nos — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Sopra­nos co-stars Michael Impe­ri­oli and Steve Schirri­pa host the defin­i­tive Sopra­nos re-watch pod­cast. Michael and Steve fol­low the Sopra­nos series episode by episode giv­ing fans all the inside info, behind the scenes sto­ries and lit­tle-known facts that could only come from some­one on the inside.

‘The Wire: Way Down in the Hole’ — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Jemele Hill and Van Lath­an recap, break­down, and ana­lyze every episode of the icon­ic HBO hit series, The Wire, start­ing from the begin­ning with sea­son one.

Philosophy

Hi-Phi Nation - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google Play — Web Site — A phi­los­o­phy pod­cast that turns sto­ries into ideas. It begins with a sto­ry, from ordi­nary life, law, sci­ence, or cul­ture, and then trans­forms it into an exam­i­na­tion of philo­soph­i­cal ideas. The show is cre­at­ed by Bar­ry Lam, a PhD in phi­los­o­phy at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, and Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at Vas­sar Col­lege. Read more here.

His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps — Apple – Spo­ti­fy — RSS Feed — Peter Adam­son, Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at King’s Col­lege Lon­don, takes lis­ten­ers through the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy, “with­out any gaps.” The series looks at the ideas, lives and his­tor­i­cal con­text of the major philoso­phers as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion. With more than 300+ episodes, it cov­ers both west­ern and east­ern tra­di­tions. Read more here.

In Our Time: Phi­los­o­phy — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Down­loads — The sto­ried BBC show cov­ers every­thing from Altru­ism to Wittgen­stein, philoso­phers, the­o­ries and key themes.

Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life - Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Phi­los­o­phy, philoso­phers and philo­soph­i­cal texts. This pod­cast fea­tures an infor­mal round­table dis­cus­sion, with each episode loose­ly focused on a short read­ing that intro­duces at least one “big” philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion, con­cern, or idea. Recent episodes have focused on Niet­zsche, Sartre and Aldous Hux­ley, and fea­tured Fran­cis Fukuya­ma as a guest.

Phi­los­o­phy Bites — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — David Edmonds (Uehi­ro Cen­tre, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty) and Nigel War­bur­ton (free­lance philosopher/writer) inter­view top philoso­phers on a wide range of top­ics. Two books based on the series have been pub­lished by Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press. There are over 400 pod­casts in this col­lec­tion. Read more here.

Phi­los­o­phize This! — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web — RSS — Lib­syn — Begin­ner friend­ly if lis­tened to in order! For any­one inter­est­ed in an edu­ca­tion­al pod­cast about phi­los­o­phy where you don’t need to be a grad­u­ate-lev­el philoso­pher to under­stand it. In chrono­log­i­cal order, the thinkers and ideas that forged the world we live in are bro­ken down and explained. Read more here.

Very Bad Wiz­ards — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Very Bad Wiz­ards is a pod­cast fea­tur­ing a philoso­pher (Tam­ler Som­mers) and a psy­chol­o­gist (David Pizarro), who share a love for ethics, pop cul­ture, and cog­ni­tive sci­ence, and who have a marked inabil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish sacred from pro­fane. Each pod­cast includes dis­cus­sions of moral phi­los­o­phy, recent work on moral psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ro­science, and the over­lap between the two.

True Stories & Storytelling

13 Min­utes to the Moon — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Epic sto­ries of Nasa’s mis­sions to the Moon. Sea­son 1: the first Moon land­ing, Apol­lo 11. Sea­son 2: the near dis­as­ter of Apol­lo 13. Pre­sen­ter: Kevin Fong. Theme music: Hans Zim­mer.

Cau­tion­ary Tales — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — We tell our chil­dren unset­tling fairy tales to teach them valu­able life lessons, but these Cau­tion­ary Tales are for the edu­ca­tion of the grown ups – and they are all true. Tim Har­ford (Finan­cial Times, BBC, author of “Messy” and “The Under­cov­er Econ­o­mist”) brings you sto­ries of awful human error, trag­ic cat­a­stro­phes, dar­ing heists and hilar­i­ous fias­cos. They’ll delight you, scare you, but also make you wis­er.

Crime­town — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A ser­i­al doc­u­men­tary pod­cast looks at how orga­nized crime has shaped par­tic­u­lar Amer­i­can cities.

Crim­i­nal — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A pod­cast about crime. Not so much the “if it bleeds, it leads,” kind of crime. Some­thing a lit­tle more com­plex. Sto­ries of peo­ple who’ve done wrong, been wronged, and/or got­ten caught some­where in the mid­dle.

Ear Hus­tle — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Ear Hus­tle brings you the dai­ly real­i­ties of life inside prison shared by those liv­ing it, and sto­ries from the out­side, post-incar­cer­a­tion. The pod­cast is a part­ner­ship between Nigel Poor, a Bay Area visu­al artist, and Ear­lonne Woods, for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed at San Quentin State Prison, and was co-found­ed with for­mer San Quentin res­i­dent Antwan Williams.

Futil­i­ty Clos­et — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — For­got­ten sto­ries from the pages of his­to­ry. Join us for sur­pris­ing and curi­ous tales from the past and chal­lenge your­self with our lat­er­al think­ing puz­zles.

Heavy­weight — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A pod­cast cre­at­ed and pro­duced by humorist Jonathan Gold­stein where he helps peo­ple try to resolve a moment from their past that they wish they could change.

HumaNa­ture — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — HumaNa­ture is the pod­cast that explores where humans and our habi­tat meet. The show tells real sto­ries about human expe­ri­ences in nature. Along the way, we’ll meet peo­ple whose encoun­ters help us reflect on our own place in the nat­ur­al world.

Invis­i­bil­ia — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Unsee­able forces con­trol human behav­ior and shape our ideas, beliefs, and assump­tions. Invisibilia—Latin for invis­i­ble things—fuses nar­ra­tive sto­ry­telling with sci­ence that will make you see your own life dif­fer­ent­ly.

Mod­ern Love — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — Mod­ern Love fea­tures top actors per­form­ing true sto­ries of love, loss, and redemp­tion. It has includ­ed per­for­mances by Kate Winslet, Uma Thur­man, Angela Bas­sett, Jake Gyl­len­haal, Ster­ling K. Brown, and more. A col­lab­o­ra­tion between WBUR and The New York Times.

Mys­tery Show — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Vot­ed the top pod­cast of the year, this pod­cast fea­tures Star­lee Kine solv­ing mys­ter­ies.

Myths and Leg­ends — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Jason Weis­er tells sto­ries from myths, leg­ends, and folk­lore that have shaped cul­tures through­out his­to­ry. Some, like the sto­ries of Aladdin, King Arthur, and Her­cules are sto­ries you think you know, but with sur­pris­ing ori­gins. Oth­ers are sto­ries you might not have heard, but real­ly should. All the sto­ries are sourced from world folk­lore, but retold for mod­ern ears.

Out­side — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS —  Out­side’s long­stand­ing lit­er­ary sto­ry­telling tra­di­tion comes to life in audio with fea­tures that will both enter­tain and inform lis­ten­ers. The pod­cast offers a range of sto­ry for­mats, includ­ing inter­views with the biggest fig­ures in sports, adven­ture, and pol­i­tics, as well as reports from our cor­re­spon­dents in the field.

S‑Town — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — From Ser­i­al and This Amer­i­can Life, this pod­cast tells you about a man named John who despis­es his Alaba­ma town and decides to do some­thing about it. He asks Bri­an to inves­ti­gate the son of a wealthy fam­i­ly who’s alleged­ly been brag­ging that he got away with mur­der. But when some­one else ends up dead, the search for the truth leads to a nasty feud, a hunt for hid­den trea­sure, and an unearthing of the mys­ter­ies of one man’s life.

Ser­i­al — Apple — Google — Web Site — Host­ed by Sarah Koenig, Ser­i­al unfolds one sto­ry — a true sto­ry — over the course of a whole sea­son. The show fol­lows the plot and char­ac­ters wher­ev­er they lead, through many sur­pris­ing twists and turns. Sarah won’t know what hap­pens at the end of the sto­ry until she gets there, not long before you get there with her.

Snap Judg­ment — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — This pod­cast mix­es real sto­ries with killer beats to pro­duce cin­e­mat­ic, dra­mat­ic, kick-ass radio. Snap’s raw, musi­cal brand of sto­ry­telling dares lis­ten­ers to see the world through the eyes of anoth­er. Also see their spin­off pod­cast, Spooked.

Sto­ryCorps — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Sto­ries of the human heart. A can­did, unscript­ed con­ver­sa­tion between two peo­ple about what’s real­ly impor­tant in life: love, loss, fam­i­ly, friend­ship. When the world seems out of hand, tune in to Sto­ryCorps and be remind­ed of the things that mat­ter most.

The Bal­lad of Bil­ly Balls — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — It’s 1982, and a man bursts into an East Vil­lage store­front apart­ment and shoots punk musi­cian Bil­ly Balls. Author and activist iO Tillett Wright and Crime­town Pro­duc­er Austin Mitchell unrav­el a mys­tery of love and loss, the ten­der binds of fam­i­ly, and the sto­ries we tell our­selves just to sur­vive.

The Clear­ing — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — When April Bal­as­cio was 40 years old, some­thing she’d feared for decades was final­ly proven true. Her father, Edward Wayne Edwards, real­ly was a mur­der­er. The Clear­ing is about what came after April called a detec­tive in 2009 to tell him about her sus­pi­cions — a call that led to her father’s arrest and even­tu­al con­vic­tion on mul­ti­ple mur­ders.

The Kitchen Sis­ters Present — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS —  The Kitchen Sis­ters Present… Sto­ries from the b‑side of his­to­ry. Lost record­ings, hid­den worlds, peo­ple pos­sessed by a sound, a vision, a mis­sion. The episodes tell deeply lay­ered sto­ries, lush with inter­views, field record­ings and music.

The Leap — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — From a doctor’s con­tro­ver­sial LSD treat­ments to a mother’s high-risk efforts to recov­er her abduct­ed child to a punk rock pioneer’s rad­i­cal career rein­ven­tion, these are sto­ries of peo­ple mak­ing dra­mat­ic, risky changes—and the big and small deci­sions that change the course of lives. Host­ed by award­­­-win­ning jour­nal­ist Judy Camp­bell.

The Mem­o­ry Palace — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Short, sur­pris­ing sto­ries of the past, some­times heart­break­ing, some­times hys­ter­i­cal, often a lit­tle bit of both.

The Moth — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Since its launch in 1997, The Moth has pre­sent­ed thou­sands of true sto­ries, told live and with­out notes, to stand­ing-room-only crowds world­wide. Moth sto­ry­tellers stand alone, under a spot­light, with only a micro­phone and a room­ful of strangers. The sto­ry­teller and the audi­ence embark on a high-wire act of shared expe­ri­ence which is both ter­ri­fy­ing and exhil­a­rat­ing. Since 2008, The Moth pod­cast has fea­tured many of our favorite sto­ries told live on Moth stages around the coun­try.

This Amer­i­can Life — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — A famous week­ly pub­lic radio pro­gram and pod­cast. Each week they choose a theme and put togeth­er dif­fer­ent kinds of sto­ries on that theme.

This is Love — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — From the mak­ers of the award-win­ning pod­cast Crim­i­nal, This is Love inves­ti­gates life’s most per­sis­tent mys­tery. Sto­ries of sac­ri­fice, obses­sion, and the ways in which we bet every­thing on each oth­er.

White Lies — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — In 1965, Rev. James Reeb was mur­dered in Sel­ma, Alaba­ma. Three men were tried and acquit­ted, but no one was ever held to account. Fifty years lat­er, two jour­nal­ists from Alaba­ma return to the city where it hap­pened, expose the lies that kept the mur­der from being solved and uncov­er a sto­ry about guilt and mem­o­ry that says as much about Amer­i­ca today as it does about the past.

You Must Remem­ber This — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site —  This is a sto­ry­telling pod­cast explor­ing the secret and/or for­got­ten his­to­ries of Hollywood’s first cen­tu­ry. It’s the brain­child and pas­sion project of Kari­na Long­worth (founder of Cinematical.com, for­mer film crit­ic for LA Week­ly), who writes, nar­rates, records and edits each episode. It is a heav­i­ly-researched work of cre­ative non­fic­tion: nav­i­gat­ing through con­flict­ing reports, mythol­o­gy, and insti­tu­tion­al­ized spin, Kari­na tries to sort out what real­ly hap­pened behind the films, stars and scan­dals of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Business & Economy

a16z — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — The a16z Pod­cast dis­cuss­es tech and cul­ture trends, news, and the future – espe­cial­ly as ‘soft­ware eats the world’. It fea­tures indus­try experts, busi­ness lead­ers, and oth­er inter­est­ing thinkers and voic­es from around the world. This pod­cast is pro­duced by Andreessen Horowitz (aka “a16z”), a Sil­i­con Val­ley-based ven­ture cap­i­tal firm.

Har­vard Busi­ness Review Idea­Cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — A week­ly pod­cast fea­tur­ing the lead­ers in busi­ness and man­age­ment.

How I Built This — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — From NPR. Guy Raz dives into the sto­ries behind some of the world’s best known com­pa­nies. The pod­cast weaves a nar­ra­tive jour­ney about inno­va­tors, entre­pre­neurs and idealists—and the move­ments they built.

Mar­ket­place — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Host­ed by Kai Ryss­dal, NPR’s flag­ship pro­gram is all about pro­vid­ing con­text on the eco­nom­ic news of the day. Through sto­ries, con­ver­sa­tions and news­wor­thy num­bers, we help lis­ten­ers under­stand the eco­nom­ic world around them.

Mas­ters of Scale — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — The best start­up advice from Sil­i­con Val­ley & beyond in a pod­cast host­ed by host Reid Hoff­man — LinkedIn cofounder, Grey­lock part­ner and leg­endary Sil­i­con Val­ley investor. The show fea­tures icon­ic CEOs — from Nike to Net­flix, Star­bucks to Slack — shar­ing the sto­ries & strate­gies that helped them grow from star­tups into glob­al brands.

Piv­ot — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Kara Swish­er and NYU Pro­fes­sor Scott Gal­loway offer sharp, unfil­tered insights into the biggest sto­ries in tech, busi­ness, and pol­i­tics.

Plan­et Mon­ey — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS —  The econ­o­my explained by NPR. Imag­ine you could call up a friend and say, “Meet me at the bar and tell me what’s going on with the econ­o­my.” Now imag­ine that’s actu­al­ly a fun evening.

The Jour­nal — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — A Wall Street Jour­nal pod­cast on the most impor­tant sto­ries, explained through the lens of busi­ness. A pod­cast about mon­ey, busi­ness and pow­er.

Work­Life with Adam Grant — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist Adam Grant takes you inside the minds of some of the world’s most unusu­al pro­fes­sion­als to explore the sci­ence of mak­ing work not suck. From learn­ing how to love crit­i­cism to har­ness­ing the pow­er of frus­tra­tion, one thing’s for sure: You’ll nev­er see your job the same way again.

Personal Development (Including creativity)

Find­ing Mas­tery — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Michael Ger­vais is a high per­for­mance psy­chol­o­gist. His pod­cast is built around a cen­tral goal: unpack­ing and decod­ing how the great­est per­form­ers in the world use their minds to cre­ate amaz­ing jour­neys while they pur­sue the bound­aries of human poten­tial.

Mag­ic Lessons- Apple — Google — Web Site — Writer Eliz­a­beth Gilbert’s cre­ativ­i­ty pod­cast “fea­tures her inter­view­ing peo­ple about how they over­come the fears that are inher­ent in the cre­ative process, and call­ing up famous cre­atives to get their input.”

The Hap­pi­ness Lab with Dr. Lau­rie San­tos — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — You might think you know what it takes to lead a hap­pi­er life… more mon­ey, a bet­ter job, or Insta­gram-wor­thy vaca­tions. You’re dead wrong. Yale pro­fes­sor Dr. Lau­rie San­tos has stud­ied the sci­ence of hap­pi­ness and found that many of us do the exact oppo­site of what will tru­ly make our lives bet­ter. Based on the psy­chol­o­gy course she teach­es at Yale–the most pop­u­lar class in the university’s 300-year history–Laurie will take you through the lat­est sci­en­tif­ic research and share some sur­pris­ing and inspir­ing sto­ries that will change the way you think about hap­pi­ness.

The Jor­dan Har­bin­ger Show — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google —  The Jor­dan Har­bin­ger Show (Apple’s Best of 2018) is where self-moti­vat­ed peo­ple, just like you, dig deep into the untapped wis­dom of the world’s sharpest minds- from leg­endary cre­ators to intel­li­gence oper­a­tives, icon­o­clas­tic writ­ers to vision­ary change-mak­ers. They bring amaz­ing sto­ries and bril­liant per­son­al­i­ties to the table, and help you demys­ti­fy what they do and how they do it.

The Moment with Bri­an Kop­pel­man — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Inter­views about the piv­otal moments that fueled fas­ci­nat­ing cre­ative careers. Host­ed by Bri­an Kop­pel­man.

The Tim Fer­riss Show — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — YouTube — RSS — This pop­u­lar pod­cast cov­ers top­ics rang­ing from per­son­al and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, to morn­ing rou­tines and med­i­ta­tion habits of celebri­ties, CEOs and cul­tur­al fig­ures like Neil Gaiman, Brene Brown, Michael Lewis, Aman­da Palmer, Alain de Bot­ton and more.

Unlock­ing Us with Brené Brown — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — RSS — Join researcher and #1 New York Times best-sell­ing author Brené Brown as she unpacks and explores the ideas, sto­ries, expe­ri­ences, books, films, and music that reflect the uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ences of being human, from the bravest moments to the most bro­ken­heart­ed.

Sports

30 for 30 — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Orig­i­nal audio doc­u­men­taries from the mak­ers of the acclaimed 30 for 30 film series, fea­tur­ing sto­ries from the world of sports and beyond. 30 for 30 offers cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­telling for sports fans and gen­er­al inter­est lis­ten­ers alike, going beyond the field to explore how sports, com­pe­ti­tion, ath­leti­cism and adven­ture affect our lives and our world. Sports sto­ries like you’ve nev­er heard before.

The Bill Sim­mons Pod­cast — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Sim­mons hosts the most down­loaded sports pod­cast of all time, with a rotat­ing crew of celebri­ties, ath­letes, and media sta­ples.

We Came to Win — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Every four years, peo­ple all over the world turn their eyes, ears, and hearts toward the most excit­ing sports com­pe­ti­tion on the plan­et: The World Cup. We Came to Win tells the sto­ries behind the tournament’s most mem­o­rable moments.

News & Current Events

538 — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Nate Sil­ver and the FiveThir­tyEight team cov­er the lat­est in pol­i­tics, track­ing the issues and “game-chang­ers” every week.

Deep Back­ground with Noah Feld­man — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — Every sto­ry has a back­sto­ry, even in today’s 24-hour news cycle. In Deep Back­ground, Har­vard Law School pro­fes­sor and Bloomberg View colum­nist Noah Feld­man will bring togeth­er a cross-sec­tion of expert guests to explore the his­tor­i­cal, sci­en­tif­ic, legal, and cul­tur­al con­text that help us under­stand what’s real­ly going on behind the biggest sto­ries in the news.

Embed­ded — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — RSS — NPR host Kel­ly McEv­ers takes a sto­ry from the news and goes deep. Whether that means dig­ging into the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s past, the sto­ries behind police shoot­ings caught on video, or vis­it­ing a town rav­aged by the opi­oid epi­dem­ic, Embed­ded takes you where the news is hap­pen­ing.

Reveal — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — Web Site — From pris­ons to protests, immi­gra­tion to the envi­ron­ment, Peabody Award-win­ning Reveal goes deep into the press­ing issues of our times. The Atlantic says “the expe­ri­ence of each episode is akin to a spoon­ful of sug­ar, even when it’s telling a sto­ry about Richard Spencer’s cot­ton farms or a man’s final days as a hero­in addict.” Reveal is a project of The Cen­ter for Inves­tiga­tive Report­ing.

Stay Tuned with Preet — Apple —  Google — Spo­ti­fy — Web Site — Join for­mer U.S. Attor­ney Preet Bharara as he breaks down legal top­ics in the news and engages thought lead­ers in a pod­cast about pow­er, pol­i­cy, and jus­tice.

The City — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — The City is an inves­tiga­tive pod­cast from USA TODAY that tells true sto­ries about how pow­er works in urban Amer­i­ca.

The Dai­ly — Apple — Spo­ti­fy — Google — RSS — From The New York Times, this is what the news should sound like. The biggest sto­ries of our time, told by the best jour­nal­ists in the world. Host­ed by Michael Bar­baro.

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Bill Gates Recommends 5 Thought-Provoking Books to Read This Summer

in Books | May 22nd, 2020

Have free time on your hands? Then let Bill Gates sug­gest five books to fill your days. Most take you deep­er into think­ing about our chal­leng­ing times. At least one pro­vides a men­tal escape. Bill writes:

Upheaval: Turn­ing Points for Nations in Cri­sis, by Jared Dia­mond. I’m a big fan of every­thing Jared has writ­ten, and his lat­est is no excep­tion. The book explores how soci­eties react dur­ing moments of cri­sis. He uses a series of fas­ci­nat­ing case stud­ies to show how nations man­aged exis­ten­tial chal­lenges like civ­il war, for­eign threats, and gen­er­al malaise. It sounds a bit depress­ing, but I fin­ished the book even more opti­mistic about our abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems than I start­ed. More here.

Nine Pints: A Jour­ney Through the Mys­te­ri­ous, Mirac­u­lous World of Blood. If you get grossed out by blood, this one prob­a­bly isn’t for you. But if you’re like me and find it fas­ci­nat­ing, you’ll enjoy this book by a British jour­nal­ist with an espe­cial­ly per­son­al con­nec­tion to the sub­ject. I’m a big fan of books that go deep on one spe­cif­ic top­ic, so Nine Pints (the title refers to the vol­ume of blood in the aver­age adult) was right up my alley. It’s filled with super-inter­est­ing facts that will leave you with a new appre­ci­a­tion for blood. More here.

A Gen­tle­man in Moscow, by Amor Towles. It seems like every­one I know has read this book. I final­ly joined the club after my broth­er-in-law sent me a copy, and I’m glad I did. Towles’s nov­el about a count sen­tenced to life under house arrest in a Moscow hotel is fun, clever, and sur­pris­ing­ly upbeat. Even if you don’t enjoy read­ing about Rus­sia as much as I do (I’ve read every book by Dos­toyevsky), A Gen­tle­man in Moscow is an amaz­ing sto­ry that any­one can enjoy. More here.

Pres­i­dents of War: The Epic Sto­ry, from 1807 to Mod­ern Times, by Michael Beschloss. My inter­est in all aspects of the Viet­nam War is the main rea­son I decid­ed to pick up this book. By the time I fin­ished it, I learned a lot not only about Viet­nam but about the eight oth­er major con­flicts the U.S. entered between the turn of the 19th cen­tu­ry and the 1970s. Beschloss’s broad scope lets you draw impor­tant cross-cut­ting lessons about pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship. More here.

The Future of Cap­i­tal­ism: Fac­ing the New Anx­i­eties, by Paul Col­lier. Collier’s lat­est book is a thought-pro­vok­ing look at a top­ic that’s top of mind for a lot of peo­ple right now. Although I don’t agree with him about everything—I think his analy­sis of the prob­lem is bet­ter than his pro­posed solutions—his back­ground as a devel­op­ment econ­o­mist gives him a smart per­spec­tive on where cap­i­tal­ism is head­ed.

Find anoth­er addi­tion­al list of books Gates con­sid­ers worth read­ing here.

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 Bill Gates Reads Books

Bill Gates Describes His Biggest Fear: “I Rate the Chance of a Wide­spread Epi­dem­ic Far Worse Than Ebo­la at Well Over 50 Per­cent” (2015)

Bill Gates Names 5 Books You Should Read This Sum­mer (2018)

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends Five Books for Sum­mer 2017

5 Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer (2016)

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The Evocativeness of Decomposing Film: Watch the 1926 Hollywood Movie The Bells Become the Experimental 2004 Short Film, Light Is Calling

in Film, History | May 22nd, 2020

We think of movies as last­ing for­ev­er. And since we can pull up videos of films from 50, 80, even 100 years ago, why should­n’t we? But as every­one who dives deep into this his­to­ry of cin­e­ma knows, the fur­ther back in time you go, the more movies are “lost,” whol­ly or par­tial­ly. In the case of the lat­ter, bits and pieces remain of film — actu­al, phys­i­cal film — but often they’ve been poor­ly pre­served and thus have bad­ly degrad­ed. Still, they have val­ue, and not just to cin­e­ma schol­ars. The thir­ty-year-long career of film­mak­er Bill Mor­ri­son, for instance, demon­strates just how evoca­tive­ly film at the end of its life can be put to artis­tic use.

“Cre­at­ed using a decom­pos­ing 35mm print of the crime dra­ma The Bells (1926), the exper­i­men­tal short Light Is Call­ing (2004) depicts a dreamy encounter between a sol­dier and a mys­te­ri­ous woman,” says Aeon. “With images that reveal them­selves only to dis­tort and dis­ap­pear into the decay­ing amber-tint­ed nitrate,” Mor­ri­son “invites view­ers to med­i­tate on the fleet­ing nature of all things phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al, while a min­i­mal­is­tic vio­lin score suf­fus­es the cen­tu­ry-old images with a wist­ful, haunt­ing beau­ty.” Light Is Call­ing would have one kind of poignan­cy if The Bells were a lost film, but since you can watch it in full just below — and with a decent­ly kept-up image, by the stan­dards of mid-1920s movies — it has quite anoth­er.

Like many pic­tures of the silent era, The Bells was adapt­ed from a stage play, in this case Alexan­dre Cha­tri­an and Emile Erck­man­n’s Le Juif Polon­ais. Orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in 1867, the play was turned into an opera before it was turned into a film — which first hap­pened in 1911 in Aus­tralia, then in 1913 and 1918 in Amer­i­ca, then in 1928 in a British-Bel­gian co-pro­duc­tion. This 1926 Hol­ly­wood ver­sion, which fea­tures such big names of the day as Boris Karloff and Lionel Bar­ry­more, came as Le Juif Polon­ais’ fifth film adap­ta­tion, but not its last: two more, made in Britain and Aus­tralia, would fol­low in the 1930s. The mate­r­i­al of the sto­ry, altered and altered again through gen­er­a­tions of use, feels suit­able indeed for Light Is Call­ing, whose thor­ough­ly dam­aged images make us imag­ine the inten­tions of the orig­i­nal, each in our own way.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Beau­ty of Degrad­ed Art: Why We Like Scratchy Vinyl, Grainy Film, Wob­bly VHS & Oth­er Ana­log-Media Imper­fec­tion

What the First Movies Real­ly Looked Like: Dis­cov­er the IMAX Films of the 1890s

The Ear­li­est Known Motion Pic­ture, 1888’s Round­hay Gar­den Scene, Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Watch Alain Resnais’ Short, Evoca­tive Film on the Nation­al Library of France (1956)

See What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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 Shakespeare and Company Project Digitizes the Records of the Famous Bookstore, Showing the Reading Habits of the Lost Generation

in Literature | May 14th, 2020

Great writ­ers don’t come out of nowhere, even if some of them might end up there. They grow in gar­dens tend­ed by oth­er writ­ers, read­ers, edi­tors, and pio­neer­ing book­sellers like Sylvia Beach, founder and pro­pri­etor of Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny. Beach opened the Eng­lish-lan­guage shop in Paris in 1919. Three years lat­er, she pub­lished James Joyce’s Ulysses, “a feat that would make her—and her book­shop and lend­ing library—famous,” notes Prince­ton University’s Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny Project. (Infa­mous as well, giv­en the obscen­i­ty charges against the nov­el in the U.S.)

Just as the pub­li­ca­tion of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl put Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights at the cen­ter of the Beat move­ment, so Joyce’s mas­ter­piece made Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny a des­ti­na­tion for aspir­ing Mod­ernists.

The shop was already “the meet­ing place for a com­mu­ni­ty of expa­tri­ate writ­ers and artists now known as the Lost Gen­er­a­tion.” Along with Joyce, there gath­ered Ernest Hem­ing­way, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, all of whom not only bought books but bor­rowed them and left a hand­writ­ten record of their read­ing habits.

Through a large-scale dig­i­ti­za­tion project of the Sylvia Beach papers at Prince­ton, the Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny Project will “recre­ate the world of the Lost Gen­er­a­tion. The Project details what mem­bers of the lend­ing library read and where they lived, and how expa­tri­ate life changed between the end of World War I and the Ger­man Occu­pa­tion of France.” Dur­ing the thir­ties, Beach began to cater more to French-speak­ing intel­lec­tu­als. Among lat­er log­books we’ll find the names Aimé Césaire, Jacques Lacan, and Simone de Beau­voir. Beach closed the store for good in 1941, the sto­ry goes, rather than sell a Nazi offi­cer a copy of Finnegans Wake.

Princeton’s “trove of mate­ri­als reveals, among oth­er things,” writes Lithub, “the read­ing pref­er­ences of some of the 20th century’s most famous writ­ers,” it’s true. But not only are there many famous names; the library logs also record “less famous but no less inter­est­ing fig­ures, too, from a respect­ed French physi­cist to the woman who start­ed the musi­col­o­gy pro­gram at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia.” Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny became the place to go for thou­sands of French and expat patrons in Paris dur­ing some of the city’s most leg­en­dar­i­ly lit­er­ary years.

“Eng­lish-lan­guage books are expen­sive,” if you’ve arrived in the city in the 1920s, the Project explains—“five to twen­ty times the price of French books.” Eng­lish-lan­guage hold­ings at oth­er libraries are lim­it­ed. Read­ers, and soon-to-be famous writ­ers, go to Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny to bor­row a copy of Moby Dick or pick up the lat­est New York­er.

You find Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny on a nar­row side street, just off the Car­refour de l’Odéon. You step inside. The room is filled with books and mag­a­zines. You rec­og­nize a framed por­trait of Edgar Allan Poe. You also rec­og­nize a few framed Whit­man man­u­scripts. Sylvia Beach, the own­er, intro­duces her­self and tells you that her aunt vis­it­ed Whit­man in Cam­den, New Jer­sey and saved the man­u­scripts from the waste­bas­ket. Yes, this is the place for you.

The lend­ing library had dif­fer­ent mem­ber­ship plans (you can learn about them here) and kept care­ful records with codes indi­cat­ing the sta­tus of each bor­row­er. These records are still being dig­i­tized and the Project is ongo­ing. It does not offi­cial­ly launch until next month. But at the moment, you can: “Search the lend­ing library mem­ber­ship. Browse the lend­ing library cards. Read about join­ing the lend­ing library. Down­load a pre­lim­i­nary export of Project data. In June, you will be able to search and browse the lend­ing library’s books, track the cir­cu­la­tion of your favorite novels—and dis­cov­er new ones.”

See how these lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ties shaped and reshaped them­selves around what would become “the most famous book­store in the world.”

via Lithub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce Picked Drunk­en Fights, Then Hid Behind Ernest Hem­ing­way

7 Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec­tion Let­ter from Pub­lish­er (1912)

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

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Nina Simone Song “Color Is a Beautiful Thing” Animated in a Gorgeous Video

in Music | May 13th, 2020

Four years (or what seems like a life­time) ago, con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed over the cast­ing of actress Zoe Sal­dana, with dark­ened skin, as icon­ic pianist and singer Nina Simone in the biopic Nina. Accu­sa­tions of racism and col­orism met the film, his­tor­i­cal atti­tudes hun­dreds of years in the mak­ing that Simone her­self fought through­out her career, espe­cial­ly after she joined the Civ­il Rights move­ment in the 1960s and active­ly made her per­son­al strug­gles with racism cen­tral to her polit­i­cal state­ments.

“You can­not under­stand Nina Simone’s life and lega­cy with­out tak­ing stock of her iden­ti­ty as a dark-skinned black woman,” says Vox’s Vic­to­ria Massie. “That fact was inex­tri­ca­bly linked to her life’s tra­jec­to­ry, her art and her politics—to every­thing that made Nina fear­less­ly and unapolo­get­i­cal­ly Nina.” Her daugh­ter Simone Kel­ly put it this way:

We all have a sto­ry. My moth­er suf­fered. We can go all the way back to when she was a child and peo­ple told her her nose was too big, her skin was too dark, her lips were too wide. It’s very impor­tant the world acknowl­edges my moth­er was a clas­si­cal musi­cian whose dreams were not real­ized because of racism.

Simone car­ried the wounds of those expe­ri­ences through­out her life, and she sought to heal them through music that affirmed the expe­ri­ence of oth­er young, dark-skinned girls who faced sim­i­lar obsta­cles.

The out­stand­ing nar­ra­tive “Four Women,” from 1966’s Wild is the Wind, artic­u­lates the dif­fer­ent treat­ment its char­ac­ters receive based on skin col­or. The Vil­lage Voice’s Thu­lani Davis called the song “an instant­ly acces­si­ble analy­sis of the damn­ing lega­cy of slav­ery.” The famous “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black,” writ­ten for Simone’s friend and men­tor Lor­raine Hans­ber­ry, became an anthem of the Civ­il Rights move­ment in the 1970s.

Years lat­er, in “Col­or is a Beau­ti­ful Thing,” Simone revis­it­ed the theme in a short, repet­i­tive one-minute piece that is instant­ly sing-along-able. The song comes from her 1982 album Fod­der on My Wings, just re-released last month by Verve. “Col­or is a Beau­ti­ful Thing” is per­fect­ly tai­lored for young chil­dren, who will respond with joy not only to Simone’s rol­lick­ing piano but to the beau­ti­ful­ly ani­mat­ed video above.

Fod­der on My Wings is an over­looked album, Shel­don Pearce writes at Pitch­fork, “about per­son­al freedom—about lib­er­at­ing her­self from her past and find­ing the lib­er­ty to cre­ate as she pleased. It was Simone’s means of work­ing through fear—of death, manip­u­la­tion, dis­crim­i­na­tion.” In the lin­er notes, she her­self writes, “What I did on this album was try to get myself deep into joy.”

The method above is mantra-like, the song’s refrain “like some­thing she’s try­ing to inter­nal­ize, a coda to 1969’s ‘To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black.” Simone nev­er seemed to over­come her own pain, but her gift—in addi­tion to her musi­cal brilliance—was to freely share the lessons she learned in the strug­gle, the bit­ter and the sweet, and to teach new gen­er­a­tions of artists.

via The Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Nina Simone Became Hip Hop’s “Secret Weapon”: From Lau­ryn Hill to Jay Z and Kanye West

Watch a New Nina Simone Ani­ma­tion Based on an Inter­view Nev­er Aired in the U.S. Before

Watch Nina Simone Sing the Black Pride Anthem, “To Be Young, Gift­ed and Black,” on Sesame Street (1972)

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

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Little Richard Burst Into the “Then-Macho World of Rock” and “Changed it Forever”

in Music | May 11th, 2020

If Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe was the God­moth­er of Rock and Roll, then Lit­tle Richard, who passed away Sat­ur­day at the age of 87 from bone can­cer, deserves to be its God­fa­ther. This is no emp­ty hon­orif­ic, despite the fact that Tharpe was already tour­ing the coun­try as a teenage gospel prodi­gy in 1932 when Richard Pen­ni­man was born in Macon Geor­gia, and “oth­er musi­cians,” includ­ing Chuck Berry, Fats Domi­no, Bo Did­dley, and Elvis Pres­ley, “had already been min­ing a sim­i­lar vein by the time [Lit­tle Richard] record­ed his first hit, ‘Tut­ti Frutti’—a rau­cous song about sex, its lyrics cleaned up but its mean­ing hard to miss,” writes Tim Wein­er in a New York Times obit­u­ary.

Lit­tle Richard “raised the ener­gy lev­el sev­er­al notch­es and cre­at­ed some­thing not quite like any music that had been heard before—something new, thrilling and more than a lit­tle dan­ger­ous.” Tak­ing his lessons from Tharpe, he brought the dynamism of the gospel he was raised to sing and the pro­fane rhythms of the blues into a high-volt­age syn­the­sis. Lit­tle Richard’s rep­u­ta­tion needs no bur­nish­ing. He has nev­er been neglect­ed by his­to­ri­ans of rock and roll. Nonethe­less, it is star­tling to rec­og­nize, as gui­tar great Ver­non Reid wrote in a Twit­ter trib­ute: “No Jimi, No Bea­t­les No Bowie, No Bolan. NO GLAM, No Fred­die, No Prince, No Elton, No Pre­ston No Sly, No Ste­vie, WITHOUT Lit­tle Richard!”

Lit­tle Richard’s life sto­ry mir­rors his ear­ly hero Roset­ta Tharpe’s in sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant ways. Not only were they two of the most wide­ly influ­en­tial stars to emerge from the black church and onto sec­u­lar stages, but they were also the music’s first stars to live open­ly gay lives, for a time, before suc­cumb­ing to church and social pres­sures and return­ing to the clos­et. For Tharpe, that meant end­ing a long rela­tion­ship with her roman­tic and tour­ing part­ner Marie Knight and agree­ing “to par­tic­i­pate in a spec­ta­cle of a wed­ding endorsed and encour­aged by the record label for prof­it,” writes Lyn­nee Denise, “in front a pay­ing crowd of 25,000 pay­ing guests.”

Lit­tle Richard famous­ly walked away from his explo­sive career in 1957 to mar­ry, adopt a son, and become a mis­sion­ary. The mar­riage, and re-con­ver­sion, didn’t last. After four years, he was divorced fol­low­ing an arrest for “approach­ing men in a restroom,” notes France 24. “Richard—resentful that rock ‘n’ roll was tak­ing off with­out him—soon returned to music with a tri­umphant tour of Eng­land.” (See him in a fierce per­for­mance in France above from 1966.) Then he went back to the church and nev­er left. “By the late 1980s he had man­aged to merge his reli­gious life and his stage per­sona, tour­ing as a preach­er and offi­ci­at­ing at flashy celebri­ty wed­dings.”

He became some­thing of a car­i­ca­ture of him­self in lat­er years, appear­ing as a high-camp fig­ure in TV and film. Through­out his life, Richard iden­ti­fied open­ly as gay or bisex­u­al, recount­ing sto­ries of orgies and telling Pent­house in 1995, “I’ve been gay my whole life.” He also preached against LGTBTQ peo­ple, call­ing same-sex attrac­tion “unnat­ur­al.” The L.A. Times’ Richard Cromelin under­states the case in writ­ing, “he var­i­ous­ly mod­i­fied his sto­ry and renounced and/or denied his homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.” Depend­ing on how one saw it, he was either divine­ly “healed” of his life­long sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, or he was trag­i­cal­ly beset by ingrained reli­gious self-hatred.

Maybe none of this should mat­ter much in assess­ing Lit­tle Richard’s musi­cal lega­cy, except for the fact that his sud­den appear­ance as a gay artist in the “then-macho world of rock,” as France 24 puts it, changed that world irrev­o­ca­bly. Lit­tle Richard’s flam­boy­ance and teas­ing ambiva­lence became a hall­mark of pop cul­ture; his per­sona informed the stage career of near­ly every queer and sex­u­al­ly ambigu­ous super­star to fol­low. As a “sex­u­al­ly flu­id black man com­ing from the US south,” he gave black artists per­mis­sion to exper­i­ment with iden­ti­ty and defy rigid stereo­types imposed by a lega­cy of slav­ery. There’s also no get­ting around the fact that “Tut­ti Frut­ti,” the song that “intox­i­cat­ed legions of teenage fans eager to break loose from but­toned-up mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca,” was orig­i­nal­ly a song about anal sex. You can read those excised lyrics at Bill­board. They involve the phras­es “good booty” and “grease it.”

Like one of his most tal­ent­ed of his many off­spring, Prince, Lit­tle Richard some­how found a life­long home in a reli­gion that reject­ed his sex­u­al desire. This has been dif­fi­cult for many of his fans to under­stand. Per­haps he was enact­ing this com­pli­cat­ed, lib­er­at­ing, like­ly tor­tu­ous strug­gle to rec­on­cile the irrec­on­cil­able while onstage scream­ing bloody mur­der and gen­er­al­ly tear­ing the roof off the place. In what­ev­er way Lit­tle Richard ulti­mate­ly came to terms with his pres­ence in music he claimed to have invent­ed (despite Sis­ter Roset­ta), and yet also called “demon­ic,” it’s unde­ni­able that the past six­ty years or so of pop cul­ture would nev­er have hap­pened with­out him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

The Woman Who Invent­ed Rock n’ Roll: An Intro­duc­tion to Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe

New Web Project Immor­tal­izes the Over­looked Women Who Helped Cre­ate Rock and Roll in the 1950s

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

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

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The Case for a Universal Basic Income in the Time of COVID-19

in Current Affairs, Economics | May 11th, 2020

The idea of Uni­ver­sal Basic Income (UBI) has been the sub­ject of much debate in the past few years. The can­di­da­cy of Andrew Yang for U.S. Pres­i­dent brought the issue to nation­al promi­nence, where it has remained dur­ing the spread of COVID-19. What is UBI? Put sim­ply, it pro­pos­es that the gov­ern­ment give every cit­i­zen a cer­tain amount of mon­ey each month to cov­er, at the least, basic liv­ing expens­es. As the video above by YouTube chan­nel Kurzge­sagt explains, those cit­i­zens are then free to live their lives as they like.

Unlike most wel­fare state mod­els, UBI usu­al­ly does not involve any means test­ing. In most schemes, every cit­i­zen, no mat­ter their cur­rent wealth or income, receives the ben­e­fit. (Though most stud­ies of the pro­gram have only giv­en it to poor or unem­ployed ben­e­fi­cia­ries.) Those who do not need the mon­ey can do what­ev­er they want with it, but so too can those who need it. UBI ensures that peo­ple do not have go home­less or hun­gry if they lose their liveli­hood, and that they can sur­vive with­out pater­nal­ist state agen­cies breath­ing down their necks.

UBI is not a new idea but dates back at least to Thomas Paine, whose Com­mon Sense inspired the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion and whose Rights of Man defend­ed the French a few years lat­er. As Paine argued in anoth­er, lit­tle-read, pam­phlet, Agrar­i­an Jus­tice, no one could be tru­ly free if they had no means of sub­sis­tence. Since cap­i­tal­ism had placed most of those means under pri­vate own­er­ship, he rea­soned, cit­i­zens should be com­pen­sat­ed for being deprived of resources that belonged to them by nat­ur­al right as much as to any­one else.

This philo­soph­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion doesn’t always enter into the con­ver­sa­tion, which is often framed in more prag­mat­ic terms as a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic expe­di­ent in times of cap­i­tal­ist cri­sis: in times, for exam­ple, like the present moment. The COVID-19 cri­sis has inten­si­fied calls for a UBI, as mil­lions of lay­offs point toward the inevitabil­i­ty of a depres­sion. Push­ing peo­ple back to work dur­ing the pan­dem­ic seems to be the only thing the U.S. gov­ern­ment plans to do, but no amount of coer­cion can stop the virus from forc­ing clo­sures all over again.

Even the famous­ly lib­er­tar­i­an econ­o­mist Mil­ton Fried­man once embraced a ver­sion of UBI—as an alter­na­tive to the lib­er­al social pro­grams he loathed. Under Richard Nixon, of all peo­ple, such a pol­i­cy almost came into being in 1969. Nei­ther Fried­man nor Nixon believed in the nat­ur­al right of all cit­i­zens to a share in the prof­its of a state’s nat­ur­al resources. But they could see the wis­dom of ensur­ing mil­lions of U.S. cit­i­zens weren’t rel­e­gat­ed to liv­ing in des­ti­tu­tion.

The pro­gram required test­ing, so the admin­is­tra­tion set up a tri­al run. “Tens of mil­lions of dol­lars were bud­get­ed to pro­vide a basic income for more than 8,500 Amer­i­cans” in five states across the coun­try, writes Rut­ger Breg­man at The Cor­re­spon­dent. Researchers want­ed to know: 1. if those who received a basic income would work sig­nif­i­cant­ly less, 2. if the pro­gram would be too expen­sive, and 3. if it would prove “polit­i­cal­ly unfea­si­ble.” The find­ings? “No, no, and maybe.”

The chief objec­tion, idle­ness, held no water. As the chief data ana­lyst for the Den­ver exper­i­ment put it at the time, “The ‘lazi­ness’ con­tention is just not sup­port­ed by our find­ings.” The two groups who did cut back on hours, 20-some­things and moth­ers of young chil­dren, were peo­ple who most need­ed the mon­ey so they could go to col­lege or devote time to their kids. Oth­er­wise, recip­i­ents did not quit their jobs and lay around watch­ing TV.

Yet there remains a pow­er­ful species of human busy­body who can­not rest until they’re sure everyone’s work­ing. Such peo­ple con­tin­ue to object—whether in good faith or not—that “just giv­ing peo­ple mon­ey” will turn every­one into a slack­er, as though most peo­ple were only moti­vat­ed by the threat of star­va­tion. And so, tri­als con­tin­ue decades lat­er. Researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Helsin­ki recent­ly con­duct­ed a two-year study in Fin­land with a ran­dom selec­tion of 2,000 unem­ployed peo­ple across the coun­try. Each par­tic­i­pant was giv­en €560 (about $607) a month to ease their bur­den, and received the funds whether or not they sought or found a job.

“The scheme was not strict­ly speak­ing a uni­ver­sal basic income tri­al because the recip­i­ents came from a restrict­ed group and the pay­ments were not enough to live on,” points out Guardian cor­re­spon­dent Jon Hen­ley. Nonethe­less, the researchers found that recip­i­ents were sig­nif­i­cant­ly less stressed than a con­trol group—and that they could make dif­fer­ent choic­es than they might oth­er­wise. “Some said the basic income allowed them to go back to the life they had before they became unem­ployed,” the study authors write. “While oth­ers said it gave them the pow­er to say no to low-paid inse­cure jobs, and thus increased their sense of auton­o­my.”

Oth­er find­ings also showed how UBI could rad­i­cal­ize our rela­tion­ship to work. “Free­lancers and artists and entre­pre­neurs had more pos­i­tive views on the effects of the basic income, which some felt had cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for them to start busi­ness­es.” Peo­ple pro­vid­ing unpaid care for oth­ers felt their time was more val­ued. “The secu­ri­ty of the basic income allowed them to do more mean­ing­ful things, as they felt it legit­imized this kind of care work.” The find­ings are being tak­en seri­ous­ly by many Euro­pean gov­ern­ments.

In Spain, Scot­land, and else­where, lead­ers are propos­ing or con­sid­er­ing some form of UBI to com­bat mas­sive unem­ploy­ment due to the pan­dem­ic. While the idea may have lit­tle polit­i­cal future in the U.S. at the moment, where pri­or­i­ties are to use the country’s wealth to fur­ther enrich the wealthy, UBI is becom­ing tremen­dous­ly pop­u­lar else­where. (A recent poll found sup­port among 71% of Euro­peans sur­veyed.) No one believes UBI is a panacea for the world’s ills, but as the Wired video above argues, there may be no bet­ter time than now to make the case for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Pre­dic­tion That Automa­tion Will Neces­si­tate a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income

Buck­min­ster Fuller Rails Against the “Non­sense of Earn­ing a Liv­ing”: Why Work Use­less Jobs When Tech­nol­o­gy & Automa­tion Can Let Us Live More Mean­ing­ful Lives

To Save Civ­i­liza­tion, the Rich Need to Pay Their Tax­es: His­to­ri­an Rut­ger Breg­man Speaks Truth to Pow­er at Davos and to Fox’s Tuck­er Carl­son

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

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Watch Florian Schneider (RIP) in Classic Early Kraftwerk Performances

in Music | May 7th, 2020

The sev­en­ties, am I right….?

Not that I can claim to have expe­ri­enced it first­hand. But if I could have been a wit­ness to any peri­od in pop his­to­ry it would have been the decade in which exper­i­men­tal fusion move­ments invad­ed rock and roll. There was Miles Davis and his pro­tegees, of course. But there was much more besides: The Wail­ers’ fusion of rock, reg­gae, and soul; Fela Kuti’s fusion of Ghana­ian high life, James Brown funk, and Niger­ian jazz; Ryuchi Sakamoto’s fusion of indige­nous, clas­si­cal, and elec­tron­ic dance music….

Few of these influ­en­tial inter­na­tion­al artists became wide­ly known among U.S. audi­ences at the time, but we have their music to thank for some of the most inter­est­ing direc­tions post-punk and New Wave bands would take.

One of the most influ­en­tial artists of the sev­en­ties, the recent­ly depart­ed Flo­ri­an Schnei­der, who resem­bled an office man­ag­er at a Ger­man Dun­der-Mif­flin, was tru­ly an unlike­ly char­ac­ter for major inter­na­tion­al star­dom. And yet the mild-man­nered flautist from Düs­sel­dorf co-found­ed one of the most famous exper­i­men­tal fusion bands of all time with class­mate Ralf Hüt­ter.

I’m talk­ing about Kraftwerk, of course, though the label “fusion” may not espe­cial­ly come to mind when think­ing of the robot­ic Ger­man funk of the band’s major eight­ies’ releas­es. But Kraftwerk first emerged from the psych-blues-jazz-con­cep­tu­al-elec­tron­ic hybrid of the so-called “krautrock” scene, a some­what deri­sive label applied to bands like Pop­ul Vuh, Tan­ger­ine Dream, Can, and Neu!, one of the most obscure­ly influ­en­tial bands of the decade, and one whose two members—guitarist Michael Rother and drum­mer Klaus Dinger—played in an ear­ly ver­sion of Kraftwerk. “We had no father fig­ures,” says Hüt­ter. “We were part of this ’68 move­ment, where sud­den­ly there were pos­si­bil­i­ties, and we per­formed at hap­pen­ings and art sit­u­a­tions.”

For a brief time, in fact, Kraftwerk con­sist­ed only of Rother, Dinger, and Flo­ri­an Schnei­der on the flute. They made one appear­ance in this con­fig­u­ra­tion on the Ger­man TV pro­gram Beat Club. See them at the top play “Rück­stoss-Gon­do­liere.” No, it’s not at all like “Auto­bahn,” although syn­the­siz­ers were always cen­tral to the band’s sound. It’s a lot more like Pink Floyd, and they look the part. To what might we com­pare the sound of the band’s first TV appear­ance, above, live at Rock­palast in 1970? Hüt­ter, look­ing like a Ramone, plays some sort of key­tar-like synth that sounds like a dying goose; Dinger shows off his strict-yet-funky, now world-famous “motorik” beat; and Schnei­der lays down some very heavy flute grooves.

Rother and Dinger took these exper­i­ments and turned them into what David Bowie would call “the sound of the eight­ies.” He might have said the same of Kraftwerk, who heav­i­ly influ­enced Bowie, espe­cial­ly after Schnei­der and Hüt­ter adopt­ed their tongue-in-cheek businessmen/technician per­son­ae, inspired by po-faced artists Gilbert & George. Kraftwerk brought a dead­pan sense of humor to New Wave that was adopt­ed by every eight­ies syn­th­pop star from Gary Numan to Depeche Mode to New Order, whose “Blue Mon­day” was part­ly inspired by “Ura­ni­um” from 1975’s Radio-Activ­i­ty. This is a strange, tran­si­tion­al album, and one per­haps most often cit­ed by oth­er musi­cians inspired by Kraftwerk. It was their fifth album, but only the first in which they went ful­ly elec­tron­ic, and fea­tured mem­bers Karl Bar­tos and Wolf­gang Flür, who would com­plete the clas­sic line­up of the late sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies.

As you can see in the “Radioac­tiv­i­ty” video fur­ther up, they have not become robots just yet. These are clear­ly humans, still a lit­tle loose and shag­gy around the edges. (If Hütter’s deliv­ery, hair­cut, and the band’s sound in gen­er­al, make you think of Joy Divi­sion’s Ian Curtis—he was a huge fan.) How sil­ly were Kraftwerk’s lat­er con­cepts? Tremen­dous­ly sil­ly. But so too was Radio-Activ­i­ty, an album full of pun­ning banal­i­ties and geeky astro­physics ref­er­ences. By the time of The Man-Machine, Schnei­der and Hüt­ter had so com­mit­ted to their roles that we might almost, for a moment, believe the fan-made video above is a “rare pilot for the uncom­mis­sioned Kraftwerk sit­com, ‘Ralf and Flo­ri­an.’” The sin­gle “Das Mod­el,” below, has a bit more of a 70s Cabaret feel to it. And maybe a bit more danc­ing than we’re used to see­ing from Kraftwerk.

They were in on the joke, but also so musi­cal­ly and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy they could update its premise every few years and shift pop music in new, weird­er, fun­nier, and more dance­able direc­tions. “Do you want to know what the eight­ies will sound like?” they asked in 1981. And there was Com­put­er World, which you can see the band per­form in part below in Nagoya, Japan. Schneider’s flute is nowhere to be seen, but his pen­chant for pen­e­trat­ing, repet­i­tive grooves and waves of weird syn­the­sized sounds still dri­ves the sound. Kraftwerk’s fusion of influ­ences evolved prin­ci­pal­ly through the part­ner­ship of Schnei­der and Hüt­ter, the Richards and Jag­ger of exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic pop.

Kraftwerk was not a band, Hüt­ter insist­ed, but a “mul­ti-media project.” Their onstage act was what Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield calls “cere­bral tech­nocrats” very much derived from their per­son­al­i­ties, espe­cial­ly Schnei­der’s, mag­ni­fied into per­for­mance art. “Kraftwerk is not a band,” Schnei­der said back in 1975. “It’s a con­cept. We call it ‘Die Men­schmas­chine,’ which means ‘the human machine.’ We are not the band. I am me. Ralf is Ralf. And Kraftwerk is a vehi­cle for our ideas.” Yet those ideas, which Schnei­der tend­ed to express in cold­ly ana­lyt­ic terms, also pro­duced some of the most joy­ful­ly dance­able music ever made. That is the para­dox of Kraftwerk, and their genius, from Dinger’s motorik beats to the puls­ing synths built by Hüt­ter and Schnei­der. They tru­ly achieved a musi­cal syn­the­sis, one that hon­ored the human desire for groove and melody and the machine’s desire for inhu­man sounds and robot­ic pre­ci­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

The Case for Why Kraftwerk May Be the Most Influ­en­tial Band Since the Bea­t­les

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

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Take Hannah Arendt’s Final Exam for Her 1961 Course “On Revolution”

in Philosophy, Politics | May 5th, 2020

After her analy­sis of total­i­tar­i­an­ism in Nazi Ger­many and Stalin’s Sovi­et Union, Han­nah Arendt turned her schol­ar­ly atten­tion to the sub­ject of revolution—namely, to the French and Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tions. How­ev­er, the first chap­ter of her 1963 book On Rev­o­lu­tion opens with a para­phrase of Lenin about her own time: “Wars and rev­o­lu­tions… have thus far deter­mined the phys­iog­no­my of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.”

Arendt wrote the book on the thresh­old of many wars and rev­o­lu­tions yet to come, but she was not par­tic­u­lar­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to the left­ist turn of the 1960s. On Rev­o­lu­tion favors the Amer­i­can Colonists over the French Sans Culottes and Jacobins. The book is in part an intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tion to anti-Com­mu­nism, one of many ide­olo­gies, Arendt writes, that “have lost con­tact with the major real­i­ties of our world”?

What are those real­i­ties? “War and rev­o­lu­tion,” she argues, “have out­lived all their ide­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions… no cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the begin­ning of our his­to­ry has deter­mined the very exis­tence of pol­i­tics, the cause of free­dom ver­sus tyran­ny.” This sounds like pam­phle­teer­ing, but Arendt did not use such abstrac­tions light­ly. As one of the fore­most schol­ars of ancient Greek and mod­ern Euro­pean phi­los­o­phy, she was emi­nent­ly qual­i­fied to define her terms.

Her stu­dents, on the oth­er hand, might have strug­gled with such weighty con­cepts as “rev­o­lu­tion,” “rights, “free­dom,” etc. which can so eas­i­ly become mean­ing­less slo­gans with­out sub­stan­tive elab­o­ra­tion and “con­tact with real­i­ty.” Arendt was a thor­ough teacher. Once her stu­dents left her class, they sure­ly had a bet­ter grasp on the intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. Such under­stand­ing con­sti­tut­ed Arendt’s life’s work, and it was through teach­ing that she devel­oped and refined the ideas that became On Rev­o­lu­tion.

Arendt began research for the book at Prince­ton, where she was appoint­ed the first woman to serve as a full pro­fes­sor in 1953. Through­out the 50s and ear­ly 60s, she taught at Berke­ley, Colum­bia, Cor­nell, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, and North­west­ern before join­ing the fac­ul­ty of the New School. In 1961, she taught a North­west­ern sem­i­nar called “On Rev­o­lu­tion.” Just above, you can see the course’s final exam. (View it in a larg­er for­mat here.) If you’re won­der­ing why she gave the test in March, per­haps it’s because the fol­low­ing month, she board­ed a plane to cov­er the Adolf Eich­mann tri­al for The New York­er.

What did Arendt want to make sure that her stu­dents under­stood before she left? See a tran­scrip­tion of the exam ques­tions below. We see the two poles of her lat­er argu­ment com­ing into focus, the French and the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion­ary ideas. The lat­ter exam­ple has been seen by many crit­i­cal philoso­phers as hard­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary at all, giv­en that it was pri­mar­i­ly waged in the inter­ests of mer­chants and slave-own­ing plan­ta­tion own­ers. It was, as one his­to­ri­an puts it, “a rev­o­lu­tion in favor of gov­ern­ment.”

This crit­i­cism is like­ly the basis of Arendt’s final ques­tion on the test. But in her eru­dite argu­ment, the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion is foun­da­tion­al to use of “rev­o­lu­tion” as a polit­i­cal term of art. As Arendt writes in a late 60s lec­ture, re-dis­cov­ered in 2017, “pri­or to the two great rev­o­lu­tions at the end of the 18th cen­tu­ry and the spe­cif­ic sense it then acquired, the word ‘rev­o­lu­tion’ was hard­ly promi­nent in the vocab­u­lary of polit­i­cal thought or prac­tice.” Rather, it main­ly had astro­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.

Arendt saw all sub­se­quent world rev­o­lu­tions as par­tak­ing of the twinned log­ics of the 18th cen­tu­ry. “Its polit­i­cal usage was metaphor­i­cal,” she says, “describ­ing a move­ment back into some pre-estab­lished point, and hence a motion, a swing­ing back to a pre-ordained order.” Gen­er­al­ly, that order has been pre-ordained by the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies them­selves. See if your under­stand­ing of rev­o­lu­tion­ary his­to­ry is up to Arendt’s ped­a­gog­i­cal stan­dards, below, and get a more com­pre­hen­sive his­to­ry of rev­o­lu­tion from the read­ings on recent course syl­labus­es here, here, and here.

 

Answer at least five of the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

1. What is the ori­gin of the word “rev­o­lu­tion”?

How was the word orig­i­nal­ly used in polit­i­cal lan­guage?

2. Iden­ti­fy the fol­low­ing dates:

The 14th of July

The 9th of Ther­mi­dore

The 18th of Bru­maire

3. Who wrote The Rights of Man?

Who wrote Reflec­tions on the French Rev­o­lu­tion?

What was the con­nec­tion between the two books?

4. Who was Creve­coeur? Give title of his book.
5. Enu­mer­ate some authors and books that played a role in the rev­o­lu­tions?
6. What is the dif­fer­ence between abso­lutism and a “lim­it­ed monar­chy”?
7. Who is the author of The Spir­it of the Laws?
8. Which author had the great­est influ­ence on the men of the French Rev­o­lu­tion?
9. What is meant by the phrase “state of nature”?
10. The fol­low­ing words are of Greek ori­gin; give their Eng­lish equiv­a­lent: monarchy—oligarchy—aristocracy—democracy.

Write a short essay of no more than four pages on one of the fol­low­ing top­ics:

1. It is a main the­sis of R.R. Palmer’s The Age of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rev­o­lu­tion that “the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion was an event with­in an Atlantic civ­i­liza­tion as a whole.” Explain and dis­cuss.

2. Clin­ton Rossiter asserts that “America’s debt to the idea of social con­tract is so huge as to defy mea­sure­ment.” Explain and dis­cuss.

3. Dif­fer­ences and sim­i­lar­i­ties between the Amer­i­can and the French Rev­o­lu­tion.

4. Con­nect on pos­si­ble mean­ings of the phrase: Pur­suit of hap­pi­ness.

5. Describe Melville’s atti­tude to the French Rev­o­lu­tion in Bil­ly Budd.

6. The Amer­i­can Revolution—was there any?

via Saman­tha Hill

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

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

Large Archive of Han­nah Arendt’s Papers Dig­i­tized by the Library of Con­gress: Read Her Lec­tures, Drafts of Arti­cles, Notes & Cor­re­spon­dence

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

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Take a Virtual Tour of the World’s Only Sourdough Library

in Food & Drink, Libraries, Travel | May 4th, 2020

There’s 15-year-old Pre­cious from the Nether­lands…

And Bub­ble from Aus­tralia, age 4…

Yeasty Beasty Methuse­lah, from Twin Falls, Ida­ho, is esti­mat­ed to be around 50…

Every sour­dough starter is spe­cial to the ones who made or main­tain it, but of the 1000s reg­is­tered online with Quest for Sour­dough, only 125 have earned a per­ma­nent place in the Puratos Sour­dough Library in Saint-Vith, Bel­gium. It’s the world’s only library ded­i­cat­ed to Sour­dough, and you can take a vir­tu­al tour here.

Housed in iden­ti­cal jars in a muse­um-qual­i­ty refrig­er­at­ed cab­i­nets, these her­itage starters have been care­ful­ly select­ed by librar­i­an Karl De Smedt, above, who trav­els the world vis­it­ing bak­eries, tast­ing bread, and learn­ing the sto­ries behind each sam­ple that enters the col­lec­tion.

As De Smedt recalls in an inter­view with the Sour­dough Pod­cast, the idea for the muse­um began tak­ing shape when a Lebanese bak­er reached out to Puratos, a hun­dred-year-old com­pa­ny that sup­plies com­mer­cial bak­ers and pas­try mak­ers with essen­tials of the trade. The man’s sons returned from a bak­ing expo in Paris and informed their dad that when they took over, they planned to retire his time-hon­ored prac­tice of bak­ing with fer­ment­ed chick­peas in favor of instant yeast. Wor­ried that his prized recipe would be lost to his­to­ry, he appealed to Puratos to help pre­serve his pro­to­cols.

While fer­ment­ed chick­peas do not count as sourdough—a com­bi­na­tion of flour, water, and the result­ing microor­gan­isms this mar­riage gives rise to over time—the com­pa­ny had recent­ly col­lect­ed and ana­lyzed 43 ven­er­a­ble starters. The bulk came from Italy, includ­ing one from Alta­mu­ra, the “city of bread, pro­duc­er of what Horace called in 37 B.C. ‘the best bread to be had, so good that the wise trav­el­er takes a sup­ply of it for his onward jour­ney.’”

Thus was a non-cir­cu­lat­ing library born.

Each spec­i­men is ana­lyzed by food micro­bi­ol­o­gist Mar­co Gob­bet­ti from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bolzano and Bari.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion with North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gists Rob Dunn and Anne Mad­den revealed that sour­dough bak­ers’ hands share dis­tinct microbes with their starters.

More than 1100 strains of microor­gan­isms have been record­ed so far.

Every two months, the starters are tak­en out of the fridge and fed, i.e. reac­ti­vat­ed, with a com­bi­na­tion of water and some of their flour of ori­gin, year­ly quan­ti­ties of which are con­tributed by their bak­ers. With­out this reg­u­lar care, the starters will die off.

(The pan­dem­ic has De Smedt work­ing from home, but he inti­mat­ed to The New York Times that he intend­ed to make it back to feed his babies, or “moth­ers” as they are known in sour­dough cir­cles.)

#72 from Mex­i­co feeds on eggs, lime and beer

#100 from Japan is made of cooked sake rice.

#106 is a vet­er­an of the Gold Rush.

Their con­sis­ten­cy is doc­u­ment­ed along a line that ranges from hard to flu­id, with Sil­ly Put­ty in the mid­dle.

Each year, De Smedt expands the col­lec­tion with starters from a dif­fer­ent area of the world. The lat­est addi­tions come from Turkey, and are doc­u­ment­ed in the mouth­wa­ter­ing trav­el­ogue above.

For now, of course, he’s ground­ed in Bel­gium, and using his Insta­gram account to pro­vide encour­age­ment to oth­er sour­dough prac­ti­tion­ers, answer­ing rook­ie ques­tions and show­ing off some of the loaves pro­duced by his own per­son­al starters, Bar­bara and Aman­da.

Reg­is­ter your starter on Quest for Sour­dough here.

If you haven’t yet tak­en the sour­dough plunge, you can par­tic­i­pate in North Car­oli­na State University’s Wild Sour­dough Project by fol­low­ing their instruc­tions on mak­ing a starter from scratch and then sub­mit­ting your data here.

And bide your time until you’re cleared to vis­it the Puratos Sour­dough Library in per­son by tak­ing an inter­ac­tive vir­tu­al tour or watch­ing a com­plete playlist of De Smedt’s col­lect­ing trips here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

An Archive of Hand­writ­ten Tra­di­tion­al Mex­i­can Cook­books Is Now Online

400 Ways to Make a Sand­wich: A 1909 Cook­book Full of Cre­ative Recipes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her cur­rent starter, Miss Sour­dough, was brought to life with an unholy splash of apple cider. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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