Helen Keller Writes a Letter to Nazi Students Before They Burn Her Book: “History Has Taught You Nothing If You Think You Can Kill Ideas” (1933)

in Books, History | May 24th, 2023

Helen Keller achieved noto­ri­ety not only as an indi­vid­ual suc­cess sto­ry, but also as a pro­lif­ic essay­ist, activist, and fierce advo­cate for poor and mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple. She “was a life­long rad­i­cal,” writes Peter Dreier at Yes! mag­a­zine, whose “inves­ti­ga­tion into the caus­es of blind­ness” even­tu­al­ly led her to “embrace social­ism, fem­i­nism, and paci­fism.” Keller sup­port­ed the NAACP and ACLU, and protest­ed strong­ly against patron­iz­ing calls for her to “con­fine my activ­i­ties to social ser­vice and the blind.” Her crit­ics, she wrote, mis­char­ac­ter­ized her ideas as “a Utopi­an dream, and one who seri­ous­ly con­tem­plates its real­iza­tion indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind.”

Twen­ty years lat­er she found a dif­fer­ent set of read­ers treat­ing her ideas with con­tempt. This time, how­ev­er, the crit­ics were in Nazi Ger­many, and instead of sim­ply dis­agree­ing with her, they added her col­lec­tion of essays, How I Became a Social­ist, to a list of “degen­er­ate” books to be burned on May 10, 1933. Such was the date cho­sen by Hitler for “a nation­wide ‘Action Against the Un-Ger­man Spir­it,’” writes Rafael Med­off, to take place at Ger­man Universities—“a series of pub­lic burn­ings of the banned books” that “dif­fered from the Nazis’ per­spec­tive on polit­i­cal, social, or cul­tur­al mat­ters, as well as all books by Jew­ish authors.”

Books burned includ­ed works by Ein­stein and Freud, H.G. Wells, Hem­ing­way, and Jack Lon­don, Stu­dents hauled books out of the libraries as part of the spec­ta­cle. “The largest of the 34 book-burn­ing ral­lies, held in Berlin,” Med­off notes, “was attend­ed by an esti­mat­ed 40,000 peo­ple.”

Not only were these demon­stra­tions of anti-Semi­tism, but their con­tempt for ideas appealed broad­ly to the Nazi phi­los­o­phy of “Blood and Soil,” a nation­al­ist car­i­ca­ture of rur­al val­ues over a sup­pos­ed­ly “degen­er­ate,” poly­glot urban­ism. “The soul of the Ger­man peo­ple can again express itself,” declared Joseph Goebbels omi­nous­ly at the Berlin ral­ly. “These flames not only illu­mi­nate the final end of an old era; they also light up the new.”

“Some Amer­i­can edi­to­r­i­al respons­es” before and after the burn­ings, “made light of the event,” remarks the Unit­ed States Holo­caust Muse­um, call­ing it “sil­ly” and “infan­tile.”  Oth­ers fore­saw much worse to come. In one very explic­it expres­sion of the ter­ri­ble pos­si­bil­i­ties, artist and polit­i­cal car­toon­ist Jacob Bur­ck drew the image above, evok­ing the obser­va­tion of 19th cen­tu­ry Ger­man writer Hein­rich Heine: “Where one burns books, one will soon burn peo­ple.” Newsweek described the events as “’a holo­caust of books’… one of the first instances in which the term ‘holo­caust’ (an ancient Greek word mean­ing a burnt offer­ing to a deity) was used in con­nec­tion with the Nazis.”

The day before the burn­ings, Keller also dis­played a keen sense for the grav­i­ty of book burn­ings, as well as a “notable… ear­ly con­cern,” notes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate—out­side the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, that is—for what she called the “bar­bar­i­ties to the Jews.” On May 9, 1933, Keller pub­lished a short but point­ed open let­ter to the Nazi stu­dents in The New York Times and else­where, abjur­ing them to stop the pro­posed burn­ings. She wrote in a reli­gious idiom, invok­ing the “judg­ment” of God and para­phras­ing the Bible. (Not a tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian, she belonged to a mys­ti­cal sect called Swe­den­bor­gian­ism.) At the top of the post, you can see the type­script of her let­ter, with cor­rec­tions and anno­ta­tions by Pol­ly Thomp­son, one of her pri­ma­ry aides. Read the full tran­script below:

Keller added the penul­ti­mate para­graph of the pub­lished text lat­er. (See the hand­writ­ten addi­tion at the bot­tom of the typed draft.) Her con­cern for the “griev­ous com­pli­ca­tions” of the Ger­man peo­ple was cer­tain­ly gen­uine. The expres­sion also seems like a tar­get­ed rhetor­i­cal move for a stu­dent audi­ence, con­ced­ing the sit­u­a­tion as “com­plex,” and appeal­ing in more philo­soph­i­cal lan­guage to “jus­tice” and “wis­dom.” The Nazis ignored her protest, as they did the “mas­sive street demon­stra­tions” that took place on the 10th “in dozens of Amer­i­can cities,” the Holo­caust Muse­um writes, “skill­ful­ly orga­nized by the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Con­gress” and spark­ing “the largest demon­stra­tion in New York City his­to­ry up to that date.”

Five years lat­er, how­ev­er, anoth­er planned book burning—this time in Aus­tria before its annexation—was pre­vent­ed by stu­dents at Williams Col­lege, Yale, and oth­er uni­ver­si­ties in the U.S., where pro- and anti-Nazi par­ti­sans fought each oth­er on sev­er­al Amer­i­can cam­pus­es. U.S. stu­dents were able to push the Aus­tri­an Nation­al Library to lock the books away rather than burn them. Keller “is not known to have com­ment­ed specif­i­cal­ly” on these stu­dent protests, writes Med­off, “but one may assume she was deeply proud that at a time when too many Amer­i­cans did not want to be both­ered with Europe’s prob­lems, these young men and women under­stood the mes­sage of her 1933 letter—that the prin­ci­ples under attack by the Nazis were some­thing that should mat­ter to all mankind.”

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2017.

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 

The Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library Gives Every Teenag­er in the U.S. Free Access to Books Get­ting Cen­sored by Amer­i­can Schools

The 850 Books a Texas Law­mak­er Wants to Ban Because They Could Make Stu­dents Feel Uncom­fort­able

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

America’s First Banned Book: Dis­cov­er the 1637 Book That Mocked the Puri­tans

Watch the Original Schoolhouse Rock Composers Sing “Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Just a Bill” Live in Concert

in Education, English Language, Jazz, K-12 | May 22nd, 2023

At first blush, School­house Rock!, the inter­sti­tial ani­ma­tions air­ing between ABC’s Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon line up from 1973 to 1984, may seem like a catchy, edu­ca­tion­al equiv­a­lent of sneak­ing spinach into pan­cakes (and a major Gen X touch­stone.)

Not so fast! It’s also jazz, baby!

Jazz pianist Bob Dor­ough recalled how an ad exec at a New York ad agency pitched the idea:

My lit­tle boys can’t mem­o­rize their times tables, but they sing along with Jimi Hen­drix and the Rolling Stones, so why don’t you put it to rock music and we’ll call it Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion Rock?

Dor­ough, whose com­po­si­tion­al pref­er­ences ran to “extrav­a­gant love songs” and vocal chal­leng­ing num­bers, real­ized that his first order of busi­ness would be to write a good song:

I hit upon the idea, let’s pick a num­ber. Three! That’s a good num­ber. And I sat down at the piano and start­ed fool­ing around. It took me 2 weeks.

In his hands, three became a mag­ic num­ber, an ear worm to bring even the most reluc­tant ele­men­tary math­e­mati­cians up to speed in no time.

Even­tu­al­ly, Dor­ough was able to bring many of his jazz world friends into the fold, includ­ing, most famous­ly, trum­peter and Merv Grif­fin Show side­kick Jack Shel­don, whose one-of-a-kind deliv­ery is the hands down high­light of “Con­junc­tion Junc­tion.”

(Many School­house Rock! fans, view­ing the excerpt of the duo’s mid-90’s live appear­ance on the KTLA Morn­ing Show, above, pro­fessed dis­be­lief that Sheldon’s soul was of the blue-eyed vari­ety, even though the ani­mat­ed engi­neer who serves as his avatar in that three minute episode is white.)

In an inter­view with the direc­tor of the Fil­lius Jazz Archive at Hamil­ton Col­lege, Shel­don agreed that the series owed a major debt to jazz:

When we made Con­junc­tion Junc­tion, it was me and Ted­dy Edwards and Nick Ceroli and Leroy Vine­gar and Bob Dor­ough played the piano. That’s a jazz band…it was real­ly noth­ing to do with rock. It was always jazz, but we said rock and roll, so every­body loved it for rock and roll.

Anoth­er mem­o­rable col­lab­o­ra­tion between Shel­don and Dor­ough is the much par­o­died “I’m Just a Bill,” in which a weary scroll loi­ters on the steps of the Cap­i­tal Build­ing, explain­ing to a wide eyed young­ster (voiced by his son) the process by which a bill becomes law.

Dor­oughs’ School­house Rock! con­tri­bu­tions include the haunt­ing Fig­ure Eight, the folky Lucky Sev­en Samp­son, whose sen­ti­ments Dor­ough iden­ti­fied with most close­ly, and Naughty Num­ber Nine, which his pro­tégé, singer-song­writer Nel­lie McK­ay sin­gled out for spe­cial praise, “cause it was kind of weird and sub­ver­sive:”

(It) made me want to gam­ble and win. I got hooked when I heard Bob’s jazzy rasp of a voice break­ing the rules even as he explained them… this guy had a wild mind, which I fig­ured out lat­er equaled cre­ativ­i­ty.

She also paid the per­pet­u­al­ly sun­ny Dor­ough, whom she first encoun­tered “glow(ing) with health and good cheer, spread­ing sun­shine wher­ev­er he went on the cam­pus of East Strouds­burg Uni­ver­si­ty, the supreme com­pli­ment:

Lou Reed’s idea of hell would be to sit in heav­en with Bob Dor­ough.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

School­house Rock: Revis­it a Col­lec­tion of Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Videos

I’m Just a Pill: A School­house Rock Clas­sic Gets Reimag­ined to Defend Repro­duc­tive Rights in 2017

Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock: The School­house Rock Par­o­dy Sat­ur­day Night Live May Have Cen­sored

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

Google & Coursera Launch New Career Certificates That Prepare Students for Jobs in 2–6 Months: Business Intelligence & Advanced Data Analytics

in Business, Online Courses | May 18th, 2023

Back in 2021, Google launched a series of online cours­es designed to help stu­dents earn a pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate in six months and also land an entry-lev­el job. In its orig­i­nal offer­ing, Google devel­oped cer­tifi­cate pro­grams in five pro­fes­sion­al areas: User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design, Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment, IT Sup­port and IT Automa­tion. Now, the tech com­pa­ny has added two new pro­grams to its line­up, each offered through Cours­er­a’s online edu­ca­tion plat­form.

First, the Google Advanced Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate builds on the orig­i­nal Data Ana­lyt­ics Cer­tifi­cate and “delves into machine learn­ing, pre­dic­tive mod­el­ing, and exper­i­men­tal design to col­lect and ana­lyze large amounts of data.” Fea­tur­ing sev­en cours­es in total, the pro­gram takes rough­ly six months to com­plete and aims to teach stu­dents how to 1) build regres­sion and machine learn­ing mod­els to ana­lyze and inter­pret data, 2) cre­ate data visu­al­iza­tions and apply sta­tis­ti­cal meth­ods to inves­ti­gate data, and 3) com­mu­ni­cate insights from data analy­sis to stake­hold­ers. Essen­tial­ly, it teach­es many tools of the trade need­ed to become a senior data ana­lyst or junior data sci­en­tist.

With the Google Busi­ness Intel­li­gence Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate, stu­dents can par­tic­i­pate in a short­er pro­gram that focus­es on trans­form­ing data into action­able insights for orga­ni­za­tions. Con­sist­ing of three cours­es (and last­ing about two months), the pro­gram helps stu­dents learn skills like data mod­el­ing, data visu­al­iza­tion, and dashboarding–skills that have wide applic­a­bil­i­ty in our data-dri­ven age.

Stu­dents can actu­al­ly take indi­vid­ual cours­es in these pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate pro­grams for free. How­ev­er, if you would like to receive the cer­tifi­cates, Cours­era charges $49 per month (after an ini­tial 7‑day free tri­al peri­od). That means that the Advanced Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate, if com­plet­ed in 6 months, will cost less than $300. And the Busi­ness Intel­li­gence Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate would run about $100. Once stu­dents com­plete a cer­tifi­cate, they can add the cre­den­tial to their LinkedIn pro­file, resume, or CV. Like­wise, they can con­nect with 150+ U.S. hir­ing orga­ni­za­tions in Google’s Employ­er Con­sor­tium. If you would like to learn more about Google Career Cer­tifi­cates, you can read this handy page on Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas’ web­site.

Update: Google has also added a new cer­tifi­cate pro­gram focused on Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. Find out more about the pro­gram here.

You can sign up for the pro­grams by click­ing on the links in bold above. Each pro­gram has a 7‑day free tri­al.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Download Free Coloring Books from Nearly 100 Museums & Libraries

in Art, Books | April 26th, 2023

We here at Open Cul­ture hearti­ly endorse the prac­tice of view­ing art, whether in a phys­i­cal muse­um, in the pages of a book, or online. For some, how­ev­er, it tends to have one seri­ous short­com­ing: all the col­ors are already filled in. If you’re itch­ing to use your own col­ored pen­cils, crayons, water­col­ors, or oth­er tools of choice on draw­ings, paint­ings, and a vari­ety of oth­er works besides in the pos­ses­sion of well-known art insti­tu­tions, these past few months are a time of year to savor thanks to the ini­tia­tive Col­or Our Col­lec­tions.

Each Feb­ru­ary, Col­or Our Col­lec­tions releas­es its lat­est round of col­or­ing books free online, assem­bled from con­tri­bu­tions by the likes of the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France, Eton Col­lege, the New York Botan­i­cal Gar­den, the Toron­to Pub­lic Library, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co.

“Launched by The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine Library in 2016,” says its about page, it hosts an “annu­al col­or­ing fes­ti­val on social media dur­ing which libraries, muse­ums, archives and oth­er cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions around the world share free col­or­ing con­tent fea­tur­ing images from their col­lec­tions.”

The de-col­ored pic­tures you see here offer just a taste of all you can find in this year’s Col­or Our Col­lec­tions crop. Some of the par­tic­i­pat­ing insti­tu­tions pro­vide col­orable selec­tions from across their hold­ings, some stick to a cer­tain theme, and some con­tribute actu­al vol­umes, dig­i­tized whole or cre­at­ed for the occa­sion. Take, for instance, the Ol’ Med­ical Colour­ing Book from Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty Library, which promis­es hours of fun with pages like “ante­ri­or view of the skele­tal sys­tem,” “ven­tral view of the brain,” and “uri­nary sys­tem shown on the female form.”

These are some dis­tance from the bun­nies and but­ter­cups we col­ored in as chil­dren; so are the vig­or­ous nine­teen-thir­ties motor­cy­cle adver­tise­ments assem­bled by the Harley-David­son Archive, or the archi­tec­tur­al and archae­o­log­i­cal draw­ings from the Médiathèque de Châteaudun. But Col­or Our Col­lec­tions 2023 also con­tains a good deal of kid-direct­ed mate­r­i­al as well, includ­ing Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Library’s live­ly pack­age of ani­mal images from issues of Kodomo no Kuni, or The Land of Chil­dren — a mag­a­zine direct­ed toward the kids of Japan a cen­tu­ry ago, but then, some child­hood plea­sures know no cul­tur­al or tem­po­ral bounds. Enter the archive of 2023 col­or­ing books here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Col­or­ing Books from The Pub­lic Domain Review: Down­load & Col­or Works by Hoku­sai, Albrecht Dür­er, Har­ry Clarke, Aubrey Beard­s­ley & More

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

The Dune Col­or­ing & Activ­i­ty Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Cre­at­ed Count­less Hours of Pecu­liar Fun for Kids

The Very First Col­or­ing Book, The Lit­tle Folks’ Paint­ing Book (Cir­ca 1879)

The First Adult Col­or­ing Book: See the Sub­ver­sive Exec­u­tive Col­or­ing Book From 1961

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

The Most Popular Song from Each Month Since January 1980: 40+ Years of Changing Musical Tastes in 50 Minutes

in History, Music | April 3rd, 2023

As Helen Red­dy sang in the 70s:

You live your life in the songs you hear

On the rock n’ roll radio…

The 80s ush­ered in a new era, leav­ing the music indus­try for­ev­er changed, though the songs them­selves retained their pow­er to speak to us on a deeply per­son­al lev­el.

In 1979, the Eng­lish New Wave band The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” — which famous­ly became the very first song played on MTV the fol­low­ing year (1980) — was get­ting a lot of atten­tion.

40 years lat­er Puer­to Rican rap­per and reg­gae­ton artist Bad Bun­ny dom­i­nates, which speaks not only to the public’s evolv­ing musi­cal tastes but also to the expand­ed access and oppor­tu­ni­ties of the Inter­net age.

Lis­ten­ing to all 512 songs on Boogiehead’s mashup Most Pop­u­lar Song Each Month Since Jan­u­ary 1980 in their entire­ty would take over 24 hours, so Boo­giehead set­tles instead on a sin­gle rep­re­sen­ta­tive phrase, get­ting the job done in a whirl­wind 50 min­utes. Watch it above.

For many of us, that’s all it takes to unleash a flood of mem­o­ries.

Queen, Madon­na, David Bowie, and Michael Jack­son make strong show­ings, as do, more recent­ly, Rhi­an­na, Bey­on­cé, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, and Ari­ana Grande.

Else­where, there are reminders that fame is not just fleet­ing, but often teth­ered to a sin­gle hit.

That said, some­times those hits have remark­able stay­ing pow­er.

Wit­ness Dexys Mid­night Run­ners’ Come On Eileen from 1982, with its pre­scient lyric “I’ll hum this tune for­ev­er…”

And some songs turn out to be an unex­pect­ed slow burn. How else to explain one of the third-to-last ear­worms on Boogiehead’s list, “Run­ning Up That Hill” from Eng­lish singer-song­writer Kate Bush’s 1985 album Hounds of Love?

Its appear­ance on the hit series Stranger Things led it to go viral on Tik­Tok, net­ting the 64-year-old Bush a host of new fans in their teens and 20s as well as a cou­ple mil­lion dol­lars. Talk about old wine in new bot­tles!

Forbes’ Peter Suciu observes how songs’ shelf lives and in-roads are longer and wider than they were in the 80s and 90s:

Run­ning Up That Hill has cer­tain­ly become more pop­u­lar now than it was when it was released – and one fac­tor could be that social media has changed the way peo­ple lis­ten to music. In 1985, when Michael Jack­son was the undis­put­ed King of Pop, Kate Bush would have been rel­e­gat­ed to “alter­na­tive” music radio sta­tions, which were few and far between, or col­lege radio.

Read­ers, what song from Boo­giehead­’s Most Pop­u­lar Song Each Month Since Jan­u­ary 1980 do you most wish would make a come­back? Which of the new­er songs could you imag­ine lis­ten­ing to forty years from now? Let us know in the com­ments.

Lis­ten to the playlist of every song fea­tured on the Most Pop­u­lar Song Each Month Since Jan­u­ary 1980 here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are Alright: Sci­en­tif­ic Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Min­utes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

Hear a Neu­ro­sci­en­tist-Curat­ed 712-Track Playlist of Music that Caus­es Fris­son, or Musi­cal Chills

How Rick Astley’s “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” Went from 80s Pop Smash to Bas­tion of Inter­net Cul­ture: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

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

Understanding Espresso: A Six-Part Series Explaining What It Takes to Pull the Ideal Shot

in Food & Drink | March 28th, 2023

It does­n’t take long to learn how to pull a shot of espres­so. Search for that phrase on Youtube, and you’ll find hours’ worth of sound instruc­tion, most of it in the form of brief and eas­i­ly digestible videos. All of them cov­er the same basic stages of the process: grind­ing, dos­ing, tamp­ing, and brew­ing. When exam­ined close­ly, each of those stages reveals a for­mi­da­ble body of knowl­edge to mas­ter. If any one Youtu­ber can lay claim to hav­ing mas­tered all of them, it must be James Hoff­mann, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his videos on sub­jects from deep-fried cof­fee to the clas­sic Bialet­ti Moka Express. In the six-part series above, he offers view­ers an overview of all they need to know to achieve a true under­stand­ing of espres­so.

Episode by episode, Hoff­mann explains how to choose the right dose of cof­fee, ratio between the amount of ground and liq­uid cof­fee, brew time, grind size, brew tem­per­a­ture, and pres­sure. Of course, there is no sin­gle uni­ver­sal­ly cor­rect set­ting or amount of any of these things: each is a vari­able with its own range of effects on the shot of espres­so ulti­mate­ly yield­ed.

Each drinker, too, has a dif­fer­ent con­cep­tion of the taste and tex­ture of the ide­al espres­so shot, and con­sis­tent­ly real­iz­ing those qual­i­ties — or at least get­ting close — neces­si­tates no small amount of tri­al and error. But those who lis­ten well to Hoff­man­n’s expla­na­tions will sure­ly end up with few­er errors, and in any case get more enjoy­ment from the tri­als.

Watch “Under­stand­ing Espres­so,” and you’re going to want to know how Hoff­mann pulls shots for him­self. This he address­es in a bonus episode — unsur­pris­ing­ly, the longest one of the bunch — which shows his entire process in detail, from prepar­ing the beans to stir­ring and sip­ping. Along the way, he also intro­duces the vari­ety of spe­cial­ized devices he uses: a strong draw for his many cof­fee-gear­head sub­scribers, but one he presents with the caveat that you real­ly don’t need to go high-end all the way in order to live your best espres­so life. Even so, the ded­i­cat­ed home enthu­si­ast must put in con­sid­er­ably more time and atten­tion than the aver­age chain-cof­fee-shop barista. “Cafés want to make good espres­so as quick­ly and eas­i­ly as pos­si­ble,” he reminds us. “We want to make incred­i­ble espres­so every time.”

You can watch the entire playlist, from start to fin­ish, at the very top of the post.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Birth of Espres­so: The Sto­ry Behind the Cof­fee Shots That Fuel Mod­ern Life

Cof­fee Col­lege: Every­thing You Want­ed to Know about Cof­fee Mak­ing in One Lec­ture

All Espres­so Drinks Explained: Cap­puc­ci­no, Lat­te, Mac­chi­a­to & Beyond

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

Life and Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion

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

Watch 13 Levels of Drumming, from Easy to Complex, Explained by Snarky Puppy Drummer Larnell Lewis

in Music | March 22nd, 2023

Above, Snarky Pup­py drum­mer Lar­nell Lewis explains drum­ming in 13 lev­els of dif­fi­cul­ty, from easy to com­plex, show­ing how “drum tech­niques build upon each oth­er as the eas­i­est lev­els incor­po­rate the hi-hat, bass and snare drums, and more dif­fi­cult lev­els include polyrhythms, the floor tom, ride cym­bals, syn­co­pa­tion and much more.” It’s fun to watch. In anoth­er video from the same series pro­duced by Wired mag­a­zine, musi­cian Jacob Col­lier explains the con­cept of har­mo­ny with increas­ing dif­fi­cul­ty to five dif­fer­ent peo­ple– a child, a teen, a col­lege stu­dent, a pro­fes­sion­al, and jazz leg­end Her­bie Han­cock. Enjoy…

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 

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

The Case for Why Ringo Starr Is One of Rock’s Great­est Drum­mers

The Health Ben­e­fits of Drum­ming: Less Stress, Low­er Blood Pres­sure, Pain Relief, and Altered States of Con­scious­ness

A Student Writes a Rejection Letter Rejecting Harvard’s Rejection Letter (1981): Hear It Read by Actor Himesh Patel

in Education, Harvard, Letters | March 16th, 2023

The doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er and sports edi­tor Paul Devlin has won five Emmy awards, but he may well be bet­ter known for not get­ting into Har­vard — or rather, for not get­ting into Har­vard, then reject­ing Har­vard’s rejec­tion. “I noticed that the rejec­tion let­ter I received from Har­vard had a gram­mat­i­cal error,” Devlin writes. “So, I wrote a let­ter back, reject­ing their rejec­tion let­ter.” His moth­er then “sent a copy of this let­ter to the New York Times and it was pub­lished in the New Jer­sey sec­tion on May 31, 1981.” In 1996, when the New York Times Mag­a­zine pub­lished a cov­er sto­ry “about the trau­ma stu­dents were expe­ri­enc­ing get­ting reject­ed from col­leges,” she seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to send her son’s rejec­tion-rejec­tion let­ter to the Paper of Record.

It turned out that Devlin’s let­ter had already run there, hav­ing long since gone the pre-social-media equiv­a­lent of viral. “The New York Times accused me of pla­gia­rism. When they dis­cov­ered that I was the orig­i­nal author and they had unwit­ting­ly re-print­ed them­selves, they were none too hap­py. But my mom insists that it was impor­tant to reprint the arti­cle because the issue was clear­ly still rel­e­vant.”

Indeed, its after­life con­tin­ues even today, as evi­denced by the new video from Let­ters Live at the top of the post. In it actor Himesh Patel, well-known from series like Eas­t­En­ders, Sta­tion Eleven, and Avenue 5, reads aloud Devlin’s let­ter, which runs as fol­lows:

Hav­ing reviewed the many rejec­tion let­ters I have received in the last few weeks, it is with great regret that I must inform you I am unable to accept your rejec­tion at this time.

This year, after apply­ing to a great many col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, I received an espe­cial­ly fine crop of rejec­tion let­ters. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the num­ber of rejec­tions that I can accept is lim­it­ed.

Each of my rejec­tions was reviewed care­ful­ly and on an indi­vid­ual basis. Many fac­tors were tak­en into account – the size of the insti­tu­tion, stu­dent-fac­ul­ty ratio, loca­tion, rep­u­ta­tion, costs and social atmos­phere.

I am cer­tain that most col­leges I applied to are more than qual­i­fied to reject me. I am also sure that some mis­takes were made in turn­ing away some of these rejec­tions. I can only hope they were few in num­ber.

I am aware of the keen dis­ap­point­ment my deci­sion may bring. Through­out my delib­er­a­tions, I have kept in mind the time and effort it may have tak­en for you to reach your deci­sion to reject me.

Keep in mind that at times it was nec­es­sary for me to reject even those let­ters of rejec­tion that would nor­mal­ly have met my tra­di­tion­al­ly high stan­dards.

I appre­ci­ate your hav­ing enough inter­est in me to reject my appli­ca­tion. Let me take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to wish you well in what I am sure will be a suc­cess­ful aca­d­e­m­ic year.

SEE YOU IN THE FALL!

Sin­cere­ly,
Paul Devlin
Appli­cant at Large

How­ev­er con­sid­er­able the mox­ie (to use a whol­ly Amer­i­can term) shown by the young Devlin in his let­ter, his rea­son­ing seems not to have swayed Har­vard’s admis­sions depart­ment. Whether it would prove any more effec­tive in the twen­ty-twen­ties than it did in the nine­teen-eight­ies seems doubt­ful, but it must remain a sat­is­fy­ing read for high-school stu­dents dispir­it­ed by the sup­pli­cat­ing pos­ture the col­lege-appli­ca­tion process all but forces them to take. It sure­ly does them good to remem­ber that they, too, pos­sess the agency to declare accep­tance or rejec­tion of that which is pre­sent­ed to them sim­ply as neces­si­ty, as oblig­a­tion, as a giv­en. And for Devlin, at least, there was always the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Read Rejec­tion Let­ters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Von­negut & Andy Warhol

T. S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

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

Meet the “Gram­mar Vig­i­lante,” Hell-Bent on Fix­ing Gram­mat­i­cal Mis­takes on England’s Store­front Signs

Steven Pinker Iden­ti­fies 10 Break­able Gram­mat­i­cal Rules: “Who” Vs. “Whom,” Dan­gling Mod­i­fiers & More

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

Hear De La Soul’s Highly Acclaimed & Influential Hip-Hop Albums Streaming Free for the First Time

in Music | March 7th, 2023

If you don’t lis­ten to rap, you’ve heard the same ques­tions over and over in response to that con­fes­sion. One of the most com­mon is “But have you heard De La Soul?” — which in recent years was eas­i­er said than done, at least on stream­ing plat­forms. “What kept De La’s tunes out of rota­tion was a frus­trat­ing morass of out­dat­ed con­tracts and record label par­si­mo­ny,” writes Oliv­er Wang at NPR. One com­pli­ca­tion had to do with sam­pling, a stan­dard hip hop prac­tice con­duct­ed in such a far-reach­ing, free­wheel­ing, and elab­o­rate man­ner by De La Soul that the prospect of rene­go­ti­at­ing each and every son­ic snip­pet they’d cleared in the CD-and-tape era inspired untold cor­po­rate intran­si­gence.

But as of this month, “all this has final­ly been rec­ti­fied. The group’s most impor­tant record­ings are now legal­ly avail­able on the inter­net.” None of them is more impor­tant than their debut, 3 Feet High and Ris­ing, orig­i­nal­ly released in 1989 and added to the Library of Con­gress’ Nation­al Record­ing Reg­istry in 2010.

As Wang writes, the album “reshaped the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion of what hip-hop could be. The core trio — Pos­d­nu­os, Tru­goy and DJ Pase­mas­ter Mase — assist­ed by mentor/producer Prince Paul all came straight out­ta the wilds of sub­ur­ban Long Island, rap­ping about advice-spout­ing croc­o­diles, Mar­t­ian trans­mis­sions, and an artis­tic meta-con­cept they dubbed The D.A.I.S.Y. (Da Inner Soul, Y’all) Age.”

Clear­ly, De La Soul had a set of artis­tic pri­or­i­ties all their own. “Sam­ple-hun­gry rap pro­duc­ers had spent the pre­vi­ous few years min­ing the James Brown and P‑Funk cat­a­logs and though De La sam­pled from both on their debut, they were more like­ly to cre­ate mem­o­rable musi­cal moments from chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion songs (‘The Mag­ic Num­ber’), obscure doo-wop sin­gles (‘Plug Tunin”) and clas­sic ’80s pop hits (‘Say No Go’),” to say noth­ing of a learn-at-home French record. The first time I remem­ber hear­ing De La Soul was when an ear­ly-morn­ing col­lege-radio DJ put on the 3 Feet High track “Eye Know,” which sam­ples Steely Dan — as well as the Mad Lads, Lee Dorsey, and Otis Red­ding.

As if 3 Feet High and Ris­ing weren’t enough of a cav­al­cade of won­ders, it comes as only one of six De La Soul albums new­ly avail­able to stream. On the group’s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel and oth­er stream­ing plat­forms, you can also hear De La Soul Is Dead (1991), Buhloone Mind­state (1993), Stakes Is High (1996), and the Art Offi­cial Intel­li­gence pair Thump and Bion­ix (2001), each of which marks an expan­sion of the group’s already con­sid­er­able ambi­tions. They all join the already-stream­able albums released over the twen­ty years up to the death of found­ing mem­ber David “Tru­goy” Joli­coeur last month, an event that may put end to De La Soul as a record­ing enti­ty. But if you do lis­ten through their expan­sive and inven­tive body of work, be pre­pared for anoth­er ques­tion: have you heard A Tribe Called Quest?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Hip Hop Music Visu­al­ized on a Turntable Cir­cuit Dia­gram: Fea­tures 700 Artists, from DJ Kool Herc to Kanye West

How Jazz Became the “Moth­er of Hip Hop”

150 Songs from 100+ Rap­pers Get Art­ful­ly Woven into One Great Mashup: Watch the “40 Years of Hip Hop”

How Sam­pling Trans­formed Music and Cre­at­ed New Tapes­tries of Sound: An Inter­ac­tive Demon­stra­tion by Producer/DJ Mark Ron­son

The Birth of Hip Hop: How DJ Kool Herc Used Turnta­bles to Change the Musi­cal World (1973)

Enter the The Cor­nell Hip Hop Archive: A Vast Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion of Hip Hop Pho­tos, Posters & More

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

Discover Pemmican, The Power Bar Invented Centuries Ago by Native American Tribes

in Food & Drink, Health, K-12, Nature | March 3rd, 2023

Out­door enthu­si­asts of a non-veg­e­tar­i­an stripe, do you weary of gar­den vari­ety ener­gy bars and trail mix?

Per­haps you’re feel­ing adven­tur­ous enough to make your own pem­mi­can, var­i­ous­ly described by Tast­ing His­to­ry’s Max Miller, above, as “history’s Pow­er Bar” and “a meaty ver­sion of a sur­vival food that has a shelf life not mea­sured in months but in decades, just like hard tack.”

Per­haps you’re already well acquaint­ed with this  low-carb, keto­genic portable pro­vi­sion, a culi­nary sta­ple of the upper half of North Amer­i­ca long before the first Euro­pean traders set foot on the land. Many indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties across North Amer­i­ca are still pro­duc­ing pem­mi­can for both per­son­al and cer­e­mo­ni­al con­sump­tion.

Back in 1743, Hudson’s Bay Com­pa­ny fur trad­er James Isham was one of the first to doc­u­ment pem­mi­can pro­duc­tion for an Eng­lish read­er­ship:

 [Meat] beat between two Stones, till some of itt is as small as Dust…when pound­ed they putt itt into a bag and will Keep for sev­er­al Years, the Bones they also pound small and Boil them…to Reserve the fatt, which fatt is fine and sweet as any Butter…Reckon’d by some Very good food by the Eng­lish as well as Natives.

Per­haps now would be a good time to give thanks for the plen­ti­ful food options most of us have access to in the 21st-cen­tu­ry (and pay it for­ward with a dona­tion to an orga­ni­za­tion fight­ing food inse­cu­ri­ty…)

A time may come when know­ing how to make pem­mi­can could give us a leg up on sur­viv­ing, but for now, exe­cu­tion of this recipe is like­ly more of a curios­i­ty sat­is­fi­er.

To be fair, it’s not designed to be a del­i­ca­cy, but rather an extreme­ly long last­ing source of calo­ries, four times as nour­ish­ing as the same weight of fresh meat.

If you want to try it, lay in 2 pounds of meat — bison is his­tor­i­cal­ly the most pop­u­lar and most doc­u­ment­ed, but deer, elk, moose, beef, fish, or fowl work well too.

You’ll also need an equal amount of suet, though heed Miller’s advice and add just enough to make things stick.

Bump the fla­vor up a notch with ground dried berries, sug­ar, or salt.

(Miller went the tra­di­tion­al route with choke­ber­ries, pro­cured in an extreme­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry man­ner.)

In terms of appli­ances, feel free to use such mod­ern con­ve­niences as your oven, your blender, and a small pan or mold.

(Please report back if you take the old school route with fire, direct sun­light, mor­tar, pes­tle, and a bag formed from undressed hide.)

Giv­en Miller’s response to the fin­ished dish, we’re hunch­ing most of us will rest con­tent to feast on his­tor­i­cal con­text alone, as Miller digs into the Pem­mi­can Procla­ma­tion of 1814, the Sev­en Oaks Inci­dent and the unique role the bira­cial, bilin­gual Métis peo­ple of Cana­da played in the North Amer­i­can fur trade…

Those still up for it should feel free to take their pem­mi­can to the next lev­el by boil­ing it with wild onions or the tops of parsnips, to pro­duce a ruba­boo or rechaud, as bushcrafter Mark Young does below.

You can also get a taste of pem­mi­can by order­ing the Tan­ka Bars that Oglala Lako­ta-owned small busi­ness pro­duces on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reser­va­tion.

Watch more of Max Miller’s Tast­ing His­to­ry videos here.

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