Google Unveils a Digital Marketing & E‑Commerce Certificate: 7 Courses Will Help Prepare Students for an Entry-Level Job in 6 Months

in Business, Education, Online Courses | May 13th, 2022

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Google launched a series of Career Cer­tifi­cates that will “pre­pare learn­ers for an entry-lev­el role in under six months.” Their first cer­tifi­cates focused on Project Man­age­ment, Data Ana­lyt­ics, User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design, IT Sup­port and IT Automa­tion. Now comes their latest–a cer­tifi­cate ded­i­cat­ed to Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑commerce.

Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, the Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑commerce Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate con­sists of sev­en cours­es, all col­lec­tive­ly designed to help stu­dents “devel­op dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and e‑commerce strate­gies; attract and engage cus­tomers through dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing chan­nels like search and email; mea­sure mar­ket­ing ana­lyt­ics and share insights; build e‑commerce stores, ana­lyze e‑commerce per­for­mance, and build cus­tomer loy­al­ty.” The cours­es include:

• Foun­da­tions of Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing and E‑commerce
• Attract and Engage Cus­tomers with Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing
• From Likes to Leads: Inter­act with Cus­tomers Online
• Think Out­side the Inbox: Email Mar­ket­ing
• Assess for Suc­cess: Mar­ket­ing Ana­lyt­ics and Mea­sure­ment
• Make the Sale: Build, Launch, and Man­age E‑commerce Stores 
• Sat­is­fac­tion Guar­an­teed: Devel­op Cus­tomer Loy­al­ty Online

In total, this pro­gram “includes over 190 hours of instruc­tion and prac­tice-based assess­ments, which sim­u­late real-world dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and e‑commerce sce­nar­ios that are crit­i­cal for suc­cess in the work­place.” Along the way, stu­dents will learn how to use tools and plat­forms like Can­va, Con­stant Con­tact, Google Ads, Google Ana­lyt­ics, Hoot­suite, Hub­Spot, Mailchimp, Shopi­fy, and Twit­ter. You can start a 7‑day free tri­al and explore the cours­es. If you con­tin­ue beyond that, Google/Coursera will charge $39 USD per month. That trans­lates to about $235 after 6 months.

If you don’t want to pay, you can audit each course for free, with­out ulti­mate­ly receiv­ing the cer­tifi­cate.

Explore the Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & E‑commerce Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Google & Cours­era Launch Career Cer­tifi­cates That Pre­pare Stu­dents for Jobs in 6 Months: Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment and UX Design

Become a Project Man­ag­er With­out a Col­lege Degree with Google’s Project Man­age­ment Cer­tifi­cate

Google Data Ana­lyt­ics Cer­tifi­cate: 8 Cours­es Will Help Pre­pare Stu­dents for an Entry-Lev­el Job in 6 Months

When Orson Welles Became a Speech & Joke Writer for Franklin Delano Roosevelt

in History, Politics | May 11th, 2022

As some­one who had mas­tered radio, film, and stage at such a young age, it shouldn’t be a sur­prise that Orson Welles once flirt­ed with the idea of run­ning for office. It nev­er hap­pened, but Welles got pret­ty close in 1944 by ghost-writ­ing speech­es for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s re-elec­tion cam­paign. This in-depth arti­cle at Smith­son­ian by Erick Trick­ey goes into greater detail about this mix of enter­tain­ment and pol­i­tics, and shows how both have always influ­enced each oth­er.

In the final four months of 1944, Amer­i­ca was still at war with Japan and Ger­many, and Roo­sevelt was seek­ing an unprece­dent­ed fourth term to bring the war to a close. Roosevelt’s Repub­li­can chal­lenger Thomas Dewey ques­tioned the ail­ing president’s sta­mi­na and well­ness for the job, along with accu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion and incom­pe­tence.

Welles was still Hollywood’s gold­en boy, with a career that had tak­en off dur­ing Roosevelt’s sec­ond term with his infa­mous War of the Worlds radio play, pick­ing up on America’s pre-war para­noia. It had con­tin­ued through 1941’s Cit­i­zen Kane and its thin­ly veiled attack on William Ran­dolph Hearst and oth­er oli­garchs. Welles’ voice car­ried author­i­ty and grav­i­tas. He was also mar­ried to Rita Hay­worth at the time, and enjoy­ing the upside of Hol­ly­wood suc­cess.

Roo­sevelt engaged the left-wing Welles in the last month of the cam­paign and soon the actor was trav­el­ing the coun­try and deliv­er­ing speech­es at ral­lies for FDR. In one stop he called Repub­li­cans “the par­ti­sans of priv­i­lege, the cham­pi­ons of monop­oly, the old oppo­nents of lib­er­ty, the deter­mined adver­saries of the small busi­ness and the small farm.”

Welles also sup­plied ideas and jokes for FDR’s speech­es. When Dewey and oth­er Repub­li­cans attacked FDR’s dog Fala, Welles’ penned this: “Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my fam­i­ly doesn’t resent attacks — but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scot­tie, as soon as he learned that the Repub­li­can fic­tion writ­ers, in Con­gress and out, had con­coct­ed a sto­ry that I had left him behind on the Aleut­ian Islands and had sent a destroy­er back to find him — at a cost to the tax­pay­ers of 2 or 3 or 8 or $20 mil­lion — his Scotch soul was furi­ous. He has not been the same dog since.”

The Amer­i­can pub­lic seemed to agree that going after a pet was a bit too much. The nation­al­ly broad­cast speech turned FDR’s for­tunes around. And at FDR’s final ral­ly at Fen­way Park in Boston, the pres­i­dent intro­duced both Welles (“The Dra­mat­ic Voice”) and Frank Sina­tra (“The Voice”). Welles spoke out against GOP elit­ism: “By free enter­prise they want exclu­sive right to free­dom. They are stu­pid enough to think that a few can enjoy pros­per­i­ty at the expense of the rest.”

Days lat­er, FDR won 53 per­cent of the pop­u­lar vote and took the elec­toral col­lege, 432–99. In one sense though, Dewey’s attacks on FDR’s health were found­ed: Roo­sevelt died five months lat­er on April 12, 1945.

FDR had writ­ten to Welles to thank him for the ral­ly, but also wrote about that April’s meet­ing of the Unit­ed Nations. The man had the weight of the free world upon his shoul­ders, and Welles felt it. The artist wrote a eulo­gy for FDR for the New York Post:

Des­per­ate­ly we need his courage and his skill and wis­dom and his great heart. He moved ahead of us show­ing a way into the future. If we lose that way, or fall beside it, we have lost him indeed. Our tears would mock him who nev­er wept except when he could do no more than weep. If we despair. because he’s gone — he who stood against despair — he had as well nev­er have lived, he who lived so great­ly.

You can read it online here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds Broad­cast (1938)

Rare Video Shows FDR Walk­ing: Filmed at the 1937 All-Star Game

When Amer­i­can Financiers and Busi­ness Lead­ers Plot­ted to Over­throw Franklin D. Roo­sevelt and Install a Fas­cist Gov­ern­ment in the U.S. (1933)

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (RIP)

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

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

Self-Encounter: The 10-Episode TV Show That Introduced Existentialism to Americans in 1961

in Philosophy, Television | May 6th, 2022

“Exis­ten­tial­ism is both a phi­los­o­phy and a mood,” says Hazel Barnes by way of open­ing the tele­vi­sion series Self-Encounter: A Study in Exis­ten­tial­ism. “As a mood, I think we could say that it is the mood of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry — or, at least, of those peo­ple in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry who are dis­con­tent with things as they are. It express­es the feel­ing that, some­how or oth­er, all of those sys­tems — whether they be social, psy­cho­log­i­cal, or sci­en­tif­ic — which have attempt­ed to define and explain and deter­mine man, have some­how missed the liv­ing indi­vid­ual per­son.”

Exis­ten­tial­ism was on the rise in 1961, when Barnes spoke those words, and the sub­se­quent six decades have arguably done lit­tle to assuage its dis­con­tent. By the time of Self-Encounter’s broad­cast in ’61, Barnes was already well-known in philo­soph­i­cal cir­cles for her Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Noth­ing­ness. When she took on that job, with what she lat­er described as “three years of bad­ly taught high school French and one year­long course in col­lege, and a bare min­i­mum of back­ground in phi­los­o­phy,” she could­n’t have known that it would set her on the road to becom­ing the most famous pop­u­lar­iz­er of exis­ten­tial­ism in Amer­i­ca.

Five years after the pub­li­ca­tion of Barnes’ Sartre trans­la­tion, along came the oppor­tu­ni­ty to host a ten-part series on Nation­al Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion­al Tele­vi­sion (a pre­de­ces­sor of PBS) explain­ing Sartre’s thought as well as that of oth­er writ­ers like Simone de Beau­voir, Albert Camus, and Richard Wright, between drama­ti­za­tions of scenes drawn from exis­ten­tial­ist lit­er­a­ture. Self-Encounter was once “thought to be entire­ly lost, the orig­i­nal tapes hav­ing been report­ed record­ed over,” writes Nick Nielsen. But after the series’ unex­pect­ed redis­cov­ery in 2017, all of its episodes grad­u­al­ly made their way to the web. You can watch all ten of them straight through in the near­ly five-hour video at the top of the post, or view them one-by-one at the Amer­i­can Archive of Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing.

“Self Encounter was pro­duced in 1961 and first broad­cast in 1962,” Nielsen writes. “I can­not help but note that Route 66 aired from 1960 to 1964, The Out­er Lim­its aired from 1963 to 1965, Rawhide aired from 1959 to 1965, and Per­ry Mason aired from 1957 to 1966” — not to men­tion The Twi­light Zone, from 1959 to 1964. “It would be dif­fi­cult to name anoth­er tele­vi­sion milieu of com­pa­ra­ble depth. Our men­tal image of this peri­od of Amer­i­can his­to­ry as being one of sti­fling con­for­mi­ty is belied by these dark per­spec­tives on human nature.” And as for the social, psy­cho­log­i­cal, sci­en­tif­ic, and of course tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tems in effect today, the exis­ten­tial­ists would sure­ly take a dim view of their poten­tial to lib­er­ate us from con­for­mi­ty — or any oth­er aspect of the human con­di­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Crash Course in Exis­ten­tial­ism: A Short Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Paul Sartre & Find­ing Mean­ing in a Mean­ing­less World

Exis­ten­tial­ism with Hubert Drey­fus: Five Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Albert Camus’ Exis­ten­tial­ism, a Phi­los­o­phy Mak­ing a Come­back in Our Dys­func­tion­al Times

The Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist Philoso­pher, Revis­it­ed in 1984 Doc­u­men­tary

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Exis­ten­tial­ist Phi­los­o­phy of Jean-Paul Sartre… and How It Can Open Our Eyes to Life’s Pos­si­bil­i­ties

Exis­ten­tial Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games

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

Footage of Flappers from 1929 Restored & Colorized with AI

in Fashion, Film, History, Technology, Video - Politics/Society | May 4th, 2022

The flap­per is the Roar­ing 20s’ endur­ing emblem — a lib­er­at­ed, young woman with bobbed hair, rolled down stock­ings, and a pub­lic thirst for cock­tails.

(My grand­moth­er longed to be one, and suc­ceed­ed, as best one could in Cairo, Illi­nois, only to mar­ry an old­er man at the age of 17, and give birth to my father a few months before the stock mar­ket crashed, bring­ing the friv­o­li­ty of the decade to an abrupt halt.)

Our abid­ing affec­tion for the flap­per is stoked on F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s Jazz Age novel­la, The Great Gats­by, and its many stage and screen adap­ta­tions, with their depic­tions of wild par­ties fea­tur­ing guests like Miss Baedeck­er (“When she’s had five or six cock­tails she always starts scream­ing like that”) and Lucille (“I nev­er care what I do, so I always have a good time.”)

The vin­tage fash­ion blog Glam­our Daze’s new­ly col­orized footage of a 1929  fash­ion show in Buf­fa­lo, New York, at the top of this post, presents a vast­ly more sedate image than Fitzger­ald, or Ethel Hays, whose sin­gle-pan­el dai­ly car­toon Flap­per Fan­ny was wild­ly pop­u­lar with both young women and men of the time.

The scene it presents seems more whole­some than one might have found in New York City, with what Fitzger­ald dubbed its “wild promise of all the mys­tery and the beau­ty in the world”. The mod­els seem more eager ama­teurs than run­way pro­fes­sion­als, though lined up jaun­ti­ly on a wall, all exhib­it “nice stems.”

My young grand­moth­er would have gone ga ga for the cloche hats, tea dress­es, bathing suits, loung­ing paja­mas, golf and ten­nis ensem­bles, and evening gowns, though the Deep Exem­plar-based Video Col­oriza­tion process seems to have stained some mod­els’ skin and teeth by mis­take.

The orig­i­nal black and white footage is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Carolina’s Fox Movi­etone News col­lec­tion, whose oth­er fash­ion-relat­ed clips from 1929 include pre­sen­ta­tions fea­tur­ing Wash­ing­ton debu­tantes and col­lege coeds.

Added sound brings the peri­od to life with nary a men­tion of the Charleston or gin, though if you want a feel for 20s fash­ion, check out the col­lec­tion’s non-silent Movi­etone clip devot­ed to the lat­est in 1929 swimwear — this is a mod­ernistic beach ensem­ble of ray­on jer­sey with diag­o­nal stripes and a sun back cut…

It’s the cat’s paja­mas. As is this playlist of hits from 1929.

Explore Glam­our Daze’s guide to 1920s fash­ion his­to­ry here.

Watch the orig­i­nal black and white footage of the Buf­fa­lo, New York fash­ion show 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.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Revisit Morphine, the 90s Power Trio Who Played the Two-String Bass, Saxophone & Drums

in Music | April 27th, 2022

No 90s band flew as low under that radar as Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts three-piece Mor­phine. Too odd for nos­tal­gia radio, not com­mer­cial enough to pop up on a big-time mod­ern sound­track, Mor­phine either means noth­ing to you or, if you were in the right place at the right time, every­thing.

YouTube chan­nel Rock n’ Roll True Sto­ries would like more peo­ple to dis­cov­er Mor­phine and their intro­duc­tion video does an ade­quate job of stitch­ing togeth­er inter­view quotes, band pics, and some daffy stock pho­tog­ra­phy. The only thing miss­ing: actu­al exam­ples of their music. We’ll get to that in just a bit.

Mor­phine were some­where between a rock band and a jazz trio. Led by Mark Sand­man, the group con­sist­ed of drum­mers Jerome Deupree or Bil­ly Con­way, and sax­o­phon­ist Dana Col­ley, with Sandman’s two-string bass front and cen­ter. “In a pop uni­verse where every singer, gui­tarist, and key­boardist instinc­tive­ly goes to a high­er note to attract atten­tion,” wrote the Wash­ing­ton Post at the time, “Mor­phine stays hun­kered down low.”

Live, Sand­man most­ly kept to his bass, but on their five albums, he also includ­ed home­made instru­ments like the “tri­tar,” con­sist­ing of two gui­tar strings and a bass string. He also added piano and key­boards to the mix. Col­ley some­times played two sax­es at once, or he switched out his main bari­tone for sopra­no, tenor, or bass sax­o­phones.

After their first indie release Good in 1992, Rykodisc signed the band. But Mor­phine remained as res­olute­ly anti-com­mer­cial as they could, turn­ing down offers to license their songs for com­mer­cials. (Ryko, how­ev­er, could license their music for TV and movies with­out the band’s approval.) “You Look Like Rain” was a col­lege radio “hit”; “Bue­na” was the sin­gle release. There’s a bit of Tom Waits or Nick Cave in his voice; a bit of be-bop by way of Twin Peaks in the music. It’s a for­mu­la they tweaked, altered, and per­fect­ed. Their crit­i­cal apex came with the album Cure for Pain in 1993, but each suc­ces­sive album sold more units. The label Dream­works took over from Ryko, but Sand­man felt they were push­ing the band to be some­thing they were not, a “new Beck” or a sound beyond the trio of instru­ments. But they didn’t fal­ter and remained true to them­selves.

Instead, the band end­ed when Sand­man suf­fered a heart attack on stage in 1999, pos­si­bly due to stress and the oppres­sive heat of the venue itself. Their fifth and final album The Night was released posthu­mous­ly. The sur­viv­ing mem­bers have formed a few Mor­phine-adja­cent bands since, as well as start­ing a schol­ar­ship in Sandman’s name.

Ryko recent­ly re-released their ear­ly discog­ra­phy on vinyl with bonus tracks, so a new gen­er­a­tion is poised to dis­cov­er Mor­phine, look around and won­der, who else knows about this band? That’s how it starts.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­sive 800-Track Playlist of 90s Indie & Alter­na­tive Music, in Chrono­log­i­cal Order

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

Stream a Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of Indie, Noise Indus­tri­al Mix­tapes from the 80s and 90s

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

A Master List of 1,700 Free Courses From Top Universities: A Lifetime of Learning on One Page

in Online Courses | April 24th, 2022

For the past 15 years, we’ve been busy rum­mag­ing around the inter­net and adding cours­es to an ever-grow­ing list of Free Online Cours­es, which now fea­tures 1,700 cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. Let’s give you the quick overview: The list lets you down­load audio & video lec­tures from schools like Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Har­vard and many oth­er insti­tu­tions. Gen­er­al­ly, the cours­es can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes or uni­ver­si­ty web sites, and you can lis­ten to the lec­tures any­time, any­where, on your com­put­er or smart phone. We haven’t done a pre­cise cal­cu­la­tion, but there’s about 50,000 hours of free audio & video lec­tures here. Enough to keep you busy for a very long time–something that’s use­ful dur­ing these social­ly dis­tant times.

Right now you’ll find 200 free phi­los­o­phy cours­es, 105 free his­to­ry cours­es, 170 free com­put­er sci­ence cours­es, 85 free physics cours­es and 55 Free Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es in the col­lec­tion, and that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face. You can peruse sec­tions cov­er­ing Astron­o­my, Biol­o­gy, Busi­ness, Chem­istry, Eco­nom­ics, Engi­neer­ing, Math, Polit­i­cal Sci­ence, Psy­chol­o­gy and Reli­gion.

Here are some high­lights from the com­plete list of Free Online Cours­es. We’ve added a few unconventional/vintage cours­es in the mix just to keep things inter­est­ing.

• A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: From Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times — Free Online Video — Arthur Holmes, Wheaton Col­lege
• A Romp Through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners - Var­i­ous For­mats – Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty
• Ancient Greek His­to­ry — Var­i­ous For­mats — Don­ald Kagan, Yale
• Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing by William S. Bur­roughs — Free Online Audio — Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty
• Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners — Var­i­ous For­mats – Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Oxford
• Deep Learn­ing — Free Online Video — Vin­cent Van­houcke, Google
• Edi­ble Edu­ca­tion 101 – Free Online Video – Michael Pol­lan, UC Berke­ley
• Finan­cial Mar­kets — Var­i­ous For­mats — Robert Shiller, Yale
• Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse – Free Online Video – Richard Dawkins, Oxford
• Har­vard’s Intro­duc­to­ry Com­put­er Sci­ence Course - Free Online Course — David Malan, Har­vard
• Hem­ing­way, Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er – Var­i­ous For­mats – Wai Chee Dimock, Yale
• How to Lis­ten to Music — Var­i­ous For­mats — Craig Wright, Yale
• Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy – Var­i­ous For­mats – Robert Sapol­sky, Stan­ford
• Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment (Hebrew Bible) – Free Online Video — Chris­tine Hayes, Yale.
• Lec­tures on Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy — Free Online Video — Marc Lev­oy, Stanford/Google
• Physics for Future Pres­i­dents – Free Online Video – Richard Muller, UC Berke­ley
• Sci­ence and Cook­ing: From Haute Cui­sine to the Sci­ence of Soft Mat­ter — Var­i­ous For­mats — Team taught, Har­vard
• Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full - Var­i­ous For­mats — MIT, Dr. Pao­la Rebus­co
• The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945 – Var­i­ous For­mats – Amy Hunger­ford, Yale
• The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet — Free Online Audio – Robert Thur­man, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty
• The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law (1964) - Free Online Video — Richard Feyn­man, Cor­nell
• The Tem­pest - Free Online Audio — Allen Gins­berg, Naropa
• Wal­ter Kauf­mann Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre — Free Online Audio

The com­plete list of cours­es can be accessed here: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. For more enrich­ing mate­r­i­al, see our oth­er col­lec­tions below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

What Did People Do Before the Invention of Eyeglasses?

in Biology, Health, History | April 7th, 2022

You remem­ber it — one of the most heart­break­ing scenes on TV. A man longs for noth­ing more than time to read, to be free of all those peo­ple Sartre told us make our hells. Final­ly grant­ed his wish by the H‑Bomb, he then acci­den­tal­ly break his glass­es, ren­der­ing him­self unable make out a word. Oh, cru­el irony! Not an optometrist or opti­cian in sight! Sure­ly, there are “Time Enough at Last” jokes at eye care con­ven­tions world­wide.

Moral­i­ty tales wrapped in sci­ence fic­tion might make us think about all sorts of things, but one of the most obvi­ous ques­tions when we wit­ness the fate of Mr. Hen­ry Bemis, “char­ter mem­ber in the fra­ter­ni­ty of dream­ers,” might be, but what did peo­ple do before cor­rec­tive lens­es? Were mil­lions forced to accept his fate, liv­ing out their lives with far­sight­ed­ness, near­sight­ed­ness, and oth­er defects that impede vision? How did ear­ly humans sur­vive in times much less hos­pitable to dis­abil­i­ties? At least there were oth­ers to read and describe things for them.…

In truth, the Twi­light Zone is not far off the mark. Or at least near­sight­ed­ness and read­ing are close­ly linked. “As long as pri­mates have been around, there’s prob­a­bly been myopia,” says pro­fes­sor of oph­thal­mol­o­gy Ivan Schwab. But Schwab argues in his book Evo­lu­tion’s Wit­ness: How Eyes Evolved that the rise of read­ing like­ly caused sky­rock­et­ing rates of myopia over the past three hun­dred years. “Though genes and nutri­tion may play a role in near­sight­ed­ness,” Natal­ie Jacewicz writes at NPR, “[Schwab] says edu­ca­tion and myopia seem to be linked, sug­gest­ing that when peo­ple do a lot of close work, their eyes grow longer.”

As the His­to­ry Dose video above explains, the old­est image of a pair of glass­es dates from a 1351 paint­ing of Car­di­nal Hugh of Saint-Cher. The paint­ing is an anachro­nism — spec­ta­cles, the nar­ra­tor tells us, were invent­ed 23 years ear­li­er in Pisa, after the car­di­nal’s death. They “grad­u­al­ly spread across Europe and trav­elled the Silk Road to Chi­na.” (The old­est sur­viv­ing pair of glass­es dates from around 1475). So what hap­pened before 1286? As you’ll learn, glass­es were not the only way to enlarge small items. In fact, humans have been using some form of mag­ni­fy­ing lens to read small print (or man­u­script or cuneiform or what-have-you) for thou­sands of years. Those lens­es, how­ev­er, cor­rect­ed pres­by­opia, or far-sight­ed­ness.

Those with myopia were most­ly out of luck until the inven­tion of sophis­ti­cat­ed lens-grind­ing tech­niques and improved vision tests. But for most of human his­to­ry, unless you were a sailor or a sol­dier, you “like­ly spent your day as an arti­san, smith, or farm work­er,” occu­pa­tions where dis­tance vision did­n’t mat­ter as much. In fact, arti­sans like medieval scribes and illu­mi­na­tors, says Neil Han­d­ley — muse­um cura­tor of the Col­lege of Optometrists, Lon­don — were “actu­al­ly encour­aged to remain in their myopic con­di­tion, because it was actu­al­ly ide­al for them doing this job.”

It was­n’t until well after the time of Guten­berg that wear­ing lens­es on one’s face became a thing — and hard­ly a pop­u­lar thing at first. Ear­ly glass­es were held up to the eyes, not worn. They were heavy, thick, and frag­ile. In the 15th cen­tu­ry, “because… they were unusu­al and rare,” says Han­d­ley, “they were seen as hav­ing mag­i­cal pow­ers” and their wear­ers viewed as “in league with the dev­il, immoral.” That stig­ma went away, even if glass­es picked up oth­er asso­ci­a­tions that some­times made their users the sub­ject of taunts. But by the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, glass­es were com­mon around the world.

Giv­en that we all spend most of our time inter­act­ing with small text and images on hand­held screens, it seems maybe they haven’t spread wide­ly enough. “More than a bil­lion, and maybe as many as 2.5 bil­lion, peo­ple in the world need but don’t have glass­es to cor­rect for var­i­ous vision impair­ments,” notes Live­science, cit­ing fig­ures from The New York Times. For many peo­ple, espe­cial­ly in the devel­op­ing world, the ques­tion of how to get by in the world with­out eye­glass­es is still a very press­ing, present-day issue.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Pair of Glass­es (Cir­ca 1475)

James Joyce, With His Eye­sight Fail­ing, Draws a Sketch of Leopold Bloom (1926)

Oliv­er Sacks Explains the Biol­o­gy of Hal­lu­ci­na­tions: “We See with the Eyes, But with the Brain as Well”

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

How to Wear a Toga the Official Ancient Roman Way

in Fashion, History | April 4th, 2022

What does it take to wear an ancient Roman toga with dig­ni­ty and grace?

Judg­ing from the above demon­stra­tion by Dr Mary Har­low, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Ancient His­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter, a cou­ple of helpers, who, in the first cen­tu­ry CE, would have invari­ably been enslaved, and thus inel­i­gi­ble for togas of their own.

The icon­ic out­er gar­ments, tra­di­tion­al­ly made of wool, begin as sin­gle, 12–16m lengths of fab­ric.

Extra hands were need­ed to keep the cloth from drag­ging on the dirty floor while the wear­er was being wrapped, to secure the gar­ment with addi­tion­al pleats and tucks, and to cre­ate the pouch-like umbo at chest lev­el, in a man­ner as aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing as every oth­er fold and drape was expect­ed to be.

As for­mal citizen’s garb, the toga was suit­able for vir­tu­al­ly every pub­lic occa­sion, as well as an audi­ence with the emper­or.

In addi­tion to slaves, the toga was off-lim­its to for­eign­ers, freed­men, and, with the notable excep­tion of adul­ter­ess­es and pros­ti­tutes, women.

Wealth­i­er indi­vid­u­als flaunt­ed their sta­tus by accent­ing their out­fit with stripes of Tyr­i­an Pur­ple.

The BBC reports that dying even a sin­gle small swatch of fab­ric this shade “took tens of thou­sands of des­ic­cat­ed hypo­branchial glands wrenched from the cal­ci­fied coils of spiny murex sea snails” and that thus dyed, the fibers “retained the stench of the invertebrate’s marine excre­tions.”

Achiev­ing that Tyr­i­an Pur­ple hue was “a very smelly process,” Dr. Har­low con­firms, “but if you could retain a lit­tle bit of that fishy smell in your final gar­ment, it would show your col­leagues that you could afford the best.”

Giv­en the laun­dry-relat­ed rev­e­la­tions of some toga inves­ti­gat­ing stu­dents in Sal­is­bury Uni­ver­si­ty’s Depart­ment of The­atre and Dance study abroad pro­gram, above, a fishy odor might not have been the great­est olfac­to­ry chal­lenge asso­ci­at­ed with this gar­ment.

The stu­dents also share how toga-clad Romans dealt with stairs, and intro­duce view­ers to 5 forms of toga:

Toga Vir­ilis  — the toga of man­hood

Toga Prae­tex­ta — the pre-toga of man­hood toga

Toga Pul­la — a dark mourn­ing toga

Toga Can­di­da- a chalk whitened toga sport­ed by those run­ning for office

Toga Pic­ta- to be worn by gen­er­als, prae­tors cel­e­brat­ing games and con­suls. The emperor’s toga pic­ta was dyed pur­ple. Uh-oh.

Their youth­ful enthu­si­asm for antiq­ui­ty is rous­ing, though Quin­til­ian, the first cen­tu­ry CE edu­ca­tor and expert in rhetoric might have had some thoughts on their clown­ish antics.

He cer­tain­ly had a lot of thoughts about togas, which he shared in his instruc­tive mas­ter­work, Insti­tu­tio Ora­to­ria:

The toga itself should, in my opin­ion, be round, and cut to fit, oth­er­wise there are a num­ber of ways in which it may be unshape­ly. Its front edge should by pref­er­ence reach to the mid­dle of the shin, while the back should be high­er in pro­por­tion as the gir­dle is high­er 

behind than in front. The fold is most becom­ing, if it fall to a point a lit­tle above the low­er edge of the tunic, and should cer­tain­ly nev­er fall below it. The oth­er fold which pass­es oblique­ly like a belt under the right shoul­der and over the left, should nei­ther be too tight nor too loose. The por­tion of the toga which is last to be arranged should fall rather low, since it will sit bet­ter thus and be kept in its place. A por­tion of the tunic also should be drawn back in order that it may not fall over the arm when we are plead­ing, and the fold should be thrown over the shoul­der, while it will not be unbe­com­ing if the edge be turned back. On the oth­er hand, we should not cov­er the shoul­der and the whole of the throat, oth­er­wise our dress will be undu­ly nar­rowed and will lose the impres­sive effect pro­duced by breadth at the chest. The left arm should only be raised so far as to form a right angle at the elbow, while the edge of the toga should fall in equal lengths on either side. 

Quin­til­lian was will­ing to let some of his high stan­dards slide if the wearer’s toga had been unti­died by the heat of rous­ing ora­tion:

When, how­ev­er, our speech draws near its close, more espe­cial­ly if for­tune shows her­self kind, prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing is becom­ing; we may stream with sweat, show signs of fatigue, and let our dress fall in care­less dis­or­der and the toga slip loose from us on every side…On the oth­er hand, if the toga falls down at the begin­ning of our speech, or when we have only pro­ceed­ed but a lit­tle way, the fail­ure to replace it is a sign of indif­fer­ence, or sloth, or sheer igno­rance of the way in which clothes should be worn.

We’re pret­ty sure he would have frowned on clas­si­cal archae­ol­o­gist Shel­by Brown’s exper­i­ments using a twin-size poly-blend bed sheet in advance of an ear­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry Col­lege Night at the Get­ty Vil­la.

Prospec­tive guests were encour­aged to attend in their “best togas.”

Could it be that the par­ty plan­ners , envi­sion­ing a civ­i­lized night of pho­to booths, clas­si­cal art view­ing, and light refresh­ments in the Her­cu­la­neum-inspired Get­ty Vil­la, were so igno­rant of 1978’s noto­ri­ous John Belushi vehi­cle Ani­mal House?

…Estne vol­u­men in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre?

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Roman Stat­ues Weren’t White; They Were Once Paint­ed in Vivid, Bright Col­ors

The Ancient Romans First Com­mit­ted the Sar­to­r­i­al Crime of Wear­ing Socks with San­dals, Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Sug­gests

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman San­dal with Nails Used for Tread

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

Watch a Very Nervous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talking Heads Performing Live in NYC (1976)

in History, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 7th, 2022

“This is a per­son who is pro­found­ly uncom­fort­able address­ing an audi­ence and yet puts him­self in that posi­tion,” David Byrne told Stu­dio 360’s Kurt Ander­son in 2019, as they watched some of the above footage of his 23-year-old self fronting a live Talk­ing Heads’ per­for­mance back in 1976.

Every­thing was pret­ty new back in that Bicen­ten­ni­al year.

Talk­ing Heads had formed the year before, when Byrne and drum­mer Chris Frantz, who’d been band­mates at the Rhode Island Col­lege of Design, moved to New York City with Frantz’s girl­friend, bassist Tina Wey­mouth.

The venue host­ing this live per­for­mance, New York City’s leg­endary exper­i­men­tal art space, The Kitchen, was slight­ly less wet behind the ears, hav­ing opened its doors in 1971. (Some 30 years lat­er, elder states­man Byrne was the guest of hon­or at its annu­al spring gala.)

How­ev­er you define it — New Wave, no wave, post-punk art pop — the band’s sound was also fresh, though Byrne sug­gests, in the inter­view with Ander­son, there was noth­ing new about his youth­ful cock­i­ness:

…like a lot of bands, artists, every­thing else, any peri­od real­ly, you tend to think that, um, the per­va­sive stuff around you is crap and you and your friends are…we’re doing the real stuff. 

And opti­misti­cal­ly, one might think, since we’re doing the real stuff and it has real soul and pas­sion, and it’s of its moment, it rep­re­sents its moment, and so immod­est­ly, you think, “Of course! Things are just going to fall into your lap because you’re doing some­thing that has some truth to it. Uh…that cer­tain­ly doesn’t always hap­pen.

It hap­pened com­par­a­tive­ly quick­ly for Talk­ing Heads.

Sev­er­al of the songs they per­formed as a trio that March night at the Kitchen made it onto Talk­ing Heads: 77, the debut stu­dio album record­ed bare­ly a year lat­er, by which time a fourth mem­ber, Jer­ry Har­ri­son, had joined on key­boards and gui­tar.

Of par­tic­u­lar note above is Psy­cho Killer, which earned the band both noto­ri­ety, owing to the coin­ci­den­tal tim­ing of 1976 and 1977’s Son of Sam mur­ders, and their first Bill­board Hot 100 spot.

“This song was writ­ten a long time ago,” the young Byrne stut­ters into the micro­phone at the Kitchen, then apol­o­gizes for fid­dling with his clothes and equip­ment.

(“It’s all good!” Frantz calls out encour­ag­ing­ly from behind his drum kit.)

Accord­ing to the lin­er notes of Once in a Life­time: The Best of Talk­ing Heads, Byrne began work on the song in col­lege:

When I start­ed writ­ing this (I got help lat­er), I imag­ined Alice Coop­er doing a Randy New­man-type bal­lad. Both the Jok­er and Han­ni­bal Lecter were much more fas­ci­nat­ing than the good guys. Every­body sort of roots for the bad guys in movies.

Fans may note a dis­par­i­ty in the lyrics between this per­for­mance and record­ed ver­sions of the song. Here, the sec­ond verse goes:

Lis­ten to me, now I’ve passed the test

I think I’m cute, I think I’m the best

Skirt tight, don’t like that style

Don’t crit­i­cize what I know is worth­while

Psy­cho Killer stayed on the shelf for David Byrne’s Amer­i­can Utopia, the Broad­way show recent­ly filmed by Spike Lee. But it gave a far more pol­ished Byrne an excel­lent open­er for Talk­ing Heads’ 1984 con­cert film, Stop Mak­ing Sense.

The uncom­fort­able young front­man dressed like a “pro­le­tari­at every­man,” who the Kitchen’s press release described as “a cross between Ralph Nad­er, Lou Reed, and Tony Perkins.” And he has since man­aged to acquire some impres­sive per­for­mance chops over the course of a still flour­ish­ing career.

This is your chance to catch him at that awk­ward age when, as Byrne told Kirk Ander­son, he per­formed “because he had to”:

There was this means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that was being a per­former and writ­ing songs and singing them (that) was a way of, kind of being present to oth­er peo­ple — not just girls, but oth­er peo­ple in gen­er­al.

Setlist for The Kitchen, March 13, 1976:

00:00 — Introduction/soundcheck

02:13 — The Girls Want To Be With the Girls (Fea­tured on More Songs About Build­ings and Food in 1978)

06:05 — Psy­cho Killer (Fea­tured on Talk­ing Heads: 77 in 1977, with dif­fer­ent lyrics)

The lyrics of the 2nd verse of Psy­cho Killer is dif­fer­ent from the record­ed ver­sion!

10:55 — I Feel It In My Heart (Fea­tured on the deluxe ver­sion of Talk­ing Heads: 77, with dif­fer­ent lyrics)

15:28 — I Wish You Would­n’t Say That (Fea­tured on the deluxe ver­sion of Talk­ing Heads: 77)

18:15 — Infor­ma­tion about the record­ing

19:00 — Stay Hun­gry (Fea­tured on More Songs About Build­ings and Food)

24:35 — I Want To Live (Fea­tured on com­pi­la­tions such as Sand in the Vase­line, 1992 and Bonus Rar­i­ties & Out­takes, 2006)

29:48 — Ten­ta­tive Deci­sions (Fea­tured on Talk­ing Heads: 77)

32:55 — No Com­pas­sion (assumed, video ends before song starts)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Talk­ing Heads Per­form The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Togeth­er)

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play a Vin­tage Con­cert in Syra­cuse (1978)

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

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

Russia’s War on Ukraine: A Conversation Hosted by The Atlantic, Featuring Anne Applebaum, Tom Nichols & Jeffrey Goldberg

in Current Affairs, History | March 2nd, 2022

“After years of threats, Vladimir Putin’s Russ­ian forces invad­ed Ukraine—culminating in the largest attack against one Euro­pean state by anoth­er since the Sec­ond World War. What hap­pens now?”

Above, you can watch a wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion host­ed by The Atlantic, fea­tur­ing Anne Apple­baum (Pulitzer-prize win­ning his­to­ri­an), Tom Nichols (U.S. Naval War Col­lege pro­fes­sor), and Jef­frey Gold­berg (edi­tor-in-chief of The Atlantic) as they exam­ine “the glob­al reac­tion, the effec­tive­ness of sanc­tions, and how to address the rise of author­i­tar­i­an­ism and ongo­ing threats to democ­ra­cy.” It’s also worth read­ing Apple­baum’s lat­est piece, “The Impos­si­ble Sud­den­ly Became Pos­si­ble.”