The Psychological & Neurological Disorders Experienced by Characters in Alice in Wonderland: A Neuroscience Reading of Lewis Carroll’s Classic Tale

in Literature, Neuroscience, Psychology | January 17th, 2018

Most rep­utable doc­tors tend to refrain from diag­nos­ing peo­ple they’ve nev­er met or exam­ined. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this cir­cum­spec­tion does­n’t obtain as often among lay folk. When we lob unin­formed diag­noses at oth­er peo­ple, we may do those with gen­uine men­tal health issues a seri­ous dis­ser­vice. But what about fic­tion­al char­ac­ters? Can we ascribe men­tal ill­ness­es to the sur­re­al menagerie, say, in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land? It’s almost impos­si­ble not to, giv­en the overt themes of mad­ness in the sto­ry.

Car­roll him­self, it seems, drew many of his depic­tions direct­ly from the treat­ment of men­tal dis­or­ders in 19th cen­tu­ry Eng­land, many of which were linked to “extreme­ly poor work­ing con­di­tions,” notes Franziska Kohlt at The Con­ver­sa­tion. Dur­ing the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion, “pop­u­la­tions in so-called ‘pau­per lunatic asy­lums’ for the work­ing class sky­rock­et­ed.” Carroll’s uncle, Robert Wil­fred Skeff­in­g­ton Lutwidge, hap­pened to be an offi­cer of the Luna­cy Com­mis­sion, which super­vised such insti­tu­tions, and his work offers “stun­ning insights into the mad­ness in Alice.”

Yet we should be care­ful. Like the sup­posed drug ref­er­ences in Alice, some of the lay diag­noses now applied to Alice’s char­ac­ters may be a lit­tle far-fetched. Do we real­ly see diag­nos­able PTSD or Tourette’s? Anx­i­ety Dis­or­der and Nar­cis­sis­tic Per­son­al­i­ty Dis­or­der? These con­di­tions hadn’t been cat­e­go­rized in Carroll’s day, though their symp­toms are noth­ing new. And yet, experts have long looked to his non­sense fable for its depic­tions of abnor­mal psy­chol­o­gy. One British psy­chi­a­trist didn’t just diag­nose Alice, he named a con­di­tion after her.

In 1955, Dr. John Todd coined the term Alice in Won­der­land Syn­drome (AIWS) to describe a rare con­di­tion in which—write researchers in the Jour­nal of Pedi­atric Neu­ro­sciences—“the sizes of body parts or sizes of exter­nal objects are per­ceived incor­rect­ly.” Among oth­er ill­ness­es, Alice in Won­der­land Syn­drome may be linked to migraines, which Car­roll him­self report­ed­ly suf­fered.

We might jus­ti­fi­ably assume the Mad Hat­ter has mer­cury poi­son­ing, but what oth­er dis­or­ders might the text plau­si­bly present? Hol­ly Bark­er, doc­tor­al can­di­date in clin­i­cal neu­ro­science at King’s Col­lege Lon­don, has used her schol­ar­ly exper­tise to iden­ti­fy and describe in detail two oth­er con­di­tions she thinks are evi­dent in Alice.

Deper­son­al­iza­tion:

“At sev­er­al points in the sto­ry,” writes Bark­er, “Alice ques­tions her own iden­ti­ty and feels ‘dif­fer­ent’ in some way from when she first awoke.” See­ing in these descrip­tions the symp­toms of Deper­son­al­iza­tion Dis­or­der (DPD), Bark­er describes the con­di­tion and its loca­tion in the brain.

This dis­or­der encom­pass­es a wide range of symp­toms, includ­ing feel­ings of not belong­ing in one’s own body, a lack of own­er­ship of thoughts and mem­o­ries, that move­ments are ini­ti­at­ed with­out con­scious inten­tion and a numb­ing of emo­tions. Patients often com­ment that they feel as though they are not real­ly there in the present moment, liken­ing the expe­ri­ence to dream­ing or watch­ing a movie. These symp­toms occur in the absence of psy­chosis, and patients are usu­al­ly aware of the absur­di­ty of their sit­u­a­tion. DPD is often a fea­ture of migraine or epilep­tic auras and is some­times expe­ri­enced momen­tar­i­ly by healthy indi­vid­u­als, in response to stress, tired­ness or drug use.

Also high­ly asso­ci­at­ed with child­hood abuse and trau­ma, the con­di­tion “acts as a sort of defense mech­a­nism, allow­ing an indi­vid­ual to become dis­con­nect­ed from adverse life events.” Per­haps there is PTSD in Carroll’s text after all, since an esti­mat­ed 51% of DPD patients also meet those cri­te­ria.

Prosopag­nosia:

This con­di­tion is char­ac­ter­ized by “the selec­tive inabil­i­ty to rec­og­nize faces.” Though it can be hered­i­tary, prosopag­nosia can also result from stroke or head trau­ma. Fit­ting­ly, the char­ac­ter sup­pos­ed­ly affect­ed by it is none oth­er than Hump­ty-Dump­ty, who tells Alice “I shouldn’t know you again if we did meet.”

“Your face is the same as every­body else has – the two eyes, so-” (mark­ing their places in the air with his thumb) “nose in the mid­dle, mouth under. It’s always the same. Now if you had two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance – or the mouth at the top – that would be some help.”

This “pre­cise descrip­tion” of prosopag­nosia shows how indi­vid­u­als with the con­di­tion rely on par­tic­u­lar­ly “dis­crim­i­nat­ing fea­tures to tell peo­ple apart,” since they are unable to dis­tin­guish fam­i­ly mem­bers and close friends from total strangers.

Schol­ars know that Carroll’s text con­tains with­in it sev­er­al abstract and seem­ing­ly absurd math­e­mat­i­cal con­cepts, such as imag­i­nary num­bers and pro­jec­tive geom­e­try. The work of researchers like Kohit and Bark­er shows that Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land might also present a com­plex 19th cen­tu­ry under­stand­ing of men­tal ill­ness and neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders, con­veyed in a super­fi­cial­ly sil­ly way, but pos­si­bly informed by seri­ous research and obser­va­tion. Read Barker’s arti­cle in full here to learn more about the con­di­tions she diag­noses.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lewis Carroll’s Pho­tographs of Alice Lid­dell, the Inspi­ra­tion for Alice in Won­der­land

See The Orig­i­nal Alice In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

See Sal­vador Dali’s Illus­tra­tions for the 1969 Edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land

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

The Improbable Time When Orson Welles Interviewed Andy Kaufman (1982)

in Comedy, Television | December 27th, 2017

“Sit­coms are the low­est form of enter­tain­ment,” declares Andy Kauf­man as por­trayed by Jim Car­rey in Milos For­man’s biopic Man on the Moon. “I mean, it’s just stu­pid jokes and canned laugh­ter.” The scene comes in the peri­od of Kauf­man’s life in the late 1970s when, grow­ing ever more well-known on the back of acts like his “For­eign Man” char­ac­ter, he receives an offer to take part in ABC’s Taxi. The real-life Kauf­man, even­tu­al­ly con­vinced to join the show’s cast, devel­oped the For­eign Man into the unplace­able mechan­ic Lat­ka Gavras. Quite pos­si­bly Taxi’s most mem­o­rable char­ac­ter, Lat­ka also won the appre­ci­a­tion of no less demand­ing a cul­tur­al fig­ure than Orson Welles.

Guest-host­ing the Merv Grif­fin Show in June of 1982, Welles describes Taxi as a show that has “kept tele­vi­sion from being a crim­i­nal felony” just before bring­ing Kauf­man on for a brief (and unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly straight­for­ward) chat. He heaps praise on Kauf­man’s per­for­mance as Lat­ka, adding, “I want to know why it is that you go and wres­tle with peo­ple when you can act so well.” Kauf­man had shown up wear­ing a neck brace, an acces­so­ry sig­ni­fy­ing the end of his stint as a pro­fes­sion­al wrestler, one of the many inex­plic­a­ble but some­how com­pelling choic­es in a short career that blurred the lines between com­e­dy, per­for­mance art, and life itself.

“Nobody ever came from nowhere more com­plete­ly,” Welles says, draw­ing a big stu­dio-audi­ence laugh with this descrip­tion of not just Lat­ka but Kauf­man as well. Asked how he came up with such a dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter voice, Kauf­man says only that he “grew up in New York, and you hear a lot of dif­fer­ent voic­es in New York” (“You don’t hear that one,” replies Welles). He also cites the accents of a high-school friend from South Amer­i­ca and a col­lege room­mate from Iran. Less than four years lat­er, both Kauf­man and Welles would be gone (and actor Ron Glass, look­ing on from the oth­er side of the couch, joined them this past Novem­ber).

Or at least both men would be gone if you don’t cred­it the rumors about Kauf­man hav­ing elab­o­rate­ly faked his death. “I don’t know whether it’s the inno­cence of the fel­low or the feel­ing you have that he is not stu­pid­er than every­body, but maybe smarter, that adds to the fas­ci­na­tion,” Welles says. Again he speaks osten­si­bly of Kauf­man’s For­eign Man/Latka per­sona, but his words apply equal­ly to the man who not just played but peri­od­i­cal­ly — and some­times unpre­dictably — became him. 33 years after Kauf­man’s death, or in any case dis­ap­pear­ance from life, that fas­ci­na­tion remains as strong as ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Look Back at Andy Kauf­man: Absurd Com­ic Per­for­mance Artist and Endear­ing Weirdo

Orson Welles Meets H.G. Wells in 1940: The Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

How the Japanese Practice of “Forest Bathing”—Or Just Hanging Out in the Woods—Can Lower Stress Levels and Fight Disease

in Health, Nature, Psychology | December 19th, 2017

When the U.S. media began report­ing on the phe­nom­e­non of “for­est bathing” as a ther­a­py for men­tal and phys­i­cal health, the online commentariat—as it will—mocked the con­cept relent­less­ly as yet anoth­er pre­ten­tious, bour­geois repack­ag­ing of some­thing thor­ough­ly mun­dane. Didn’t we just used to call it “going out­side”?

Well, yes, if all “for­est bathing” means is “going out­side,” then it does sound like a grandiose and unnec­es­sary phrase. The term, how­ev­er, is not an Amer­i­can mar­ket­ing inven­tion but a trans­la­tion of the Japan­ese shin­rin-yoku. “Coined by the Japan­ese Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Forestry and Fish­eries in 1982,” writes Meeri Kim at The Wash­ing­ton Post, “the word lit­er­al­ly trans­lates to ‘tak­ing in the for­est atmos­phere’ or ‘for­est bathing’ and refers to the process of soak­ing up the sights, smells and sounds of a nat­ur­al set­ting to pro­mote phys­i­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal health.”

So what? We already have the exam­ples of thou­sands years of Bud­dhist monks (and Thich Nat Hanh), of Hen­ry David Thore­au, and the saints of the Sier­ra Club. But the old­est and most use­ful ideas and prac­tices can get care­less­ly dis­card­ed in the fran­tic pur­suit of inno­va­tion at all costs. The push­ing of hi-tech out­door gear, wear­able activ­i­ty track­ers, and health apps that ask us to log every move­ment can make going out­side feel like a daunt­ing, expen­sive chore or a com­pet­i­tive event.

For­est bathing involves none of those things. “Just be with the trees,” as Ephrat Livni describes the prac­tice, “no hik­ing, no count­ing steps on a Fit­bit. You can sit or mean­der, but the point is to relax rather than accom­plish any­thing.” You don’t have to hug the trees if you don’t want to, but at least sit under one for a spell. Even if you don’t attain enlight­en­ment, you very well may reduce stress and boost immune func­tion, accord­ing to sev­er­al Japan­ese stud­ies con­duct­ed between 2004 and 2012.

The Japan­ese gov­ern­ment spent around four mil­lion dol­lars on stud­ies con­duct­ed with hun­dreds of peo­ple “bathing” on 48 des­ig­nat­ed ther­a­py trails. In his work, Qing Li, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at Nip­pon Med­ical School in Tokyo, found “sig­nif­i­cant increas­es in NK [nat­ur­al killer] cell activ­i­ty in the week after a for­est vis­it… pos­i­tive effects last­ed a month fol­low­ing each week­end in the woods.” Nat­ur­al killer cells fight virus­es and can­cers, and are appar­ent­ly stim­u­lat­ed by the oils that trees them­selves secrete to ward off germs and pests. See the pro­fes­sor explain in the video above (he trans­lates shin­rin-yoku as tak­ing a “for­est show­er,” and also claims to have bot­tled some of the effects).

Addi­tion­al­ly, exper­i­ments con­duct­ed by Japan’s Chi­ba Uni­ver­si­ty found that for­est bathing low­ered heart rate and blood pres­sure and brought down lev­els of cor­ti­sol, the stress hor­mone that can wreak hav­oc on every sys­tem when large amounts cir­cu­late through the body. Then there are the less tan­gi­ble psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of tak­ing in the trees. Sub­jects in one study “showed sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced hos­til­i­ty and depres­sion scores” after a walk in the woods. These find­ings under­score that spend­ing time in the for­est is a med­ical inter­ven­tion as well as an aes­thet­ic and spir­i­tu­al one, some­thing sci­en­tists have long observed but haven’t been able to quan­ti­fy.

In their review of a book called Your Brain on Nature, Moth­er Earth News quotes Franklin Hough, first chief of the U.S. Divi­sion of Forestry, who remarked in a 19th cen­tu­ry med­ical jour­nal that forests have “a cheer­ful and tran­quil­iz­ing influ­ence which they exert upon the mind, more espe­cial­ly when worn down by men­tal labor.” Hough’s hypoth­e­sis has been con­firmed, and despite what might sound to Eng­lish speak­ers like a slight­ly ridicu­lous name, for­est bathing is seri­ous ther­a­py, espe­cial­ly for the ever-increas­ing num­ber of urban­ites and those who spend their days in strip malls, office com­plex­es, and oth­er over­built envi­ron­ments.

What is a guid­ed for­est bathing expe­ri­ence like? You can lis­ten to NPR’s Ali­son Aubrey describe one above. She quotes Amos Clif­ford, founder of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Nature & For­est Ther­a­py, the cer­ti­fy­ing orga­ni­za­tion, as say­ing that a guide “helps you be here, not there,” sort of like a med­i­ta­tion instruc­tor. Clif­ford has been push­ing health care providers to “incor­po­rate for­est ther­a­py as a stress-reduc­tion strat­e­gy” in the U.S., and there’s no ques­tion that more stress reduc­tion tools are sore­ly need­ed.

But, you may won­der, do you have to call it “for­est bathing,” or pay for a cer­ti­fied guide, join a group, and buy some fan­cy out­er­wear to get the ben­e­fits hang­ing out with trees? I say, con­sid­er the words of John Muir, the inde­fati­ga­ble 19th nat­u­ral­ist, “father of the Nation­al Park Sys­tem,” and found­ing saint of the Sier­ra Club: In the eter­nal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go qui­et­ly, alone; no harm will befall you. The quote may under­es­ti­mate the amount of risk or over­state the ben­e­fits, but you get the idea. Muir was not one to get tan­gled up in seman­tics or over­ly detailed analy­sis. Nonethe­less, his work inspired Amer­i­cans to step in and pre­serve so much of the coun­try’s for­est in the 19th and 20th cen­turies. Maybe the pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine of “for­est bathing” can help do the same in the 21st.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

How Mind­ful­ness Makes Us Hap­pi­er & Bet­ter Able to Meet Life’s Chal­lenges: Two Ani­mat­ed Primers Explain

This Is Your Brain on Exer­cise: Why Phys­i­cal Exer­cise (Not Men­tal Games) Might Be the Best Way to Keep Your Mind Sharp

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

How to Draw in the Style of Japanese Manga: A Series of Free & Wildly Popular Video Tutorials from Artist Mark Crilley

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, How to Learn for Free | December 19th, 2017

In Japan, the word man­ga refers broad­ly to the art form we know in Eng­lish as comics. But as used in the West, it refers to a com­ic art style with dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ic and sto­ry­telling con­ven­tions of its own, orig­i­nat­ing from but now no longer lim­it­ed to Japan. Just as the past cen­tu­ry or so has seen the emer­gence of West­ern mas­ters of such things thor­ough­ly Japan­ese as sushi, judo, and even tea cer­e­mo­ny, the past few decades brought us the work of the West­ern man­ga­ka, or man­ga artist. Mark Cril­ley stands as one of the best-known prac­ti­tion­ers of that short tra­di­tion, thanks not only to his art but to his efforts to teach fans how to draw in the style of Japan­ese man­ga them­selves as well.

Apart from com­ic-book series like Akiko, Miki Falls, and Brody’s Ghost, the Detroit-born Cril­ley has also pub­lished a tril­o­gy of Mas­ter­ing Man­ga instruc­tion­al books. In an inter­view with Wired, he frames his own man­ga-mas­ter­ing process as a project sim­i­lar to lan­guage-learn­ing: “When I went to Tai­wan to teach Eng­lish after grad­u­at­ing from col­lege, I threw myself into learn­ing Chi­nese with a real ‘tun­nel vision’ kind of ded­i­ca­tion. As a result I became con­ver­sa­tion­al in Man­darin with­in about a year. More recent­ly I decid­ed to teach myself how to draw in a man­ga-influ­enced style and thus focused exclu­sive­ly on that for many months.”

Cril­ley first took to Youtube to pro­mote his then-new man­ga series, but he “soon found that peo­ple were watch­ing my videos as draw­ing lessons. As more peo­ple watched I got hooked on pass­ing on draw­ing tips to the next gen­er­a­tion, and so I con­tin­ued pro­duc­ing more and more instruc­tion­al videos.”

More young­sters seem to have an inter­est in draw­ing in the style of Japan­ese comics and ani­ma­tion than ever (at least if my friends’ kids are gen­er­a­tional­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive), and Cril­ley finds that they “appre­ci­ate hav­ing an art teacher who takes man­ga seri­ous­ly, and doesn’t dis­miss it as an infe­ri­or art form. I’m sure plen­ty of art teach­ers are all, ‘Stop draw­ing those saucer-eyed char­ac­ters! Draw this still life instead!’ ”

Not to say that Cril­ley does­n’t appre­ci­ate real­ism: he’s put out a whole book on the sub­ject, and some of his instruc­tion­al videos cov­er how to draw life­like eyes (a tuto­r­i­al that has drawn 27 mil­lion views and count­ing), leop­ards, mush­rooms, and much else besides. But for the aspir­ing man­ga­ka of any nation­al­i­ty, his Youtube chan­nel offers a wealth of lessons on how to draw every­thing from faces to clothes to fig­ures in motion to big eyes in the man­ga aes­thet­ic. But as he sure­ly knows — hav­ing cit­ed in the Wired inter­view a wide range of influ­ences from Star Wars to Mad mag­a­zine to Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus — if you want to tru­ly find your own style, you can’t lim­it your­self to any one source of inspi­ra­tion. Acquire the skills, of course, but then take them to new places.

You can see a playlist of 256 how-to-draw videos by Cril­ley here. Or a series of small­er draw­ing playlists here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Big List of Free Art Lessons on YouTube

How to Draw the Human Face & Head: A Free 3‑Hour Tuto­r­i­al

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Shows You How to Draw Bat­man in Her UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

W.B. Yeats’ Poem “When You Are Old” Adapt­ed into a Japan­ese Man­ga Com­ic

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

10 Reasons Why Hannibal’s Military Genius Still Captures Our Imagination Today

in History | December 13th, 2017

Note: This is a guest post from Patrick Hunt, author of the new book, Han­ni­bal.

Han­ni­bal Bar­ca, oth­er­wise sim­ply known as Han­ni­bal, lived and waged war over two thou­sand years ago – but is he still rel­e­vant in a world where the Romans are long gone? His famous cross­ing of the Alps in win­ter with an intre­pid army and ele­phants is unfor­get­table, but are his bril­liant maneu­vers and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing still worth exam­in­ing? Despite the enig­ma of this great Carthagin­ian gen­er­al being unable to pre­serve Carthage after him, Hannibal’s tac­tics and meth­ods offer great lessons not only for mil­i­tary his­to­ry but also for civ­i­liza­tion at large. His­to­ry reveals the Romans had a des­tiny of world con­quest, but what is less well known is how much Han­ni­bal changed the ways in which the Romans con­duct­ed the wars that even­tu­al­ly brought them Pax Romana, a peace often forged out of vio­lence after a bru­tal expan­sion that killed and enslaved mil­lions, includ­ing Carthage a cen­tu­ry after Han­ni­bal.

Before Han­ni­bal, Rome was hemmed in by seas on almost all sides and could hard­ly expand except north­ward into Etr­uscan and Celtic ter­ri­to­ry; acquir­ing Sici­ly was Rome’s first step out­side its main­land. But Han­ni­bal forced Rome to fight a very dif­fer­ent kind of war; his vic­to­ries taught them how exploitable their mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion was, and he pres­sured Rome to change for sur­vival. More rel­e­vant, while Han­ni­bal did­n’t invent spy­craft, he seem­ing­ly used it more effec­tive­ly than any oth­er ancient gen­er­al by his care­ful con­tin­gency plan­ning. Han­ni­bal set prece­dents for spy agen­cies and intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and how to stage bat­tles in any kind of ter­rain and weather–templates that cur­rent nations still study and fol­low. Every mil­i­tary acad­e­my today offers detailed class­es and sem­i­nars on Hannibal’s tac­tics. I am fre­quent­ly invit­ed to lec­ture on Hannibal’s intel­li­gence gath­er­ing in venues like the U.S. Naval War Col­lege, where class­es are filled with Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force offi­cers along with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the intel­li­gence agen­cies. That is also why the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety spon­sored my Han­ni­bal field research – send­ing me to every Han­ni­bal bat­tle site and to Carthage in Tunisia, along with Spain, France, Italy and even Turkey where Han­ni­bal con­clud­ed his dra­mat­ic life — and also why Simon and Schus­ter pub­lished my biog­ra­phy Han­ni­bal this sum­mer. Here are some nuggets from 20 years of Han­ni­bal field­work found in this new book.

1. Han­ni­bal stud­ied his oppo­nents very care­ful­ly, employ­ing every means of gath­er­ing intel­li­gence in ene­my camps, includ­ing spies from allied pop­u­la­tions who pro­vi­sioned the Romans.
2. When nec­es­sary, Han­ni­bal paid for cred­i­ble intel­li­gence with sil­ver sup­plied from mines in Carthagin­ian Spain; as long as that sil­ver last­ed to pay for good intel, he was unbeat­able. Once Rome con­quered Spain’s sil­ver mines, Hannibal’s abil­i­ty to gath­er and exploit such mil­i­tary intel­li­gence was cut off. There is a direct cor­re­la­tion to Han­ni­bal’s access to sil­ver for intel or mer­ce­nary use and his bril­liant vic­to­ries.
3. Han­ni­bal usu­al­ly went for the unpre­dictable sur­prise maneu­ver that had nev­er been seen before, includ­ing cross­ing the Alps in win­ter and forc­ing the Romans to fight in the dead of win­ter and at night.
4. Han­ni­bal got into the minds of his ene­mies with psy-ops, expos­ing their weak­ness­es, trig­ger­ing their anger and van­i­ty, and mak­ing them fall into his traps; under­min­ing the con­fi­dence of the Roman foot sol­diers in big bat­tles and par­a­lyz­ing them with fear. Romans taught their chil­dren to fear Han­ni­bal as the bogey­man – always warn­ing in crises for cen­turies that “Han­ni­bal is at the Gates”.
5. Han­ni­bal proved it’s not the size of your army but how well pre­pared it is. He epit­o­mizes the old adage, “Bet­ter 10 men wise­ly led than 100 with a fool at the head.” Even if aus­tere, Hannibal’s lead­er­ship was leg­en­dar­i­ly charis­mat­ic – he even slept with his men on the ground wrapped in a blan­ket. He taught his men the bru­tal­i­ty of war with like­ly less PTSD than his ene­mies because he always pre­pared them with ideas like “fight or die.” Much lat­er, Machi­avel­li even allud­ed to Han­ni­bal in The Prince with the con­cept that it’s “bet­ter to be feared than loved.”
6. Han­ni­bal effec­tive­ly used the most mobile units pos­si­ble with his Numid­i­an cav­al­ry, often out­flank­ing the Roman infantry on mul­ti­ple cam­paigns, espe­cial­ly in his famous “dou­ble envel­op­ment” or where he fin­ished bat­tles with ambush­es from the rear where there was no escape.
7. Because his armies were almost always small­er – espe­cial­ly after his dif­fi­cult Alps cross­ing when he lost many sol­diers – Han­ni­bal aug­ment­ed his arse­nal with weapons of nature: forc­ing the Romans to cross the frozen Treb­bia Riv­er, hid­ing his armies in the fog above Lake Trasimene, dri­ving cap­tured cat­tle with torch­es tied to their horns to fool the Romans into think­ing he was on the move at night at Voltur­nus, mak­ing the Romans face the blind­ing dust and sand blow­ing from Africa at Can­nae. He even con­fused the Romans at Can­nae with some of his troops out­fit­ted with cap­tured Roman gear.
8. Sim­i­lar­ly, after study­ing ter­rain and topog­ra­phy, Han­ni­bal always chose his bat­tle sites when pos­si­ble for the best pos­si­ble advan­tage, espe­cial­ly con­strict­ing the larg­er Roman armies where they would be unable to out­flank him and instead they would be hemmed in by rivers or hills, etc., also choos­ing ter­rain where he could hide ambush­es in near­by forests.
9. Han­ni­bal sage­ly exploit­ed the 2‑consul Roman alter­nat­ing com­mand rotat­ed one day between an expe­ri­enced mil­i­tary vet­er­an and the next day with a polit­i­cal appointee pop­ulist lead­ing. On at least three occa­sions, Han­ni­bal anni­hi­lat­ed the Romans on the days when fools were the sup­posed com­man­ders. The fol­low­ing Roman gen­er­a­tions learned the hard les­son from this and the Sen­ate cre­at­ed a pro­fes­sion­al army com­mand­ed by vet­er­an lead­er­ship. Even­tu­al­ly Rome also amped up its cav­al­ry and became less depen­dent on infantry thanks to Han­ni­bal.
10. Han­ni­bal taught his one for­mi­da­ble Roman oppo­nent Sci­pio how to imple­ment bril­liant tac­tics, how to mine data from mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and how to ben­e­fit from Spain’s mer­ce­nary sil­ver to bribe the Numid­i­ans to aban­don Carthage. Sci­pio – the only one to beat Han­ni­bal — respect­ed Han­ni­bal more than any oth­er Roman because he learned so much from him. It’s one of the great ironies in his­to­ry that Han­ni­bal is appar­ent­ly more famous than Sci­pio, and it’s not only because of cross­ing the Alps with ele­phants: ulti­mate­ly the Romans did­n’t appre­ci­ate a vic­to­ri­ous Sci­pio any more than the Carthagini­ans appre­ci­at­ed a vic­to­ri­ous Han­ni­bal. Han­ni­bal will remain a pro­found enig­ma in that he could not ulti­mate­ly win the war with Rome, yet he could win so many bril­liant bat­tles with incred­i­bly mem­o­rable tac­tics still taught today.

The Roman book Strat­a­ge­ma­ta by Fron­ti­nus — a com­pi­la­tion of mil­i­tary strat­a­gems — has more clever rus­es of Han­ni­bal than any oth­er com­man­der up to that time. His­toric great com­man­ders or offi­cers who stud­ied or emu­lat­ed Han­ni­bal include but are not lim­it­ed to Julius Cae­sar, Belis­ar­ius, Charle­magne, Napoleon, Suvorov, Kutu­zov, von Clause­witz, Mont­gomery, Lid­dell Hart, Rom­mel, Pat­ton and Schwarzkopf, among many oth­ers. Even the term blitzkrieg allud­ed to Han­ni­bal’s clan (Bar­ca = “light­ning”) and his rapid advance in his inva­sion of Italy.”  So, of course, Han­ni­bal is at least as rel­e­vant as any oth­er mem­o­rable per­son in his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly in a time of world chaos and rethink­ing strate­gic alle­giances.

Post­script: Han­ni­bal (Simon and Schus­ter 2017) has been acclaimed in reviews from The New York Times, Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, Philadel­phia Inquir­er, Ancient His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­dia, a starred Kirkus Review and many oth­ers, and also nom­i­nat­ed in the Kirkus List of Best Non­fic­tion Books of 2017.

What Books Did Wunderkind Philosopher J.S. Mill Read Between Ages 3 and 7?: Plato’s Apology (in Ancient Greek), Cervantes’ Don Quixote & Much More

in Books, Philosophy | November 30th, 2017

I left much of my read­ing of C.S. Lewis behind, but one quote of his will stay with me for life: “It is a good rule,” he advised, “after read­ing a new book, nev­er to allow your­self anoth­er new one till you have read an old one in between.” I believe his advice is invalu­able for main­tain­ing a bal­anced per­spec­tive and achiev­ing a healthy crit­i­cal dis­tance from the tumult of the present.

Read­ing works of ancient writ­ers shows us how alike the mores and the crises of the ancients were to ours, and how vast­ly dif­fer­ent. Those sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences can help us eval­u­ate cer­tain cur­rent ortho­dox­ies with greater wis­dom. And that’s not to men­tion count­less his­to­ri­ans, nov­el­ists, poets, play­wrights, crit­ics, and philoso­phers from the past few hun­dred years, or sev­er­al decades, who have much to teach us about where our mod­ern ideas came from and how much they’ve devi­at­ed from their prece­dents.

For exam­ple, 19th cen­tu­ry lib­er­al polit­i­cal philoso­pher John Stu­art Mill is now wide­ly admired by con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­tar­i­an writ­ers and aca­d­e­mics as a pro­po­nent of indi­vid­ual eco­nom­ic lib­er­ty, the free mar­ket, and a flat tax. And they are not wrong, he was all of that, in his ear­ly thought. (Mill lat­er sup­port­ed sev­er­al social­ist caus­es.) Many of his oth­er polit­i­cal views might be denounced by quite a few as the excess­es of cam­pus activist left­ism. Adam Gop­nik sum­ma­rizes the Vic­to­ri­an philosopher’s gen­er­ous slate of posi­tions:

Mill believed in com­plete equal­i­ty between the sex­es, not just women’s col­leges and, some­day, female suf­frage but absolute par­i­ty; he believed in equal process for all, the end of slav­ery, votes for the work­ing class­es, and the right to birth con­trol (he was arrest­ed at sev­en­teen for help­ing poor peo­ple obtain con­tra­cep­tion), and in the com­mon intel­li­gence of all the races of mankind. He led the fight for due process for detainees accused of ter­ror­ism; argued for teach­ing Ara­bic, in order not to alien­ate poten­tial native rad­i­cals.…

Can peo­ple to Mill’s left on eco­nom­ics learn some­thing from him? Sure. Can peo­ple to his right on near­ly every­thing else learn a thing or two? It’s worth a shot. Mill cham­pi­oned engag­ing those with whom we dis­agree (he great­ly admired Thomas Car­lyle; the two could­n’t have been more dif­fer­ent in many respects). He also argued vig­or­ous­ly for “’lib­er­ty of the press’ as one of the secu­ri­ties against cor­rupt or tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment.” Before nod­ding your head in agree­ment—read Mill’s argu­ments. He might not agree with you.

And what did John Stu­art Mill read? In Chap­ter One of his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Mill gives a detailed account of his clas­si­cal edu­ca­tion from ages 3–7, dur­ing which time he read “the whole of Herodotus,” “the first six dia­logues of Pla­to,” “part of Lucian,” all in their orig­i­nal Greek, of course, as any young gen­tle­man of the time would. Mil­l’s father, Scot­tish philoso­pher James Mill, inten­tion­al­ly set out to cre­ate a genius with this advanced course of study.

Lapham’s Quar­ter­ly excerpt­ed the pas­sage, and turned the many books Mill men­tions into a list called “Ear­ly Edu­ca­tion.” You can find all of the titles below, includ­ing the ancients men­tioned and over two dozen “mod­ern” works (that is, since the time of the Renais­sance) Mill read as a child in Eng­lish, includ­ing Cer­vantes’ mam­moth Don Quixote. Most of us will have to make do with trans­la­tions of the Greek texts, but take heart, even Mill “learnt no Latin until my eighth year.” The list shows not only Mill’s daunt­ing pre­coc­i­ty, but also how essen­tial clas­si­cal texts were to well-edu­cat­ed Euro­peans of any age.

It also high­lights what kinds of texts were val­ued by Mil­l’s soci­ety, or at least by his father. All of the authors but one are men, all of them are Euro­peans, most of the works are his­to­ries and biogra­phies. Giv­en Mill’s broad views, his own rec­om­mend­ed read­ing list might look dif­fer­ent. Nonethe­less, Mil­l’s account of his extra­or­di­nary ear­ly years gives us a fas­ci­nat­ing look at the rel­a­tive breadth of a lib­er­al edu­ca­tion in 19th cen­tu­ry Britain. What ancient authors did you read as a young stu­dent? Or do you read now, between books, essays, arti­cles, or Twit­ter­storms du jour?

In Greek

Aesop–The Fables

Xenophon–The Anaba­sis, Memo­ri­als of Socrates, The Cry­opadeia 

Herodotus–The His­to­ries

Dio­genes Laer­tius–some of The Lives of Philoso­phers

Lucian–various works

Isocrates–parts of To Demon­i­cus and To Nic­o­cles 

Pla­to--Euthy­phro, Apol­o­gy, Crito, Phae­do, Craty­lus, Theaete­tus

 

In Eng­lish

William Robert­son–The His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, The His­to­ry of the Reign of the Emper­or Charles V, The His­to­ry of Scot­land Dur­ing the Reigns of Queen Mary and King James VI

David Hume–The His­to­ry of Eng­land

Edward Gib­bon–The His­to­ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Robert Watson–The His­to­ry of the Reign of Philip II, King of Spain

Robert Wat­son and William Thomp­son–The His­to­ry of the Reign of Philip III, King of Spain

Nathaniel Hooke–The Roman His­to­ry, from the Build­ing of Rome to the Ruin of the Com­mon­wealth 

Charles Rollin–The Ancient His­to­ry of the Egyp­tians, Carthagini­ans, Assyr­i­ans, Baby­lo­ni­ans, Medes and Per­sians, Mace­do­nians and Gre­cians

Plutarch–Par­al­lel Lives

Gilbert Bur­net--Bish­op Bur­net’s His­to­ry of His Own Time

The Annu­al Reg­is­ter of World Events, A Review of the Year (1758–1788)

John Mil­lar–An His­tor­i­cal View of the Eng­lish Gov­ern­ment

Johann Lorenz von Mosheim–An Eccle­si­as­ti­cal His­to­ry

Thomas McCrie–The Life of John Knox

William Sewell–The His­to­ry of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Chris­t­ian Peo­ple Called Quak­ers 

Thomas Wight and John Rut­ty–A His­to­ry of the Rise and Progress of Peo­ple Called Quak­ers in Ire­land

Philip Beaver–African Mem­o­ran­da

David Collins–An Account of the Eng­lish Colony in New South Wales

George Anson–A Voy­age Round the World

Daniel Defoe–Robin­son Cru­soe

The Ara­bi­an Nights and Ara­bi­an Tales

Miguel de Cer­vantes–Don Quixote

Maria Edge­worth–Pop­u­lar Tales

Hen­ry Brooke–The Fool of Qual­i­ty; or the His­to­ry of Hen­ry, Earl of More­land

via Lapham’s Quar­ter­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Harold Bloom Cre­ates a Mas­sive List of Works in The “West­ern Canon”: Read Many of the Books Free Online

Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Yale Course

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

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

Bryan Cranston Gives Advice to the Young: Find Yourself by Traveling and Getting Lost

in Creativity, Life | November 9th, 2017

I don’t know what time you’re read­ing this post but “What do you real­ly want to do in life?” is a ques­tion that can wake you up right fast, or make you want to pack it in and sleep on it.

It’s also a ques­tion asked maybe a bit too ear­ly of our young peo­ple, which starts with fan­ta­sy (“What do you want to be when you grow up?” “A space­man!”) and by our teens it turns into a more seri­ous, fate-decid­ing inquiry by peo­ple who may not be hap­py with their sta­tion in life.

Actor Bryan Cranston takes on this ques­tion in this Big Think video, and extolls the virtues of trav­el and wan­der­ing.

“Trav­el­ing forces you to be social,” Cranston says. “You have to get directions.You have to learn where things are. You’re attuned to your envi­ron­ment.”

Cranston thought he was going to be a police­man when he entered col­lege. Then he took an act­ing class. So, at 19, Cranston explored Amer­i­ca for two years by motor­cy­cle with his broth­er, in essence to find them­selves by get­ting lost. He says he’s passed on this direc­tion­less wan­der­ing to his now 24 year-old daugh­ter.

That idea of let­ting go and just wan­der­ing also dove­tails nice­ly into his oth­er advice about audi­tions. You don’t go there to get a job, you go to cre­ate a char­ac­ter and present it. The rest is out of your con­trol.

Now, Cranston says that the peri­od between high school/college and the “real world” is the best time to do it, but there’s real­ly no time like right now. To quote Niger­ian author Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie, “I think you trav­el to search and you come back home to find your­self there,” and the boats are always leav­ing. Just jump on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Any­thing You Think Is Real­ly Good”

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers: Write, Write, Write and Read

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

A Free Trial Offer for The Great Courses Plus: A Special Deal for Open Culture Readers

in Deals | October 31st, 2017

We’ve told you about the Great Cours­es Plus (now called Won­dri­um)  before–a new video sub­scrip­tion ser­vice that lets you watch free cours­es (about 8,000 lec­tures in total) across a wide range of sub­jects, all taught by some of the best lec­tur­ers in the coun­try. The top­ics cov­er every­thing from His­to­ry, Phi­los­o­phy, Lit­er­a­ture, and Eco­nom­ics, to Math, Sci­ence, Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment, Cook­ing, and Pho­tog­ra­phy. And you can binge-watch entire col­lege cours­es in a mat­ter of days by watch­ing videos on your TV, tablet, lap­top and smart phone, with the help of apps designed for Apple, Google Play, Kin­dle Fire, and Roku.

Inter­est­ed in try­ing out this ser­vice? Right now, the Great Cours­es Plus/Won­dri­um is offer­ing a spe­cial deal for Open Cul­ture read­ers. If you click here, and sign up for a free tri­al, you can use this ser­vice for 30 days … for free. And then, if you would like, you can con­tin­ue to sub­scribe and pay their nor­mal prices. If you have time on your hands, this is a great way to keep your mind engaged and stream what PC Mag­a­zine has called “an excel­lent library of col­lege-lev­el lec­tures.”

Note: The Great Cours­es is a part­ner with Open Cul­ture. So if you sign up for a free tri­al, it ben­e­fits not just you and Great Cours­es Plus. It ben­e­fits Open Cul­ture too. So con­sid­er it win-win-win.

What Makes The Death of Socrates a Great Work of Art?: A Thought-Provoking Reading of David’s Philosophical & Political Painting

in Art, History, Philosophy | October 30th, 2017

When we think of polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da, we do not typ­i­cal­ly think of French Neo­clas­si­cal painter Jacques-Louis David. There’s some­thing debased about the term—it stinks of insin­cer­i­ty, stagi­ness, emo­tion­al manip­u­la­tion, qual­i­ties that can­not pos­si­bly belong to great art. But let us put aside this prej­u­dice and con­sid­er David’s 1787 The Death of Socrates. Cre­at­ed two years before the start of the French Rev­o­lu­tion, the paint­ing “gave expres­sion to the prin­ci­ple of resist­ing unjust author­i­ty,” and—like its source, Plato’s Phae­do—it makes a mar­tyr of its hero, who is the soul of rea­son and a thorn in the side of dog­ma and tra­di­tion.

Nonethe­less, as Evan Puschak, the Nerd­writer, shows us in the short video above, The Death of Socrates sit­u­ates itself firm­ly with­in the tra­di­tions of Euro­pean art, draw­ing heav­i­ly on clas­si­cal sculp­tures and friezes as well as the great­est works of the Renais­sance. There are echoes of da Vinci’s Last Sup­per in the num­ber of fig­ures and their place­ment, and a dis­tinct ref­er­ence of Raphael’s School of Athens in Socrates’ upward-point­ing fin­ger, which belongs to Pla­to in the ear­li­er paint­ing. Here, David has Pla­to, already an old man, seat­ed at the foot of the bed, the scene arranged behind him as if “explod­ing from the back of his head.”

Socrates, says Puschak, “has been dis­cussing at length the immor­tal­i­ty of the soul, and he doesn’t even seem to care that he’s about to take the imple­ment of his death in hand. On the con­trary, Socrates is defi­ant… David ide­al­izes him… he would have been 70 at the time and some­what less mus­cu­lar and beau­ti­ful than paint­ed here.” He is a “sym­bol of strength over pas­sion, of sto­ic com­mit­ment to an abstract ide­al,” a theme David artic­u­lat­ed with much less sub­tle­ty in an ear­li­er paint­ing, The Oath of the Hor­atii, with its Roman salutes and bun­dled swords—a “severe, moral­is­tic can­vas,” with which the artist “effec­tive­ly invent­ed the Neo­clas­si­cal style.”

In The Death of Socrates, David refines his moral­is­tic ten­den­cies, and Puschak ties the com­po­si­tion loose­ly to a sense of prophe­cy about the com­ing Ter­ror after the storm­ing of the Bastille. The Nerd­writer sum­ma­tion of the painting’s angles and influ­ences does help us see it anew. But Puschak’s vague his­tori­ciz­ing doesn’t quite do the artist jus­tice, fail­ing to men­tion David’s direct part in the wave of bloody exe­cu­tions under Robe­spierre.

David was an active sup­port­er of the Rev­o­lu­tion and designed “uni­forms, ban­ners, tri­umphal arch­es, and inspi­ra­tional props for the Jacobin Club’s pro­pa­gan­da,” notes a Boston Col­lege account. He was also “elect­ed a Deputy form the city of Paris, and vot­ed for the exe­cu­tion of Louis XVI.” His­to­ri­ans have iden­ti­fied over “300 vic­tims for whom David signed exe­cu­tion orders.” The sever­i­ty of his ear­li­er clas­si­cal scenes comes into greater focus in The Death of Socrates around the cen­tral fig­ure, a great man of his­to­ry, one whose hero­ic feats and trag­ic sac­ri­fices dri­ve the course of all events worth men­tion­ing.

Indeed, we can see David’s work as a visu­al pre­cur­sor to philoso­pher and his­to­ri­an Thomas Carlyle’s the­o­ries of “the hero­ic in his­to­ry.” (Car­lyle also hap­pened to write the 19th century’s defin­i­tive his­to­ry of the French Rev­o­lu­tion.) In 1793, David took his visu­al great man the­o­ry and Neo­clas­si­cal style and applied them for the first time to a con­tem­po­rary event, the mur­der of his friend Jean-Paul Marat, Swiss Jacobin jour­nal­ist, by the Girondist Char­lotte Cor­day. (Learn more in the Khan Acad­e­my video above.) This is one of three can­vas­es David made of “mar­tyrs of the Revolution”—the oth­er two are lost to his­to­ry. And it is here that we can see the evo­lu­tion of his polit­i­cal paint­ing from clas­si­cal alle­go­ry to con­tem­po­rary pro­pa­gan­da, in a can­vas wide­ly hailed, along with The Death of Socrates, as one of the great­est Euro­pean paint­ings of the age.

We can look to David for both for­mal mas­tery and didac­tic intent. But we should not look to him for polit­i­cal con­stan­cy. He was no John Mil­ton—the poet of the Eng­lish Rev­o­lu­tion who was still devot­ed to the cause even after the restora­tion of the monarch. David, on the oth­er hand, “could eas­i­ly be denounced as a bril­liant cyn­ic,” writes Michael Glover at The Inde­pen­dent. Once Napoleon came to pow­er and began his rapid ascen­sion to the self-appoint­ed role of Emper­or, David quick­ly became court painter, and cre­at­ed the two most famous por­traits of the ruler.

We’re quite famil­iar with The Emper­or Napoleon in His Study at the Tui­leries, in which the sub­ject stands in an awk­ward pose, his hand thrust into his waist­coat. And sure­ly know Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass, above. Here, the fin­ger point­ing upward takes on an entire­ly new res­o­nance than it has in The Death of Socrates. It is the ges­ture not of a man nobly pre­pared to leave the world behind, but of one who plans to con­quer and sub­due it under his absolute rule.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Restor­ing a 400-Year-Old Paint­ing: A Five-Minute Primer

Gus­tav Klimt’s Haunt­ing Paint­ings Get Re-Cre­at­ed in Pho­tographs, Fea­tur­ing Live Mod­els, Ornate Props & Real Gold

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

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

The Art of Explaining Hard Ideas: Scientists Try to Explain Gene Editing & Brain Mapping to Young Kids & Students

in Biology, K-12, Neuroscience, Science | October 25th, 2017

If you’ve seen Bong Joon-ho’s film Okja, about an Agribusi­ness-engi­neered gar­gan­tu­an mutant pig and her young Kore­an girl side­kick, you may have some very spe­cif­ic ideas about CRISPR, the sci­ence used to edit and manip­u­late genes. In fact, the mad­cap fic­tion­al adventure’s world may not be too far off, though the sci­ence seems to be mov­ing in the oth­er direc­tion. Just recent­ly, Chi­nese sci­en­tists have report­ed the cre­ation of 12 pigs with 24 per­cent less body fat than the ordi­nary vari­ety. It may not be front-page news yet, but the achieve­ment is “a big issue for the pig indus­try,” says the lead researcher.

There’s much more to CRISPR than bio­engi­neer­ing lean bacon. But what is it and how does it work? I couldn’t begin to tell you. Let biol­o­gist Neville San­jana explain. In the Wired video above, he under­takes the ulti­mate chal­lenge for sci­ence communicators—explaining the most cut­ting-edge sci­ence to five dif­fer­ent peo­ple: a 7‑year-old, 14-year-old, col­lege stu­dent, grad stu­dent, and—to real­ly put him on the spot—a CRISPR expert. CRISPR is “a new area of bio­med­ical sci­ence that enables gene edit­ing,” San­jana begins in his short intro for view­ers, “and it’s help­ing us under­stand the basis of many genet­ic dis­eases like autism and can­cer.”

That’s all well and good, but does he have any­thing to say about the pig busi­ness? Watch and find out, begin­ning with the adorable 7‑year-old Teigen Riv­er, who may or may not have been primed with per­fect respons­es. Play it for your own kids and let us know how well the expla­na­tion works. San­jara runs quick­ly through his oth­er stu­dents to arrive, halfway through the video, at Dr. Matthew Can­ver, CRISPR expert.

From there on out you may wish to refer to oth­er quick ref­er­ences, such as the Har­vard and MIT Broad Institute’s short guide and video intro above from mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist Feng Zhang, who explains that CRISPR, or “Clus­tered Reg­u­lar­ly Inter­sperced Short Palin­dromic Repeats,” is actu­al­ly the name of DNA sequences in bac­te­ria. The gene edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy itself is called CRISPR-Cas9. Just so you know how the sausage is made.

Enough of pig puns. Let’s talk about brains, with neu­ro­sci­en­tist Dr. Bob­by Kasthuri of the Argonne Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry. He faces a sim­i­lar chal­lenge above—this time explain­ing high con­cept sci­ence to a 5‑year-old, 13-year-old, col­lege stu­dent, grad stu­dent, and a “Con­nec­tome entre­pre­neur.” A what? Con­nec­tome is the prod­uct of the NIH’s Human Con­nec­tome Project, which set out to “pro­vide an unpar­al­leled com­pi­la­tion of neur­al data” and “achieve nev­er before real­ized con­clu­sions about the liv­ing human brain.” This brain-map­ping sci­ence has many objec­tives, one of which, in the 5‑year-old ver­sion, is “to know where every cell in your brain is, and how it can talk to every oth­er cell.”

To this aston­ish­ing expla­na­tion you may reply like Daniel Dod­son, 5‑year-old, with a stunned “Oh.” And then you may think of Philip K. Dick, or Black Mir­ror’s “San Junipero” episode. Espe­cial­ly after hear­ing from “Con­nec­tome Entre­pre­neur” Rus­sell Han­son, founder and CEO of a com­pa­ny called Brain Back­ups, or after lis­ten­ing to Sebas­t­ian Seung—“leader in the field of connectomics”—give his TED talk, “I am my con­nec­tome.” Want anoth­er short, but grown-up focused, expla­na­tion of the total­ly sci­ence-fic­tion but also com­plete­ly real Con­nec­tome? See Kasthuri’s 2‑minute ani­mat­ed video above from Boston Uni­ver­si­ty.

Relat­ed Video:

Real­i­ty Is Noth­ing But a Hal­lu­ci­na­tion: A Mind-Bend­ing Crash Course on the Neu­ro­science of Con­scious­ness

Richard Feyn­man Cre­ates a Sim­ple Method for Telling Sci­ence From Pseu­do­science (1966)

125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics & Psy­chol­o­gy 

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