Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Sessions: 255 Tracks by Syd Barrett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Banshees & Other Artists

in Music | July 12th, 2016

For fans of what came to be called “alter­na­tive music,” the dis­cov­ery of new artists and bands felt like a gen­uine adven­ture before the inter­net irrev­o­ca­bly changed music con­sump­tion. A few offi­cial venues act­ed as guides—magazines like Trouser Press and NME, shows like 120 Min­utes, MTV’s late-night show­case of post-punk, new wave, indus­tri­al, etc. Word of mouth, local zines, col­lege radio, mix­tape gifts, and the pur­loined con­tents of old­er broth­ers and sis­ters’ record col­lec­tions went a long way. Many of us had access to inde­pen­dent record stores that stocked all sorts of under­ground odd­i­ties, often run by obses­sive know-it-alls like High Fideli­ty’s Rob Gor­don.

Ven­tur­ing into that world could be an intim­i­dat­ing expe­ri­ence. But one depend­able mark­er of qual­i­ty hard­ly ever let young seek­ers down: the name of BBC DJ and cura­tor extra­or­di­naire John Peel. Peel’s influ­ence on the musi­cal trends of the last forty years is incal­cu­la­ble, and impos­si­ble to sum­ma­rize in brief. (Learn about his lega­cy at this BBC trib­ute page.) From 1967 to his death in 2004, he record­ed up and com­ing and under­ground bands in inti­mate ses­sions at BBC stu­dios, and many of these clas­sic record­ings came out on his Strange Fruit label.

No mat­ter the band, no mat­ter the genre, the mys­te­ri­ous gray cov­er of a Peel Ses­sions release always promised some­thing worth fork­ing over one’s hard-earned lawn­mow­ing mon­ey to hear. Peel broad­cast and record­ed Nir­vana before “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” hit the main­stream; intro­duced his lis­ten­ers to now-leg­ends like Joy Divi­sion, The Smiths, and The Spe­cials; gave Bowie his first break before his Zig­gy Star­dust fame; and played Bob Mar­ley before Catch a Fire made him world famous.

These ses­sions and many more have been lov­ing­ly com­piled in one Spo­ti­fy playlist by Sebastien Van­blaere. If you have nos­tal­gic mem­o­ries of putting on a Peel Ses­sions record or cas­sette and hav­ing your mind blown by music the likes of which you’d nev­er heard before, you may find your favorites here. My per­son­al touch­stone is Siouxsie and the Ban­shees’ Peel Ses­sion record­ings, which to this day I pre­fer to their still excel­lent stu­dio releas­es (hear “Love in a Void” at the top). Some­thing about the way those focused live ses­sions were record­ed, and the imme­di­a­cy of their raw, unclut­tered mix­es, make them feel very per­son­al, like a con­cert in your liv­ing room.

While I asso­ciate Peel’s name main­ly with the post-punk niche of my youth, his eclec­tic tastes spanned the gamut. Before he gave the Ramones, The Damned, and oth­er punk bands their first major play in the mid-sev­en­ties, Peel cham­pi­oned the psy­che­del­ic space­rock of Pink Floyd, the dron­ing krautrock of Neu!, and the uncat­e­go­riz­able weird­ness of Cap­tain Beef­heart; “he was among the first (and only) DJs any­where,” writes the Hous­ton Press, “to broad­cast reg­gae, punk, hard­core, grind­core, grime and dub­step music over the radio.”

Peel’s rel­e­vance nev­er waned because his inter­est in find­ing, broad­cast­ing, and record­ing new music nev­er did either, but the playlist here most­ly rep­re­sents his pre-1990 favs, and sticks close­ly to rock, punk, new wave, and folk. See this page for a full list­ing of every John Peel ses­sion, from 1967 to three posthu­mous releas­es in 2004. And for a sense of the incred­i­ble breadth and eclec­tic inclu­sive­ness of Peel’s musi­cal tastes, vis­it the John Peel Archive, an online project cat­a­logu­ing every sin­gle record in Peel’s col­lec­tion. They’re cur­rent­ly up to 2679 of over 100,000 records total.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 120 Min­utes Archive Com­piles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alter­na­tive Music Show (1986–2013)

Revis­it the Radio Ses­sions and Record Col­lec­tion of Ground­break­ing BBC DJ John Peel

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

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

32 Animated Videos by Wireless Philosophy Teach You the Essentials of Critical Thinking

in Online Courses, Philosophy | July 6th, 2016

Do you know some­one whose argu­ments con­sist of bald­ly spe­cious rea­son­ing, hope­less­ly con­fused cat­e­gories, arch­i­pel­a­gos of log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es but­tressed by sea­walls of cog­ni­tive bias­es? Sure­ly you do. Per­haps such a per­son would wel­come some instruc­tion on the prop­er­ties of crit­i­cal think­ing and argu­men­ta­tion? Not like­ly? Well, just in case, you may wish to send them over to this series of Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy (or “WiPhi”) videos by phi­los­o­phy instruc­tor Geoff Pynn of North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty and doc­tor­al stu­dents Kel­ley Schiff­man of Yale, Paul Henne of Duke, and sev­er­al oth­er phi­los­o­phy and psy­chol­o­gy grad­u­ates.

What is crit­i­cal think­ing? “Crit­i­cal think­ing,” says Pynn, “is about mak­ing sure that you have good rea­sons for your beliefs.” Now, there’s quite a bit more to it than that, as the var­i­ous instruc­tors explain over the course of 32 short lessons (watch them all at the bot­tom of the post), but Pynn’s intro­duc­to­ry video above lays out the foun­da­tion. Good rea­sons log­i­cal­ly sup­port the beliefs or con­clu­sions one adopts—from degrees of prob­a­bil­i­ty to absolute cer­tain­ty (a rare con­di­tion indeed). The sense of “good” here, Pynn spec­i­fies, does not relate to moral good­ness, but to log­i­cal coher­ence and truth val­ue. Though many ethi­cists and philoso­phers would dis­agree, he notes that it isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly “moral­ly wrong or evil or wicked” to believe some­thing on the basis of bad rea­sons. But in order to think ratio­nal­ly, we need to dis­tin­guish “good” rea­sons from “bad” ones.

“A good rea­son for a belief,” Pynn says, “is one that makes it prob­a­ble. That is, it’s one that makes the belief like­ly to be true. The very best rea­sons for a belief make it cer­tain. They guar­an­tee it.” In his next two videos, above and below, he dis­cuss­es these two class­es of argument—one relat­ing to cer­tain­ty, the oth­er prob­a­bil­i­ty. The first class, deduc­tive argu­ments, occur in the clas­sic, Aris­totelian form of the syl­lo­gism, and they should guar­an­tee their con­clu­sions, mean­ing that “it’s impos­si­ble for the premis­es to be true while the con­clu­sion is false” (pro­vid­ed the form of the argu­ment itself is cor­rect). In such an instance, we say the argu­ment is “valid,” a tech­ni­cal philo­soph­i­cal term that rough­ly cor­re­sponds to what we mean by a “good, cogent, or rea­son­able” argu­ment. Some prop­er­ties of deduc­tive rea­son­ing—valid­i­ty, truth, and sound­ness—receive their own explana­to­ry videos lat­er in the series.

In abduc­tive argu­ments (or what are also called “induc­tive argu­ments”), above, we rea­son infor­mal­ly to the best, most prob­a­ble expla­na­tion. In these kinds of argu­ments, the premis­es do not guar­an­tee the con­clu­sion, and the argu­ments are not bound in rigid for­mal syl­lo­gisms. Rather, we must make a leap—or an inference—to what seems like the most like­ly con­clu­sion giv­en the rea­son­ing and evi­dence. Find­ing addi­tion­al evi­dence, or find­ing that some of our evi­dence or rea­son­ing is incor­rect or must be rethought, should force us to reassess the like­li­hood of our con­clu­sion and make new infer­ences. Most sci­en­tif­ic expla­na­tions rely on abduc­tive rea­son­ing, which is why they are sub­ject to retrac­tion or revi­sion. New evidence—or new under­stand­ings of the evidence—often requires new con­clu­sions.

As for under­stand­ing probability—the like­li­hood that rea­sons pro­vide suf­fi­cient jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for infer­ring par­tic­u­lar conclusions—well… this is where we often get into trou­ble, falling vic­tim to all sorts of fal­lac­i­es. And when it comes to inter­pret­ing evi­dence, we’re prey to a num­ber of psy­cho­log­i­cal bias­es that pre­vent us from mak­ing fair assess­ments. WiPhi brings pre­vi­ous video series to bear on these prob­lems of argu­men­ta­tion, one on For­mal and Infor­mal Fal­lac­i­es and anoth­er on Cog­ni­tive Bias­es.

When it comes to a gen­er­al the­o­ry of prob­a­bil­i­ty itself, we would all ben­e­fit from some under­stand­ing of what’s called Bayes’ The­o­rem, named for the 18^th cen­tu­ry sta­tis­ti­cian and philoso­pher Thomas Bayes. Bayes’ The­o­rem can seem for­bid­ding, but its wide appli­ca­tion across a range of dis­ci­plines speaks to its impor­tance. “Some philoso­phers,” says CUNY grad­u­ate stu­dent Ian Olasov in his video les­son above, “even think it’s the key to under­stand­ing what it means to think ratio­nal­ly.”

Bayesian rea­son­ing, infor­mal log­ic, sound, valid, and true argu­ments… all of these modes of crit­i­cal think­ing help us make sense of the tan­gles of infor­ma­tion we find our­selves caught up in dai­ly. Though some of our less ratio­nal­ly-inclined acquain­tances may not be recep­tive to good intro­duc­to­ry lessons like these, it’s worth the effort to pass them along. And while we’re at it, we can sharp­en our own rea­son­ing skills and learn quite a bit about where we go right and where we go wrong as crit­i­cal thinkers in Wire­less Philosophy’s thor­ough, high qual­i­ty series of video lessons.

Find more help­ful resources in the Relat­eds below.

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:

Down­load 130 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es: Tools for Think­ing About Life, Death & Every­thing Between

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

How to Spot Bull­shit: A Primer by Prince­ton Philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt

Michael Shermer’s Baloney Detec­tion Kit: What to Ask Before Believ­ing

Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

“Call­ing Bull­shit”: See the Syl­labus for a Col­lege Course Designed to Iden­ti­fy & Com­bat Bull­shit

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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

What’s the Essence of Music & Sound?: Meditations from Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad Presented in a Short, Creative Film

in Music | July 6th, 2016

If you’ve ever lis­tened to Radi­o­lab, one of the most pop­u­lar and endur­ing pod­casts out there, you know how much music (and sound more gen­er­al­ly) plays a spe­cial role in the show’s pro­duc­tion. And that’s all large­ly the cre­ation of Radi­o­lab’s co-host, Jad Abum­rad. You know those “jaggedy sounds, lit­tle plurps and things, strange stac­ca­to, per­cus­sive things” that make the show so dis­tinc­tive? That’s all Abum­rad, who majored in exper­i­men­tal music com­po­si­tion and pro­duc­tion at Ober­lin Col­lege.

To get inside Abum­rad’s think­ing about music (what is sound? what is music? why do we orga­nize sound into music?) watch the video above. Mac Pre­mo inter­viewed Jad, then turned the con­ver­sa­tion into a short cre­ative film. Note: If you don’t react well to see­ing fast-mov­ing images, you might want to skip this one.

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!

Hear the Great Mixtapes Richard Linklater Created to Psych Up the Actors in Dazed and Confused and Everybody Wants Some!!

in Film, Music | June 22nd, 2016

Richard Linklater’s films have become increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed as the 90s indie break­out writer-direc­tor has grown into his auteur­hood. From the loose ston­er vérité of Slack­ers (watch it online) to the loose but heady ani­ma­tion of Wak­ing Life to the painstak­ing­ly metic­u­lous “mod­el of cin­e­mat­ic real­ism” of Boy­hood, Lin­klater has a unique­ly Amer­i­can vision and the unde­ni­able tal­ent to real­ize it in full.

But most­ly when I think of Lin­klater, I think—excuse my language—of cock rock.

I think of Dazed and Con­fused’s super senior Wood­er­son, lean­ing against a mus­cle car, drawl­ing “alright, alright, alright,” and crank­ing Aero­smith. I think of wild-eyed Jack Black in School of Rock, strap­ping a Gib­son Fly­ing V on an uptight, sweater-vest­ed youth and teach­ing him Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” riff. And now, I think of a gang of short shorts-wear­ing col­lege base­ball dudes in the “cam­pus bro­mance” Every­body Wants Some!!, singing along (above) to Sug­ar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”…. wait…

So, okay, it ain’t all cock rock. But Linklater’s films are often so dude-cen­tric, and so informed by pop­u­lar music of cer­tain eras, that he titled two of his most per­son­al—Dazed and Con­fused and its recent “spir­i­tu­al sequel”—after anthems from the two most arche­typ­i­cal­ly cock rock bands, Led Zep­pelin and Van Halen.

Where Dazed and Con­fused’s high school milieu more or less stayed anchored in 70s hard rock, Every­body Wants Some!!—like its com­par­a­tive­ly adven­tur­ous col­lege jocks—takes sev­er­al musi­cal detours from beer-and-babes 80s clichés. The film’s sound­track, for exam­ple, includes “deep cuts” from Bri­an Eno, obscure local Texas punk rock band The Big Boys, and L.A.-based 80s New Wave/R&B band The Bus­boys.

It’s true, then, that the songs choic­es on Every­body Wants Some!!, which you can hear almost in their entire­ly (sans a few) above, are fair­ly diverse, genre-wise, com­pared to the cock-rock-heavy list of songs from Dazed and Con­fused (fur­ther up). And when it comes to Linklater’s musi­cal inspi­ra­tions for both films, we see that dif­fer­ence as well.

As the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion blog doc­u­ments—bring­ing us the 1992 let­ter above (read it here) from Lin­klater to his cast—the direc­tor put togeth­er “a thought­ful series of mix­tapes to get his cast into the mind-set” of Dazed and Con­fused. And Cri­te­ri­on put togeth­er the Spo­ti­fy playlist below of the songs Lin­klater gave his actors. As you’ll see, it’s most­ly balls-to-the-wall hard rock, with some oblig­a­tory 70s dis­co and a few cuts from Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Elton John. In his accom­pa­ny­ing let­ter, Lin­klater admits “a few of the songs are a lit­tle cheezy,” but also notes “there are a few places for iron­ic usage.” For the most part, he says, “this music… is like the movie itself—straightforward, hon­est and fun.”

When it came time to begin shoot­ing Every­body Wants Some!! (get the offi­cial sound­track here), Lin­klater again used the same method to get his cast in the mood, cir­cu­lat­ing the songs in the playlist below (though prob­a­bly not on cas­settes). Here we get a much more diverse, com­pre­hen­sive musi­cal sum­ma­ry of the decade in ques­tion, with Michael Jack­son sit­ting next to Elvis Costel­lo, Pat Benatar and Dire Straits next to Pink Floyd, Sis­ter Sledge, Queen, and Cha­ka Khan.

It’s an inter­est­ing tran­si­tion that may—musically—signal the move from teenage fan­dom to the more curi­ous, adven­tur­ous lis­ten­ing habits of ear­ly adult­hood. Col­lege, after all, is not only where young Amer­i­cans of the mod­ern era dis­cov­er new sex­u­al and chem­i­cal plea­sures, but also where they acquire new musi­cal tastes. And in the 80s espe­cial­ly, the bound­aries of pop music expand­ed.

“That’s just how it felt to me to be a young per­son at that time. It was cool to be into every­thing,” Lin­klater com­ment­ed to Cor­nelia Rowe at Yahoo: “There was a lot of new­ness in the era. You didn’t real­ly appre­ci­ate it at the time – it’s like, there are all these new bands! There’s this new wave, punk, par­ty, R&B – there’s a thing called rap music from New York!”

The ath­lete bros in Linklater’s lat­est, very male-ori­ent­ed piece of cin­e­mat­ic nos­tal­gia “at once embody and upend the stereo­type of the shal­low, sex­u­al­ly enti­tled jock,” writes A.O. Scott in his review. Roam­ing far afield of their com­fort zones, they “have a good time wher­ev­er they are.” That’s pret­ty much guar­an­teed, I think, with the fine­ly-curat­ed 80s gems in these playlists as their sound­track.

via the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Free Online: Richard Linklater’s Slack­er, the Clas­sic Gen‑X Indie Film

Scenes from Wak­ing Life, Richard Linklater’s Philo­soph­i­cal, Fea­ture-Length Ani­mat­ed Film (2001)

A Playlist of 172 Songs from Wes Ander­son Sound­tracks: From Bot­tle Rock­et to The Grand Budapest Hotel

Scenes from Wak­ing Life, Richard Linklater’s Philo­soph­i­cal, Fea­ture-Length Ani­mat­ed Film (2001)

Watch Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot, the Cult Clas­sic Film That Ranks as One of the “Great Rock Doc­u­men­taries” of All Time

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

Explore Harvard’s Iconic Spaces with 360° Interactive Videos

in Education, Harvard, Life, Technology, Travel, Web/Tech | June 15th, 2016

For me, noth­ing cap­tures those occa­sion­al feel­ings of post-grad­u­ate yearn­ing like “I Wish I Could Go Back to Col­lege,” a N‑quite-SFW track from the Broad­way musi­cal, Avenue Q.

With all due respect, it feels like the five mem­bers of Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s just-grad­u­at­ed Class of 2016 shar­ing their rec­ol­lec­tions in the inter­ac­tive 360° video project, Har­vard Stu­dents Say Farewell, left a few cru­cial details out. (Note: Youtube 360 videos only work in Chrome, Fire­fox, Inter­net Explor­er, or Opera browsers.)

It’s com­plete­ly safe for prospec­tive par­ents, not a keg or con­dom wrap­per in sight. (The project is host­ed on Harvard’s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel.)

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Har­vard appears to have been the par­tic­i­pants’ uni­ver­sal first choice of col­lege. Hasty Pud­ding per­former, Joshuah Camp­bell, above, a self-described “Black kid from the coun­try,” con­fides that it was the only place he applied to.

He may have arrived won­der­ing how he would fit in, but four years lat­er, his grub­by dorm room is one of the “icon­ic” Har­vard loca­tions view­ers can explore dig­i­tal­ly as he briefly reflects upon his expe­ri­ence.

That’s about as down and dirty as this series gets. The human sub­jects seem to have been select­ed with an eye toward diver­si­ty and humil­i­ty, rather than the clenched Boston Brah­min jaw that once defined the insti­tu­tion.

Mean­while, the libraries, quads, and the­aters through which this new breed of Har­vard men and women wan­der attest to the place’s ongo­ing exclu­siv­i­ty.

Sree­ja Kala­pu­rakkel, above, a mem­ber of the Har­vard South Asian Dance Com­pa­ny, knew what she was get­ting into, as a stu­dent at a respect­ed Boston sec­ondary school. Short­ly after grad­u­a­tion, she sung Har­vard’s prais­es some­what more frankly on her Face­book page:

Each day of my time at Har­vard was filled with every­thing that makes life beau­ti­ful: dark­ness, strug­gle, despair, lone­li­ness, friend­ship, hope, per­se­ver­ance, light. Every expe­ri­ence, every les­son, every friend trans­formed me into some­one more human and gave me some­thing new to fight for.

Har­vard, like every oth­er col­lege in the land, has relaxed its pol­i­cy on end­ing a sen­tence in a prepo­si­tion.

Ana-Maria Con­stan­tin arrived sight unseen from her native Roma­nia to pull us out onto the deck of the Smith­son­ian Astro­phys­i­cal Obser­va­to­ry.

On to the lock­er room! Hock­ey cap­tain Kyle Criscuo­lo joins the Detroit Red Wings, reflect­ing that Har­vard stu­dent ath­letes enjoy no spe­cial treat­ment. In future, the uni­ver­si­ty may want to require them to lis­ten to Will Stephen’s lec­ture, “How to Sound Smart in a TED Talk.” Criscuo­lo sounds sin­cere, but also stiff, as if read­ing from a sheet of paper, or the dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent there­of.

(There­of is an adverb, by the way. Not a prepo­si­tion. I checked.)

Har­vard Art Muse­ums Stu­dent Board mem­ber Rachel Thomp­son paints her­self so meek­ly, I’m tempt­ed to check with her fresh­man year room­mate. Was she real­ly so filled with self doubt? I’ve always assumed Har­vard accep­tance let­ters would puff the recip­i­ent up. Good lord, imag­ine the effect the rejec­tion let­ters must have!

Use a mouse to explore the immer­sive envi­ron­ment on your com­put­er, or the YouTube app to nav­i­gate on a mobile device. Use a vir­tu­al real­i­ty head­set and the Har­vard Crim­son staff’s vocab­u­lary list to enhance the expe­ri­ence even more.

The com­plete playlist is here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Presents Free Cours­es with the Open Learn­ing Ini­tia­tive

NPR Launch­es Data­base of Best Com­mence­ment Speech­es Ever

The Har­vard Clas­sics: Down­load All 51 Vol­umes as Free eBooks

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, and a North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty grad. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Filmmaker Ken Burns Urges Stanford Graduates to Defeat Trump & the Retrograde Forces Threatening the U.S.

in Graduation Speech, History, Politics | June 14th, 2016

This time of year, we see grad­u­a­tion speech­es pop­ping up all over the web. The com­mence­ment address as a genre focus­es on the oppor­tu­ni­ties, chal­lenges, and respon­si­bil­i­ties grad­u­ates will face post-col­lege, and often espous­es time­less life lessons and philoso­phies. But this year, as you may have seen, esteemed doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Ken Burns took the oppor­tu­ni­ty of his grad­u­a­tion speech, pre­sent­ed to the 2016 class at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, to address the timeli­est of issues: the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and the threat of “an incip­i­ent pro­to-fas­cism.” The grad­u­a­tion just hap­pened to fall on the same day as the dead­liest mass-shoot­ing in recent Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

Vot­ers are angry at the sys­tem, we’re told again and again, and frankly the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of us have every rea­son to be. But anger can be intox­i­cat­ing, and the seg­ment of the elec­torate that car­ried Don­ald Trump to pow­er seems drunk with rage and hos­til­i­ty. The promise of Trump­ism puts me in mind of his­to­ri­an and crit­ic Richard Slotkin’s clas­sic study of U.S. mythol­o­gy, Regen­er­a­tion Through Vio­lence, which describes the nation’s com­pul­sion to purge the coun­try of threat­en­ing oth­ers in order to restore some myth of lost inno­cence. “I will give you every­thing, I’m the only one,” the can­di­date vows, while scape­goat­ing group after group for the coun­try’s prob­lems.

In his Stan­ford com­mence­ment speech on Sun­day, Burns decried “the dic­ta­to­r­i­al ten­den­cies of the can­di­date with zero expe­ri­ence in the much maligned but sub­tle art of gov­er­nance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for any­thing, offer­ing only bom­bas­tic and con­tra­dic­to­ry promis­es and ter­ri­fy­ing Orwellian state­ments.” The Repub­li­can can­di­date for pres­i­dent is “a per­son,” Burns said in his impas­sioned speech, “who eas­i­ly lies, cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment where truth doesn’t seem to mat­ter.”

As a stu­dent of his­to­ry, I rec­og­nize this type. He emerges every­where and in all eras. We see nur­tured in his cam­paign an incip­i­ent pro­to-fas­cism, a nativist anti-immi­grant Know Noth­ing-ism, a dis­re­spect for the judi­cia­ry, the prospect of women los­ing author­i­ty over their own bod­ies, African-Amer­i­cans again asked to go to the back of the line, vot­er sup­pres­sion glee­ful­ly pro­mot­ed, jin­go­is­tic saber-rat­tling, a total lack of his­tor­i­cal aware­ness, a polit­i­cal para­noia that, pre­dictably, points fin­gers, always mak­ing the oth­er wrong. These are all vir­u­lent strains that have at times infect­ed us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again — all hap­pen­ing at once. We know from our his­to­ry books that these are the dis­eases of ancient and now fall­en empires. The sense of com­mon­wealth, of shared sac­ri­fice, of trust, so much a part of Amer­i­can life, is erod­ing fast, spurred along and ampli­fied by an amoral inter­net that per­mits a lie to cir­cle the globe three times before the truth can get start­ed.

We no longer have the lux­u­ry of neu­tral­i­ty or “bal­ance,” or even of bemused dis­dain. Many of our media insti­tu­tions have large­ly failed to expose this char­la­tan, torn between a nag­ging respon­si­bil­i­ty to good jour­nal­ism and the big rat­ings a media cir­cus always deliv­ers. In fact, they have giv­en him the abun­dant air­time he so des­per­ate­ly craves, so much so that it has actu­al­ly worn down our nat­ur­al human revul­sion to this kind of behav­ior. Hey, he’s rich; he must be doing some­thing right. He is not. Edward R. Mur­row would have exposed this naked emper­or months ago. He is an insult to our his­to­ry. Do not be deceived by his momen­tary “good behav­ior.” It is only a spoiled, mis­be­hav­ing child hop­ing some­how to still have dessert.

And do not think that the tragedy in Orlan­do under­scores his points. It does not. We must “dis­en­thrall our­selves,” as Abra­ham Lin­coln said, from the cul­ture of vio­lence and guns. And then “we shall save our coun­try.”

The words of Lin­coln that Burns quotes come from the president’s annu­al remarks to con­gress in 1862, in which Lin­coln made the case for the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion, one month before sign­ing it. (A doc­u­ment, iron­i­cal­ly, that Slotkin says “rad­i­cal­ly expand­ed the exist­ing pow­ers of the pres­i­den­cy” in its pur­suit of a just cause.) In his address, Lin­coln makes a force­ful moral argu­ment, all the more elo­quent for its char­ac­ter­is­tic brevi­ty.

Fel­low-cit­i­zens, we can­not escape his­to­ry. We of this Con­gress and this admin­is­tra­tion, will be remem­bered in spite of our­selves. No per­son­al sig­nif­i­cance, or insignif­i­cance, can spare one or anoth­er of us.

Like­wise, Burns—addressing future lead­ers at an elite institution—makes his case for heed­ing the lessons of his­to­ry, con­sid­er­ing pos­ter­i­ty, and reject­ing Trump, inde­pen­dent of par­ti­san inter­ests: “This is not a lib­er­al or con­ser­v­a­tive issue, a red state-blue state divide. This is an Amer­i­can issue.” He also implores “those ‘Vichy Repub­li­cans’ who have endorsed him to please, please recon­sid­er.” The hor­rif­ic mass mur­der in Orlan­do has fur­ther inflamed what Burns calls “the trou­bling, unfil­tered Tourette’s of [Trump’s] tribalism”—with renewed calls for bans on all Mus­lims, more inflam­ma­to­ry insin­u­a­tions that the pres­i­dent col­ludes with ter­ror­ists, and bizarre alle­ga­tions that a Clin­ton aide is a Sau­di agent.

Trump did not invent this rhetoric of big­otry, con­spir­a­cy, and para­noia, but he has manip­u­lat­ed and exploit­ed it more effec­tive­ly than any­one else, to poten­tial­ly dis­as­trous effect. “The next few months of your ‘com­mence­ment,’ ” Burns says, “that is to say, your future, will be crit­i­cal to the sur­vival of our repub­lic.” He urges the grad­u­at­ing Stan­ford class to take action: “before you do any­thing with your well-earned degree, you must do every­thing you can to defeat the ret­ro­grade forces that have invad­ed our demo­c­ra­t­ic process.” Those process­es may already be deeply com­pro­mised by mon­eyed inter­ests, but destroy­ing the edi­fice on which they’re built, Burns sug­gests, will hard­ly restore any sup­pos­ed­ly lost “great­ness.” Watch Burns’ full com­mence­ment speech above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ken Burns on the Art of Sto­ry­telling: “It’s Lying Twen­ty-Four Times a Sec­ond”

Noam Chom­sky on Whether the Rise of Trump Resem­bles the Rise of Fas­cism in 1930s Ger­many

Prince­ton His­to­ri­an Sean Wilentz on How Trump May Change (If Not Destroy) the GOP

J.K. Rowl­ing Defends Don­ald Trump’s Right to Be “Offen­sive and Big­ot­ed”

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

1,000-Year-Old Manuscript of Beowulf Digitized and Now Online

in Archives, Literature | June 7th, 2016

One out­come of the upcom­ing “Brex­it” vote, we’re told, might free the UK to pur­sue its own unfet­tered des­tiny, or might plunge it into iso­la­tion­ist decline. The eco­nom­ic issues are beyond my ken, but as a read­er and stu­dent of Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, I’ve always been struck by the fact that the old­est poem in Eng­lish, Beowulf, shows us an already inter­na­tion­al­ized Britain absorb­ing all sorts of Euro­pean influ­ences. From the Ger­man­ic roots of the poem’s Anglo-Sax­on lan­guage to the Scan­di­na­vian roots of its nar­ra­tive, the ancient epic reflects a Britain tied to the con­ti­nent. With pagan, native tra­di­tions min­gled with lat­er Chris­t­ian echoes, and local leg­ends with those of the Danes and Swedes, Beowulf pre­serves many of the island nation’s poly­glot, mul­ti-nation­al ori­gins.

Irish poet Sea­mus Heaney—whose work engaged with the ironies and com­pli­ca­tions of trib­al­ism and nationalism—had a deep respect for Beowulf; in the intro­duc­tion to his trans­la­tion of the poem, Heaney describes it as a tale “as elab­o­rate as the beau­ti­ful con­trivances of its lan­guage. Its nar­ra­tive ele­ments may belong to a pre­vi­ous age but as a work of art it lives in its own con­tin­u­ous present, equal to our knowl­edge of real­i­ty in the present time.” Though we’ve come to think of it as an essen­tial work of Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, Beowulf might have dis­ap­peared into the mists of his­to­ry had not the only man­u­script of the poem sur­vived “more or less by chance.” The “unique copy,” writes Heaney, “(now in the British Library) bare­ly sur­vived a fire in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry and was then tran­scribed and titled, retran­scribed and edit­ed, trans­lat­ed and adapt­ed, inter­pret­ed and taught, until it has become an acknowl­edged clas­sic.”

Now, the British Library’s dig­i­ti­za­tion of that sole man­u­script allows us to peel back the lay­ers of can­on­iza­tion and see how the poem first entered a lit­er­ary tra­di­tion. Orig­i­nal­ly “passed down oral­ly over many gen­er­a­tions, and mod­i­fied by each suc­ces­sive bard,” writes the British Library, Beowulf took this fixed form when “the exist­ing copy was made at an unknown loca­tion in Anglo-Sax­on Eng­land.” Not only is the loca­tion unknown, but the date as well: “its age has to be cal­cu­lat­ed by ana­lyz­ing the scribes’ hand­writ­ing. Some schol­ars have sug­gest­ed that the man­u­script was made at the end of the 10th cen­tu­ry, oth­ers in the ear­ly decades of the 11th, per­haps as late as the reign of King Cnut, who ruled Eng­land from 1016 until 1035.”

These schol­ar­ly debates may not inter­est the aver­age read­er much. The poem sur­vived long enough to be writ­ten down, then became known as great lit­er­a­ture these many cen­turies lat­er, because the rich poet­ic lan­guage and the com­pelling sto­ry it tells cap­ti­vate us still. Nonethe­less, though we may all know the gen­er­al out­lines of its hero’s con­test with the mon­ster Gren­del and his moth­er, many of the cul­tur­al con­cepts from the world of Beowulf strike mod­ern read­ers as total­ly alien. Like­wise the poem’s lan­guage, Old Eng­lish, resem­bles no form of Eng­lish we’ve encoun­tered before. Schol­ars like J.R.R. Tolkien and poets like Heaney have done much to shape our appre­ci­a­tion for the ancient work, and we might say that with­out their inter­ven­tions, it would not live, as Heaney writes, “in its own con­tin­u­ous present” but in a dis­tant, unrec­og­niz­able past.

You can hear Heaney read his trans­la­tion of the poem on Youtube. Read Tolkien’s famous essay on the poem here, and hear it read in its orig­i­nal lan­guage at our pre­vi­ous post. Learn more about the sin­gle man­u­script that pre­served the epic poem for pos­ter­i­ty at the British Library’s web­site.

Find Beowulf list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sea­mus Heaney Reads His Exquis­ite Trans­la­tion of Beowulf and His Mem­o­rable 1995 Nobel Lec­ture

Hear Beowulf Read In the Orig­i­nal Old Eng­lish: How Many Words Do You Rec­og­nize?

Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Illus­trat­ed in a Remark­able Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­script (c. 1450)

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

How to Look at Art: A Short Visual Guide by Cartoonist Lynda Barry

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Life, Museums, Philosophy | June 6th, 2016

Despite the small, nar­ra­tive doo­dle post­ed to her Tum­blr a cou­ple of weeks back, inspi­ra­tional teacher and car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry clear­ly has no short­age of strate­gies for view­ing art in a mean­ing­ful way.

She takes a Socrat­ic approach with stu­dents and read­ers eager to forge a deep­er per­son­al con­nec­tion to images.

She traces this ten­den­cy back forty years, to when she stud­ied with Mar­i­lyn Fras­ca at Ever­green State Col­lege. Could Fras­ca have antic­i­pat­ed what she wrought when she asked the young Bar­ry, “What is an image?”

For Bar­ry, who claims to have spent over forty years try­ing to answer the above ques­tion, there will almost always be an emo­tion­al com­po­nent. In a 2010 inter­view with The Paris Review, she addressed the ways in which art, visu­al and oth­er­wise, can fill cer­tain cru­cial holes:

In the course of human life we have a mil­lion phan­tom-limb pains—losing a par­ent when you’re lit­tle, being in a war, even some­thing as dumb as hav­ing a mean teacher—and see­ing it some­how reflect­ed, whether it’s in our own work or lis­ten­ing to a song, is a way to deal with it.

The Greeks knew about it. They called it cathar­sis, right? And with­out it we’re fucked. I think this is the thing that keeps our men­tal health or emo­tion­al health in bal­ance, and we’re born with an impulse toward it.

No won­der the snag­gle-toothed dog woman on Barry’s Tum­blr looks so anx­ious. She craves that elu­sive some­thing that nev­er much trou­bled Helen Hockinson’s muse­um-going com­ic matrons.

(Had rev­e­la­tion been on the menu, those ladies would have duti­ful­ly paged through the most high­ly rec­om­mend­ed guide­book of the day, con­fi­dent they’d find it with­in those pages.)

These days, the inter­net abounds with point­ers on how to get the most from art.

Houston’s Muse­um of Fine Arts lob­bies for a four-point method, well suit­ed to class­room dis­cus­sion.

The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Pulitzer Prize-win­ning art and archi­tec­ture crit­ic Philip Ken­ni­cott pre­scribes time and silence.

Anoth­er crit­ic, New York magazine’s fire­brand, Jer­ry Saltz, rec­om­mends an aggres­sive­ly tac­tile approach for those who would look at art like an artist. Get up close. Cop a feel. Try to see how any giv­en piece is made. (He him­self is giv­en to con­tem­plat­ing art with his hips thrust for­ward and head tilt­ed back as far as it will go, in dupli­ca­tion of Jasper Johns’ stance.)

Look­ing for some­thing more graph­ic? Abstract Expres­sion­ist Ad Rein­hardt helped the post-War pub­lic get a han­dle on mod­ern art in his icon­ic How to Look series.

For­mer muse­um edu­ca­tor, Cindy Ingram, the Art Cura­tor for Kids, echoes the spir­it of Barry’s sen­ti­ment when she states that a child’s inter­pre­ta­tion of a work’s mean­ing is no less valid than Wikipedia’s, the museum’s, or even the artist’s. Adults, don’t squelch a child viewer’s joy of art by telling him or her what to think!

Of course, some of us don’t mind a hint or two to help us feel we’re on the right track. Those in that camp might enjoy the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s 82nd and 5th series, in which expert cura­tors wax rhap­sod­ic about their love of par­tic­u­lar works in the col­lec­tion.

You under­stand that this is just the tip of the prover­bial ‘berg…

Read­ers, if you have any tips for achiev­ing rev­e­la­tion through art, please share them by leav­ing a com­ment below.

And don’t for­get to lift your short­er com­pan­ion up so he can see bet­ter.

Bar­ry’s short series of images orig­i­nal­ly appeared on her Tum­blr.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lyn­da Barry’s Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her New UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

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

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Speak and Read French, by Armand and Louise Bégué

in | June 1st, 2016

Speak and Read French, Part 1: Basic and Inter­me­di­ate

“This album is the first of three vol­umes of a French lan­guage course: Speak and Read French, cre­at­ed by Armand Bégué, a pro­fes­sor at Brook­lyn Col­lege and his wife, Louise Bégué, in 1959. The record­ing, for basic and inter­me­di­ate lev­els, focus­es on words and expres­sions fre­quent­ly used in French.”

Speak and Read French, Vol. 2: Basic and Inter­me­di­ate

“This album is the sec­ond part of a basic French lan­guage les­son devel­oped by Armand Bégué, a pro­fes­sor at Brook­lyn Col­lege and his wife, Louise Bégué, in 1959. This record­ing focus­es on words and expres­sions fre­quent­ly used in French.”

Speak and Read French, Part 3: French Lit­er­a­ture

“This album is the third of three vol­umes in a French lan­guage course: Speak and Read French, cre­at­ed by Armand Bégué, a pro­fes­sor at Brook­lyn Col­lege and his wife, Louise Bégué, in 1959. The speak­er reads excerpts from great texts writ­ten by famous French authors such as: “Thoughts” by Blaise Pas­cal, “Dis­course on the Method” by René Descartes and “The Wolf and the Stork” by Jean de La Fontaine.”

Find them all in our col­lec­tion, Free Lessons in For­eign Lan­guages.

The British Library Digitizes 300 Literary Treasures from 20th Century Authors: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce & More

in Books, Letters, Literature | May 31st, 2016

As a young col­lege stu­dent, I spent hours wan­der­ing through my university’s library, look­ing in a state of awe at the num­ber of books con­tained there­in by writ­ers whose names I knew or who seemed vague­ly famil­iar, and by hun­dreds, thou­sands, more I’d nev­er heard of. Always con­tent to immerse myself in seclud­ed cor­ners for days on end with a good book, I could­n’t have felt more at home.

The inter­net was in its infan­cy, and my online life at the time con­sist­ed of awk­ward, plain-text emails sent once or twice a week and the occa­sion­al clunky, slow-load­ing web­site, promis­ing much but deliv­er­ing lit­tle. Excitable futur­ists made extrav­a­gant pre­dic­tions about how hyper­text and inter­ac­tiv­i­ty would rev­o­lu­tion­ize the book. These seemed like intrigu­ing but unnec­es­sary solu­tions in search of a prob­lem.

To the book­ish, the book is a per­fect­ed tech­nol­o­gy that can­not be improved upon except by the pub­lish­ing of more books. While inter­ac­tive texts—with linked anno­ta­tions, biogra­phies, his­tor­i­cal pre­cis, crit­i­cal essays, and the like—have much enhanced life for stu­dents, they have not in any way improved upon the sim­ple act of read­ing for plea­sure and edification—an activ­i­ty, wrote Vir­ginia Woolf, requir­ing noth­ing more than “the rarest qual­i­ties of imag­i­na­tion, insight, and judg­ment.”

Though Woolf would like­ly have been unim­pressed with all that talk of hyper­tex­tu­al inno­va­tion, I imag­ine she would have mar­veled at the online world for offer­ing some­thing to the read­er we have nev­er had until the past cou­ple decades: free and instant access to thou­sands of books, from lit­er­ary clas­sics to biogra­phies to his­to­ries to poetry—all gen­res upon which Woolf offered advice about how to read on their own terms. With­out the anx­ious admis­sions process and cost­ly tuition, any­one with a com­put­er now has access to a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the aver­age col­lege library.

And now any­one with a com­put­er has access to a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the British Library’s rare col­lec­tions as well, thanks to the ven­er­a­ble institution’s new online col­lec­tion: “Dis­cov­er­ing Lit­er­a­ture: 20th Cen­tu­ry.”

Read­ers of our site will know of Open Culture’s affin­i­ty for 20th cen­tu­ry mod­ernist lit­er­a­ture, like that of Vir­ginia Woolf, and for the dystopi­an fic­tion of George Orwell. These authors and greats of more recent vin­tage are all well-rep­re­sent­ed in the British Library col­lec­tion. You’ll find such trea­sures as a scanned first edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses, first Amer­i­can edi­tion of Antho­ny Burgess’ A Clock­work Orange, and first edi­tion of Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. These are just a few of the clas­sic nov­els avail­able in the “over 300 trea­sures” of the col­lec­tion, writes the British Library.

The online library offers a par­adise for read­ers, cer­tain­ly. And also a heav­en for schol­ars. Includ­ed among the rare first edi­tions and crit­i­cal essays and inter­views on the site’s main page are “online for the first time… lit­er­ary drafts… note­books, let­ters, diaries, news­pa­pers and pho­tographs from Vir­ginia Woolf, Ted Hugh­es, Angela Carter and Hanif Kureishi among oth­ers.”

Some incred­i­ble high­lights include:

• Type­script of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land with Ezra Pound’s Hand­writ­ten anno­ta­tions
• George Orwell’s Notes for 1984
• T.S. Eliot’s Faber & Faber Let­ter Reject­ing Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm (fea­tured on Open Cul­ture pre­vi­ous­ly)
• Type­script Sec­ond Draft of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar
• Let­ters on the Print­ing of James Joyce’s A Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses
• Type­script Notes of J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise, with a Draft of the Nov­el
• Note­book Drafts of Vir­ginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dal­loway
• Note­book of Research and Ideas for Angela Carter’s Wise Chil­dren
• Ezra Pound’s 1914 Poet­ry Anthol­o­gy Des Imag­istes

And as if all this—and so many more 20th cen­tu­ry lit­er­ary treasures—weren’t enough, the col­lec­tion also tucks in some won­der­ful arti­facts from pre­vi­ous eras, such as a col­lec­tion of man­u­script poems by John Keats, includ­ing the Odes and Robert Burton’s ency­clo­pe­dic 1628 study of depres­sion, The Anato­my of Melan­choly.

“Until now,” says Anna Lobben­berg, the Library’s Dig­i­tal Pro­grammes Man­ag­er, “these trea­sures could only be viewed in the British Library Read­ing Rooms or on dis­play in exhibitions—now Dis­cov­ery Lit­er­a­ture: 20th Cen­tu­ry will bring these items to any­one in the world with an inter­net con­nec­tion.” It tru­ly is, for the lover of books, a brave new world (a book whose 1932 orig­i­nal dust jack­et you can see here).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts Over 1,000,000 Images in the Pub­lic Domain: A Deep­er Dive Into the Col­lec­tion

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

Vir­ginia Woolf Offers Gen­tle Advice on “How One Should Read a Book”

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