Pretty Much Pop #16 Considers the Sitcom “Friends” 25 Years Later

in Pretty Much Pop, Television | October 25th, 2019

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt exam­ine the con­ven­tions, tech­niques, and stay­ing pow­er of the beloved ’90s sit­com. Are we sup­posed to iden­ti­fy with, or idol­ize, or mere­ly like these peo­ple? What makes the for­mu­la work, did it sus­tain itself over its 10-year run, was it suc­cess­ful­ly repli­cat­ed (like by How I Met Your Moth­er or by Chuck Lorre?), and what parts haven’t aged well?

We reviewed a ton of arti­cles to prep for this that you may want to read:

• “What the Crit­ics Said About the 1994 Debut of Friends” by Mar­garet Lyons
• “‘Friends’ Is Turn­ing 25. Here’s Why We Can’t Stop Watch­ing It” by Wes­ley Mor­ris
• “Why ‘Friends’ Is Still the World’s Favourite Sit­com, 25 Years On” by J.T. (at The Econ­o­mist)
• “‘Friends’ Is Get­ting Old. Its Fans Have Nev­er Been Younger” by Andrew Dal­ton
• “Friends Was a Great Show — That Just Hap­pened to Ruin TV Com­e­dy” by Emi­ly Todd Van­Der­W­erff
• “‘Friends’ Hasn’t Aged Well” by Scaachi Koul
• “‘Fat Mon­i­ca’ Is the Ghost That Con­tin­ues to Haunt Friends 25 Years Lat­er” from Enter­tain­ment Week­ly (no byline)
• “Friends at 25: Is the Sit­com Real­ly as Prob­lem­at­ic as Peo­ple Say? Styl­ist Inves­ti­gates” by Kayleigh Dray
• “Don’t Knock Friends. It’s Still Rel­e­vant, and Pro­gres­sive, Too” by Sarah Gosling
• “Why ‘Friends’ Won’t Get Reboot­ed” by Saul Auster­litz
• “A Par­ty Room and a Prison Cell Inside the Friends Writ­ers’ Room” by Saul Auster­litz
• “Tele­vi­sion With­out Pity” by Christo­pher Nixon
• “‘Friends’ Cre­ator Regrets One Of The Show’s Prob­lem­at­ic Ele­ments” by Nick Levine

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

Do Octopi Dream? An Astonishing Nature Documentary Suggests They Do

in Biology, Nature | October 7th, 2019

With regard to the sleep­ing and wak­ing of ani­mals, all crea­tures that are red-blood­ed and pro­vid­ed with legs give sen­si­ble proof that they go to sleep and that they wak­en up from sleep; for, as a mat­ter of fact, all ani­mals that are fur­nished with eye­lids shut them up when they go to sleep. 

Fur­ther­more, it would appear that not only do men dream, but hors­es also, and dogs, and oxen; aye, and sheep, and goats, and all vivip­a­rous quadrupeds; and dogs show their dream­ing by bark­ing in their sleep. With regard to oviparous ani­mals we can­not be sure that they dream, but most undoubt­ed­ly they sleep. 

And the same may be said of water ani­mals, such as fish­es, mol­luscs, crus­taceans, to wit craw­fish and the like. These ani­mals sleep with­out doubt, although their sleep is of very short dura­tion. The proof of their sleep­ing can­not be got from the con­di­tion of their eyes-for none of these crea­tures are fur­nished with eyelids—but can be obtained only from their motion­less repose.

-Aris­to­tle, The His­to­ry of Ani­mals, Book IV, Part 10,350 B.C.E

2,369 years lat­er, Marine Biol­o­gist David Scheel, a pro­fes­sor at Alas­ka Pacif­ic Uni­ver­si­ty, wit­nessed a star­tling event, above, that allowed him to expand on Aristotle’s obser­va­tions, at least as far as eight-armed cephalo­pod mollusks—or octopi—are con­cerned

Appar­ent­ly, they dream.

Scheel, whose spe­cial­ties include preda­tor-prey ecol­o­gy and cephalo­pod biol­o­gy, is afford­ed an above-aver­age amount of qual­i­ty time with these alien ani­mals, cour­tesy of Hei­di, an octo­pus cyanea (or day octo­pus) who inhab­its a large tank of salt water in his liv­ing room.

Scheel’s usu­al beat is cold water species such as the giant Pacif­ic octo­pus. Hei­di, who earned her name by shy­ly stick­ing to the far­thest recess­es of her arti­fi­cial envi­ron­ment upon arrival, belongs to a warmer water species who are active dur­ing the day. Very active. Once she real­ized that Scheel and his 16-year-old daugh­ter, Lau­rel, were instru­ments of food deliv­ery, she came out of her shell, so to speak.

The hours she keeps affords her plen­ty of stim­u­lat­ing play­time with Lau­rel, who’s thrilled to have an ani­mal pal who’s less ambiva­lent than her pet gold­fish and out­door rab­bit.

Mean­while, the co-hous­ing arrange­ment pro­vides Pro­fes­sor Scheel with an inti­ma­cy that’s impos­si­ble to achieve in the lab.

He was not expect­ing the aston­ish­ing noc­tur­nal behav­ior he record­ed, above, for the hour-long PBS Nature doc­u­men­tary Octo­pus: Mak­ing Con­tact.

As Hei­di slept, she changed col­ors, rapid­ly cycling through pat­terns that cor­re­spond to her hunt­ing prac­tices. Scheel walks view­ers through:

So, here she’s asleep, she sees a crab, and her col­or starts to change a lit­tle bit.

Then she turns all dark.

Octo­pus­es will do that when they leave the bot­tom.

This is a cam­ou­flage, like she’s just sub­dued a crab and now she’s going to sit there and eat it and she does­n’t want any­one to notice her.

It’s a very unusu­al behav­ior to see the col­or come and go on her man­tel like that.

I mean, just to be able to see all the dif­fer­ent col­or pat­terns just flash­ing, one after anoth­er.

You don’t usu­al­ly see that when an ani­mal is sleep­ing.

This real­ly is fas­ci­nat­ing.

But, yeah, if she’s dream­ing, that’s the dream.

As dreams go, the nar­ra­tive Scheel sup­plies for Hei­di seems extreme­ly mun­dane. Per­haps some­where out on a coral reef, anoth­er octo­pus cyanea is dream­ing she’s trapped inside a small glass room, feast­ing on eas­i­ly got­ten crab and occa­sion­al­ly crawl­ing up a teenaged human’s arm.

Watch the full episode for free through Octo­ber 31 here.

via Laugh­ing Squid/This is Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent with an Octo­pus on His Head: Kick­start The Veep­to­pus Book

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

Envi­ron­ment & Nat­ur­al Resources: Free Online Cours­es 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC tonight, Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The First Music Streaming Service Was Invented in 1881: Discover the Théâtrophone

in History, Technology | October 2nd, 2019

Every liv­ing adult has wit­nessed enough tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment in their life­time to mar­vel at just how much has changed, and dig­i­tal stream­ing and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions hap­pen to be areas where the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary change seems to have tak­en place. We take for grant­ed that the present resem­bles the past not at all, and that the future will look unimag­in­ably dif­fer­ent. So the nar­ra­tive of lin­ear progress tells us. But that sto­ry is nev­er as tri­umphant­ly sim­ple as it seems.

In one salient coun­terex­am­ple, we find that not only did livestream­ing music and news exist in the­o­ry long before the inter­net, but it exist­ed in actu­al practice—at the very dawn of record­ing tech­nol­o­gy, tele­pho­ny, and gen­er­al elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. First devel­oped in France in 1881 by inven­tor Clement Ader, who called his sys­tem the Théâtro­phone, the device allowed users to expe­ri­ence “the trans­mis­sion of music and oth­er enter­tain­ment over a tele­phone line,” notes the site Bob’s Old Phones, “using very sen­si­tive micro­phones of [Ader’s] own inven­tion and his own receivers.”

The pre-radio tech­nol­o­gy was ahead of its time in many ways, as Michael Der­van explains at The Irish Times. The Théâtro­phone “could trans­mit two-chan­nel, mul­ti-micro­phone relays of the­atre and opera over phone lines for lis­ten­ing on head­phones. The use of dif­fer­ent sig­nals for the two ears cre­at­ed a stereo effect.” Users sub­scribed to the ser­vice, and it proved pop­u­lar enough to receive an entry in the 1889 edi­tion of The Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer ref­er­ence guide, which defined it as “a tele­phone by which one can have soupçons of the­atri­cal decla­ma­tion for half a franc.”

In 1896 “the Belle Epoque pop artist Jules Cheret immor­tal­ized the the­at­ro­phone,” writes Tanya Basu at Men­tal Floss, “in a lith­o­graph fea­tur­ing a woman in a yel­low dress, grin­ning as she pre­sum­ably lis­tened to an opera feed.” Vic­tor Hugo got to try it out. “It’s very strange,” he wrote. “It starts with two ear muffs on the wall, and we hear the opera; we change ear­muffs and hear the French The­atre, Coquelin. And we change again and hear the Opera Comique. The chil­dren and I were delight­ed.”

Though The Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer also called it “the lat­est thing to catch [Parisians’] ears and their cen­times,” the inno­va­tion had already by that time spread else­where in Europe. Inven­tor Tivador Puskas cre­at­ed a “stream­ing” sys­tem in Budapest called Tele­fon Her­mon­do (Tele­phone Her­ald), Bob’s Old Phones points out, “which broad­cast news and stock mar­ket infor­ma­tion over tele­phone lines.” Unlike Ader’s sys­tem, sub­scribers could “call in to the tele­phone switch­board and be con­nect­ed to the broad­cast of their choice. The sys­tem was quite suc­cess­ful and was wide­ly report­ed over­seas.”

The mech­a­nism was, of course, quite dif­fer­ent from dig­i­tal stream­ing, and quite lim­it­ed by our stan­dards, but the basic deliv­ery sys­tem was sim­i­lar enough. A third such ser­vice worked a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly. The Elec­tro­phone sys­tem, formed in Lon­don in 1884, com­bined its pre­de­ces­sors’ ideas: broad­cast­ing both news and musi­cal enter­tain­ment. Play­back options were expand­ed, with both head­phones and a speak­er-like mega­phone attach­ment.

Addi­tion­al­ly, users had a micro­phone so that they could “talk to the Cen­tral Office and request dif­fer­ent pro­grams.” The addi­tion of inter­ac­tiv­i­ty came at a pre­mi­um. “The Elec­tro­phone ser­vice was expen­sive,” writes Der­van, “£5 a year at a time when that sum would have cov­ered a cou­ple months rent.” Addi­tion­al­ly, “the expe­ri­ence was com­mu­nal rather than soli­tary.” Sub­scribers would gath­er in groups to lis­ten, and “some of the pho­tographs” of these ses­sions resem­ble “images of addicts in an old-style opi­um den”—or of Vic­to­ri­ans gath­ered at a séance.

The com­pa­ny lat­er gave recu­per­at­ing WWI ser­vice­men access to the ser­vice, which height­ened its pro­file. But these ear­ly livestream­ing services—if we may so call them—were not com­mer­cial­ly viable, and “radio killed the ven­ture off in the 1920s” with its uni­ver­sal acces­si­bil­i­ty and appeal to adver­tis­ers and gov­ern­ments. This seem­ing evo­lu­tion­ary dead end might have been a dis­tant ances­tor of stream­ing live con­certs and events, though no one could have fore­seen it at the time. No one save sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers.

Edward Bellamy’s 1888 utopi­an nov­el Look­ing Back­ward imag­ined a device very like the Théâtro­phone in his vision of the year 2000. And in 1909, E.M. Forster drew on ear­ly stream­ing ser­vices and oth­er ear­ly telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions advances for his vision­ary short sto­ry “The Machine Stops,” which extrap­o­lat­ed the more iso­lat­ing ten­den­cies of the tech­nol­o­gy to pre­dict, as play­wright Neil Duffield remarks, “the inter­net in the days before even radio was a mass medi­um.”

via Ted Gioia/The Irish Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Inter­net in 8 Min­utes

Hear the First Record­ing of the Human Voice (1860)

How an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Monk Invent­ed the First Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment

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

Jimi Hendrix Wreaks Havoc on the Lulu Show, Gets Banned From the BBC (1969)

in Music | September 18th, 2019

Can you imag­ine Jimi Hen­drix singing a duet with Lulu? Well, nei­ther could Hen­drix. So when the icon­o­clas­tic gui­tar play­er showed up with his band at the BBC stu­dios in Lon­don on Jan­u­ary 4, 1969 to appear on Hap­pen­ing for Lulu, he was hor­ri­fied to learn that the show’s pro­duc­er want­ed him to sing with the win­some star of To Sir, With Love. The plan called for The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence to open their set with “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” and then play their ear­ly hit “Hey Joe,” with Lulu join­ing Hen­drix onstage at the end to sing the final bars with him before segue­ing into her reg­u­lar show-clos­ing num­ber. “We cringed,” writes bassist Noel Red­ding in his mem­oir, Are You Expe­ri­enced? The Inside Sto­ry of The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence.

Red­ding describes the scene that he, Hen­drix, and drum­mer Mitch Mitchell walked into that day as being “so straight it was only nat­ur­al that we would try to com­bat that atmos­phere by hav­ing a smoke in our dress­ing room.” He con­tin­ues:

In our haste, the lump of hash got away and slipped down the sink drain­pipe. Pan­ic! We just could­n’t do this show straight–Lulu did­n’t approve of smok­ing! She was then mar­ried to Mau­rice Gibb of the Bee Gees, whom I’d vis­it­ed and shared a smoke with. I could always tell Lulu was due home when Mau­rice start­ed throw­ing open all the win­dows. Any­way, I found a main­te­nance man and begged tools from him with the sto­ry of a lost ring. He was too help­ful, offer­ing to dis­man­tle the drain for us. It took ages to dis­suade him, but we suc­ceed­ed in our task and had a great smoke.

When it was time for The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence to go on cam­era, they were feel­ing fair­ly loose. They tore through “Voodoo Child” and then the pro­gram cut to Lulu, who was squeezed awk­ward­ly into a chair next to an audi­ence mem­ber in the front row. “That was real­ly hot,” she said. “Yeah. Well ladies and gen­tle­men, in case you did­n’t know, Jimi and the boys won in a big Amer­i­can mag­a­zine called Bill­board the group of the year.” As Lulu spoke a loud shriek of feed­back threw her off bal­ance. Was it an acci­dent? Hen­drix, of course, was a pio­neer in the inten­tion­al use of feed­back. A bit flus­tered, she con­tin­ued: “And they’re gonna sing for you now the song that absolute­ly made them in this coun­try, and I’d love to hear them sing it: ‘Hey Joe.’ ”

The band launched into the song, but mid­way through–before Lulu had a chance to join them onstage–Hendrix sig­naled to the oth­ers to quit play­ing. “We’d like to stop play­ing this rub­bish,” he said, “and ded­i­cate a song to the Cream, regard­less of what kind of group they may be in. We ded­i­cate this to Eric Clap­ton, Gin­ger Bak­er and Jack Bruce.” With that the band veered off into an instru­men­tal ver­sion of “Sun­shine of Your Love” by the recent­ly dis­band­ed Cream. Noel Red­ding con­tin­ues the sto­ry:

This was fun for us, but pro­duc­er Stan­ley Dorf­man did­n’t take it at all well as the min­utes ticked by on his live show. Short of run­ning onto the set to stop us or pulling the plug, there was noth­ing he could do. We played past the point where Lulu might have joined us, played through the time for talk­ing at the end, played through Stan­ley tear­ing his hair, point­ing to his watch and silent­ly scream­ing at us. We played out the show. After­wards, Dorf­man refused to speak to us but the result is one of the most wide­ly used bits of film we ever did. Cer­tain­ly, it’s the most relaxed.

The stunt report­ed­ly got Hen­drix banned from the BBC–but it made rock and roll his­to­ry. Years lat­er, Elvis Costel­lo paid homage to Hen­drix’s antics when he per­formed on Sat­ur­day Night Live. You can watch The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From SNL here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live (1977)

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Jimi Hen­drix Unplugged: Two Great Record­ings of Hen­drix Play­ing Acoustic Gui­tar

Is the Live Music Experience Irreplaceable? Pretty Much Pop #11

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | September 18th, 2019

Sure­ly tech­no­log­i­cal advances have made it unnec­es­sary to ever leave the house, right? Is there still a point in see­ing live peo­ple actu­al­ly doing things right in front of you?

Dave Hamil­ton (Host of Gig Gab, Mac Geek Gab) joins Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss what’s so damn cool about live music (and the­ater), the alter­na­tives (live-streamed-to-the­aters or devices, record­ed for TV, VR), why tick­ets are so expen­sive, whether trib­ute bands ful­fill our needs, the con­nec­tion between live music and drugs, singing along to the band, and more.

We touch on Rush (and their trib­ute Lotus Land), Damien Rice, Todd Rund­gren, The Who, Cop Rock, Bat out of Hell: The Musi­cal, Hed­wig and the Angry Inch, the filmed Shrek The Musi­cal, and Riff­trax Live.

We used some arti­cles to feed this episode, though we didn’t real­ly bring them up:

• “Nielsen Releas­es In-Depth Sta­tis­tics on Live Music Behav­ior” by Dan Rys
• “7 Pred­i­ca­tions on the Future of Live Music” by Jason Don­nel­ly
• “Live at Home: how to see con­certs every day with­out leav­ing your couch” by Noel Mur­ray
• “Broad­casts Of ‘Live’ The­ater And Opera Are Ter­rif­ic In Their Own Way” by Mau­reen Dezell

You know Mark also runs a music pod­cast, right? Check out Eri­ca doin’ her fid­dlin’ and sin­gin’. Lis­ten to Mark’s mass of tunes. Here’s Dave singing and drum­ming some Badfin­ger live with his band Fling, and here’s Mark live singing “The Grinch.”

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

Watch the Completely Unsafe, Vertigo-Inducing Footage of Workers Building New York’s Iconic Skyscrapers

in History | August 29th, 2019

Would any­one in their right mind sign up for a job that had a high risk of mortality/disability? Or a job where red hot met­al is being hurled direct­ly at your face? Back in the 1920s this was the lot of the men who built New York’s sky­line, the men who con­struct­ed the Chrysler Build­ing and the Empire State, giant phal­lic sym­bols of America’s bur­geon­ing wealth and pow­er.

In this short clip (remas­tered and quite decent­ly col­orized) from the Smith­son­ian Chan­nel, we get a brief glimpse of the per­ils encoun­tered dai­ly on the build­ing site. Nick­named “rough­necks,” the nar­ra­tor points out that they work with­out har­ness­es, safe­ty ropes, or hard hats. Red hot riv­ets are thrown at men on the met­al beams high­er up and they are meant to catch them with what looks like a tin fun­nel. You can see the thinnest of ropes used to lift the now-icon­ic stain­less steel art-deco eagles into place by men weary felt hats and no gloves.

The work­ers came from Europe, many who had trained on ships. Some came from Montreal’s Kah­nawake reser­va­tion. The lat­ter, known as Iron Walk­ers, were Mohawk, known for work­ing fear­less­ly at great heights.

“A lot of peo­ple think Mohawks aren’t afraid of heights; that’s not true,” Kyle Karon­hi­ak­tatie Beau­vais said in 2002. “We have as much fear as the next guy. The dif­fer­ence is that we deal with it bet­ter.”

Much of this work was doc­u­ment­ed by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Lewis Hine, who cap­tured a mix of brute strength and grav­i­ty defy­ing courage along with pri­vate moments of rest, catch­ing a smoke or tak­ing lunch. You can see many of his famous pho­tos in this clip:

The Chrysler Build­ing was com­plet­ed in 1930, and reached a height of 1,046 feet (319 m), fea­tur­ing 77 floors. It held its fame as the world’s tallest build­ing for only 11 months. In 1931 work­ers com­plet­ed the Empire State Build­ing, stand­ing at 1,454 feet (443.2 m) and hous­ing 102 floors. (That’s dinky com­pared to the cur­rent record-hold­er: Dubai’s Burj Khal­i­fa, which stands at 2,722 feet (829.8 m)).

Heads up: The Smith­son­ian Chan­nel clip has some of the worst exam­ples of YouTube com­ments among the videos we’ve high­light­ed over the year, as if peo­ple still don’t work in ter­ri­ble and unsafe con­di­tions in order to feed their fam­i­lies and pay rent. And look! Here’s a guy who walks out onto the Chrysler eagle just for fun. Don’t say we didn’t warn you:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paris, New York & Havana Come to Life in Col­orized Films Shot Between 1890 and 1931

A Light Show on The Empire State Build­ing Gets Synced to the Dead’s Live Per­for­mance of “Touch of Grey” (6/24/2017)

Famous Archi­tects Dress as Their Famous New York City Build­ings (1931)

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 Digital Animation Compares the Size of Trees: From the 3‑Inch Bonsai, to the 300-Foot Sequoia

in Nature | August 29th, 2019

It took about 110 days to put togeth­er. A dig­i­tal ani­ma­tion com­par­ing the size of trees, from a minia­ture 3‑inch bon­sai, to a sequoia soar­ing more than 300 feet high. Some trees are small­er than blades of grass. Oth­ers big­ger than the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty. A lot fall some­where between.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

The Social Lives of Trees: Sci­ence Reveals How Trees Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Talk to Each Oth­er, Work Togeth­er & Form Nur­tur­ing Fam­i­lies

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

3,000-Year-Old Olive Tree on the Island of Crete Still Pro­duces Olives Today

Mister Rogers Creates a Prime Time TV Special to Help Parents Talk to Their Children About the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (1968)

in History, Politics, Psychology, Television | July 22nd, 2019

Near­ly three min­utes into a patient blow-by-blow demon­stra­tion of how breath­ing works, Fred Rogers’ tim­o­rous hand pup­pet Daniel Striped Tiger sur­pris­es his human pal, Lady Aber­lin, with a wham­my: What does assas­si­na­tion mean?

Her answer, while not exact­ly Web­ster-Mer­ri­am accu­rate, is both con­sid­ered and age-appro­pri­ate. (Daniel’s for­ev­er-age is some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of four.)

The exchange is part of a spe­cial prime­time episode of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood, that aired just two days after Sen­a­tor Robert F. Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion.

Rogers, alarmed that America’s chil­dren were being exposed to unfil­tered descrip­tions and images of the shock­ing event, had stayed up late to write it, with the goal of help­ing par­ents under­stand some of the emo­tions their chil­dren might be expe­ri­enc­ing in the after­math:

I’ve been ter­ri­bly con­cerned about the graph­ic dis­play of vio­lence which the mass media has been show­ing recent­ly. And I plead for your pro­tec­tion and sup­port of your young chil­dren. There is just so much that a very young child can take with­out it being over­whelm­ing.

Rogers was care­ful to note that not all chil­dren process scary news in the same way.

To illus­trate, he arranged for a vari­ety of respons­es through­out the Land of Make Believe. One pup­pet, Lady Elaine, is eager to act out what she has seen: “That man got shot by that oth­er man at least six times!”

Her neigh­bor, X the Owl, does­n’t want any part of what is to him a fright­en­ing-sound­ing game.

And Daniel, who Rogers’ wife Joanne inti­mat­ed was a reflec­tion “the real Fred,” pre­ferred to put the top­ic on ice for future discussions—a lux­u­ry that the grown up Rogers would not allow him­self.

The episode has become noto­ri­ous, in part because it aired but once on the small screen. (The 8‑minute clip at the top of the page is the longest seg­ment we were able to truf­fle up online.)

Writer and gameshow his­to­ri­an Adam Ned­eff watched it in its entire­ty at the Paley Cen­ter for Media, and the detailed impres­sions he shared with the Neigh­bor­hood Archive web­site pro­vides a sense of the piece as a whole.

Mean­while, the Paley Center’s cat­a­logue cred­its speak to the dra­ma-in-real-life imme­di­a­cy of the turn­around from con­cep­tion to air­date:

Above is some of the footage Rogers feared unsus­pect­ing chil­dren would be left to process solo. Read­ers, are there any among you who remem­ber dis­cussing this event with your par­ents… or chil­dren?

Ever vig­i­lant, Rogers returned in the days imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the 2001 attack on the World Trade Cen­ter, with a spe­cial mes­sage for par­ents who had grown up watch­ing him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers’ Nine Rules for Speak­ing to Chil­dren (1977)

When Fred Rogers and Fran­cois Clem­mons Broke Down Race Bar­ri­ers on a His­toric Episode of Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood (1969)

All 886 episodes of Mis­ter Roger’s Neigh­bor­hood Stream­ing Online (for a Lim­it­ed Time)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 9 for anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

3 Iconic Paintings by Frida Kahlo Get Reborn as Vans Skate Shoes

in Art, Fashion | June 28th, 2019

Atten­tion Fri­da Kahlo tchotchke hounds.

You can scratch that itch, even if your sum­mer itin­er­ary doesn’t include Mex­i­co City (or Nashville, Ten­nessee, where the Frist Muse­um is host­ing Fri­da Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mex­i­can Mod­ernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gel­man Col­lec­tion through Sep­tem­ber 2).

Tak­ing its cue from Doc Marten’s Muse­um Col­lec­tion, Vans is releas­ing three shoes inspired by some of the painter’s most icon­ic works, 1939’s The Two Fridas, 1940’s Self-Por­trait with Thorn Neck­lace and Hum­ming­bird, and—for those who pre­fer a more sub­tly Fri­da-inspired shoe, 1954’s refresh­ing­ly fruity Viva la Vida.

Vans’ lim­it­ed edi­tion Fri­da Kahlo col­lec­tion hits the shelves June 29. Expect it to be snapped up quick­ly by the Waf­fle­heads, Vans’ ded­i­cat­ed group of col­lec­tors and cus­tomiz­ers, so don’t delay.

If this line doesn’t tick­le your fan­cy, there is of course an abun­dance of Fri­da Kahlo trib­ute footwear on Etsy, every­thing from huaraches and Con­verse All-Stars to socks and baby booties.

via Juxtapoz/MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life and Work of Fri­da Kahlo

Dis­cov­er Fri­da Kahlo’s Wild­ly-Illus­trat­ed Diary: It Chron­i­cled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

Vis­it the Largest Col­lec­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Work Ever Assem­bled: 800 Arti­facts from 33 Muse­ums, All Free Online

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

Deliberate Practice: A Mindful & Methodical Way to Master Any Skill

in Life, Productivity | June 27th, 2019

Each and every day we eat, we sleep, we read, we brush our teeth. So why haven’t we all become world-class mas­ters of eat­ing, sleep­ing, read­ing, and teeth-brush­ing? Most of us, if we’re hon­est with our­selves, plateaued on those par­tic­u­lar skills decades ago, despite nev­er hav­ing missed our dai­ly prac­tice ses­sions. This should tell us some­thing impor­tant about the dif­fer­ence between prac­tic­ing an action and sim­ply doing it a lot, a dis­tinc­tion at the heart of the con­cept of “delib­er­ate prac­tice.” As the Sprouts video above explains it, delib­er­ate prac­tice “is a mind­ful and high­ly struc­tured form of learn­ing by doing,” a “process of con­tin­ued exper­i­men­ta­tion to first achieve mas­tery and even­tu­al­ly full auto­matic­i­ty of a spe­cif­ic skill.”

Psy­chol­o­gist Anders Eric­s­son, the sin­gle fig­ure most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with delib­er­ate prac­tice, draws a dis­tinc­tion with what he calls naive prac­tice: “Naive prac­tice is peo­ple who just play games,” and in so doing “just accu­mu­late more expe­ri­ence.” But in delib­er­ate prac­tice, “you actu­al­ly pin­point some­thing you want to change. And once you have that spe­cif­ic goal of chang­ing it, you will now engage in a prac­tice activ­i­ty that has a pur­pose of chang­ing that.”

As a post on delib­er­ate prac­tice at Far­nam Street puts it, “great per­form­ers decon­struct ele­ments of what they do into chunks they can prac­tice. They get bet­ter at that aspect and move on to the next,” often under the guid­ance of a teacher who can more clear­ly see their strengths and weak­ness­es in action.

“Most of the time we’re prac­tic­ing we’re real­ly doing activ­i­ties in our com­fort zone,” says the Far­nam Street post. “This doesn’t help us improve because we can already do these activ­i­ties eas­i­ly” — just as eas­i­ly, per­haps, as we eat, sleep, read, and brush our teeth. But we also fail to improve when we oper­ate at the oth­er end of the spec­trum, in the “pan­ic zone” that “leaves us par­a­lyzed as the activ­i­ties are too dif­fi­cult and we don’t know where to start. The only way to make progress is to oper­ate in the learn­ing zone, which are those activ­i­ties that are just out of reach.” As in every oth­er area of life, what chal­lenges us too much frus­trates us and what chal­lenges us too lit­tle bores us; only at just the right bal­ance do we ben­e­fit.

But strik­ing that bal­ance presents chal­lenges of its own, chal­lenges that have ensured a read­er­ship for writ­ings on the sub­ject of how best to engage in delib­er­ate prac­tice by Eric­s­son as well as many oth­ers (such as writer-entre­pre­neur James Clear, whose begin­ner’s guide to delib­er­ate prac­tice you can read online here). The video above on Eric­sson’s book Peak: How to Mas­ter Almost Any­thing explains his view of the goal of delib­er­ate prac­tice as to devel­op the kind of library of “men­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tions” that mas­ters of every dis­ci­pline — golfers, doc­tors, gui­tarists, come­di­ans, nov­el­ists — use to approach every sit­u­a­tion that might arise. Devel­op­ing those men­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tions requires spe­cif­ic goals, intense peri­ods of prac­tice, imme­di­ate feed­back dur­ing that prac­tice, and above all, fre­quent dis­com­fort. Every­one enjoys mas­tery once they attain it, but if you find your­self hav­ing too much fun on the way, con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that you’re not prac­tic­ing delib­er­ate­ly enough.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

The Cor­nell Note-Tak­ing Sys­tem: Learn the Method Stu­dents Have Used to Enhance Their Learn­ing Since the 1940s

Wyn­ton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Prac­tice: For Musi­cians, Ath­letes, or Any­one Who Wants to Learn Some­thing New

How to Prac­tice Effec­tive­ly: Lessons from Neu­ro­science Can Help Us Mas­ter Skills in Music, Sports & Beyond

What’s a Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven Way to Improve Your Abil­i­ty to Learn? Get Out and Exer­cise

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