Death-Cap Mushrooms are Terrifying and Unstoppable: A Wild Animation

in Biology, Food & Drink, Nature, Science | August 18th, 2023

Mush­rooms are just­ly cel­e­brat­ed as vir­tu­ous mul­ti­taskers.

They’re food, teach­ers, movie stars, design inspi­ra­tion…

…and some, as any­one who’s spent time play­ing or watch­ing The Last of Us can read­i­ly attest, are killers.

Hope­ful­ly we’ve got some time before civ­i­liza­tion is con­quered by zom­bie cordy­ceps.

For now, the ones to watch out for are amani­ta phal­loide, aka death cap mush­rooms.

The pow­er­ful ama­tox­in they har­bor is behind 90 per­cent of mush­room-relat­ed fatal­i­ties world­wide. It caus­es severe liv­er dam­age, lead­ing to bleed­ing dis­or­ders, brain swelling, and mul­ti-organ fail­ure in those who sur­vive. 

A death cap took the life of a three-year-old in British Colum­bia who mis­took one for a tasty straw mush­room on a for­ag­ing expe­di­tion with his fam­i­ly near their apart­ment com­plex. 

In Mel­bourne, a pot pie that test­ed pos­i­tive for death caps result­ed in the deaths of three adults, and sent a fourth to the hos­pi­tal in crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

As the ani­ma­tors feast on mush­rooms’ lim­it­less visu­al appeal in the above episode of The Atlantic’s Life Up Close series, author Craig Childs deliv­ers some sober­ing news:

We did it to our­selves. Humans are the ones who’ve enabled death caps to spread so far beyond their native habi­tats in Scan­di­navia and parts of north­ern Europe, where the poi­so­nous fun­gi feed on the root tips of decid­u­ous trees, spring­ing up around their hosts in tidy fairy rings.

When oth­er coun­tries import these trees to beau­ti­fy their city streets, the death caps, whose frag­ile spores are inca­pable of trav­el­ing long dis­tances when left to their own devices, tag along.

They have sprout­ed in the Pacif­ic North­west near import­ed sweet chest­nuts, beech­es, horn­beams, lin­dens, red oaks, and Eng­lish oaks, and oth­er host species.

As bio­chemist Paul Kroeger, cofounder of the Van­cou­ver Myco­log­i­cal Soci­ety, explained in a 2019 arti­cle Childs penned for the Atlantic, the inva­sive death caps aren’t pop­ping up in deeply wood­ed areas. 

Rather, they are set­tling into urban neigh­bor­hoods, fre­quent­ly in the grass strips bor­der­ing side­walks. When Childs accom­pa­nied Krueger on his rounds, the first of two dozen death caps dis­cov­ered that day were found in front of a house fes­tooned with Hal­loween dec­o­ra­tions. 

Now that they have estab­lished them­selves, the death caps can­not be roust­ed. No longer mere tourists, they’ve been seen mak­ing the jump to native oaks in Cal­i­for­nia and West­ern Cana­da.

Childs also notes that death caps are no longer a North Amer­i­can prob­lem:

They have spread world­wide where for­eign trees have been intro­duced into land­scap­ing and forestry prac­tices: North and South Amer­i­ca, New Zealand, Aus­tralia, South and East Africa, and Mada­gas­car. In Can­ber­ra, Aus­tralia, in 2012, an expe­ri­enced Chi­nese-born chef and his assis­tant pre­pared a New Year’s Eve din­ner that includ­ed, unbe­knownst to them, local­ly gath­ered death caps. Both died with­in two days, wait­ing for liv­er trans­plants; a guest at the din­ner also fell ill, but sur­vived after a suc­cess­ful trans­plant.

For­agers should pro­ceed with extreme cau­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Atlas of Mush­rooms: Edi­ble, Sus­pect and Poi­so­nous (1827)

A Stun­ning, Hand-Illus­trat­ed Book of Mush­rooms Drawn by an Over­looked 19th Cen­tu­ry Female Sci­en­tist

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

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

Fascism!: The US Army Publishes a Pamphlet in 1945 Explaining How to Spot Fascism at Home and Abroad

in History, Politics | June 1st, 2023

“Fas­cism is a word that’s been used a great deal these last few years,” says the arti­cle pic­tured above (scanned in full here at the Inter­net Archive). “We come across it in our news­pa­pers, we hear it in our news­reels, it comes up in our bull ses­sions.” Oth­er than the part about news­reels (today’s equiv­a­lent being our social-media feeds, or per­haps the videos put before our eyes by the algo­rithm), these sen­tences could well have been pub­lished today. Some see the fas­cist takeover of mod­ern-day democ­ra­cies as prac­ti­cal­ly immi­nent, while oth­ers argue that the con­cept itself has no mean­ing in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. But 78 years ago, when this issue of Army Talk came off the press, fas­cism was very much a going — and fear­some — con­cern.

“Begin­ning in 1943, the War Depart­ment pub­lished a series of pam­phlets for U.S. Army per­son­nel in the Euro­pean the­ater of World War II,” writes his­to­ri­an Heather Cox Richard­son. The mis­sion of Army Talks, in the pub­li­ca­tion’s own words, was to help its read­ers “become bet­ter-informed men and women and there­fore bet­ter sol­diers.”

Each issue includ­ed a top­ic for dis­cus­sion, and on March 25, 1945, that top­ic was fas­cism — or, as the head­line puts it, “FASCISM!” Under that ide­ol­o­gy, defined as “gov­ern­ment by the few and for the few,” a small group of polit­i­cal actors achieves “seizure and con­trol of the eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, social, and cul­tur­al life of the state.” Such rul­ing class­es “per­mit no civ­il lib­er­ties, no equal­i­ty before the law. They make their own rules and change them when they choose. If you don’t like it, it’s ‘T.S.’ ”

Fas­cists come to pow­er, the text explains, in times of hard­ship, dur­ing which they promise “every­thing to every­one”: land to the farm­ers, jobs to the work­ers, cus­tomers and prof­its to the small busi­ness­men, elim­i­na­tion of small busi­ness­men to the indus­tri­al­ists, and so on. When this regime “under which every­thing not pro­hib­it­ed is com­pul­so­ry” inevitably fails to deliv­er a per­fect soci­ety, things turn vio­lent, both in the coun­try’s inter­nal strug­gles and in its con­flicts with oth­er pow­ers. To many Amer­i­cans at the time of World War II, this might seem like a whol­ly for­eign dis­or­der, liable to afflict only such dis­tant lands as Italy, Japan, and Ger­many. But a notion­al Amer­i­can fas­cism would look and feel famil­iar, work­ing “under the guise of ‘super-patri­o­tism’ and ‘super-Amer­i­can­ism.’ Fas­cist lead­ers are nei­ther stu­pid nor naïve. They know that they must hand out a line that ‘sells.’ ”

That some­one’s always try­ing to sell you some­thing in pol­i­tics — and even more so in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics — is as true in 2023 as it was in 1945. Though who­ev­er assumed back then that “it could­n’t hap­pen here” pre­sum­ably fig­ured that the Unit­ed States was too wealthy a soci­ety for fas­cist temp­ta­tions to gain a foothold. But even the most favor­able eco­nom­ic for­tunes can reverse, and “lots of things can hap­pen inside of peo­ple when they are unem­ployed or hun­gry. They become fright­ened, angry, des­per­ate, con­fused. Many, in their mis­ery, seek to find some­body to blame. They look for a scape­goat as a way out. Fas­cism is always ready to pro­vide one.” And not only fas­cism: polit­i­cal oppor­tunists of every stripe know full well the pow­er to be drawn from “the inse­cure and unem­ployed” look­ing for some­one on who “to pin the blame for their mis­for­tune” — and how easy it is to do so when no one else has a more appeal­ing vision of the future to offer.

You can see a scan of the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment here, and read the text here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Wal­ter Ben­jamin Explains How Fas­cism Uses Mass Media to Turn Pol­i­tics Into Spec­ta­cle (1935)

Sin­clair Lewis’ Chill­ing Play, It Can’t Hap­pen Here: A Read-Through by the Berke­ley Reper­to­ry The­atre

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets in a Gun­fight with His Neigh­bor & Dis­pens­es Polit­i­cal Wis­dom: “In a Democ­ra­cy, You Have to Be a Play­er”

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

Watch Young David Attenborough Encounter Animals in Their Natural Habitats: Video from the 1950s and 1960s

in Biology, Nature, Television | May 15th, 2023

Expe­ri­ence long ago con­ferred the man­tle of author­i­ty on broad­cast­er, biol­o­gist, nat­ur­al his­to­ri­an and author David Atten­bor­ough, age 97.

In his late 20s, he land­ed at the BBC, pro­duc­ing live stu­dio broad­casts that ran the gamut from children’s shows, bal­let per­for­mances and arche­o­log­i­cal quizzes to pro­grams focused on cook­ing, reli­gion and pol­i­tics.

When an edu­ca­tion­al show star­ring ani­mals from the Lon­don Zoo became a hit with view­ers, the pow­ers that be built on its pop­u­lar­i­ty with a fresh take — a show that sent the intre­pid young Atten­bor­ough around the world, seek­ing ani­mals in their native habi­tats. He was accom­pa­nied by cam­era­man Charles Lagus and two zool­o­gists, whom he quick­ly sup­plant­ed as host.

It made for thrilling view­ing in an era when wildlife tourism was avail­able to a very few.

The New York Times notes that many of the crea­tures who cropped up onscreen in these ear­ly Zoo Quest episodes were shipped back to Lon­don Zoo:

It is not the kind of mis­sion we approve of nowa­days, but with­out it the West might nev­er have got­ten inter­est­ed in wildlife to begin with. We start­ed by shoot­ing exot­ic species for their skins and bones and trap­ping them for our zoos, and only recent­ly moved to wor­ry­ing about their sur­vival in the wild and the health of the plan­et in gen­er­al. This his­to­ry is sym­bol­ized by the trans­for­ma­tion of Atten­bor­ough him­self from a talk­ing and writ­ing croc­o­dile hunter to the great­est liv­ing advo­cate of the glob­al ecosys­tem.

In Bor­neo in 1956, in search for Komo­do drag­ons, he paused for an encounter with an orang­utan, above, and also a big whiff of duri­an, the spiky, odif­er­ous fruit whose aro­ma famous­ly got it banned from Singapore’s ele­gant Raf­fles Hotel, with taxis, planes, sub­ways, and fer­ries fol­low­ing suit.

Soon there­after, the six-episode hunt for the Komo­do drag­on finds Atten­bor­ough in Java, mask­ing his nerves as he uses a cut­lass, a will­ing­ness to climb trees, and a cloth sack to get the bet­ter of a ful­ly grown python.

(Once the ser­pent was set­tled at the Lon­don Zoo, he made the trek to the BBC for an in-stu­dio appear­ance.)

You’ll note that this episode is in col­or.

Although Zoo Quest filmed in col­or, it aired ten years before col­or broad­casts were avail­able to UK view­ers, so most of the folks watch­ing at home assumed it had been shot in black and white.

In 1960, Atten­bor­ough used the lat­est — now severe­ly out­mod­ed-look­ing– tech­nol­o­gy to cap­ture the first audio record­ing of the indri, Madagascar’s largest lemur for Attenborough’s Won­der of Song.

This audio vic­to­ry led him to won­der if he could be the first to film an indri.

Frus­trat­ed by the thick canopy over­head, Atten­bor­ough resort­ed to play­back, suc­cess­ful­ly tempt­ing the ani­mals to not only come clos­er, but do so while vocal­iz­ing.

Mat­ing calls?

No. Atten­bor­ough deduced that they were the indris’ “bat­tle songs”, issued as a warn­ing to the per­ceived threat of unfa­mil­iar indris.

In 2011, Atten­bor­ough returned to Mada­gas­car, lis­ten­ing respect­ful­ly to Joseph, a local hunter turned con­ser­va­tion­ist, who explains how the local pop­u­lace no longer think of indri as a food source, but rather a sym­bol of their com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing the nat­ur­al world around them. Joseph’s rela­tion­ship with the indri affords Sir David a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty, as the indri feed from his hand:

Fifty years ago, I spent days and days and days search­ing through the for­est, with these fir­ing their noise over­head but now this group is so accus­tomed to see­ing peo­ple around that I have been right close up to them, some­thing I nev­er believed could have be pos­si­ble. 

Read more about David Atten­bor­ough’s Zoo Quest expe­ri­ences in his mem­oir, Adven­tures of a Young Nat­u­ral­ist, and watch a playlist of doc­u­men­taries for the BBC here.

via TheKidsShould­SeeThis

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Net­flix Makes Doc­u­men­taries Free to Stream: Design, Pol­i­tics, Sports, Sir David Atten­bor­ough & More

David Atten­bor­ough Reads “What a Won­der­ful World” in a Mov­ing Video

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

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

Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Cookery Course: Free Video Lessons

in Food & Drink, Television | March 6th, 2023

Our def­i­n­i­tion of bud­get cook­ery may dif­fer from celebri­ty chef Gor­don Ram­sey’s.

True, the world famous restau­ran­teur and cook­book author speaks of cheap cuts with mes­sian­ic zeal, but the episode of Gor­don Ramsey’s Ulti­mate Cook­ery Course ded­i­cat­ed to Food on a Bud­get, above, also finds him pay­ing a call to Lina Stores’ SoHo loca­tion to dis­cuss ham, sausages, and sala­mi with the late “deli mae­stro” Anto­nio Sac­co­mani.

It’s not exact­ly Cost­co.

Nor can we buy bone-in Lamb with fried bread as a cost con­scious dish, though the accom­pa­ny­ing milk soaked fried bread — home­made crou­tons real­ly — will cost slight­ly less to make this year, as the USDA is pre­dict­ing that dairy prices will fall after 2022’s his­toric lev­els.

As long as we’re at peace with the idea that the man is not ever going to be found stretch­ing rice and beans to feed a fam­i­ly of four for a week when there’s left­over risot­to to be res­ur­rect­ed as aranci­ni, the series is a gold­mine for chefs of all bud­gets and expe­ri­ence lev­els.

It’s not so much the final dish­es, as the short cuts and best prac­tices on the jour­ney.

His “chef in Paris” might indeed kill him for ugly­ing up a dish with deli­cious­ly hum­ble pan scrap­ings, but his iron­clad max­ims to waste noth­ing and use avail­able ingre­di­ents will ben­e­fit home chefs with an eye on the bot­tom line, as well as pros in high end restau­rants where prof­it mar­gins turn on a knife’s edge.

In an age when any fool can Google up dozens of fool­proof meth­ods for cook­ing rice, some­times it’s reas­sur­ing to get this sort of intel straight from the lips of a glob­al­ly rec­og­nized expert. (We’re big fans of Julia Child’s scram­bled eggs…)

How does your method mea­sure up against Ramsey’s freely shared secret for cook­ing per­fect rice?

Weigh out 400 grams of rice on a kitchen scale

Rinse with cold water

Sea­son with salt and pep­per, and — going up the food chain a bit — 3 pierced car­damom pods and a star anise

Add 600 grams of water (that’s a 1:1.5 ratio for those play­ing along with­out kitchen scales or the met­ric sys­tem) 

Bring to a boil, and steam, cov­ered for 8–10  min­utes 

No peek­ing!

Remove pot from heat and fluff

Such uni­ver­sal tips are the most per­sua­sive rea­son to stick with the series.

Ramsey’s rapid fire deliv­ery and lack of linked recipes may leave you feel­ing a bit lost in regard to exact mea­sure­ments, tem­per­a­tures, and step by step instruc­tions, but keep your ears peeled and you’ll quick­ly pick up on how to extend fresh herbs’ shelf life and keep cut pota­toes, apples and avo­ca­dos look­ing their best.

Oth­er episodes reveal how to grease cake tins, pre­vent milk from boil­ing over, remove baked-on residue, peel kiwis and man­gos, deter­mine a pineapple’s ripeness, seed pome­gran­ates, skin toma­toes, and keep plas­tic con­tain­ers stain-free…

Seri­ous­ly, who needs Tik­Tok when we have Gor­don Ram­sey 2012?

Ramsey’s advice to bypass expen­sive wine when cook­ing those com­par­a­tive­ly cheap cuts of meat low and slow gets a chef’s kiss from us. (In full dis­clo­sure, we would hap­pi­ly swig his brais­ing vin­tage.)

As to the slow-cooked duck, truf­fles and caramelized figs with ricot­ta, we must remind our­selves that the series is over 10 years old. These days even eggs feel like a splurge..

Per­haps some stress free cook­ing tips will low­er our stress lev­el over this week’s gro­cery expen­di­tures?

Here too, there seems to be some dis­crep­an­cy in Ram­sey’s def­i­n­i­tion and the gen­er­al pub­lic’s. His idea of stress free is achieved through lots of prep­work

If your idea of de-stress­ing involves skin­ning & debon­ing a salmon or mak­ing home­made fish stock, you’re in luck.

Obvi­ous­ly the end prod­uct will be deli­cious but the phrase “chili chick­en with gin­ger & corian­der” acti­vates both our sali­vary glands and our impulse to order out…

Watch a full playlist of Gor­don Ram­say’s Ulti­mate Cook­ery Course here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s First Food-and-Trav­el Series A Cook’s Tour Free Online (2002–03)

Watch 26 Free Episodes of Jacques Pépin’s TV Show, More Fast Food My Way

How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Wis­dom of Michael Pol­lan

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

How to Silence the Negative Chatter in Our Heads: Psychology Professor Ethan Kross Explains

in Psychology | February 18th, 2023

A cou­ple of weeks ago, the New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle head­lined “How to Stop Rumi­nat­ing.” If your social media feeds are any­thing like mine, you’ve seen it pop up with some fre­quen­cy since then. “Per­haps you spend hours replay­ing a tense con­ver­sa­tion you had with your boss over and over in your head,” writes its author Han­nah Seo. “Maybe you can’t stop think­ing about where things went wrong with an ex dur­ing the weeks and months after a breakup.” The piece’s pop­u­lar­i­ty speaks to the com­mon­ness of these ten­den­cies.

But if “your thoughts are so exces­sive and over­whelm­ing that you can’t seem to stop them,” lead­ing to dis­trac­tion and dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion at work and at home, “you’re prob­a­bly expe­ri­enc­ing rumi­na­tion.” For this broad­er phe­nom­e­non Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Ethan Kross has a more evoca­tive name: chat­ter.

“Your inner voice is your abil­i­ty to silent­ly use lan­guage to reflect on your life,” he explains in the Big Think video above. “Chat­ter refers to the dark side of the inner voice. When we turn our atten­tion inward to make sense of our prob­lems, we don’t end up find­ing solu­tions. We end up rumi­nat­ing, wor­ry­ing, cat­a­stro­phiz­ing.”

Despite being an invalu­able tool for plan­ning, mem­o­ry, and self-con­trol, our inner voice also has a way of turn­ing against us. “It makes it incred­i­bly hard for us to focus,” Kross says, and it can also have “severe neg­a­tive phys­i­cal health effects” when it keeps us per­pet­u­al­ly stress­ing out over long-passed events. “We expe­ri­ence a stres­sor in our life. It then ends, but in our minds, our chat­ter per­pet­u­ates it. We keep think­ing about that event over and over again.” When you’re inside them, such men­tal loops can feel infi­nite, and they could result in per­pet­u­al­ly dire con­se­quences in our per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al lives. To those in need of a way to break free, Kross empha­sizes the pow­er of rit­u­als.

“When you expe­ri­ence chat­ter, you often feel like your thoughts are in con­trol of you,” he says. But “we can com­pen­sate for this feel­ing out of con­trol by cre­at­ing order around us. Rit­u­als are one way to do that.” Per­form­ing cer­tain actions exact­ly the same way every sin­gle time gives you “a sense of order and con­trol that can feel real­ly good when you’re mired in chat­ter.” Kross goes into greater depth on the range of chat­ter-con­trol­ling tools avail­able to us (“dis­tanced-self talk,” for exam­ple, which involves per­ceiv­ing and address­ing the self as if it were some­one) in his book Chat­ter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Mat­ters, and How to Har­ness It. His inter­view with Chase Jarvis above offers a pre­view of its con­tent — and a reminder that, as means of silenc­ing chat­ter go, some­times a pod­cast works as well as any­thing.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Secret to High Per­for­mance and Ful­fil­ment: Psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Gole­man Explains the Pow­er of Focus

How Lit­er­a­ture Can Improve Men­tal Health: Take a Free Course Fea­tur­ing Stephen Fry, Ian McK­ellen, Melvyn Bragg & More

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

The Ther­a­peu­tic Ben­e­fits of Ambi­ent Music: Sci­ence Shows How It Eas­es Chron­ic Anx­i­ety, Phys­i­cal Pain, and ICU-Relat­ed Trau­ma

Erich Fromm’s Six Rules of Lis­ten­ing: Learn the Keys to Under­stand­ing Oth­er Peo­ple from the Famed Psy­chol­o­gist

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

How to Watch Hundreds of Free Movies on YouTube

in Film | January 6th, 2023

We lived in the age of movie the­aters, then we lived in the age of home video, and now we live in the age of stream­ing. Like every peri­od in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, ours has its advan­tages and its dis­ad­van­tages. The qua­si-reli­gios­i­ty of the cinephile view­ing expe­ri­ence is, arguably, not as well served by click­ing on a Youtube video as it is by attend­ing a screen­ing at a grand revival house. But on the whole, we do have the advan­tage of access, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er we like, to a great many films that most of us may have been whol­ly unable to see just a cou­ple of decades ago — and often, we can watch them for free.

That said, these are still rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly days for on-demand view­ing, and find­ing out just where to do it isn’t as easy as it could be. That’s why we’ve round­ed up this col­lec­tion of Youtube chan­nels with free movies, which togeth­er con­sti­tute one big meta-col­lec­tion of hun­dreds of films. Among them are numer­ous black-and-white clas­sics, of course, but also crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed pic­tures by inter­na­tion­al auteurs, rather less crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed (but nonethe­less enjoy­able) cult favorites, doc­u­men­taries on a wide vari­ety of sub­jects, and even twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry Hol­ly­wood releas­es.

Which films you can watch will vary, unfor­tu­nate­ly, depend­ing on which part of the world you hap­pen to be watch­ing them in. But no mat­ter your loca­tion, you should eas­i­ly be able to find more than a few worth­while selec­tions on all these chan­nels. One under-appre­ci­at­ed aspect of our stream­ing age is that, though the num­ber of choic­es may some­times over­whelm, it’s nev­er been eas­i­er to give a movie a chance. One click may, after all, trans­port you into a pic­ture that changes the way you expe­ri­ence cin­e­ma itself — and if it does­n’t, well, at least the price was right.

• Cult Cin­e­ma Clas­sics: This chan­nel fea­tures cult clas­sic films from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60, 70s and 80s, pro­vid­ing access to 100 hor­ror films, almost 400 west­ern films, and a large num­ber of Pre-Code films.
• Kino Lor­ber: Kino Lor­ber, a lead­ing film dis­trib­u­tor, has put 145 films on YouTube. The col­lec­tion includes 80 doc­u­men­taries on top­ics like on M.C. Esch­er, Stan­ley Kubrick, Han­nah Arendt, and Hilma af Klint.
• Kore­an Clas­sic Films: This chan­nel lets you expe­ri­ence decades of Kore­an cin­e­ma, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to those of mid-20th-cen­tu­ry mas­ters like Kim Ki-young, Im Kwon-taek, and Kim Soo-yong, direc­tor of haunt­ing, even brazen pic­tures of the 1960s and 70s like Mist and Night Jour­ney. Enter the chan­nel here.
• Mos­film: One of the old­est film stu­dios in Rus­sia & Europe, Mos­film has put online hun­dreds of Russ­ian and Sovi­et films, many with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. The col­lec­tion includes major films by Andrei Tarkovsky and an epic adap­ta­tion of War & Peace. Here, you will also find Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and oth­er films by Sergei Eisen­stein. Enter the chan­nel here.
• Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da: Canada’s pub­lic film pro­duc­er and dis­trib­u­tor has put online a large col­lec­tion of short films. The chan­nel fea­tures over 50 films from cel­e­brat­ed Cana­di­an ani­ma­tor Nor­man McLaren, plus curat­ed col­lec­tions of films from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond.
• New Yorker’s Screen­ing Room: On The New York­er’s YouTube chan­nel, you can find a Screen­ing Room that hosts near­ly 70 award-win­ning short films. This col­lec­tion includes some won­der­ful clay­ma­tions and ani­ma­tions. We pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the col­lec­tion on our site in 2021.
• Piz­zaFlix: A pas­sion project cre­at­ed by two film indus­try pro­fes­sion­als with 50 years com­bined expe­ri­ence. They con­trol a large, pri­vate­ly-held broad­cast-qual­i­ty film & TV library and have put online over 300 cow­boy west­erns, 80+ noir films, 200+ clas­sic thriller and mys­tery films, and a num­ber of films by Roger Cor­man.
• Pop­corn Flix: A lit­tle like Piz­zaFlix (above), this archive has playlists of action movies, sci fi films, west­erns, thrillers, come­dies, dra­mas, and more.
• Time­less Clas­sic Movies: Just as the title says, it’s a fine col­lec­tion of time­less clas­sic movies. Among oth­er things, you can find 35 noir films and 60 clas­sic thrillers here.
• YouTube’s Free Stream­ing Movies: YouTube itself hosts a large num­ber of free stream­ing movies, most­ly main­stream Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tions. That said, you can also find some clas­sics there, like the Coen Broth­er­s’O Broth­er, Where Art Thou?, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Dreams, Yasu­jiro Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry, and Clint East­wood’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and also Fist­ful of Dol­lars. Enter the chan­nel here.

If you know of oth­er YouTube chan­nels that legit­i­mate­ly host films online, please add them to the com­ments sec­tion below.

And, for more films, be sure to explore our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent 

60 Free Film Noir Movies

Watch 3,000+ Films Free Online from the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch 30+ Excep­tion­al Short Films for Free in The New Yorker’s Online Screen­ing Room

Watch More Than 400 Clas­sic Kore­an Films Free Online Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

Watch 70 Movies in HD from Famed Russ­ian Stu­dio Mos­film: Clas­sic Films, Beloved Come­dies, Tarkovsky, Kuro­sawa & More

Kino Lor­ber Puts Online 50 Free Films: Watch Clas­sics by Jean-Luc Godard, Derek Jar­man, Tai­ka Wait­i­ti & Oth­er Major Film­mak­ers

Cha­rade, the Best Hitch­cock Film Hitch­cock Nev­er Made: Stars Cary Grant & Audrey Hep­burn

Watch Free Cult Films by Stan­ley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi & More on the New Kino Cult Stream­ing Ser­vice

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

Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entirety by Tilda Swinton, Stephen Fry, John Waters & Many Others

in Audio Books, Literature | October 26th, 2022

“Moby-Dick is the great Amer­i­can nov­el. But it is also the great unread Amer­i­can nov­el. Sprawl­ing, mag­nif­i­cent, deliri­ous­ly digres­sive, it stands over and above all oth­er works of fic­tion, since it is bare­ly a work of fic­tion itself. Rather, it is an explo­sive expo­si­tion of one man’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the world of the whale, and the way humans have relat­ed to it. Yet it is so much more than that.”

That’s how Ply­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty intro­duces Her­man Melville’s clas­sic tale from 1851. And it’s what set the stage for their web project launched back in 2012. Called The Moby-Dick Big Read, the project fea­tured celebri­ties and less­er known fig­ures read­ing all 135 chap­ters from Moby-Dick — chap­ters that you can start down­load­ing (as free audio files) on iTunes, Sound­cloud, RSS Feed, or the Big Read web site itself.

The project start­ed with the first chap­ters being read by Til­da Swin­ton (Chap­ter 1), Cap­tain R.N. Hone (Chap­ter 2), Nigel Williams (Chap­ter 3), Caleb Crain (Chap­ter 4), Musa Okwon­ga (Chap­ter 5), and Mary Nor­ris (Chap­ter 6). John Waters, Stephen Fry, Simon Cal­low, Mary Oliv­er and even Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron read lat­er ones.

If you want to read the nov­el as you go along, find the text over at Project Guten­berg.

Til­da Swin­ton’s nar­ra­tion of Chap­ter 1 appears right below:

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:

An Illus­tra­tion of Every Page of Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick

How Ray Brad­bury Wrote the Script for John Huston’s Moby Dick (1956)

Hear a Com­plete 24-Hour Read­ing of Moby-Dick, Record­ed at the South­bank Cen­tre in Lon­don (2015)

An AI-Generated Painting Won First Prize at a State Fair & Sparked a Debate About the Essence of Art

in Art, Technology | September 7th, 2022

Théâtre D’opéra Spa­tial by Jason Allen Jason Allen via Dis­cord

The tech­nol­o­gy behind arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-aid­ed art has long been in devel­op­ment, but the era of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-aid­ed art feels like a sud­den arrival. Since the recent release of DALL‑E and oth­er image-gen­er­a­tion tools, our social-media feeds have filled up with elab­o­rate art­works and even pho­to­re­al­is­tic-look­ing pic­tures cre­at­ed entire­ly through the algo­rith­mic pro­cess­ing of a sim­ple ver­bal descrip­tion. We now live in a time, that is to say, where we type in a few words and get back an image nobody has ever before imag­ined, let alone seen. And if we do it right, that image could win a blue rib­bon at the state fair.

“This year, the Col­orado State Fair’s annu­al art com­pe­ti­tion gave out prizes in all the usu­al cat­e­gories: paint­ing, quilt­ing, sculp­ture,” reports the New York Times’ Kevin Roose. “But one entrant, Jason M. Allen of Pueblo West, Colo., didn’t make his entry with a brush or a lump of clay. He cre­at­ed it with Mid­jour­ney, an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­gram that turns lines of text into hyper-real­is­tic graph­ics.” The work, Théâtre D’opéra Spa­tial, “took home the blue rib­bon in the fair’s con­test for emerg­ing dig­i­tal artists,” and it does look, at first glance, like an impres­sion­is­tic and ambi­ence-rich past-future vision that could grace the cov­er of one of the bet­ter class of sci­ence-fic­tion or fan­ta­sy nov­els.

Reac­tions have, of course, var­ied. Roose finds at least one Twit­ter user insist­ing that “we’re watch­ing the death of artistry unfold right before our eyes,” and an actu­al work­ing artist claim­ing that “this thing wants our jobs.” Allen him­self pro­vides a help­ful­ly brash clos­ing quote: “This isn’t going to stop. Art is dead, dude. It’s over. A.I. won. Humans lost.” Over on Metafil­ter, one com­menter makes the expect­ed ref­er­ence: “It has a sort of Duchamp-sub­mit­ting-Foun­tain vibe, only in reverse. Instead of the propo­si­tion being that the jury would wrong­ly fail to rec­og­nize some­thing triv­ial and as art, now we have the propo­si­tion that the jury would wrong­ly fail to rec­og­nize that the art is some­thing triv­ial.”

How­ev­er lit­tle desire you may have to hang Théâtre D’opéra Spa­tial on your own wall, a momen­t’s thought will sure­ly lead you to sus­pect that, on anoth­er lev­el, the con­di­tions that brought about its vic­to­ry are any­thing but triv­ial. Mid­jour­ney, as the orig­i­nal poster on Metafil­ter explains, “can be run on any com­put­er with a decent GPU, a Google col­lab, or run through their own servers.” The abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate more-or-less con­vinc­ing works of art (often lit­tered, it must be said, with the bizarre visu­al glitch­es that have been the tech­nol­o­gy’s sig­na­ture so far) out of just a few key­strokes will only become more pow­er­ful and more wide­spread. And so the “real” artists must find a new form too vital for the machines to mas­ter — just as they’ve had to do all through­out moder­ni­ty.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dis­cov­er DALL‑E, the Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Artist That Lets You Cre­ate Sur­re­al Art­work

The Long-Lost Pieces of Rembrandt’s Night Watch Get Recon­struct­ed with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

What Hap­pens When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Cre­ates Images to Match the Lyrics of Icon­ic Songs: David Bowie’s “Star­man,” Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en”, ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” & More

AI & X‑Rays Recov­er Lost Art­works Under­neath Paint­ings by Picas­so & Modigliani

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings Sal­vador Dalí Back to Life: “Greet­ings, I Am Back”

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

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Has Given Away 186 Million Free Books to Kids, Boosting Literacy Worldwide

in Books, Education, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | August 19th, 2022

Dol­ly Par­ton cre­at­ed her Imag­i­na­tion Library, a non-prof­it which gives books to mil­lions of chil­dren every month, with her father, Robert Lee Par­ton, in mind.

“I always thought that if Dad­dy had an edu­ca­tion, there’s no telling what he could have been,” she mused in her 2020 book, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics:

Because he knew how to barter, he knew how to bar­gain. He knew how to make every­thing work, and he knew how to count mon­ey. He knew exact­ly what every­thing was worth, how much he was going to make from that tobac­co crop, what he could trade, and how he could make it all work

Despite his busi­ness acu­men, Parton’s father nev­er learned to read or write, a source of shame.

Par­ton explains how there was a time when school­ing was nev­er con­sid­ered a giv­en for chil­dren in the moun­tains of East Ten­nessee, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those like her father, who came from a fam­i­ly of 15:

Kids had to go to work in the fields to help feed the fam­i­ly. Because of the weath­er and because of con­di­tions, a lot of kids couldn’t go to school.

I told him, “Dad­dy, there are prob­a­bly mil­lions of peo­ple in this world who don’t know how to read and write, who didn’t get the oppor­tu­ni­ty. Don’t be ashamed of that. Let’s do some­thing spe­cial.”

Par­ton is con­vinced that her father, whose pride in her musi­cal accom­plish­ments was so great he drove over with a buck­et of soapy water to clean the bronze stat­ue her home­town erect­ed in her hon­or, was proud­er still of a nick­name bestowed on her by the Imag­i­na­tion Library’s child ben­e­fi­cia­ries — the Book Lady.

Togeth­er with the com­mu­ni­ty part­ners who secure fund­ing for postage and non-admin­is­tra­tive costs, the Book Lady has giv­en away some 186,680,000 books since the project launched in 1995.

Orig­i­nal­ly lim­it­ed to chil­dren resid­ing in Sevi­er Coun­ty, Ten­nessee, the pro­gram has expand­ed to serve over 2,000,000 kids in the US, UK, Aus­tralia, Cana­da and the Repub­lic of Ire­land.

Par­tic­i­pa­tion can start well before a child is old enough to attempt their ABCs. Par­ents and guardians are encour­aged to enroll them at birth.

The Imag­i­na­tion Library’s lit­tlest par­tic­i­pants’ love of books is fos­tered with col­or­ful illus­tra­tions and sim­ple texts, often rhymes hav­ing to do with ani­mals or bed­time.

By the time a read­er hits their final year of the pro­gram at age 5, the focus will have shift­ed to school readi­ness, with sub­jects includ­ing sci­ence, folk­tales, and poet­ry.

The books — all Pen­guin Ran­dom House titles — are cho­sen by a pan­el of ear­ly child­hood lit­er­a­cy experts. 

This year’s selec­tion includes such old favorites as The Tale of Peter Rab­bit, Good Night, Goril­la, and The Snowy Day, as well as Parton’s own Coat of Many Col­ors, based on the song in which she famous­ly paid trib­ute to her moth­er’s ten­der resource­ful­ness:

Back through the years

I go won­derin’ once again

Back to the sea­sons of my youth

I recall a box of rags that some­one gave us

And how my mom­ma put the rags to use

There were rags of many col­ors

Every piece was small

And I did­n’t have a coat

And it was way down in the fall

Mom­ma sewed the rags togeth­er

Sewin’ every piece with love

She made my coat of many col­ors

That I was so proud of

The Imag­i­na­tion Library is clear­ly a boon to chil­dren liv­ing, as Par­ton once did, in pover­ty, but par­tic­i­pa­tion is open to any­one under age 5 liv­ing in an area served by an Imag­i­na­tion Library affil­i­ate.

Pro­mot­ing ear­ly engage­ment with books in such a sig­nif­i­cant way has also helped Par­ton to reduce some of the stig­ma sur­round­ing illit­er­a­cy:

You don’t real­ly real­ize how many peo­ple can’t read and write. Me telling the sto­ry about my dad­dy instilled some pride in peo­ple who felt like they had to keep it hid­den like a secret. I get so many let­ters from peo­ple say­ing, “I would nev­er had admit­ted it’ or “I was always ashamed.”

Learn more about Dol­ly Parton’s Imag­i­na­tion Library, which wel­comes dona­tions and inquiries from those who would like to start an affil­i­ate pro­gram in their area, here.

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

When Helen Keller Met Charlie Chaplin and Taught Him Sign Language (1919)

in Film, History | August 9th, 2022

Char­lie Chap­lin had many high-pro­file fans in his day, includ­ing some of the lumi­nar­ies of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. We could per­haps be for­giv­en for assum­ing that the writer and activist Hellen Keller was not among them, giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions her con­di­tion of deaf­ness and blind­ness — or “deaf­blind­ness” — would nat­u­ral­ly place on the enjoy­ment of film, even the silent films in which Chap­lin made his name. But mak­ing that assump­tion would be to mis­un­der­stand the dri­ving force of Keller’s life and career. If the movies were sup­pos­ed­ly unavail­able to her, then she’d make a point of not just watch­ing them, but befriend­ing their biggest star.

Keller met Chap­lin in 1919 at his Hol­ly­wood stu­dio, dur­ing the film­ing of Sun­ny­side. This, as biog­ra­phers have revealed, was not one of the smoothest-going peri­ods in the come­di­an-auteur’s life, but that did­n’t stop him from enjoy­ing his time with Keller, and even learn­ing from her.

In her 1928 auto­bi­og­ra­phy Mid­stream, she would remem­ber that he’d been “shy, almost timid,” and that “his love­ly mod­esty lent a touch of romance to the occa­sion that might oth­er­wise have seemed quite ordi­nary.” The pic­tures that have cir­cu­lat­ed of the meet­ing, seen here, include one of Keller teach­ing Chap­lin the tac­tile sign-lan­guage alpha­bet she used to com­mu­ni­cate.

It was also the means by which, with the assis­tance of com­pan­ion Anne Sul­li­van, she fol­lowed the action of Chap­lin’s films A Dog’s Life and Shoul­der Arms when they were screened for her that evening. When Keller and Chap­lin met again near­ly thir­ty years lat­er, he sought her feed­back on the script for his lat­est pic­ture, Mon­sieur Ver­doux. “There is no lan­guage for the ter­ri­fy­ing pow­er of your mes­sage that sears with sar­casm or rends apart coverts of social hypocrisy,” Keller lat­er wrote to Chap­lin. A polit­i­cal­ly charged black com­e­dy about a bigamist ser­i­al killer bear­ing lit­tle resem­blance indeed to the beloved Lit­tle Tramp, Mon­sieur Ver­doux met with crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial fail­ure upon its release. The film has since been re-eval­u­at­ed as a sub­ver­sive mas­ter­work, but it was per­haps Keller who first tru­ly saw it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

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

When Albert Ein­stein & Char­lie Chap­lin Met and Became Fast Famous Friends (1930)

When Mahat­ma Gand­hi Met Char­lie Chap­lin (1931)

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

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