Charles & Ray Eames’ A Communications Primer Explains the Key to Clear Communication in the Modern Age (1953)

in Design, Film, Technology | November 13th, 2014

You might think that a movie about infor­ma­tion from 1953 couldn’t pos­si­bly be rel­e­vant in the age of iPhone apps and the Inter­net but you’d be wrong. A Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Primer, direct­ed by that pow­er cou­ple of design Charles and Ray Eames, might refer to some hope­less­ly quaint tech­nol­o­gy – com­put­er punch cards, for instance – but the under­ly­ing ideas are as cur­rent as any­thing you’re like­ly to see at a TED talk. You can watch it above.

In fact, the film made for IBM was the result of the first ever mul­ti-media pre­sen­ta­tions that Charles Eames devel­oped for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia and UCLA. Using slides, music, nar­ra­tion and film, Eames broke down some ele­men­tal aspects of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the audi­ence. Cen­tral to the film is an input/output dia­gram that was laid out by Claude Shan­non, the father of infor­ma­tion the­o­ry, in his 1949 book, The Math­e­mat­i­cal The­o­ry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. As the per­haps over­ly sooth­ing nar­ra­tor intones, any mes­sage is trans­mit­ted by a sig­nal through a chan­nel to its receiv­er. While in the chan­nel, the sig­nal is altered and degrad­ed by noise. The key to effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion is to reduce “noise” (con­strued broad­ly) that inter­feres with the mes­sage and to gen­er­al­ly sim­pli­fy things.

The issue of sig­nal vs noise is prob­a­bly more rel­e­vant now in this age of per­pet­u­al dis­trac­tion than it was dur­ing the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion. Every email, text mes­sage or Buz­zfeed arti­cle seen indi­vid­u­al­ly is clear­ly a sig­nal. Yet for some­one try­ing to work, say on an arti­cle about a short film by Charles and Ray Eames, they are def­i­nite­ly noise.

The Eames use the terms “sig­nal,” “noise,” and “com­mu­ni­ca­tion” quite broad­ly. Not only do they use these terms to describe, say, a radio broad­cast or a mes­sage being relayed by Morse code but also the cre­ation of archi­tec­ture, design and even visu­al art.

The source of a paint­ing is the mind and expe­ri­ence of the painter. Mes­sage? His con­cept of a par­tic­u­lar paint­ing. Trans­mit­ter? His tal­ent and tech­nique. Sig­nal? The paint­ing itself. Receiv­er? All the eyes and ner­vous sys­tems and pre­vi­ous con­di­tion­ing of those who see the paint­ing. Des­ti­na­tion? Their minds, their emo­tions, their expe­ri­ence. Now in this case, the noise that tends to dis­rupt the sig­nal can take many forms. It can be the qual­i­ty of the light. The col­or of the light. The prej­u­dices of the view­er. The idio­syn­crasies of the painter.

Of course, a paint­ing — or a poem, or a film by Andrei Tarkovsky — is a dif­fer­ent kind of sig­nal than an email. It’s mes­sage is mul­ti­lay­ered and mul­ti­va­lent. And while a gen­er­a­tion of cul­tur­al the­o­rists would no doubt chafe at Eames’s reduc­tive, Mod­ernist view of art, it is still inter­est­ing to think of a paint­ing in the same man­ner as smoke sig­nals.

The film’s nar­ra­tor con­tin­ues:

But besides noise, there are oth­er fac­tors that can keep infor­ma­tion from reach­ing its des­ti­na­tion in tact. The back­ground and con­di­tion­ing of the receiv­ing appa­ra­tus may so dif­fer from that of the trans­mit­ter that it may be impos­si­ble for the receiv­er to pick up the sig­nal with­out dis­tor­tion.

That’s about as good a descrip­tion of cable new pun­dits as I’ve ever seen.

A Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Primer will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Design­ers Charles & Ray Eames Cre­ate a Pro­mo­tion­al Film for the Ground­break­ing Polaroid SX-70 Instant Cam­era (1972)

Charles & Ray Eames’ Icon­ic Film Pow­ers of Ten (1977) and the Less­er-Known Pro­to­type from 1968

Charles and Ray Eames’ Pow­ers of Ten: The Clas­sic Film Re-Imag­ined By 40 Artists

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Learn The History of Philosophy in 247 Podcasts (With More to Come)

in Philosophy, Podcasts | November 12th, 2014

Yes­ter­day we took a look at, or rather a lis­ten to, the “pod­cast­ing renais­sance,” high­light­ing a few of the new wave of shows and rec­om­mend­ing some of the pre-exist­ing ones you may have missed. Many Open Cul­ture read­ers will remem­ber our addic­tion to phi­los­o­phy pod­casts — The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, Phi­los­o­phy Bites, and Phi­los­o­phize This!, to name but three of our favorites — and some may won­der if The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site), which we fea­tured back in 2011 and again in 2012, sur­vived the dark ages into which pod­cast­ing had appar­ent­ly fall­en. Could its host Peter Adam­son, pro­fes­sor at Lud­wig Max­i­m­il­ian Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich and King’s Col­lege Lon­don, have suc­cumbed to the dread­ed pod­fade some­where between Plot­nius on the soul and Chris­t­ian asceti­cism?

Wor­ry not, stu­dents of thought, for Adam­son has con­tin­ued these past few years, still reg­u­lar­ly and gap­less­ly, to pro­vide “the ideas and lives of the major philoso­phers as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.” Just this past week­end, he put up a twen­ty-minute episode on the Car­olin­gian Renais­sance. If you haven’t kept up with the show since we last post­ed about it, you’ve got a great deal of intel­lec­tu­al­ly rich catch­ing up to do. You will find more than 100 new pod­casts, fea­tur­ing short talks on Latin Pla­ton­ism, Aris­totelian phi­los­o­phy’s “Bagh­dad school,” phi­los­o­phy’s reign in Spain, Illu­mi­na­tion­ism, and women schol­ars and Islam. If you’ve want­ed to learn the entire his­to­ry phi­los­o­phy in the most con­ve­nient pos­si­ble man­ner, now’s the time to jump aboard. If you planned on wait­ing until Adam­son gets to, say, Der­ri­da, I fear you’ll have a bit of a daunt­ing back­log on your hands — not to men­tion your ears and brain.

Note: This arti­cle was first pub­lished in Novem­ber, 2014. As of Feb­ru­ary, 2016, there are 247 episodes in this series. The title of the post has been updat­ed to reflect that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Jump Into the “Podcasting Renaissance” with These Intelligent Shows (and Tell Us Your Favorites)

in Podcasts | November 11th, 2014

You may have heard that pod­cast­ing has a renais­sance going on. As a pod­cast­er since the begin­ning stages of the medi­um — and one slight­ly sur­prised to find that the medi­um has now reached ten years of age — I can only wel­come the news, though I nev­er knew pod­cast­ing had gone into a dark age. New York Mag­a­zine’s Kevin Roose tells the sto­ry of the appear­ance of Apple’s iPod, fol­lowed by a flow­er­ing of “pod­casts about pol­i­tics, sports, lit­er­a­ture, com­e­dy,” “pod­casts that sound­ed like NPR, and ones that sound­ed like Rush Lim­baugh,” some that “lacked pol­ish,” but most pos­sessed of “a kind of ener­gy to them that suit­ed their audi­ences well.” But then, “some­time around 2009 or 2010, the pod­cast scene seemed to with­er. The stal­warts (This Amer­i­can Life, Radi­o­lab) stayed around at the top of the iTunes charts, but there was­n’t much else hap­pen­ing. Down­load num­bers fell. Inter­est waned.” But ah, in this year of our Pod 2014, things have changed: “Today, a very dif­fer­ent prob­lem exists: There are too many great pod­casts to keep up with.”

Roose, and hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of oth­er peo­ple on the inter­net, rec­om­mends first and fore­most Ser­i­al (iTunes — RSS — Sound­cloud), “the true-crime dra­ma host­ed by This Amer­i­can Life pro­duc­er Sarah Koenig,” a show some­times cred­it­ed with reviv­ing pod­cast­ing itself. The New York­er’s Sarah Lar­son calls it “the pod­cast we’ve been wait­ing for” in a piece giv­ing a look into the rea­sons behind its suc­cess. Roos also gives spe­cial men­tion to anoth­er new show involv­ing a name you might rec­og­nize from the This Amer­i­can Life orbit: Alex Blum­berg’s Start­Up (iTunes — RSS), a run­ning doc­u­ment of the cre­ator’s attempt to launch a pod­cast­ing busi­ness, the kind of ven­ture that sounds less quixot­ic all the time. And Roose also names a per­son­al favorite of mine, the well-known pod­cast about archi­tec­ture and design — but Real­ly, About Life Itself — 99% Invis­i­ble (iTunes — RSS).

If you feel like get­ting into this pod­cast renais­sance, or if you’ve spent years as a pod­cast lis­ten­er and just need some new mate­r­i­al in your rota­tion, you could do much worse than start­ing with the three shows above. To add to that list, I can sug­gest no pod­cast more suit­ed to the inter­ests of Open Cul­ture read­ers than In Our Time (iTunes — RSS), the long-run­ning BBC Radio 4 pro­gram about the his­to­ry of ideas where­in vet­er­an broad­cast­er Melvyn Bragg inter­views groups of Oxbridge experts on sub­jects like nuclear fusion, the Hait­ian rev­o­lu­tion, Rud­yard Kipling, the Bat­tle of Talas, and the female pharaoh Hat­shep­sut — just in the past month. Per­son­al­ly, I so enjoy In Our Time that I went to inter­view Melvyn Bragg on my own pod­cast Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture ear­li­er this year.

Inter­views and com­e­dy have proven two of the most durable forms of con­tent in pod­cast­ing, and any­one who has­n’t dipped into come­di­an Marc Maron’s in-depth and intro­spec­tive inter­view show WTF (iTunes — RSS) — not that many haven’t at this point — has missed out on a ster­ling exam­ple of the kind of lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences pod­cast­ing, and only pod­cast­ing, has made pos­si­ble. (You might con­sid­er also lis­ten­ing to my inter­view with Maron on The Los Ange­les Review of Books pod­cast.) And while not nec­es­sar­i­ly com­e­dy, I can’t imag­ine Open Cul­ture read­ers not get­ting a laugh, and all oth­er kinds of intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion besides, out of the pod­cast­ing of Ben­ja­men Walk­er. Walk­er, for­mer­ly the host of Too Much Infor­ma­tion on the beloved inde­pen­dent radio sta­tion WFMU, recent­ly launched a new show called Ben­ja­men Walk­er’s The­o­ry of Every­thing (iTunes — Sound­cloud), a show of per­son­al sto­ries that explores all things to which those sto­ries con­nect.

True, one com­plaint about pod­cast­ing in its ear­ly years held that the shows pod­cast­ers made went too per­son­al — the old charge of “two or three guys sit­ting in base­ment talk­ing about noth­ing” — but now that this decade-old medi­um has found more mature forms, the per­son­al has become its art and its craft. I nev­er hes­i­tate to pro­mote XO (iTunes — RSS), a show by Kei­th McNal­ly, a pod­cast auteur whom I believe has done more to mas­ter the cre­ative per­son­al-sto­ry pod­cast than almost any­body, and he began doing it ear­li­er. (As with Bragg, I went to his home­town of Toron­to to inter­view him too.) But enough about my favorite pod­casts; which ones do you tire­less­ly cham­pi­on? Make your rec­om­men­da­tions, and we’ll round them up in a post soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

Shakespeare’s Rest­less World: A Por­trait of the Bard’s Era in 20 Pod­casts

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essential Cooking Techniques: From Poaching Eggs to Shucking Oysters

in Food & Drink, How to Learn for Free | November 7th, 2014

I was blessed to grow up around a grand­moth­er who cooked every meal like she was feed­ing a dozen fam­ished farmhands. She nev­er spelled out all her var­i­ous tricks and short cuts … let’s not call them hacks. She just did what she did, and I picked it up by osmo­sis, using a juice glass for a bis­cuit cut­ter and watch­ing for pock­marks in the pan­cake bat­ter. End­less hours in her kitchen made me a con­fi­dent chef long before I was in a posi­tion to buy my own gro­ceries.

Not every­one is so for­tu­nate, I know.

They get their infor­ma­tion from Julia Child, Martha Stew­art, some pseu­do­ny­mous food blog­ger or pos­si­bly my friend, Jesse, whose exper­tise as a builder extends to things culi­nary. He once insist­ed on show­ing me a more effi­cient way to cut up man­go. My grandmother’s trop­i­cal fruit expe­ri­ence maxed out at oranges, so I was on my own in the sep­a­rat­ing man­go flesh from man­go bone depart­ment. I tried it his way a cou­ple of times, before revert­ing to my non-way.

There’s unde­ni­able com­pet­i­tive­ness amongst those of us who pride our­selves on our cook­ing abil­i­ties. Our skills are our hon­or. So help me if I went on Top Chef, and some guest judge decreed I was doing some­thing wrong!

For the record, The New York Times endors­es Jesse’s man­go tech­nique above, in their short instruc­tion­al video series, Cook­ing Tech­niques. There are 53 videos in total.

I can see how such a col­lec­tion would come in handy for those who didn’t grow up around my grand­moth­er, Jesse, or me.

And speak­ing of handy, all fledg­ling chefs are advised to get a firm han­dle on knife tech­niques before pick­ing up a noto­ri­ous­ly slip­pery-fleshed fruit and cut­ting toward their own fin­gers! Such reck­less­ness would nev­er have passed muster with the edi­tors of the Bet­ty Crock­er New Boys and Girls Cook­book. The Times is liv­ing on the edge!

Some of the con­tent has a dopey wash-rinse-repeat vibe, abet­ted by an odd­ly fla­vor­less nar­ra­tive voice. (Not every­one has Thug Kitchen’s nar­ra­tive sparkle. I should be grate­ful for the per­son­al­i­ty shin­ing through oth­er Times videos, notably Bill Cunningham’s “On The Street.”)

I’ll eat those words should I ever need to shuck an oys­ter, anoth­er one of those culi­nary duties that had no place on my Mid­west­ern grandmother’s agen­da. Not to say that my kitchen abil­i­ties are limned by the culi­nary stan­dards of 1970s Indi­ana. I fling around fish sauce and coconuts with Siamese aban­don, but oys­ters always seem so damn daunt­ing. Could owe to ear­ly read­ings of Lewis Car­roll.

I don’t know what I was so afraid of. Appar­ent­ly all it takes is 30 sec­onds and a dish­tow­el. (And an oys­ter knife, but we’ve got draw­er­fuls of those, the trick­le down effect of my husband’s Cape Cod boy­hood.)

Ulti­mate­ly, it’s sol­id stuff, but though with apolo­gies to our veg­e­tar­i­an read­ers, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. You can poach eggs a la the Times, or do it my way by adding a table­spoon of vine­gar to the poach­ing water. No fussy pre-poach. Boom! Done!

Sim­i­lar­ly stem­ming greens. My way, gleaned, not from my gran, but a hand­writ­ten, illus­trat­ed zine ear­li­er this mil­len­ni­um, doesn’t even require a knife! Hold that kale stem side up, using your oth­er hand as an ersatz prong, tear­ing the leaf from stem to stern.

Good heav­ens. Is that where that expres­sion came from? Per­haps some­one at the Times would know…. See all 53 of their cook­ing tech­nique videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Harvard’s Free Course on Mak­ing Cakes, Pael­la & Oth­er Deli­cious Food

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

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

How to Dance Your Dissertation: See the Winning Video in the 2014 “Dance Your PhD” Contest

in Biology, Dance | November 5th, 2014

We’ve seen how mod­ern dance can explain key con­cepts in sta­tis­tics (e.g. cor­re­la­tion and sam­pling error). So why could­n’t dance also illus­trate the con­clu­sions of a plant biol­o­gy doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion?

Uma Nagen­dra, a grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia, has just won the 2014 edi­tion of the “Dance Your Ph.D.” con­test. Spon­sored by Sci­ence and High­Wire Press, the con­test asks grad stu­dents to “explain their Ph.D. research in the most jar­gon-free medi­um of all: dance.” (More cri­te­ria can be found over at the con­test’s tips & tricks page.) Accord­ing to Sci­ence mag­a­zine, Nagen­dra likes to spend “a good deal of her [free] time hang­ing upside down from a trapeze doing cir­cus aeri­als.” It’s a cre­ative out­let for her. And it offers a good way, it turns out, to visu­al­ize the con­clu­sions of her dis­ser­ta­tion explor­ing “Plant-soil feed­backs after severe tor­na­do dam­age.”

The “Dance Your Ph.D.” con­test allows each con­tes­tant to sub­mit a video with a short piece of descrip­tive text. Here is what Nagen­dra wrote:

Many of the pat­terns we see in forests around the world are caused by the rela­tion­ships that plants have with organ­isms in the soil. Some very diverse forests can only sup­port as many dif­fer­ent tree species as they do because soil-borne dis­eases pre­vent any one species from tak­ing over. But what hap­pens when a tor­na­do comes along? Do the plants and soil organ­isms main­tain this diver­si­ty-pro­mot­ing rela­tion­ship?

My PhD research focus­es on how sev­er­al dif­fer­ent species of tree seedlings in the south­ern Appalachi­an moun­tains inter­act with soil organisms—and how tor­na­does might mix things up. I study many dif­fer­ent species. As an exam­ple, we can look at white pine (Pinus strobus), and the many pathogens that attack the roots of its seedlings.

The dance begins in an undis­turbed for­est. Because trees live for so long in one place, a mature pine tree accu­mu­lates a unique group of fun­gi around its roots—including pathogens that cause dis­eases in tree seedlings (in this case, Pythi­um and Rhi­zoc­to­nia). White pine seedlings that are very close to a mature tree are more like­ly to be attacked by these pathogens—causing stunt­ed growth, or even death. The far­ther away a seedling is from a mature tree, the less like­ly it is to get infect­ed. These dis­tant seedlings are more like­ly to sur­vive to matu­ri­ty. A pat­tern emerges where the mature pine trees are spaced far apart—leaving room for seedlings of oth­er species to grow, and cre­at­ing a diverse for­est.

In the mid­dle of the dance, we wit­ness the tornado—and how it changes the for­est envi­ron­ment. The mature pine tree dies, and the for­est floor is no longer shad­ed. The soil becomes hot­ter and dri­er. With­out the liv­ing mature tree as a host, spe­cial­ist pathogens are less active, and many die. Because of this, I am pre­dict­ing that plant-soil rela­tion­ships in recent­ly tor­na­do-dam­aged areas may be much weak­er. In the last part of the dance, seedlings close to the (killed) mature tree are no longer at greater risk for dis­ease; they grow and sur­vive the same as their more dis­tant sib­lings. The chang­ing plant-soil rela­tion­ships after dis­tur­bances might be one piece in the puz­zle of how diverse ecosys­tems change over time.

via Explore

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”

Free: Stream Songs from Bob Dylan’s Upcoming Release, The Basement Tapes Complete

in Music | October 28th, 2014

As his loy­al fans already know, Bob Dylan will release next week a six-CD col­lec­tion called The Base­ment Tapes Com­plete: The Boot­leg Series, Vol. 11, which fea­tures 139 songs record­ed dur­ing the late 1960s, when, Dylan, recov­er­ing from a motor­cy­cle acci­dent, holed him­self up in a base­ment in Sauger­ties, NY and began play­ing music casu­al­ly with The Band. The sto­ry behind the mak­ing of The Base­ment Tapes gets nice­ly told by Sasha Frere-Jones in the lat­est edi­tion of The New York­er, and over at NPR you can now stream a selec­tion of songs from the upcom­ing Base­ment Tapes release. Just thought you might want to know.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: 12 Rare Record­ings

Stephen Colbert Explains How The Colbert Report Is Made in a New Podcast

in Comedy, Creativity, Podcasts, Television | October 20th, 2014

“I do the show in char­ac­ter, he’s an idiot, he’s will­ful­ly igno­rant of what you know and care about, please hon­est­ly dis­abuse me of my igno­rance and we’ll have a great time.” 

This secret speaks to the heart of come­di­an and fake-pun­dit Stephen Colbert’s wild­ly pop­u­lar Col­bert Report. But how exact­ly does he man­age to pull this rab­bit from his hat, night after night gru­el­ing night?

The nuts and bolts of Colbert’s work­ing day make for a fas­ci­nat­ing inau­gur­al episode of Work­ing, a new Slate pod­cast host­ed by David Plotz. It shares a title with radio per­son­al­i­ty Studs Terkel’s famous non-fic­tion­al exam­i­na­tion, but Plotz’s project is more process ori­ent­ed. Soup-to-nuts-and-bolts, if you will.

Col­bert is hap­py to oblige with a Lit­tle Red Hen-like corn metaphor in which alco­hol, not bread, is the ulti­mate goal.

His morn­ing begins with a deep rum­mage through the headlines—Google News, Red­dit, Slate, The Drudge Report, Fox News, Buz­zfeed, The Huff­in­g­ton Post… imag­ine if this stack was made of paper. When does he have the time to google ex-girl­friends?

When­ev­er pat­terns and trends emerge, Col­bert and his hard work­ing team fer­ret out ways to impose his char­ac­ter onto them. Occa­sion­al­ly some lucky non-sto­ry will find itself ele­vat­ed to Queen for a Day, if it speaks to some­thing Col­bert-the-char­ac­ter would care about pas­sion­ate­ly. The pro­posed ban on horse car­riages in Cen­tral Park, the Col­orado VA’s mar­i­jua­na stance, and the self-declared les­bian trou­ple are three that have borne fruit of late.

From pitch meet­ing through read-aloud and rewrites, the school hours por­tion of Colbert’s day resem­bles that of oth­er dead­line-dri­ven shows. He’s quick to acknowl­edge the con­tri­bu­tions of a ded­i­cat­ed and like-mind­ed staff, includ­ing exec­u­tive pro­duc­er Tom Pur­cell and head writer Opus—as in Bloom Coun­ty—Moreschi.

As show­time approach­es, Col­bert swaps his jeans for a Brooks Broth­ers suit, and leaves the homey, dog-friend­ly town­house where the bulk of the writ­ing takes place for the stu­dio next door.

There are last minute rewrites, a guest to greet, a Bic pen to be nib­bled…

Ide­al­ly, he’ll get at least 10 min­utes of head­space to become the mon­ster of his own mak­ing, lib­er­al America’s favorite will­ful­ly igno­rant idiot. (Most of lib­er­al Amer­i­ca, any­way. My late-moth­er-in-law refused to believe it was an act, but it is.)

A bit of schtick with the make­up artist serves as a lit­mus test for audi­ence respon­sive­ness.

When the cam­eras roll, Col­bert sticks close to his prompter, fur­ther proof that the char­ac­ter is a con­struct. Any impro­vi­sa­tion­al impuls­es are unleashed dur­ing one-on-one inter­ac­tions with the guest. With some 10,000 hours of com­e­dy under his belt, his instincts tend toward the unerr­ing.

At days end, he thanks the audi­ence, the guest and every­one back­stage except for one guy who gets a mere wave. The show is then edit­ed at a zip squeal pace, and will hope­ful­ly fall into the “yay!” cat­e­go­ry. (The oth­er choic­es are “sol­id” or “wrench to the head.”)

Col­bert will only watch the show if there was a prob­lem.

And then? The day begins again.

After peer­ing through this win­dow onto Colbert’s world, we’re stoked for future episodes of Work­ing, when guests as var­ied as a rock musi­cian, a hos­pice nurse, and porn star Jes­si­ca Drake walk Plotz through a typ­i­cal day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert & Louis CK Recite The Get­tys­burg Address, With Some Help from Jer­ry Sein­feld

Stephen Col­bert Tries to Make Sense of MOOCs with the Head of edX

A Seri­ous Stephen Col­bert Gives Advice on Love & Life to Teenage Girls

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the cre­ator of The Mermaid’s Legs, a trau­ma-filled Hans Chris­t­ian Ander­sen reboot pre­mier­ing this week in NYC. See it! And fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The Making (and Remaking) of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Arguably the Greatest Rock Album of All Time

in Music | October 9th, 2014

Rock ‘n’ roll has a sad tra­di­tion of genius­es who’ve suc­cumbed to men­tal ill­ness and addic­tion. Some of them have, para­dox­i­cal­ly, pro­duced some of the best music of their careers dur­ing peri­ods of decline. We’d have to men­tion Pink Floyd’s Syd Bar­rett, Moby Grape’s Skip Spence, Big Star’s Chris Bell… all of whom record­ed strange, inti­mate, and heart­felt solo albums after leav­ing their respec­tive bands. Then, of course, there’s Bri­an Wil­son, whose 1966 Pet Sounds re-invent­ed pop, and laid the ground­work for Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. (Wil­son is said to have been inspired by Rub­ber Soul). We may know Pet Sounds as a Beach Boys release, but it was real­ly Wilson’s record. In the video series here, “Behind the Sounds,” we get a unique lis­ten in to the cre­ation of the album by way of ear­ly takes, lots of stu­dio chat­ter, and pop-up video style fac­toids in the Pet Sounds cover’s Coop­er Black font over behind-the-scenes pho­tos.

At the top, hear behind the sounds of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” Just above, hear the mak­ing of “I Know There’s An Answer,” and below, hear Parts 1 and 2 of the cre­ation of “God Only Knows,” the lush, self-effac­ing bal­lad whose harp­si­chord and French horn intro clear­ly inspired the orches­tra­tion in songs like “Pen­ny Lane” and “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.” See videos for the rest of Pet Sounds’ songs at the “Behind the Sounds” Youtube chan­nel.

Pet Sounds has been named the great­est album of all time by NME and Mojo mag­a­zines and ranks at num­ber two in Rolling Stone’s 500 Great­est Albums of All Time, right behind Sgt. Pepper’s. Wil­son wrote the songs with lyri­cist Tony Ash­er dur­ing a time when he was pulling away from his sun­ny surf-pop group and expand­ing his reper­toire of stu­dio tech­niques in unprece­dent­ed ways. The songs can sound super­fi­cial­ly like breezy Beach Boys pop, but reveal them­selves as com­plex, baroque orches­tra­tions that hold enough instru­men­tal sur­pris­es and lyri­cal sub­tleties for a life­time of lis­ten­ing. It’s a record both thor­ough­ly of its time and thor­ough­ly time­less.

Unlike many a trag­ic rock com­pos­er, Wil­son has sur­vived and recov­ered (many times over) into old age, record­ing and tour­ing on and off with the Beach Boys and open­ing up about his dark­er times. And unless you’re spend­ing this week under a rock some­where, you’ll catch the BBC’s star-stud­ded video re-make of “God Only Knows,” just below, cir­cu­lat­ing all over the ‘net. Both a pro­mo for the more than two dozen musi­cians involved and a ben­e­fit sin­gle for char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion BBC Chil­dren in Need, the glam­orous pro­duc­tion fea­tures Wil­son behind his piano, look­ing state­ly and healthy. For more on the mak­ing of Pet Sounds, see this 2002 BBC doc­u­men­tary, Art That Shook The World: The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. And please, amidst this flur­ry of Pet Sounds good­ies, don’t for­get to lis­ten to the album itself, best appre­ci­at­ed, says Wil­son, with “ear­phones, in the dark.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd Get Bri­an Wil­son Out of Bed and Force Him to Go Surf­ing, 1976

The Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er Demos: The Mak­ing of a Bea­t­les Clas­sic (1966)

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

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

Longform’s New, Free App Lets You Read Great Journalism from Your Favorite Publishers

in iPad, iPhone, Magazines, Media | September 23rd, 2014

If you have man­aged to keep your atten­tion span intact dur­ing this dis­tract­ing infor­ma­tion age, then you’re almost cer­tain­ly famil­iar with Longform.org, a web site that makes it easy to find some­thing great to read online, espe­cial­ly if you like read­ing infor­ma­tive, well-craft­ed works of non-fic­tion. Last week, Long­form enhanced its ser­vice with the release of a new, free app for iPhone and iPad. It’s the “only 100% free app that fil­ters out the inter­net junk and deliv­ers noth­ing but smart, in-depth reads.” And, draw­ing on mate­r­i­al from 1,000 pub­lish­ers, the app lets read­ers “cre­ate their own cus­tom feeds of high qual­i­ty, fea­ture-length jour­nal­ism,” and then read it all on the go. It’s a mis­sion that cer­tain­ly aligns with ours, so we’re more than hap­py to give the new app a plug.

Sign up for our dai­ly email and, once a day, we’ll bun­dle all of our dai­ly posts and drop them in your inbox, in an easy-to-read for­mat. You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you!

Let’s Learn Japanese: Two Classic Video Series to Get You Started in the Language

in Language Lessons | September 22nd, 2014

Say the name “Yan-san” to any­one who’s stud­ied Japan­ese in the last thir­ty years, and you’ll prob­a­bly get a reac­tion of delight­ed recog­ni­tion. It means that, inside or out­side the class­room, they stud­ied with Let’s Learn Japan­ese, a series of edu­ca­tion­al videos pro­duced by the Japan Foun­da­tion. The first “sea­son,” if you like, came out in 1984, the time of an enor­mous Asian eco­nom­ic bub­ble that made the world’s future look Japan­ese, send­ing the lan­guage straight to the top of every inter­na­tion­al busi­ness-mind­ed stu­den­t’s to-do-list. (Sound famil­iar, cur­rent strug­glers with Man­darin?) Its hero, a young man of delib­er­ate­ly ambigu­ous nation­al­i­ty named Yan — the Japan­ese all address him with the every­day hon­orif­ic -san — turns up in Japan for a few years of life in Tokyo and works at an archi­tec­ture firm, helped along by his host fam­i­ly the Katos, his eager­ly team-play­ing co-work­ers (one of whom intro­duces him­self, in Eng­lish, with the phase, “We are friends — okay?”), and a vari­ety of help­ful cit­i­zens and pro­fes­sion­als all across the Land of the Ris­ing Sun.

This may sound like dull stuff — the stuff of run-of-the-mill lan­guage-learn­ing videos — but Let’s Learn Japan­ese raised the bar for this sort of thing, in terms of not just pro­duc­tion val­ue and teach­ing effec­tive­ness but sheer rewatch­a­bil­i­ty. In addi­tion to Yan-san’s life among the Japan­ese peo­ple, Let’s Learn Japan­ese also offers instruc­tion­al seg­ments led by Mary Althaus, still a pro­fes­sor at Toky­o’s Tsu­da Col­lege, and imag­i­na­tive illus­tra­tive skits per­formed by the inde­fati­ga­ble trio of Mine, Kai­hō, and Sug­i­hara. In the more advanced Sea­son 2, released over a decade lat­er in 1995, they’ve become the eeri­ly sim­i­lar Kodama, Andō, and Koy­ana­gi, and Yan-san has become a grad­u­ate stu­dent with girl­friend trou­bles. Hav­ing watched all 52 episodes sev­er­al times through, I can vouch for both its enter­tain­ment val­ue and its effec­tive­ness. (It also spurred me to start vol­un­teer­ing at the Japan Foun­da­tion, Los Ange­les.) So can the for­eign­ers who give a hero’s wel­come to star Nick Muhrin (who, last I heard, still lives in Japan) when they run into him. I know I’ve learned enough to buy Yan-san a drink.

You can find more use­ful Japan­ese-learn­ing mate­ri­als to sup­ple­ment all this in our archive of free lan­guage lessons. It includes resources rang­ing from the For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute’s dig­i­tized text­books and tapes to pod­casts like the life abroad-ori­ent­ed Japanesepod101 [iTunes Free — Feed] and the ani­me-geared Japan­cast [iTunes Free — Feed]. 皆さんがんばって！

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Learn Japan­ese Free

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

Woody Allen Lives the “Deli­cious Life” in Ear­ly-80s Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.