Two Peter Gabriel Albums ‘Scratch My Back … And I’ll Scratch Yours,’ Streaming Free for a Limited Time

in Music | January 2nd, 2014

Peter Gabriel’s cov­er album, Scratch My Back, came out in ear­ly 2010, and it fea­tured Gabriel’s quite orig­i­nal remakes of songs by David Bowie, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Regi­na Spek­tor and oth­er major artists. Now comes the fol­low-up: Set to be released on Jan­u­ary 6, the new album,  And I’ll Scratch Yours, flips the con­cept of the pre­vi­ous album. This time around, artists like Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Lou Reed, Paul Simon and Feist record some of Peter Gabriel’s biggest hits — songs like “Games With­out Fron­tiers,” “Mer­cy Street” and “Biko.” The albums can be pur­chased togeth­er here, but, hap­pi­ly, you can stream them online for free — but only for a a lim­it­ed time — on NPR’s First Lis­ten site. Enjoy.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture in 2014. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

Peter Gabriel Plays Full Con­cert in Mod­e­na, Italy (1994)

Peter Gabriel and His Big Orches­tra Play Live at the Ed Sul­li­van The­ater

The 15 Most Popular Posts from Open Culture in 2013

in Most Popular | December 31st, 2013

In 2013, we pub­lished 1300+ posts on a wide range of cul­tur­al sub­jects. Look­ing back through our logs we were able to iden­ti­fy the 15 posts that res­onat­ed most wide­ly with our read­ers. We hope you enjoy this recap, and share some of the items with friends. And we look for­ward to see­ing you in 2014. Hap­py New Year to you all.

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’: A lit­tle spat broke out between Chom­sky and Žižek this sum­mer. Chom­sky got the debate going after he accused Jacques Lacan of being a “total char­la­tan” and Slavoj Žižek of pos­tur­ing rather than offer­ing real intel­lec­tu­al sub­stance. Žižek replied sharply. Chom­sky rebutted. Žižek coun­tered again. Some scored it a draw.

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics: Through­out the year, our res­i­dent film schol­ar Col­in Mar­shall revis­it­ed the favorite films of some of the great­est film­mak­ers — Stan­ley Kubrick, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Woody Allen, and Quentin Taran­ti­no, to name a few. But it also made sense to take a more glob­al view of things, to sur­vey the films loved by 800+ direc­tors and film crit­ics. That’s what you can find here.

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981: In 2013, we fea­tured a series of iso­lat­ed tracks that offer unique insights into clas­sic songs. You might recall Kurt Cobain’s Vocals From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’, and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals on the Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shel­ter’. But your favorite was Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie’s unfor­get­table per­for­mance on Queen’s Under Pres­sure. You have good taste. Bowie fans should also check his list of his Top 100 Books.

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online: When Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize on the strength of her many short sto­ries, Josh Jones gath­ered for you 18 free short sto­ries writ­ten by the now 82-year-old author. They’re all free to read online. Dur­ing the year, we also put togeth­er col­lec­tions of 10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son, Four Sto­ries by Jen­nifer Egan, and 30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace. Be sure to enjoy them as well.

Free: The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and the Guggen­heim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online: Art cat­a­logues from muse­ums can be down­right expen­sive. That’s why we were excit­ed when The Met and the Guggen­heim put an archive of art cat­a­logues online for free. For no cost, you can read high­ly visu­al intro­duc­tions to the work of Alexan­der Calder, Edvard Munch, Fran­cis Bacon, Gus­tav Klimt & Egon Schiele, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, Frank Lloyd Wright and many oth­er influ­en­tial artists.

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix: Some of the world’s great libraries are also open­ing access to our cul­tur­al her­itage. Take for exam­ple the British Library, which announced this month that it has released over a mil­lion images onto Flickr Com­mons for any­one to use, remix and repur­pose. Culled from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry books, the images include a dizzy­ing array of “maps, geo­log­i­cal dia­grams, beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions, com­i­cal satire, illu­mi­nat­ed and dec­o­ra­tive let­ters, col­or­ful illus­tra­tions, land­scapes, wall-paint­ings” and more.

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme: To cel­e­brate Trane’s birth­day, we fea­tured a rare doc­u­ment from the Smithsonian’s Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Coltrane’s hand­writ­ten out­line of his ground­break­ing jazz com­po­si­tion A Love Supreme. In terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty, this post was just about tied with anoth­er great (but very dif­fer­ent) jazz doc­u­ment: Thelo­nious Monk’s List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig.

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip: Bach wrote his “Crab Canon” in such a way that it could be played back­wards as well as for­wards. But pre­pare your­self for the mind-blow­ing coup de grâce when math­e­mat­i­cal image-mak­er Jos Ley lays the piece out on a Möbius strip.

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion: Hem­ing­way nev­er wrote a trea­tise on the art of writ­ing fic­tion. He did, how­ev­er, leave behind a great many pas­sages in let­ters, arti­cles and books with opin­ions and advice on writ­ing. Some of the best of those were assem­bled in 1984 by Lar­ry W. Phillips into a book, Ernest Hem­ing­way on Writ­ing. We’ve select­ed sev­en of our favorite quo­ta­tions from the book and placed them, along with our own com­men­tary, on this page. Read­ers will also want to peruse these relat­ed posts: 18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time and Hem­ing­way Cre­ates a Read­ing List for a Young Writer, 1934, plus F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936.

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18: In the ear­ly 2000s, Pink Floyd gui­tarist and singer David Gilmour record­ed a musi­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of William Shakespeare’s “Son­net 18″ at his home stu­dio aboard the his­toric, 90-foot house­boat the Asto­ria. This video of Gilmour singing the son­net was released as an extra on the 2002 DVD David Gilmour in Con­cert, and it’s pret­ty sub­lime.

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es: These days, it could nev­er hurt to make sure you have some good tech chops. Many of you under­stand that, and that’s why you jumped on Har­vard’s free, intro­duc­to­ry com­put­er sci­ence course. Taught by David Malan, the intro­duc­to­ry course cov­ers “abstrac­tion, algo­rithms, encap­su­la­tion, data struc­tures, data­bas­es, mem­o­ry man­age­ment, secu­ri­ty, soft­ware devel­op­ment, vir­tu­al­iza­tion, and web­sites. Lan­guages include C, PHP, and JavaScript plus SQL, CSS, and HTML.” You can always find the course list­ed in the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 800 Free Cours­es Online.

Michelangelo’s Illus­trat­ed 16th-Cen­tu­ry Gro­cery List: Very few of Michelan­gelo’s papers sur­vive today, but we do odd­ly have the gro­cery lists that he had his ser­vant bring to the food mar­ket. “Because the ser­vant he was send­ing to mar­ket was illit­er­ate,” writes the Oregonian‘s Steve Duin, “Michelan­ge­lo illus­trat­ed the shop­ping lists — a her­ring, tortel­li, two fen­nel soups, four anchovies and ‘a small quar­ter of a rough wine’ — with rushed … car­i­ca­tures in pen and ink.” It’s a unique his­tor­i­cal item, cer­tain­ly worth check­ing out.

Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Lets You Fly Through 17th Cen­tu­ry Lon­don: Six stu­dents from De Mont­fort Uni­ver­si­ty cre­at­ed a stel­lar 3D rep­re­sen­ta­tion of 17th cen­tu­ry Lon­don, as it exist­ed before The Great Fire of 1666. The three-minute video pro­vides a real­is­tic ani­ma­tion of Tudor Lon­don, and par­tic­u­lar­ly a sec­tion called Pud­ding Lane where the fire start­ed. Grab a small hand­ful of pop­corn, and sit back and enjoy.

Her­mann Rorschach’s Orig­i­nal Rorschach Test: What Do You See?: In hon­or of Her­mann Rorschach’s birth­day in Novem­ber, we high­light­ed the orig­i­nal images used in his famous psy­chol­o­gy test back in 1921. And we invit­ed you to say what you saw in these images. The answers were often amus­ing, some­times per­plex­ing.

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975): In a 1975 inter­view, Simone de Beau­voir picked up on ideas she explored in The Sec­ond Sex. This reveal­ing clip can be watched along­side oth­er 2013 posts fea­tur­ing de Beau­voir and her part­ner Jean-Paul Sartre. See Lovers and Philoso­phers — Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beau­voir Togeth­er in 1967 and Philosophy’s Pow­er Cou­ple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir, Fea­tured in 1967 TV Inter­view.

Bonus: Fill Your New Kin­dle, iPad, iPhone, eRead­er with Free eBooks, Movies, Audio Books, Online Cours­es & More: Just last week, we told you where to load up your new iPads, Kin­dles, and oth­er devices with free intel­li­gent media. If you missed it the first time around, it’s not too late to cir­cle back.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture in 2014. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Sherlock Holmes Is Now in the Public Domain, Declares US Judge

in Books, Law, Literature | December 27th, 2013

Chief Judge Rubén Castil­lo of the Unit­ed States Dis­trict Court of the North­ern Dis­trict of Illi­nois has ruled that the char­ac­ters and sto­ry lines used in 50 Sher­lock Holmes texts pub­lished by Arthur Conan Doyle before Jan. 1, 1923 “are no longer cov­ered by Unit­ed States copy­right law and can be freely used by cre­ators with­out pay­ing any licens­ing fee to the Conan Doyle estate,” reports The New York Times. This gives con­tem­po­rary authors the abil­i­ty to write their own Sher­lock Holmes mys­tery sto­ries and keep con­tribut­ing to a rich tra­di­tion of detec­tive fic­tion. It would also seem­ing­ly put pre-1923 texts firm­ly in the pub­lic domain. (You can find The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes and oth­er relat­ed sto­ries in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions. ) Leslie S. Klinger, the edi­tor of The Com­plete Anno­tat­ed Sher­lock Holmes, who filed the civ­il suit, praised the judge’s deci­sion, say­ing “Peo­ple want to cel­e­brate Holmes and Wat­son, and now they can do that with­out fear.” Now it’s time for them to write some­thing that can hold a can­dle to what Conan Doyle cre­at­ed those many years ago.

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via Arts Beat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Arthur Conan Doyle & The Cot­tin­g­ley Fairies: How Two Young Girls Fooled Sher­lock Holmes’ Cre­ator

Arthur Conan Doyle Fills Out the Ques­tion­naire Made Famous By Mar­cel Proust (1899)

Watch John Cleese as Sher­lock Holmes in The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It

The Rolling Stones “Shattered” Covered by Eddie Vedder & Julie Andrews (Ok, It’s Really Jeanne Tripplehorn)

in Music | December 23rd, 2013

Pearl Jam front­man Eddie Ved­der and actress Jeanne Trip­ple­horn (Basic Instinct, The Firm, Big Love) per­formed this delight­ful cov­er of The Rolling Stones’ 1978 hit “Shat­tered” at a recent fundrais­er for a non-prof­it called Heal EB. EB stands for Epi­der­mol­y­sis Bul­losa, a dis­ease that caus­es blis­ters (some­times poten­tial­ly fatal ones) to erupt on the skin after the mildest trau­ma. You can lis­ten to The Rolling Stones’ orig­i­nal record­ing here, and fol­low along with the lyrics here. Or, bet­ter yet, you can close your eyes and sim­ply imag­ine Julie Andrews singing these risqué‎ lines. Yeah, on sec­ond thought, do that. H/T Marc

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rolling Stones Write “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il”: A High­light in Godard’s ’68 Film One Plus One

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)

Download 100 Free Philosophy Courses and Start Living the Examined Life

in Online Courses, Philosophy | December 21st, 2013

The Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big Free Online Cours­es col­lec­tion just went through anoth­er update, and it now fea­tures 100 cours­es. Enough to give you a soup-to-nuts intro­duc­tion to a time­less dis­ci­pline. You can start with one of sev­er­al intro­duc­to­ry cours­es.

• Phi­los­o­phy for Begin­ners – iTunes – Web Video – Mar­i­anne Tal­bot, Oxford
  
• Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing for Begin­ners - iTunes Video – iTunes Audio – Web Video – Oxford
• A Romp through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners — iTunes Video – Web Video – Oxford
• Intro­duc­tion to Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy – YouTube – iTunes – Web Video — Steven B. Smith, Yale
• The Art of Liv­ing — Web Video – Stan­ford
• The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps - Mul­ti­ple For­mats– Peter Adam­son, King’s Col­lege Lon­don

Then, once you’ve found your foot­ing, you can head off in some amaz­ing direc­tions. As we men­tioned many moons ago, you can access cours­es and lec­tures by mod­ern day leg­ends – Michel Fou­cault, Bertrand Rus­sell, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus and Michael Sandel. Then you can sit back and let them intro­duce you to the think­ing of Aris­to­tle, Socrates, Pla­to, Hobbes, Hegel, Hei­deg­ger, Kierkegaard, Kant, Niet­zsche, Sartre and the rest of the gang. The cours­es list­ed here are gen­er­al­ly avail­able via YouTube, iTunes, or the web.

Explore our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, to find top­ics in many oth­er dis­ci­plines — His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, Physics, Com­put­er Sci­ence and beyond. As we like to say, it’s the most valu­able sin­gle page on the web.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

Teacher Helps His Student Overcome Stuttering and Read Poetry, Using the Sound of Music

in Education, Life, Music | December 19th, 2013

Musharaf Asghar, a stu­dent at Thorn­hill Acad­e­my in north­east Eng­land, over­came an acute stam­mer when his teacher, Matthew Bur­ton, bor­rowed an idea from The King’s Speech. The teacher asked his stu­dent to put on some head­phones play­ing the music of Ben Howard, and to start recit­ing a poem called ‘The Moment.’ Sud­den­ly, for the first time, the words began to flow. All of this was cap­tured in a doc­u­men­tary series, Edu­cat­ing York­shire, that aired on the BBC. The seg­ment above con­cludes with Mushy, as he’s known, giv­ing a short talk in front of his class, at what looks like a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny. It did­n’t take long for his fel­low stu­dents to break down in tears.

Writ­ing recent­ly in The Guardian, the stu­dent recalls. “My nerves over speak­ing in assem­bly were TERRIBLE though. I did­n’t realise how big 200 peo­ple looks like. I was sweat­ing and I had a lit­tle wob­ble but even­tu­al­ly, I man­aged to get through it. I was excit­ed, if ner­vous, about the whole thing going out. But I’m real­ly hap­py and proud to be on tel­ly as I hope it gives oth­er peo­ple with a stam­mer the con­fi­dence to have a go at pub­lic speak­ing. My speech is get­ting bet­ter every week. Every­one at col­lege gives me time, but I’m get­ting quick­er any­way so they don’t miss their bus while they are lis­ten­ing to me. I still won’t be apply­ing for any call-cen­tre jobs yet though.” Find more infor­ma­tion on how music ther­a­py can help peo­ple over­come stut­ter­ing here.

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via @courosa

French Café Adds Extra Charge for Rude Customers

in Food & Drink, Life | December 19th, 2013

A cou­ple of days ago, we high­light­ed a delight­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Eti­quette Guide Explain­ing How to Ride the Paris Metro in a Civ­i­lized Way. It comes to you cour­tesy of the RATP, the gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion that makes the sub­ways and trains run in Paris (some­times on time).

Let’s now head 600 miles south, to the Riv­iera city of Nice, where some café own­ers opt­ed for anoth­er way to keep bad behav­ior in check. At the Petite Syrah, they’ve imple­ment­ed a sim­ple pric­ing scheme that works like this:

If you ask for “a cof­fee” (it’s most like­ly an espres­so), it will run you 7 euros, or $9.50.

If you ask for a “cof­fee please,” the charge drops to €4.25/$5.80.

But if you start your order by say­ing “Hel­lo, may I have a cof­fee, please,” the bill becomes a man­age­able €1.40.

Now, truth be told, the pric­ing scheme is more car­rot than stick. The café’s man­ag­er read­i­ly admits that he has nev­er actu­al­ly charged any of the puni­tive high­er prices. But that’s not to say that the scheme does­n’t work. Accord­ing to manager/owner Fab­rice Pepino, reg­u­lar cus­tomers quick­ly took note of the sign and began to “say, ‘Hel­lo, your high­ness, will you serve me one of your beau­ti­ful cof­fees.” Eh voilà, no more cof­fee jerks.

via Kot­tke/The Local

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email orRSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Illus­trat­ed Eti­quette Guide Explains How to Ride the Paris Metro in a Civ­i­lized Way

Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads

The (Beau­ti­ful) Physics of Adding Cream to Your Cof­fee

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

New Art Edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses Features All 265,000 Words Written by Hand on Big Wooden Poles

in Art, Books, Literature | December 18th, 2013

This week, Stephen Gertz, the edi­tor of Book Tryst, has on dis­play an Incred­i­ble Art Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Here’s how he describes the ambi­tious project:

James Joyce com­plet­ed his nov­el, Ulysses, on Octo­ber 30, 1921. Nine­ty years lat­er, on Octo­ber 30, 2011, Char­lene Matthews, the Los Ange­les-based book artist and book­binder recent­ly the sub­ject of a pro­file in Stu­dios mag­a­zine, began work on an extra­or­di­nary edi­tion of the book, based upon Sylvia Beach’s true first edi­tion with all its typos includ­ed.

Two years lat­er, on Octo­ber 30, 2013, she com­plet­ed it: the entire text of Ulysses — all of its approx­i­mate­ly 265,000 words in eigh­teen episodes — tran­scribed by hand onto thir­ty-eight sev­en-foot tall, two-inch diam­e­ter poles: Ulysses as a land­scape to phys­i­cal­ly move through; the nov­el as lit­er­ary grove, Ulysses as trees of of life with lan­guage as fra­grant, hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry bark, and trunks reach­ing toward the sky.

Head over to Book­tryst to look over a gallery of images and learn more about Matthews’ grand under­tak­ing. And if you’d like a nice intro­duc­tion to Ulysses, please see some of the instruc­tive mate­r­i­al we’ve list­ed below.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email orRSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Read Joyce’s Ulysses Line by Line, for the Next 22 Years, with Frank Delaney’s Pod­cast

Hear James Joyce Read a Pas­sage From Ulysses, 1924

The Very First Reviews of James Joyce’s Ulysses: “A Work of High Genius” (1922)

Vir­ginia Woolf Writes About Joyce’s Ulysses, “Nev­er Did Any Book So Bore Me,” and Quits at Page 200

Vladimir Nabokov Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Watch Kids’ Priceless Reactions to Hearing the Timeless Music of The Beatles

in K-12, Life, Music | December 17th, 2013

Yes­ter­day, John McMil­lian, assis­tant pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty, appeared on KQED’s Forum in San Fran­cis­co (lis­ten here) to talk about his new book Bea­t­les vs. Stones. It offers a new look at how the two British bands co-exist­ed, often helped one anoth­er, and strate­gi­cal­ly defined them­selves against each oth­er. The Bea­t­les were every­man’s band. Whole­some, clean-cut, wit­ty, the Fab Four appealed to the young and the old, the rich and the poor. The Stones, try­ing to make a name for them­selves in the wake of Beat­le­ma­nia, posi­tioned them­selves as the anti-Bea­t­les. As the jour­nal­ist Tom Wolfe once wrote, “The Bea­t­les want to hold your hand, but the Stones want to burn down your town.”

50 years lat­er, The Bea­t­les still have a near­ly uni­ver­sal appeal. The Boomers and their now mid­dle-aged chil­dren haven’t let dust gath­er on The Bea­t­les’ discog­ra­phy. And, if you plunk the grand­chil­dren in front of old Bea­t­les’ videos, they’ll love what they see. Just watch above.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Flash­mob Per­forms The Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ in Madrid Unem­ploy­ment Office

The Bea­t­les Per­form in a Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, 1964

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

How to Follow Open Culture Posts: Daily Email & RSS Are Gold, Twitter Is an Option, Forget About Facebook

in Uncategorized | December 16th, 2013

Read­ers often ask us, “What’s the best way to make sure that I don’t miss any of your posts?” The answer, right now, is pret­ty clear: Sign up for our dai­ly email. Each day, you will receive an email that tidi­ly wraps up every­thing we’ve fea­tured on the site over a 24 hour peri­od. Faith­ful­ly it will appear in your inbox each day. The oth­er great option is our trusty RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/OpenCulture

You can always fol­low us on Twit­ter (or Google Plus), where we high­light our dai­ly posts, plus many oth­er cul­tur­al curiosi­ties found on the web. The only down­side is that a riv­er of mate­r­i­al flows through Twit­ter, so you’ll have to keep a pret­ty close eye on things to spot our posts.

Final­ly there’s Face­book, but you can almost for­get about that. Although near­ly a quar­ter mil­lion peo­ple have liked our Face­book page, Face­book has his­tor­i­cal­ly shown our posts to a frac­tion of that audi­ence (some­thing they’re can­did about). And because of a new algo­rithm change, the frac­tion is get­ting sub­stan­tial­ly small­er. The unfor­tu­nate bot­tom line is that you can’t rely on Face­book to give you what you want. But you can rely on our dai­ly email and our feed. They’re 100% guar­an­teed. Now back to our reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled pro­gram.