Stream 48 Hours of Vintage Christmas Radio Broadcasts Featuring Orson Welles, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Ida Lupino & More (1930–1959)

in History, Radio | December 25th, 2020

The Gold­en Age of Amer­i­can Radio began in the 1930s and last­ed well into the 50s. That makes near­ly thir­ty Christ­mases, not one of which passed with­out spe­cial broad­casts by the major net­works. This Christ­mas, thanks to The World War II News and Old Time Radio Chan­nel on Youtube, you can expe­ri­ence the Gold­en Age’s three decades through 48 straight hours of hol­i­day broad­casts. Strung like an audio gar­land in chrono­log­i­cal order, these begin with an episode of NBC’s Empire Builders, quite pos­si­bly the first-ever West­ern radio dra­ma, first broad­cast on Decem­ber 22nd, 1930 — a rare year from which to hear a record­ed radio show at all, let alone a Christ­mas spe­cial. The com­pi­la­tion ends one day shy of 29 years lat­er, with a Top 40 broad­cast from WMGM in New York.

Through­out this all-Christ­mas lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence, old-time radio enthu­si­asts will rec­og­nize many of Amer­i­ca’s very favorite shows: Lum and Abn­er, Amos and Andy, Fib­ber McGee and Mol­ly and The Great Gilder­sleeve, The Jack Ben­ny Pro­gram and The Char­lie McCarthy Show. For many sea­son­al­ly appro­pri­ate episodes of those series as well as one-off vari­ety broad­casts, net­works would wran­gle as many big names as they could into the stu­dio, from Bob Hope and Lionel Bar­ry­more to Gary Coop­er and Frank Sina­tra to Car­men Miran­da and Ida Lupino (direc­tor, film noir fans know, of The Hitch-Hik­er).

In 1947, CBS’ Lux Radio The­ater put on a full pro­duc­tion of It’s a Won­der­ful Life with Jim­my Stew­art and Don­na Reed, stars of the film that had come out just the year before. Even U.S. pres­i­dents like Franklin D. Roo­sevelt and Dwight D. Eisen­how­er turn up to deliv­er Christ­mas address­es.

Open Cul­ture read­ers may well remem­ber CBS’ 1941 pro­duc­tion of Oscar Wilde’s “The Hap­py Prince” fea­tur­ing Orson Welles and Bing Cros­by, but even those of us who know our clas­sic radio will hear a good deal in these 48 hours of broad­casts that we’ve nev­er heard before. Though all of them cel­e­brate the sea­son in one way or anoth­er, they do so in a host of dif­fer­ent forms and gen­res, even beyond the broad divi­sions of dra­ma, com­e­dy, music, and celebri­ty chat. In grad­u­al­ly pass­ing from liv­ing mem­o­ry, the gold­en age of Amer­i­can radio comes to seem a longer era than it was. But through that rel­a­tive­ly brief win­dow, opened by the house­hold adop­tion of radio and closed by the rise of tele­vi­sion, came an abun­dance of cre­ativ­i­ty that can still sur­prise us — and indeed inspire us — here at the close of the year 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear The Cin­na­mon Bear, the Clas­sic Hol­i­day Radio Series That Has Aired Between Thanks­giv­ing and Christ­mas for 80 Years

A Christ­mas Car­ol, A Vin­tage Radio Broad­cast by Orson Welles and Lionel Bar­ry­more (1939)

Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas” On His Hol­i­day Radio Show (2006)

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.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain Performs The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

in Music | December 24th, 2020

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain–we’ve fea­tured them here before, play­ing cov­ers of every­thing from David Bowie’s “Heroes,” to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Talk­ing Heads’ “Psy­cho Killer” and The Who’s “Pin­ball Wiz­ard.” And let’s not for­get their stir­ring per­for­mances of Ennio Morricone’s west­ern theme songs. Now, to help lift you out of the COVID gloom, they’re back with a nov­el take on the Stones’ 1965 clas­sic, “(I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion.” Hope you enjoy.

Note: The orches­tra plans to post a new video every Sun­day on their YouTube chan­nel, and a full (pay-per-view) con­cert every month avail­able on their web­site.

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

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain Per­forms Stun­ning Cov­ers of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Talk­ing Heads’ “Psy­cho Killer” & More

Ukulele Orches­tra Per­forms Ennio Morricone’s Icon­ic West­ern Theme Song, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” And It’s Pret­ty Bril­liant.

David Bowie’s “Heroes” Delight­ful­ly Per­formed by the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain

Watch the Rolling Stones Play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” While Social Dis­tanc­ing in Quar­an­tine

Tune Into Tree.fm: An Online Radio Station That Streams the Soothing Sounds of Forests from Around the World

in Nature | December 23rd, 2020

Image by Snežana Tri­funović, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Walk into a for­est. Stand per­fect­ly still. Close your eyes. What do you hear? The sounds of birds, the rustling leaves, yes, yes…. But what’s that? And that? The for­est is full of sounds you can’t iden­ti­fy! Curi­ous sounds, far-away sounds, sooth­ing sounds, sounds that are not the churn­ing anx­ious wheels inside your head when you try to relax….

Expe­ri­enc­ing our­selves around trees has sev­er­al demon­stra­ble ben­e­fits, as the sci­ence of for­est bathing has taught us. Many of these have to do with visu­al, olfac­to­ry, and tac­tile plea­sures. But we must not neglect the nat­ur­al acoustic sys­tem all around us: an immer­sive expe­ri­ence in full 360-degree sound. Trees’ “vibra­to­ry ener­gies reveal humanity’s many con­nec­tions with forests,” writes David George Haskell at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can.

Forests “are full of song.”

That’s all very well for peo­ple who can go out­side. But if you’re locked down in a major city, say, or the office, or an ill-advised hol­i­day gath­er­ing, and you feel cor­ti­sol lev­els ris­ing, we’ve got you cov­ered. Back in Sep­tem­ber, we fea­tured Sounds of the For­est, a crowd­sourced audio archive gath­er­ing sounds from forests all over the world. Now, these clips are stream­ing at Tree.fm, an online radio sta­tion for tree songs in stereo. 

Streams rill, frogs hoot, birds caw and squawk in cho­rus. And then there are the trees, each species pos­sessed of its own voice, Haskell writes:

Gusts of wind soni­fy plant diver­si­ty. Oak’s voice is coarse-grained, throaty; maple’s is sandy and light. These dif­fer­ences have their ori­gins in plant evo­lu­tion and adap­ta­tion. Drought-resis­tant oak leaves are thick­er, tougher than the water-hun­gry maple. The dif­fer­ent sounds of trees on a dry moun­tain ridge and in a moist forest­ed hol­low speak to the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of the ecol­o­gy of each place. Pon­derosa pine sings sweet­ly in the winds of Cal­i­for­nia, its long nee­dles were, John Muir wrote, “finest music” and a “free, wing-like hum”. But in Col­orado, pines have evolved short­er, stiffer nee­dles to cope with heavy loads of snow and ice. There, the trees wail as their wiry nee­dles har­row the wind.

Tree.fm “is a tool that gives you instant access to the sounds of the world’s forests,” Beth Skwarec­ki writes at Life­hack­er. Many of those sounds, like the forests that pro­duced them, are endan­gered, not only from the usu­al sus­pects but also the noise pol­lu­tion of high­ways and hous­ing devel­op­ments. Lis­ten to for­est songs on repeat or hit “lis­ten to a ran­dom for­est” and be “trans­port­ed to Mada­gas­car to lis­ten to some lemurs, or to Ghana to hear some peace­ful­ly rush­ing water, or to Rus­sia, where a bird I’ve nev­er heard of puts on a vocal per­for­mance.” This is good med­i­cine. Dis­cov­er the for­est songs that best soothe your ner­vous sys­tem or delight ears at Tree.fm.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sounds of the For­est: A Free Audio Archive Gath­ers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World

Free: Down­load the Sub­lime Sights & Sounds of Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park

How to Find Silence in a Noisy World

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

Bill Gates Picks 5 Good Books for a Lousy Year

in Books | December 22nd, 2020

2020 has been a ter­ri­ble year. But that has­n’t stopped Bill Gates (as is his cus­tom) from choos­ing, he says, “five books that I enjoyed—some because they helped me go deep­er on a tough issue, oth­ers because they offered a wel­come change of pace.”

Below, you can read, in his own words, the selec­tions he pub­lished here.

Range: Why Gen­er­al­ists Tri­umph in a Spe­cial­ized World, by David Epstein. I start­ed fol­low­ing Epstein’s work after watch­ing his fan­tas­tic 2014 TED talk on sports per­for­mance. In this fas­ci­nat­ing book, he argues that although the world seems to demand more and more specialization—in your career, for example—what we actu­al­ly need is more peo­ple “who start broad and embrace diverse expe­ri­ences and per­spec­tives while they progress.” His exam­ples run from Roger Fed­er­er to Charles Dar­win to Cold War-era experts on Sovi­et affairs. I think his ideas even help explain some of Microsoft’s suc­cess, because we hired peo­ple who had real breadth with­in their field and across domains. If you’re a gen­er­al­ist who has ever felt over­shad­owed by your spe­cial­ist col­leagues, this book is for you. More on the book here.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incar­cer­a­tion in the Age of Col­or­blind­ness, by Michelle Alexan­der. Like many white peo­ple, I’ve tried to deep­en my under­stand­ing of sys­temic racism in recent months. Alexander’s book offers an eye-open­ing look into how the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem unfair­ly tar­gets com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, and espe­cial­ly Black com­mu­ni­ties. It’s espe­cial­ly good at explain­ing the his­to­ry and the num­bers behind mass incar­cer­a­tion. I was famil­iar with some of the data, but Alexan­der real­ly helps put it in con­text. I fin­ished the book more con­vinced than ever that we need a more just approach to sen­tenc­ing and more invest­ment in com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. More on the book here.

The Splen­did and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Fam­i­ly, and Defi­ance Dur­ing the Blitz, by Erik Lar­son. Some­times his­to­ry books end up feel­ing more rel­e­vant than their authors could have imag­ined. That’s the case with this bril­liant account of the years 1940 and 1941, when Eng­lish cit­i­zens spent almost every night hud­dled in base­ments and Tube sta­tions as Ger­many tried to bomb them into sub­mis­sion. The fear and anx­i­ety they felt—while much more severe than what we’re expe­ri­enc­ing with COVID-19—sounded famil­iar. Lar­son gives you a vivid sense of what life was like for aver­age cit­i­zens dur­ing this awful peri­od, and he does a great job pro­fil­ing some of the British lead­ers who saw them through the cri­sis, includ­ing Win­ston Churchill and his close advis­ers. Its scope is too nar­row to be the only book you ever read on World War II, but it’s a great addi­tion to the lit­er­a­ture focused on that trag­ic peri­od. More on the book here.

The Spy and the Trai­tor: The Great­est Espi­onage Sto­ry of the Cold War, by Ben Mac­in­tyre. This non­fic­tion account focus­es on Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB offi­cer who became a dou­ble agent for the British, and Aldrich Ames, the Amer­i­can turn­coat who like­ly betrayed him. Macintyre’s retelling of their sto­ries comes not only from West­ern sources (includ­ing Gordievsky him­self) but also from the Russ­ian per­spec­tive. It’s every bit as excit­ing as my favorite spy nov­els. More on the book here.

Breath from Salt: A Dead­ly Genet­ic Dis­ease, a New Era in Sci­ence, and the Patients and Fam­i­lies Who Changed Med­i­cine, by Bijal P. Trive­di. This book is tru­ly uplift­ing. It doc­u­ments a sto­ry of remark­able sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tion and how it has improved the lives of almost all cys­tic fibro­sis patients and their fam­i­lies. This sto­ry is espe­cial­ly mean­ing­ful to me because I know fam­i­lies who’ve ben­e­fit­ed from the new med­i­cines described in this book. I sus­pect we’ll see many more books like this in the com­ing years, as bio­med­ical mir­a­cles emerge from labs at an ever-greater pace. More on the book here.

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:

Bill Gates Describes His Biggest Fear: “I Rate the Chance of a Wide­spread Epi­dem­ic Far Worse Than Ebo­la at Well Over 50 Per­cent” (2015)

Take Big His­to­ry: A Free Short Course on 13.8 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry, Fund­ed by Bill Gates

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends 5 Thought-Pro­vok­ing Books to Read This Sum­mer

How Bill Gates Reads Books

Bill Gates Names His New Favorite Book of All Time

Peter Jackson Gives Us an Enticing Glimpse of His Upcoming Beatles Documentary The Beatles: Get Back

in Film, Music | December 22nd, 2020

The leg­endary acri­mo­ny of the Bea­t­les’ break-up comes through in Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 film Let it Be, which doc­u­ments the record­ing of their last stu­dio album and their famous rooftop send­off con­cert, joined by key­boardist Bil­ly Pre­ston. Things got so tense that George Har­ri­son left the band dur­ing the ses­sions. He lat­er called them “the low of all time.” Lennon went fur­ther: “hell… the most mis­er­able ses­sions on earth.”

Though some of the worst moments of those ses­sions were cut in edit­ing, there’s no doubt Lind­say-Hogg built the film around stu­dio dra­ma instead of “the monot­o­nies, the lack­lus­ter worka­day yawns, of four peo­ple who know each oth­er too well,” wrote Jonathan Cot and David Dal­ton in a 1970 Rolling Stone review. “We only get a few moments because with 300 hours of footage, only the high­lights, the more dra­mat­ic scenes, and the fun­nier dia­logue are shown.”

In the film, the band ends their last per­for­mance togeth­er with “Get Back,” then Lennon famous­ly jokes, “I hope we’ve passed the audi­tion.” Let it Be, Cott and Dal­ton revealed, was orig­i­nal­ly titled Get Back, the name Peter Jackson—yes that Peter Jackson—has cho­sen for his upcom­ing Bea­t­les film, which will final­ly see the light next year, after the COVID delays that have slowed down every pro­duc­tion.

Build­ing on the archival and restora­tion skills he refined dur­ing the mak­ing of They Shall Not Grow Old, Jack­son and his team have combed through those hun­dreds of hours of film, cut­ting togeth­er 56 hours of “nev­er-before-seen footage,” notes Bren­na Ehrlich at Rolling Stone. “The film promis­es to be ‘the ulti­mate ‘fly on the wall’ expe­ri­ence that Bea­t­les fans have long dreamt about,’” as Jack­son says. “We get to sit in the stu­dio watch­ing these four friends make great music togeth­er.”

The film will also “present a much sun­nier vision of the Bea­t­les’ breakup” and has been made with the full per­mis­sion of sur­viv­ing mem­bers Paul McCart­ney and Ringo Starr as well as Yoko Ono and George Harrison’s wife Olivia. As Starr put it, “There were hours and hours of us just laugh­ing and play­ing music, not at all like the ver­sion that came out. There was a lot of joy and I think Peter will show that. I think this ver­sion will be a lot more peace and lov­ing, like we real­ly were.”

As if to prove the point, McCart­ney, who just dropped his lat­est album, McCart­ney III, tweet­ed out the five-minute clip above yes­ter­day, in which Jack­son intro­duces what he calls a “mon­tage” from the film’s edit­ing process so far. The vivid life­like­ness of the images is a result of Jackson’s dig­i­tal pro­cess­ing, and it does not seem intru­sive. What stands out most of all is the joy the band clear­ly still took in each other’s com­pa­ny, “just laugh­ing and play­ing music,” as Ringo remem­bered. Get Back is slat­ed for release in the­aters on August, 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

How Peter Jack­son Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Doc­u­men­tary, They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

When the Bea­t­les Refused to Play Before Seg­re­gat­ed Audi­ences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

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

How Do Vaccines (Including the COVID-19 Vaccines) Work?: Watch Animated Introductions

in Current Affairs, Health, Science | December 18th, 2020

The oth­er day, I found myself read­ing about what life is like in coun­tries that have suc­cess­ful­ly min­i­mized the pan­dem­ic: wor­ry free hol­i­days, meet­ing friends and fam­i­ly with­out the dan­ger of infec­tion, a gen­er­al air of nor­mal­cy thanks to a com­bi­na­tion of rig­or­ous pub­lic health efforts and pub­lic coop­er­a­tion. I live in the U.S., where the polit­i­cal par­ty cur­rent­ly in pow­er (and des­per­ate to keep it) con­vinced mil­lions of my fel­low cit­i­zens that the virus was a hoax, a scam, a polit­i­cal ploy. The real­i­ty of a virus-free exis­tence seems like a fairy tale.

But per­haps, after a year of death, suf­fer­ing, and luna­cy, we will begin to see the tide turn once enough peo­ple get vac­ci­nat­ed…  if we can over­come the mas­sive wave of anti-sci­ence bias and dis­in­for­ma­tion about vac­cines…. “The anti-vac­ci­na­tion move­ment is going to make Covid-19 more dif­fi­cult to get under con­trol,” says Scott Ratzan, dis­tin­guished lec­tur­er at the CUNY Grad­u­ate School of Pub­lic Health and Health Pol­i­cy.

Long before the vac­cine arrived, Kather­ine O’Brien, a direc­tor at WHO, not­ed there was already a promi­nent “anti-vac­ci­na­tion voice” on social media. “We have to take this seri­ous­ly,” she told The BMJ. “Vac­ci­na­tion isn’t just an indi­vid­ual choice; it pro­tects those who can’t be vac­ci­nat­ed.” We’ve seen the term “herd immu­ni­ty”  mis­used a lot late­ly. What it essen­tial­ly means is that a small num­ber of peo­ple can be shield­ed from the virus if the vast major­i­ty get vac­ci­nat­ed. Or as WHO puts it, “herd immu­ni­ty is achieved by pro­tect­ing peo­ple from a virus, not by expos­ing them to it.”

All of this means there will like­ly nev­er be a more crit­i­cal moment to edu­cate our­selves and oth­ers on the sci­ence of vac­cines. We may not sway those faith­ful to a cer­tain nar­ra­tive, but it can help shift the con­ver­sa­tion from fears of the unknown to the long his­to­ry of the known when it comes to erad­i­cat­ing high­ly infec­tious, dead­ly dis­eases. A great way to start is with the basics, which you’ll find in the videos above from TED-Ed, Mech­a­nisms of Med­i­cine, and PBS. Watch them your­self, share them on social media, and keep the con­ver­sa­tion about vac­cines’ effi­ca­cy going.

In the TED-Ed les­son just above, we learn some more spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion about the key phas­es of devel­op­ing a new vac­cine: explorato­ry research, clin­i­cal test­ing, and man­u­fac­tur­ing. You’ll find much more detailed infor­ma­tion on the his­to­ry of vac­cines, spu­ri­ous anti-vac­ci­na­tion claims, and the coro­n­avirus vac­cines now on the mar­ket and cur­rent­ly ship­ping around the world, at the award-win­ning site, The His­to­ry of Vac­cines, from the Col­lege of Physi­cians of Philadel­phia.

The COVID-19 vac­cine is a spe­cial kind of vac­cine (mRNA) that works dif­fer­ent­ly from most, and you can learn about how it works here. A quick primer on herd immu­ni­ty appears at the bot­tom.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Does the Unit­ed States’ Coro­n­avirus Response Look Like Abroad?: Watch the Rest of the World Stare Aghast at Our Han­dling of COVID-19

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

19th Cen­tu­ry Maps Visu­al­ize Measles in Amer­i­ca Before the Mir­a­cle of Vac­cines

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

When Martin Scorsese Directed Michael Jackson in the 18-Minute “Bad” Music Video & Paid Cinematic Tribute to West Side Story (1986)

in Film | December 18th, 2020

In 1983, Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the biggest album in the world, and he was the biggest pop star. And then he was expect­ed to top it. But could he? The mount­ing pres­sures of fame and mon­ey, his falling out with his fam­i­ly over the Jack­sons tour, and his per­fec­tion­ist sta­tus as a musi­cian meant the fol­low-up album kept being pushed back fur­ther and fur­ther. He became more reclu­sive and strange-look­ing, and went from being a sex sym­bol to being the butt of jokes. And in the back­ground of all that was his increas­ing addic­tion to pain killers, which had start­ed after a mal­func­tion­ing pyrotech­nic burned his scalp to the bone.

Mean­while his clos­est com­peti­tor, Prince, had been releas­ing an album a year since 1999. And, in 1986, as this Spin pro­file men­tions, the two met for an odd, most­ly-silent “sum­mit.” What­ev­er was said, it spurred Jack­son to final­ly fin­ish his next album.

Jack­son had worked with John Lan­dis on the “Thriller” video, and then with Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la for Cap­tain EO, but for the title track off of his come­back album, he hired Mar­tin Scors­ese to direct, work­ing from a script by Richard Price. Scors­ese and Price had just worked togeth­er on The Col­or of Mon­ey, and the latter’s script was orig­i­nal­ly about a pri­vate school kid who gets killed in a Harlem shootout. A lot of that is still there in the fin­ished full video, although the mur­der is not. Instead, Jack­son turns the “Bad” music video into some­thing mul­ti­lay­ered.

For Scors­ese it allowed him to mix the street real­ism of his clas­sic New York City tales, and to indulge in a musi­cal num­ber with its sev­er­al nods to West Side Sto­ry. Scorsese’s orig­i­nal film clocks in at over 18 min­utes and it takes until half-way for the music video to begin, when the black’n’white real­ism gives way to col­or, and typ­i­cal NYC win­ter wear turns into b‑boy dance attire, includ­ing Jackson’s black buck­le jack­et. Chore­o­graphed by Jack­son along­side Gregg Burge and Jef­frey Daniel, with input from Geron ‘Caszper’ Can­di­date, the team cre­at­ed a per­for­mance that is a col­lage of styles, from Jerome Rob­bins’ musi­cal the­ater dance to moves from the days of Soul Train (Daniel and Burge had both been fea­tured per­form­ers), to Jackson’s own idio­syn­crat­ic moves. Scors­ese was there to cap­ture it all with his always-mov­ing cam­era.

Also of note is the debut of Wes­ley Snipes, play­ing the antag­o­nist Mini Max. There are few actors who can take a sec­ondary role in a music video and make it stand out, but Snipes’ per­for­mance was so pow­er­ful, audi­ences and cast­ing direc­tors took notice.

And while most broad­casts of the video end with the final line of the song, the orig­i­nal film ends with a most amaz­ing sequence. Jack­son sings a capel­la, while his back­up dancers repeat his impro­vi­sa­tion, a call and response straight out of gospel music, caught on three cam­eras in one take. This scene, even more than the sur­round­ing video, is Jack­son plac­ing him­self in the his­to­ry of Black enter­tain­ment, call­ing up the pow­er of James Brown and Mavis Sta­ples (from whom he got “sha­mone”) and numer­ous oth­er singers. It was the rawest he had even been, and you can see all the ten­sion of those four pre­vi­ous years spill out. He wasn’t a freak show or an oddity—he was part of a tra­di­tion that reached back through the 20th cen­tu­ry, a lin­eage that the doc­u­men­tary makes clear.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” Video Changed Pop Cul­ture For­ev­er: Revis­it the 13-Minute Short Film Direct­ed by John Lan­dis

How Michael Jack­son Wrote a Song: A Close Look at How the King of Pop Craft­ed “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Three Amateur Cryptographers Finally Decrypted the Zodiac Killer’s Letters: A Look Inside How They Solved a Half Century-Old Mystery

in History, Math | December 18th, 2020

If we envi­sion ser­i­al killers as fig­ures who taunt law enforce­ment with cryp­tic mes­sages sent to the media, we do so in large part because of the Zodi­ac Killer, who ter­ror­ized north­ern Cal­i­for­nia in the late 1960s and ear­ly 70s. Though he seems to have stopped killing more than half a cen­tu­ry ago, he remains an object of great fas­ci­na­tion (and even became the sub­ject of David Fincher’s acclaimed film Zodi­ac in 2007). As thor­ough­ly as the case has been inves­ti­gat­ed, much remains unknown — not least what he actu­al­ly said in some of his cod­ed let­ters. But just this month, a team of three cryp­tog­ra­phy enthu­si­asts man­aged to break one of the Zodi­ac’s ciphers, final­ly reveal­ing the con­tents of a 51-year old let­ter.

The Zodi­ac wrote this par­tic­u­lar com­mu­niqué in a trans­po­si­tion cipher, which, as Ars Tech­ni­ca’s Dan Good­in writes, uses “rules to rearrange the char­ac­ters or groups of char­ac­ters in the mes­sage.” In the case of the 340, named for the num­ber of sym­bols, the con­tent “was prob­a­bly rearranged by manip­u­lat­ing tri­an­gu­lar sec­tions cut from mes­sages writ­ten into rec­tan­gles.” For the past half-cen­tu­ry, nobody could suc­cess­ful­ly return the text to its orig­i­nal arrange­ment, but in 2020, there’s an app for that. Or rather, a soft­ware engi­neer named David Oran­chak, a math­e­mati­cian named Sam Blake, and a pro­gram­mer named Jarl Van Eycke made an app for that. Good­in quotes Oran­chak as say­ing the three had been “work­ing on and off on solv­ing the 340 since 2006.”

You can see Oran­chak explain how he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors final­ly cracked the 340’s cipher in the video at the top of the post, the final episode of his five-part series Let’s Crack the Zodi­ac. This was­n’t a mat­ter of sim­ply whip­ping up the right piece of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and let­ting it rip: they had to gen­er­ate hun­dreds of thou­sands of per­mu­ta­tions of the mes­sage as well as attempts at decryp­tions of those mes­sages. And even when rec­og­niz­able words and phras­es began to emerge in the results — “TRYING TO CATCH ME,” “THE GAS CHAMBER” — quite a bit of tri­al, error, and thought, remained to be done. It helped that Oran­chak knew his Zodi­ac his­to­ry, such as that some­one claim­ing to be the killer men­tioned not want­i­ng to be sent to the gas cham­ber when he called in to a local tele­vi­sion show on Octo­ber 20, 1969, two weeks before the 340 was received.

Was it real­ly him? The 340, when final­ly decod­ed — a process com­pli­cat­ed by the mis­takes the Zodi­ac made, not just in spelling but in exe­cut­ing his labo­ri­ous, ful­ly ana­log encryp­tion process — seems to pro­vide the answer:

I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME
THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW
WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME
I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER
BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER
BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME
WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS
LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH

“The mes­sage does­n’t real­ly say a whole lot,” admits Oran­chak. “It’s more of the same atten­tion-seek­ing junk from Zodi­ac. We were dis­ap­point­ed that he did­n’t put any per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion in the mes­sage, but we did­n’t expect him to.” The Zodi­ac Killer remains uniden­ti­fied, and indeed remains one of recent his­to­ry’s more com­pelling vil­lains, not just to those with an inter­est in true crime, but to those with an inter­est in cryp­tog­ra­phy as well. For two more mes­sages still remain to be decod­ed, and in one of them he offers a short cipher that, he writes, con­tains his name — but then, if there’s any cor­re­spon­dent we should­n’t rush to take at his word, it’s this one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence May Have Cracked the Code of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script: Has Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy Final­ly Solved a Medieval Mys­tery?

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

How British Code­break­ers Built the First Elec­tron­ic Com­put­er

The Ser­i­al Killer Who Loved Jazz: The Infa­mous Sto­ry of the Axe­man of New Orleans (1919)

The Grue­some Doll­house Death Scenes That Rein­vent­ed Mur­der Inves­ti­ga­tions

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.

The Dune Graphic Novel: Experience Frank Herbert’s Epic Sci-Fi Saga as You’ve Never Seen It Before

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Literature, Sci Fi | December 16th, 2020

Like so many major motion pic­tures slat­ed for a 2020 release, Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune has been bumped into 2021. But fans of Frank Her­bert’s epic sci­ence-fic­tion saga haven’t had to go entire­ly with­out adap­ta­tions this year, since last month saw the release of the first Dune graph­ic nov­el. Writ­ten by Kevin J. Ander­son and Frank Her­bert’s son Bri­an Her­bert, co-authors of twelve Dune pre­quel and sequel nov­els, this 160-page vol­ume con­sti­tutes just the first part of a tril­o­gy intend­ed to visu­al­ly retell the sto­ry of the first Dune book. This tri­par­tite break­down seems to have been a wise move: the many adap­tors (and would-be) adap­tors of the lin­guis­ti­cal­ly, mytho­log­i­cal­ly, and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly com­plex nov­el have found out over the decades, it’s easy to bite off more Dune than you can chew.

Audi­ences, too, can only digest so much Dune at a sit­ting them­selves. “The par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge to adapt­ing Dune, espe­cial­ly the ear­ly part, is that there is so much infor­ma­tion to be con­veyed — and in the nov­el it is done in prose and dia­log, rather than action — we found it chal­leng­ing to por­tray visu­al­ly,” says Ander­son in an inter­view with the Hol­ly­wood Reporter.

“For­tu­nate­ly, the land­scape is so sweep­ing, we could show breath­tak­ing images as a way to con­vey that back­ground.” This is the land­scape of the desert plan­et Arrakis, source of a sub­stance known as “spice.” Used as a fuel for space trav­el, spice has become the most pre­cious sub­stance in the galaxy, and its con­trol is bit­ter­ly strug­gled over by numer­ous roy­al hous­es. (Any resem­blance to Earth­’s petro­le­um is, of course, entire­ly coin­ci­den­tal.)

The main nar­ra­tive thread of the many run­ning through Dune fol­lows Paul Atrei­des, scion of the House Atrei­des. With his fam­i­ly sent to run Arrakis, Paul finds him­self at the cen­ter of polit­i­cal intrigue, plan­e­tary rev­o­lu­tion, and even a clan­des­tine scheme to cre­ate a super­hu­man sav­ior. Though Her­bert and Ander­son have pro­duced a faith­ful adap­ta­tion, the graph­ic nov­el “trims the sto­ry down to its most icon­ic touch­stone scenes,” as Thom Dunn puts it in his Boing Boing review (adding that it hap­pens to focus in “a lot of the same scenes as David Lynch did with his glo­ri­ous­ly messy film adap­ta­tion”). This stream­lin­ing also employs tech­niques unique to graph­ic nov­els: to retain the book’s shift­ing omni­scient nar­ra­tion, for exam­ple, “differ­ent­ly col­ored cap­tion box­es present inner mono­logues from dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters like voiceovers so as not to inter­rupt the scene.”

As if telling the sto­ry of Dune at a graph­ic nov­el­’s pace was­n’t task enough, Ander­son, Her­bert and their col­lab­o­ra­tors also have to con­vey its unusu­al and rich­ly imag­ined world — in not just words, of course, but images. “Dune has had a lot of visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions over the years, from Lynch’s bizarre pseu­do-peri­od piece treat­ment to the mod­ern tele­vised mini-series’ more grit­ty inter­pre­ta­tion,” writes Poly­gon’s Char­lie Hall. While “Villeneuve’s vibe appears to take its inspi­ra­tion from more futur­is­tic sci­ence fic­tion — all angles and chunky armor,” the graph­ic nov­el­’s artists Raúl Allén and Patri­cia Martín “opt for some­thing a bit more steam­punk.” These choic­es all fur­ther what Bri­an Her­bert describes as a mis­sion to “bring a young demo­graph­ic to Frank Herbert’s incred­i­ble series.” Such read­ers have shown great enthu­si­asm for sto­ries of teenage pro­tag­o­nists who grow to assume a cen­tral role in the strug­gle between good and evil — not that, in the world of Dune, any con­flict is quite so sim­ple.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Trail­er for Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s Adap­ta­tion of Frank Herbert’s Clas­sic Sci-Fi Nov­el

A Side-by-Side, Shot-by-Shot Com­par­i­son of Denis Villeneuve’s 2020 Dune and David Lynch’s 1984 Dune

Why You Should Read Dune: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Frank Herbert’s Eco­log­i­cal, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci-Fi Epic

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

The Dune Col­or­ing & Activ­i­ty Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Cre­at­ed Count­less Hours of Pecu­liar Fun for Kids

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.

Get Inside the Head of a New York City Christmas Tree: A Gonzo Short Film from Artist Nina Katchadourian

in Art, Film, Life | December 16th, 2020

For every year this Christ­mas tree

Brings to us such joy and glee

O Christ­mas tree, O Christ­mas tree

Such plea­sure do you bring me…

All over New York City, tree stands are spring­ing up like mush­rooms.

Unlike the fan­ci­ful win­dows lin­ing 5th avenue, the Union Square hol­i­day mar­ket, or Rock­e­feller Center’s tree and skat­ing rink, this sea­son­al plea­sure requires no spe­cial trip, no threat of crowds.

You could bat­tle traf­fic, and lose half a day, drag­ging the kids to a cut-your-own farm on Long Island or in New Jer­sey, but why, when the side­walk stands are so fes­tive, so con­ve­nient, so quin­tes­sen­tial­ly New York?

The ven­dors hail from as far away as Ver­mont and Cana­da, shiv­er­ing in lawn chairs and mobile homes 24–7.

What befalls the unsold trees on Christ­mas Eve?

No one knows. They van­ish along with the ven­dors by Christ­mas morn­ing.

The spon­ta­neous coop­er­a­tion of two such ven­dors was crit­i­cal to artist Nina Katchadourian’s “Tree Shove,” above.

Katchadouri­an, who may look famil­iar to you from Lava­to­ry Self-Por­traits in the Flem­ish Style, recalls:

My friend Andrew had been hear­ing me say for years that I want­ed to be shoved through one of those things and he found two friend­ly Cana­di­ans sell­ing Christ­mas trees in a Brook­lyn super­mar­ket park­ing lot and worked it out with them.

The result is high­ly acces­si­ble, gonzo per­for­mance art from an artist who always lets the pub­lic in on the joke.

Add it to your annu­al hol­i­day spe­cial playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Artist Nina Katchadouri­an Cre­ates Flem­ish Style Self-Por­traits in Air­plane Lava­to­ry

Watch The Insects’ Christ­mas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Star­ring a Cast of Dead Bugs

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

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