Tom Jones & Chuck Berry Perform Together, Singing “Roll Over Beethoven” & “Memphis” (1974)

in Music | September 1st, 2023

Anoth­er chap­ter from the Annals of Unlike­ly Per­for­mances…

Last week, we high­light­ed Chuck Berry per­form­ing with the Bee Gees on a 1973 episode of the Mid­night Spe­cial. It’s a pair­ing that does­n’t work on paper. But, on stage, it’s mag­ic. The same goes for when Berry sang with Tom Jones on a 1974 episode of the same show. It’s mag­ic once again.

If you’re a vet­er­an OC read­er, you know that Jones could sing with any­one. On his vari­ety show, This Is Tom Jones, he shared the stage with Janis Joplin, not to men­tion Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young, and Ste­vie Won­der. It worked. Just watch the expres­sion on Janis and Cros­by’s face.

Now 83, Tom Jones and his voice are still going strong. Below, you can watch him sing “Sam­son And Delilah” in 2021.

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 

Chuck Berry & the Bee Gees Per­form Togeth­er in 1973: An Unex­pect­ed Video from The Mid­night Spe­cial Archive

Tom Jones Per­forms “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audi­ence Away (1969)

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

The Lunar Codex Will Digitize the Work of 30,000 Artists, and Then Archive Them on the Moon

in Art | August 29th, 2023

There may not yet be civ­i­liza­tion on the moon, but that does­n’t mean there’s no cul­ture up there. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the tiny ceram­ic tile, smug­gled onto the Apol­lo 12 lunar lan­der, that bears art by the likes of Claes Old­en­burg, Robert Rauschen­berg, and Andy Warhol. “Fall­en Astro­naut, an alu­minum sculp­ture by the Bel­gian artist Paul van Hoey­don­ck, was left on the lunar sur­face by the Apol­lo 15 crew in 1971,” writes the New York Times’ J. D. Biers­dor­fer. “The Arch Mis­sion Foun­da­tion has sent Isaac Asimov’s Foun­da­tion tril­o­gy and mil­lions of Lunar Library pages into space,” and artists like Jeff Koons and Sacha Jafri are among the artists cur­rent­ly aim­ing to install their own work on the moon’s sur­face.

The Lunar Codex has grander ambi­tions, hav­ing assem­bled works from “over 30,000 artists, writ­ers, musi­cians, and film­mak­ers, from 158 coun­tries, in four time cap­sules launched to the moon.” You can browse their con­tents at the pro­jec­t’s offi­cial web site, which breaks it all down into not just eight “gal­leries” of visu­al art, but also sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to film, tele­vi­sion, music, and poet­ry, among oth­er forms and media. There’s even a sec­tion for books and nov­els (as well as anoth­er, odd­ly, for nov­els and books), which includes a large num­ber of curi­ous titles to rep­re­sent the achieve­ments of human civ­i­liza­tion: Kamikaze Kan­ga­roos, Goofy New­fies, Don’t Taco ‘Bout Mur­der, In Bed with Her Mil­lion­aire Foe.

Also among all these books, stored on either dig­i­tal mem­o­ry cards or a nick­el-based medi­um called NanoFiche, is The Zoo at the End of the World by one Samuel Per­al­ta, who also hap­pens to be the mas­ter­mind of the Lunar Codex project. “A semi­re­tired physi­cist and author in Cana­da with a love of the arts and sci­ences,” Per­al­ta has select­ed for preser­va­tion on the moon every­thing from “prints from war-torn Ukraine” to “more than 130 issues of Poet­sArtists mag­a­zine” to images like “New Amer­i­can Goth­ic, by Ayana Ross, the win­ner of the 2021 Ben­nett Prize for women artists; Emer­ald Girl, a por­trait in Lego bricks by Pauline Aubey; and the apt­ly titled New Moon, a 1980 seri­graph by Alex Colville.”

All the work to be placed on the moon through the Lunar Codex was cre­at­ed by artists who are now active, or have been active in the past decade or two. As such, it reflects a par­tic­u­lar moment in the cul­tur­al his­to­ry of human­i­ty, con­sti­tut­ing what Per­al­ta calls “a mes­sage in the bot­tle for the future that dur­ing this time of war, pan­dem­ic and eco­nom­ic upheaval peo­ple still found time to cre­ate beau­ty.” They also found time to cre­ate pod­casts, as will be evi­denced by the inclu­sion of a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry-long archive of Grace Cav­a­lier­i’s inter­view show The Poet and the Poem, which has reached a new audi­ence in recent years through that rel­a­tive­ly new for­mat — one that, to future gen­er­a­tions of space­far­ers mak­ing a stop on the moon, will offer as good a rep­re­sen­ta­tion as any of life on Earth in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.

via Metafil­ter/Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed con­tent:

Carl Sagan Sent Music & Pho­tos Into Space So That Aliens Could Under­stand Human Civ­i­liza­tion (Even After We’re Gone)

NASA Enlists Andy Warhol, Annie Lei­bovitz, Nor­man Rock­well & 350 Oth­er Artists to Visu­al­ly Doc­u­ment America’s Space Pro­gram

There’s a Tiny Art Muse­um on the Moon That Fea­tures the Art of Andy Warhol & Robert Rauschen­berg

Lau­rie Ander­son Cre­ates a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Instal­la­tion That Takes View­ers on an Uncon­ven­tion­al Tour of the Moon

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

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

The 5 Innovative Bridges That Make New York City, New York City

in Architecture, Design, Travel | August 29th, 2023

The Brook­lyn Bridge ignites the pas­sions of tourists and locals alike.

For every 10,000 vis­i­tors who pause in its bike lanes to snap self­ies, there’s an alum of near­by PS 261 who cel­e­brat­ed its birth­day with a song that men­tions the fates of its engi­neers John and Wash­ing­ton Roe­bling to the tune of I’ve Been Work­ing on the Rail­road.

(A sam­ple cho­rus: Caisson’s dis­ease! Cais­sons dis­ease! Caisson’s dis­ease is real­ly bad!)

Native son Adam Suerte of Brook­lyn Tat­too esti­mates that he inks its like­ness on a half dozen cus­tomers per month. (A tem­po­rary option is avail­able for those with com­mit­ment issues…)

In 1886, a hus­tler named Steve Brodie claimed to have sur­vived a jump off of it, a tale prop­a­gat­ed by Bugs Bun­ny.

We watch movies at its feet and draw atten­tion to caus­es by march­ing across it.

It con­tin­ues to mes­mer­ize artists, poets, film­mak­ers and pho­tog­ra­phers.

But, as archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er makes clear in his most recent video for Archi­tec­tur­al Digest, it’s not the only bridge in New York City.

Also, despite what you may have heard, it’s not for sale.

Under­stand­ably, the hybrid cable-stayed/­sus­pen­sion super­star con­nect­ing Brook­lyn to low­er Man­hat­tan takes the lead in Wyetzner’s cov­er­age of five bridges that have had an enor­mous impact on the devel­op­ment of a city whose five bor­oughs were once tra­vers­a­ble sole­ly by fer­ry.

The oth­er notable play­ers:

The Hell Gate Bridge — a feat of WWI-era rail­road engi­neer­ing con­nect­ing Queens to Randall’s and Wards Island over a par­tic­u­lar­ly per­ilous stretch of water­way, it was once the longest steel arch bridge in the world.

In his 1921 book New York: The Great Metrop­o­lis, painter Peter Mar­cus not­ed that “if laid over Man­hat­tan it would reach from Wanamaker’s store at Eighth Street, to One Hun­dred and Twen­ty-fifth Street.”

Macomb’s Dam Bridge, a low lying swing bridge whose cen­ter por­tion piv­ots to accom­mo­date boat traf­fic on the Harlem Riv­er. When con­struc­tion began in late 1890, the New York Times gushed that it would be a “street built in mid-air” between the Bronx and Wash­ing­ton Heights in upper Man­hat­tan:

It is hard­ly enough to say of it that it will be the great­est piece of engi­neer­ing of the kind in the world. Noth­ing like it has ever been attempt­ed.

The High Bridge - Orig­i­nal­ly part of the Cro­ton Aque­duct, it is tech­ni­cal­ly the old­est sur­viv­ing bridge in the city, as well as a com­mu­ni­ty-led preser­va­tion cam­paign suc­cess sto­ry. Hav­ing lan­guished in the lat­ter part of the 20th cen­tu­ry, it is now a beau­ti­ful pedes­tri­an bridge whose killer views can be enjoyed with­out the has­sle of Brook­lyn Bridge-sized crowds.

The George Wash­ing­ton Bridge - a major mon­ey mak­er for the Port Author­i­ty, it’s not only the world’s busiest bridge, it puts a lot of the bridge in “bridge and tun­nel crowd” by con­nect­ing Man­hat­tan to New Jer­sey.

Archi­tec­ture buffs can geek out on the Con­crete Indus­try Board Award-win­ning bus sta­tion and sto­ried Lit­tle Red Light­house in its shad­ow.

The GWB’s most ardent fan has got to be artist Faith Ring­gold, who immor­tal­ized it in her Tar Beach sto­ry quilt and relat­ed children’s book:

 I nev­er want to be more than three min­utes from the George. I could always see it as I grew up.  That bridge has been in my life for as long as I can remem­ber.  As a kid, I could walk across it any­time I want­ed.  I love to see it sparkling at night.  I moved to New Jer­sey, and I’m still next to it.

Wyet­zn­er, whose archi­tec­tur­al round up shoe­horns in a lot of inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion about pub­lic health, eco­nom­ics, trans­porta­tion, labor prac­tice and New York City his­to­ry, is active­ly court­ing view­ers to sug­gest bridges for a sequel.

We’ll throw our weight behind the Man­hat­tan, the Williams­burg, the Queens­boro, the Ver­raz­zano, and the admit­ted­ly dark horse 103rd Street Foot­bridge.

You?

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How the Brook­lyn Bridge Was Built: The Sto­ry of One of the Great­est Engi­neer­ing Feats in His­to­ry

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Trip Across the Brook­lyn Bridge: Watch Footage from 1899

See New York City in the 1930s and Now: A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son of the Same Streets & Land­marks

An Online Gallery of Over 900,000 Won­der­ful Pho­tos of His­toric New York City

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

How the Human Population Reached 8 Billion: An Animated Video Covers 300,000 Years of History in Four Minutes

in Data, History | August 24th, 2023

Hav­ing come out less than two weeks ago, the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry video above incor­po­rates up-to-date infor­ma­tion on the num­ber of human beings on plan­et Earth. But what’s inter­est­ing here isn’t so much the cur­rent glob­al-pop­u­la­tion fig­ure (eight bil­lion, inci­den­tal­ly) as how we reached it. That sto­ry emerges through an ani­mat­ed visu­al­iza­tion that com­press­es a peri­od of 300,000 years — with all its migra­tions, its grow­ing and declin­ing empires, its major trade routes, its tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments, its plagues, and its wars — into about four and a half min­utes.

“Mod­ern humans evolved in Africa about 300,000 years ago,” says the video’s explana­to­ry text. “Around 100,000 years ago, we began migrat­ing around the globe,” a process that shows no signs of stop­ping here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.

The same can’t be said for the way our num­bers have increased over the past few hun­dred years, at least accord­ing to the pro­jec­tion that “glob­al pop­u­la­tion will peak this cen­tu­ry” around ten bil­lion, due to “aver­age fer­til­i­ty rates falling in near­ly every coun­try.” For some, this is not entire­ly unwel­come, giv­en that “as our pop­u­la­tion grows, so has our use of Earth­’s resources.”

It’s been a while since the devel­oped world has felt a wide­spread fear of over­pop­u­la­tion, which had a cli­mate change-like pow­er to inspire apoc­a­lyp­tic visions in the nine­teen-sev­en­ties. Nowa­days, we’re more like­ly to hear warn­ings of immi­nent glob­al pop­u­la­tion col­lapse, with low-birthrate coun­tries like South Korea, where I live, held up as cau­tion­ary demo­graph­ic exam­ples. From anoth­er per­spec­tive, the pat­terns of human­i­ty’s expan­sion thus far could also be used to illus­trate calls to explore and col­o­nize oth­er plan­ets, not least to secure our species a path to sur­vival should some­thing go seri­ous­ly wrong here on Earth. How­ev­er our pop­u­la­tion graph changes in the future, we can rest assured that we’ll always think of our­selves as liv­ing at one kind of deci­sive moment or anoth­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hans Rosling Uses Ikea Props to Explain World of 7 Bil­lion Peo­ple

How Humans Migrat­ed Across The Globe Over 200,000 Years: An Ani­mat­ed Look

Buck­min­ster Fuller Cre­ates an Ani­mat­ed Visu­al­iza­tion of Human Pop­u­la­tion Growth from 1000 B.C.E. to 1965

Col­or­ful Ani­ma­tion Visu­al­izes 200 Years of Immi­gra­tion to the U.S. (1820-Present)

Who Is the World’s Most Typ­i­cal Per­son?

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

Watch Rare Videos Showing Steely Dan Performing Live During the Early 1970s

in Music, Television | August 23rd, 2023

The band per­form­ing in the video above is Steely Dan. Yet it does­n’t sound quite like Steely Dan, an impres­sion par­tial­ly explained by it being a live show rather than the kind of per­fec­tion­ist stu­dio record­ings for whose metic­u­lous con­struc­tion (and repeat­ed recon­struc­tion) the group’s very name has long been a byword. But its found­ing mas­ter­minds Wal­ter Beck­er and Don­ald Fagen had­n’t yet set­tled into that com­plex­ly pris­tine aes­thet­ic at the time of this appear­ance, which aired fifty years ago next week on The Mid­night Spe­cial. Back then, hav­ing put out only their first cou­ple of albums, they could still present their project as a rel­a­tive­ly con­ven­tion­al ear­ly-sev­en­ties rock band.

It helped that they had a rel­a­tive­ly con­ven­tion­al front­man in singer David Palmer, who han­dles lead vocals on their Mid­night Spe­cial per­for­mance of “Do It Again,” Steely Dan’s first hit. That he did­n’t do so on the stu­dio record­ing under­scores that the band is gen­uine­ly play­ing live, not mim­ing to a back­ing track, as was stan­dard prac­tice on oth­er music shows.

It also con­sti­tutes anoth­er rea­son this ver­sion sounds “off” to a seri­ous Dan­fan, but it would take a tru­ly blink­ered purism (a con­di­tion wide­spread among the ranks of Dan­fans, admit­ted­ly) not to appre­ci­ate this per­for­mance, espe­cial­ly when it gets around to the solo by the band’s orig­i­nal gui­tarist Den­ny Dias — anoth­er of which comes along in “Reel­in’ in the Years,” played in the video just above.

Not that one gui­tarist could suf­fice for Steely Dan, even in this ear­ly line­up: they also had Jeff “Skunk” Bax­ter, now regard­ed as one of the finest stu­dio play­ers in the sub­genre of “yacht rock.” Bax­ter appears promi­nent­ly in their live ren­di­tion of “Show Biz Kids,” albeit as just one ele­ment of the full stage nec­es­sary to repro­duce that song live. Unlike “Do It Again” and “Reel­in’ in the Years,” two sin­gles from Steely Dan’s album Can’t Buy a Thrill, “Show Biz Kids” comes from their then-new­ly released fol­low-up Count­down to Ecsta­sy, which offered a rich­er real­iza­tion of both Steely Dan’s dis­tinc­tive sound and even more dis­tinc­tive world­view. To the refine­ment of that sound and world­view Beck­er and Fagen would devote them­selves less than a year after their Mid­night Spe­cial broad­cast, when they quit live per­for­mance entire­ly for the com­forts and rig­ors of their nat­ur­al habi­tat: the record­ing stu­dio.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Decon­struct­ing Steely Dan: The Band That Was More Than Just a Band

How Steely Dan Wrote “Dea­con Blues,” the Song Audio­philes Use to Test High-End Stere­os

Steely Dan Cre­ates the Deadhead/Danfan Con­ver­sion Chart: A Wit­ty Guide Explain­ing How You Can Go From Lov­ing the Dead to Idol­iz­ing Steely Dan

How Steely Dan Went Through Sev­en Gui­tarists and Dozens of Hours of Tape to Get the Per­fect Gui­tar Solo on “Peg”

Watch David Bowie’s Final Per­for­mance as Zig­gy Star­dust, Singing “I Got You Babe” with Mar­i­anne Faith­full, on The Mid­night Spe­cial (1973)

Chuck Berry & the Bee Gees Per­form Togeth­er in 1973: An Unex­pect­ed Video from The Mid­night Spe­cial Archive

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

Chuck Berry & the Bee Gees Perform Together in 1973: An Unexpected Video from The Midnight Special Archive

in Music | August 21st, 2023

Dur­ing the 1970s, Burt Sug­ar­man pro­duced The Mid­night Spe­cial, a late-night musi­cal vari­ety show that fea­tured great rock and pop music per­for­mances. In recent months, Sug­ar­man has start­ed bring­ing the show’s archive to YouTube, allow­ing you to revis­it vin­tage per­for­mances by David Bowie, Steely Dan, Tina Turn­er, Fleet­wood Mac, Blondie, Richard Pry­or and much more. Above, you can watch one such gem in the archive–that is, Chuck Berry & the Bee Gees per­form­ing Reel­in’ and Rockin’ (a song orig­i­nal­ly released as a B‑side with “Sweet Lit­tle Six­teen” in 1957). As one YouTu­ber put it, “what an odd com­bi­na­tion that absolute­ly works; one of Chuck’s most sat­is­fy­ing per­for­mances of this era; his guitar’s in tune, the band is hot & sup­port­ive (who’s that piano play­er?!), and it’s always cool to hear Mau­rice sing solo.” The per­for­mance took place on Octo­ber 12, 1973. Enjoy.

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 

Watch David Bowie’s Final Per­for­mance as Zig­gy Star­dust, Singing “I Got You Babe” with Mar­i­anne Faith­full, on The Mid­night Spe­cial (1973)

Chuck Berry Jams Out “John­ny B. Goode” with Eric Clap­ton, Kei­th Richards, John Lennon & Bruce Spring­steen

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

Neuroscientists Reconstruct a Pink Floyd Song from Listeners’ Brain Activity, with a Little Help from AI

in Music, Neuroscience | August 17th, 2023

Any­one who’s worked in an oper­at­ing room knows that many sur­geons like to put on music while they do their job, and that their work­ing sound­tracks often include sur­pris­ing artists. It hard­ly requires a leap of imag­i­na­tion to assume that there are more than a few scalpel-wield­ing Pink Floyd fans out there — scalpel-wield­ing Pink Floyd fans who will sure­ly feel their musi­cal taste vin­di­cat­ed by a study that involved play­ing “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall (Part 1)” to patients under­go­ing epilep­sy-relat­ed neu­ro­surgery. After­ward, with help from arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, the researchers were able to recon­struct the song from those patients’ record­ed brain­waves.

That this turns out to be pos­si­ble offers “a first step toward cre­at­ing more expres­sive devices to assist peo­ple who can’t speak,” writes the New York Times’ Hana Kiros. “Over the past few years, sci­en­tists have made major break­throughs in extract­ing words from the elec­tri­cal sig­nals pro­duced by the brains of peo­ple with mus­cle paral­y­sis when they attempt to speak. But a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the infor­ma­tion con­veyed through speech comes from what lin­guists call ‘prosod­ic’ ele­ments, like tone.”

It is the musi­cal ele­ments of speech, one might say, that have so far elud­ed repro­duc­tion by exist­ing brain-machine inter­faces, whose sen­tences “have a robot­ic qual­i­ty akin to how the late Stephen Hawk­ing sound­ed when he used a speech-gen­er­at­ing device,” as Robert Sanders writes in Berke­ley News.

You can hear a clip of “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall (Part 1)” as gen­er­at­ed from the researchers’ AI work with brain­wave data in the Euronews video above. Indis­tinct though it may sound, the song will come through rec­og­niz­ably even to the ears of casu­al Pink Floyd fans (irked though they’ll be by the video’s accom­pa­ny­ing it with the cov­er image from The Dark Side of the Moon). They may also feel the urge to con­tin­ue lis­ten­ing to the rest of The Wall, espe­cial­ly “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall (Part 2),” with its school-choir deliv­ered dec­la­ra­tion that we don’t need no mind con­trol. But as for just-dawn­ing tech­nolo­gies that allow us to con­trol things with our minds — well, that would­n’t be so bad, would it?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Neu­rosym­pho­ny: A High-Res­o­lu­tion Look into the Brain, Set to the Music of Brain Waves

Music in the Brain: Sci­en­tists Final­ly Reveal the Parts of Our Brain That Are Ded­i­cat­ed to Music

Hear a Neu­ro­sci­en­tist-Curat­ed 712-Track Playlist of Music that Caus­es Fris­son, or Musi­cal Chills

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

How Pink Floyd Built The Wall: The Album, Tour & Film

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

Albert Einstein Appears in Remarkably Colorized Video & Contemplates the Fate of Humanity After the Atomic Bomb (1946)

in History, Science | August 15th, 2023

We lived in one world before August 6, 1945, and have lived in anoth­er ever since. Nobody under­stood this more clear­ly than Albert Ein­stein, who had advo­cat­ed for the research that cul­mi­nat­ed in that day. “A let­ter from Dr. Ein­stein in 1939 informed Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt that the Ger­mans were engaged in the devel­op­ment of an atom­ic bomb and urged that sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy in the Unit­ed States be mobi­lized on a sim­i­lar effort,” says a 1946 New York Times arti­cle. “This [1939] let­ter gave the first impe­tus to the devel­op­ment of the Atom­ic Bomb.” This sto­ry was includ­ed by way of con­text of a new call to action by Ein­stein and oth­er promi­nent sci­en­tists, one meant to secure human­i­ty’s future in a world with the bomb.

“Our world faces a cri­sis as yet unper­ceived by those pos­sess­ing pow­er to make great deci­sions for good or evil,” declares a telegram sent by Ein­stein to what the Times calls “sev­er­al hun­dred promi­nent Amer­i­cans.” “The unleashed pow­er of the atom has changed every­thing save our modes of think­ing and we thus drift toward unpar­al­leled cat­a­stro­phe. We sci­en­tists who released this immense pow­er have an over­whelm­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty in this world life-and-death strug­gle to har­ness the atom for the ben­e­fit of mankind and not for humanity’s destruc­tion.”

Hence the for­ma­tion of the Emer­gency Com­mit­tee of Atom­ic Sci­en­tists, chaired by Ein­stein and includ­ing as mem­bers such fig­ures as Hans A. Bethe, who’d direct­ed the The­o­ret­i­cal Divi­sion at Los Alam­os, and Leo Szi­lard, Ein­stein’s col­lab­o­ra­tor on the 1939 let­ter to Roo­sevelt.

Szi­lard also appears along Ein­stein in the col­orized short film clip above, in which they lis­ten to a ver­sion of their telegram read aloud “We beg you to sup­port our efforts to bring real­iza­tion to Amer­i­ca that mankind’s des­tiny is being decid­ed today, now, this moment,” reads the announc­er. The telegram itself spec­i­fies that “we need two hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars at once for a nation-wide cam­paign to let the peo­ple know that a new type of think­ing is essen­tial if mankind is to sur­vive and move toward high­er lev­els.” In oth­er words, one mind­set had enabled the cre­ation of nuclear weapons, and quite anoth­er was need­ed to pre­vent them from ever being used again. In 1954, the year before his death, Ein­stein wrote that “I made one great mis­take in my life — when I signed the let­ter to Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt rec­om­mend­ing that atom bombs be made.” It’s one kind of ambi­tion to change the mind of a politi­cian, and quite anoth­er to change the mind of human­i­ty.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein in Four Col­or Films

Hear Albert Ein­stein Read “The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence” (1941)

Albert Ein­stein Explains Why We Need to Read the Clas­sics

Hear the Voice of Albert Ein­stein: Vin­tage Album Fea­tures Him Talk­ing About E=MC2, World Peace & More

“The Most Intel­li­gent Pho­to Ever Tak­en”: The 1927 Solvay Coun­cil Con­fer­ence, Fea­tur­ing Ein­stein, Bohr, Curie, Heisen­berg, Schrödinger & More

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

Alfred Hitchcock’s Strict Rules for Watching Psycho in Theaters (1960)

in Film | August 15th, 2023

Psy­cho, one of Alfred Hitch­cock­’s icon­ic films, did­n’t come togeth­er very eas­i­ly. Hitch­cock­’s stu­dio, Para­mount Pic­tures, did­n’t like any­thing about the film and denied him a prop­er bud­get. So the direc­tor went solo and fund­ed the film through his tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny Sham­ley Pro­duc­tions. The bud­get was tight — less than $1,000,000. Costs were firm­ly con­trolled. Hence why, in 1960, the film was shot in black and white.

When Psy­cho hit the­aters, Hitch­cock con­trolled the pro­mo­tion. The stars — Antho­ny Perkins and Janet Leigh — did­n’t make the usu­al rounds in the media. Crit­ics weren’t giv­en pri­vate screen­ings. And Hitch­cock cre­at­ed buzz for the film when he exert­ed direc­to­r­i­al con­trol over the view­ing expe­ri­ence of the audi­ence. Show­ings of the film began on a tight­ly-con­trolled sched­ule in the­aters in New York, Chica­go, Boston, and Philadel­phia. And a firm “no late admis­sion” pol­i­cy was put in place. You either saw the film from the very begin­ning, or you did­n’t see it all. Signs appeared in front of cin­e­mas read­ing:

We won’t allow you to cheat your­self. You must see PSYCHO from the very begin­ning. There­fore, do not expect to be admit­ted into the the­atre after the start of each per­for­mance of the pic­ture. We say no one — and we mean no one — not even the man­ager’s broth­er, the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, or the Queen of Eng­land (God bless her)!

The­ater man­agers ini­tial­ly balked at the idea, fear­ing finan­cial loss­es. But Hitch­cock had his way. And he was right. Long lines formed out­side the the­aters. Psy­cho enjoyed crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess, so much so the film was re-released in 1965.

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

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:

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

How Cin­e­mas Taught Ear­ly Movie-Goers the Rules & Eti­quette for Watch­ing Films (1912): No Whistling, Stand­ing or Wear­ing Big Hats

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

Watch Alfred Hitch­cock Make Cameo Appear­ances in 37 of His Films

Alfred Hitch­cock Reveals The Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

How to Be a Stoic in Your Everyday Life: Philosophy Professor Massimo Pigliucci Explains

in Philosophy | August 11th, 2023

To a view­er on the inter­net, TED Talks and TEDx talks may seem more or less the same. That makes sense, since the main dif­fer­ence between them isn’t of for­mat, but phys­i­cal loca­tion: TED talks take place at offi­cial TED con­fer­ences, and TEDx talks at TED-licensed but inde­pen­dent­ly-orga­nized events. The lat­ter are more numer­ous, and also more geo­graph­i­cal­ly var­ied. Take the talk above from TEDxA­thens, the ide­al place for speak­er Mas­si­mo Pigli­uc­ci to deliv­er his open­ing his­tor­i­cal sketch, which he begins by ask­ing his audi­ence to “imag­ine, if you will, that you’re walk­ing down the streets of Athens 24 cen­turies ago, give or take.”

In such a set­ting, “you might meet this guy: Zeno of Citium.” A once-pros­per­ous mer­chant strand­ed by a ship­wreck, he’d wound up in the Greek metrop­o­lis, where he spent his days hang­ing around book­stores. One day “he read Xenophon’s Mem­o­ra­bil­ia, which is a book about Socrates, and he was so intrigued that he turned to the book­seller and said, ‘Where I can find me one of these peo­ple, one of these philoso­pher folks?’ ” Luck­i­ly for Zeno, the streets of Athens were crawl­ing with philoso­phers at the time, and it was under their tute­lage that he devel­oped his own philo­soph­i­cal acu­men to a lev­el that pre­pared him to found his own school: Sto­icism, so named because its mem­bers met in the stoa, where the mar­kets set up.

The ear­ly Sto­ics were con­cerned with every­day life, and how it can be lived “accord­ing to nature”: the world’s nature, but also our own. Then, as now, a great many peo­ple suf­fered unnec­es­sar­i­ly out of con­fu­sion as to where the world end­ed and they began. They had, in oth­er words, no clear sense of what was under their con­trol and what was­n’t, a con­di­tion that the core teach­ings of Sto­icism are designed to rec­ti­fy. “The idea is that you can do things, you can make deci­sions about your health, your rep­u­ta­tion, et cetera, et cetera, but ulti­mate­ly, you don’t con­trol the out­come,” Pigli­uc­ci explains. In prac­tice, this means that “we should try to walk through life by inter­nal­iz­ing our goals — not wor­ry about the out­comes, because those are out­side our con­trol, but wor­ry about our inten­tions and our efforts, because those are very much under our con­trol.”

“Wor­ry” may not be quite the appro­pri­ate term. It con­notes, in any case, a self-defeat­ing habit that would hard­ly be con­doned by his­to­ry’s best-known pro­po­nents of Sto­icism, like the first cen­tu­ry Roman states­man and man of let­ters Seneca, the sec­ond-cen­tu­ry Roman emper­or Mar­cus Aure­lius, and espe­cial­ly the Greek ex-slave Epicte­tus, whose life bridged those eras. Epicte­tus believed, as Pigli­uc­ci puts it, that “a great part of hap­pi­ness lies in the seren­i­ty,” in “the idea that you always walk through life by know­ing that you’ve done your best, and that noth­ing else could be done on top of that.” We can learn more about how, exact­ly, to do our best from the work these Sto­ics left behind, all of which is free online: Epicte­tus’ Enchirid­ion, Mar­cus Aure­lius’ Med­i­ta­tions, the col­lec­tion of Seneca’s writ­ings pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

Of course, we could also read Pigli­uc­ci’s own book, How to Be A Sto­ic: Using Ancient Phi­los­o­phy to Live a Mod­ern Life, or even watch “Think Like a Sto­ic: Ancient Wis­dom for Today’s World,” his series from The Great Cours­es (which is also avail­able through Audi­ble free to its mem­bers). Pigli­uc­ci is but one of the host of prac­ti­tion­ers will­ing to intro­duce us to the prin­ci­ples of Sto­icism, even these 24 cen­turies — give or take — after its inven­tion. But whether on the streets of ancient Athens or in the dig­i­tal labyrinths of the 21st cen­tu­ry, the best teach­ers of this par­tic­u­lar phi­los­o­phy are the vicis­si­tudes of life itself. Whether we can meet them with virtue and equa­nim­i­ty is up to us — and indeed, to put it Sto­ical­ly, the only thing that’s ever been up to us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

What Is Sto­icism? A Short Intro­duc­tion to the Ancient Phi­los­o­phy That Can Help You Cope with Our Hard Mod­ern Times

Three Huge Vol­umes of Sto­ic Writ­ings by Seneca Now Free Online, Thanks to Tim Fer­riss

350 Ani­mat­ed Videos That Will Teach You Phi­los­o­phy, from Ancient to Post-Mod­ern

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