Jimi Hendrix Plays the Beatles: “Sgt. Pepper’s,” “Day Tripper,” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”

in Music | February 25th, 2025

Who invent­ed rock and roll? Ask Chuck Berry, he’ll tell you. It was Chuck Berry. Or was it Bill Haley, Jer­ry Lee Lewis, Lit­tle Richard? Mud­dy Waters? Robert John­son? Maybe even Lead Bel­ly? You didn’t, but if you asked me, I’d say that rock and roll, like coun­try blues, came not from one lone hero but a matrix of black and white artists in the South—some with big names, some without—trading, steal­ing licks, spot­lights, and hair­dos. Coun­try croon­ers, blues­men, refugees from jazz and gospel. Maybe look­ing to cash in, maybe not. Did the tee­ny-bop­per star sys­tem kill rock and roll’s out­law heart? Or was it Bud­dy Holly’s plane crash? Big Pay­ola? There’s a mil­lion the­o­ries in a mil­lion books, look it up.

Who res­ur­rect­ed rock and roll? The Bea­t­les? The Stones? If you ask me, and you didn’t, it was one man, Jimi Hen­drix. Any­one who ever cried into their beer over Don McLean’s maudlin eulo­gy had only to lis­ten to more Hen­drix.

He had it—the swag­ger, the hair, the trad­ing, steal­ing, licks: from the blues, most­ly, but also from what­ev­er caught his ear. And just as those val­orized giants of the fifties did, Hen­drix cov­ered his com­pe­ti­tion. Today, we bring you Hen­drix play­ing The Bea­t­les. Above, see him, Noel Red­ding, and Mitch Mitchell do “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band” in 1967, mere days after the song’s release. As we wrote in a pre­vi­ous post, “The album came out on a Fri­day, and by Sun­day night, Jimi Hen­drix learned the songs and opened his own show with a cov­er of the title track.” And, might we say, he made it his very own. “Watch out for your ears, okay?” says Hen­drix to the crowd. Indeed.

Just above, from ‘round that same time, hear Hen­drix and Expe­ri­ence cov­er “Day Trip­per,” one of many record­ings made for BBC Radio, col­lect­ed on the album BBC Ses­sions. Fuzzed-out, blis­ter­ing, boom­ing rock and roll of the purest grade. And below? Why it’s an extreme­ly drunk Jim Mor­ri­son and a super loose Hen­drix jam­ming out “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows,” or some­thing vague­ly like it. Morrison’s vocal con­tri­bu­tions come to noth­ing more than slurred moan­ing. (He’s very vocal in anoth­er cut from this ses­sion, called alter­nate­ly “Morrison’s Lament” and “F.H.I.T.A”—an acronym you’ll get after a lis­ten to Morrison’s obscene refrain.)

This raw take comes from a jam some­time in 1968 at New York’s The Scene club. Also play­ing were The Scene house band The McCoys, bassist Har­vey Brooks, and Band of Gyp­sys drum­mer Bud­dy Miles. John­ny Win­ter may or may not have been there. Released on bootlegs called Bleed­ing Heart, Sky High, and Woke Up This Morn­ing and Found Myself Dead, these ses­sions are a must-hear for Hen­drix com­pletists and lovers of decon­struct­ed vir­tu­oso blues-rock alike. After what Hen­drix did for, and to, rock and roll, there real­ly was nowhere to go but back to the skele­tal bones of punk or into the out­er lim­its of avant psych-noise and fusion. Don McLean should have writ­ten a song about that.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Arrives in Lon­don in 1966, Asks to Get Onstage with Cream, and Blows Eric Clap­ton Away: “You Nev­er Told Me He Was That F‑ing Good”

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

Jimi Hen­drix Unplugged: Two Rare Record­ings of Hen­drix Play­ing Acoustic Gui­tar

How Sci­ence Fic­tion Formed Jimi Hen­drix

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view Ani­mat­ed (1970)

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

Optical Poems by Oskar Fischinger: Discover the Avant-Garde Animator Despised by Hitler & Dissed by Disney

in Animation, Art, History | February 19th, 2025

At a time when much of ani­ma­tion was con­sumed with lit­tle anthro­po­mor­phized ani­mals sport­ing white gloves, Oskar Fischinger went in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion. His work is all about danc­ing geo­met­ric shapes and abstract forms spin­ning around a flat fea­ture­less back­ground. Think of a Mon­dri­an or Male­vich paint­ing that moves, often in time to the music. Fischinger’s movies have a mes­mer­iz­ing ele­gance to them. Check out his 1938 short An Opti­cal Poem above. Cir­cles pop, sway and dart across the screen, all in time to Franz Liszt’s 2nd Hun­gar­i­an Rhap­sody. This is, of course, well before the days of dig­i­tal. While it might be rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple to manip­u­late a shape in a com­put­er, Fischinger’s tech­nique was decid­ed­ly more low tech. Using bits of paper and fish­ing line, he indi­vid­u­al­ly pho­tographed each frame, some­how doing it all in sync with Liszt’s com­po­si­tion. Think of the hours of mind-numb­ing work that must have entailed.

(Note: The copy of the film above has become fad­ed, dis­tort­ing some of the orig­i­nal vibrant col­ors used in Fischinger’s films. Nonethe­less it gives you a taste of his cre­ative work–of how he mix­es ani­ma­tion with music. The clips below give you a more accu­rate sense of Fischinger’s orig­i­nal col­ors.)

Born in 1900 near Frank­furt, Fischinger trained as a musi­cian and an archi­tect before dis­cov­er­ing film. In the 1930s, he moved to Berlin and start­ed pro­duc­ing more and more abstract ani­ma­tions that ran before fea­ture films. They proved to be pop­u­lar too, at least until the Nation­al Social­ists came to pow­er. The Nazis were some of the most fanat­i­cal art crit­ics of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, and they hat­ed any­thing non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al. The likes of Paul Klee, Oskar Kokosch­ka and Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky among oth­ers were writ­ten off as “degen­er­ate.” (By stark con­trast, the CIA report­ed­ly loved Abstract Expres­sion­ism, but that’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.) Fischinger fled Ger­many in 1936 for the sun and glam­our of Hol­ly­wood.

The prob­lem was that Hol­ly­wood was real­ly not ready for Fischinger. Pro­duc­ers saw the obvi­ous tal­ent in his work, and they feared that it was too ahead of its time for broad audi­ences. “[Fischinger] was going in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion than any oth­er ani­ma­tor at the time,” said famed graph­ic design­er Chip Kidd in an inter­view with NPR. “He was real­ly explor­ing abstract pat­terns, but with a pur­pose to them — pio­neer­ing what tech­ni­cal­ly is the music video.”

Fischinger’s most wide­ly seen Amer­i­can work was his short con­tri­bu­tion to Walt Disney’s Fan­ta­sia. Fischinger cre­at­ed con­cept draw­ings for Fan­ta­sia, but most were not used, and only one short scene fea­tures his actu­al draw­ings. “The film is not real­ly my work,” he lat­er recalled. “Rather, it is the most inartis­tic prod­uct of a fac­to­ry. …One thing I def­i­nite­ly found out: that no true work of art can be made with that pro­ce­dure used in the Dis­ney stu­dio.” Fischinger didn’t work with Dis­ney again and instead retreat­ed into the art world.

There he found admir­ers who were recep­tive to his vision. John Cage, for one, con­sid­ered the Ger­man animator’s exper­i­ments to be a major influ­ence on his own work. Cage recalled his first meet­ing with Fischinger in an inter­view with Daniel Charles in 1968.

One day I was intro­duced to Oscar Fischinger who made abstract films quite pre­cise­ly artic­u­lat­ed on pieces of tra­di­tion­al music. When I was intro­duced to him, he began to talk with me about the spir­it, which is inside each of the objects of this world. So, he told me, all we need to do to lib­er­ate that spir­it is to brush past the object, and to draw forth its sound. That’s the idea which led me to per­cus­sion.

You can find excerpts of oth­er Fischinger films over at Vimeo.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Sep­tem­ber, 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Avant-Garde Ani­mat­ed Films of Wal­ter Ruttmann, Still Strik­ing­ly Fresh a Cen­tu­ry Lat­er (1921–1925)

Night on Bald Moun­tain: An Eery, Avant-Garde Pin­screen Ani­ma­tion Based on Mussorgsky’s Mas­ter­piece (1933)

The Nazi’s Philis­tine Grudge Against Abstract Art and The “Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion” of 1937

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

Watch David Byrne Lead a Massive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

in Music | February 19th, 2025

Through­out the years, we’ve fea­tured per­for­mances of Choir!Choir!Choir!–a large ama­teur choir from Toron­to that meets week­ly and sings their hearts out. You’ve seen them sing Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” Soundgar­den’s “Black Hole Sun” (to hon­or Chris Cor­nell) and Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah.”

If you dig through their Youtube archive, you can also revis­it per­for­mances of two Talk­ing Heads classics–“Psycho Killer” and “Burn­ing Down the House.” (Both below.) Which brings us to the video above. Accord­ing to Con­se­quence of Sound, Talk­ing Heads front­man David Byrne has long been a big fan of Choir!Choir!Choir!. He writes on his web site:

I’ve sat mes­mer­ized watch­ing online videos of the Cana­di­an group Choir! Choir! Choir! They some­how man­age to get hun­dreds of strangers to sing beau­ti­ful­ly together—in tune and full-voiced—with rich har­monies and detailed arrange­ments. With almost no rehearsal—how do they do it??

They man­age to achieve lift off—that feel­ing of sur­ren­der when groups sing together—when we all become part of some­thing larg­er than our­selves.

And back in 2018, Byrne got to expe­ri­ence some of that lift off first­hand. Hear him sing a mov­ing ver­sion of David Bowie’s “Heroes” with Choir!Choir!Choir! Enjoy.

Psy­cho Killer

Burn­ing Down the House

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Per­forms an Ethe­re­al Ver­sion of “Heroes,” with a Bot­tle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keep­ing the Beat

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

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

Depeche Mode Releas­es a Goose­bump-Induc­ing Cov­er of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

Brian Eno Explores What Art Does in a New Book Co-Written with Artist Bette A

in Art, Books | February 17th, 2025

Bri­an Eno was think­ing about the pur­pose of art a decade ago, as evi­denced by his 2015 John Peel Lec­ture (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). But he was also think­ing about it three decades ago, as evi­denced by A Year with Swollen Appen­dices, his diary of the year 1995 pub­lished by Faber & Faber. This year, that same house is bring­ing out What Art Does: An Unfin­ished The­o­ry, a new book on that very sub­ject writ­ten by Eno, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the artist and nov­el­ist Bette Adri­aanse, bet­ter known as Bette A. It deals with the ques­tions Eno lays out in the video above: “What does art do for us? Why does it exist? Why do we like art?”

These mat­ters turn out to have pre­oc­cu­pied Eno “since I was a kid, real­ly,” when he first got curi­ous about a “bio­log­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal expla­na­tion for the exis­tence of art” — a dri­ve not so read­i­ly fol­lowed, it seems, by young peo­ple today. Eno relates a con­ver­sa­tion he had with an acquain­tance’s fif­teen-year-old daugh­ter, who said to him, “I want­ed to go to art school, actu­al­ly, because I real­ly love doing art, but my teacher said I was too bright for that, so I should go for sci­ence sub­jects.” He sees it as “the death of a cul­ture, when you take the bright­est young peo­ple and stop them from think­ing about a huge area of human activ­i­ty.”

Clear­ly times have changed since Eno’s youth, when art school could be a gate­way to mak­ing a per­ma­nent mark on the cul­ture. With What Art Does, Eno and Adri­aanse set about cre­at­ing a book that could eas­i­ly be read by a bright teenag­er — or even her teacher — and con­se­quent­ly clar­i­fy that read­er’s think­ing about the impor­tance of art. Eno has been dis­cussing that sub­ject for quite some time, and to Adri­aanse fell the “thank­less task” of read­ing through his many writ­ings, lec­tures, and inter­views in search of mate­r­i­al that could be dis­tilled into a sin­gle, pock­et-sized book.

Eno clar­i­fies that What Art Does is not an expla­na­tion of the whole of art, nor does it rep­re­sent a defin­i­tive answer to the ques­tion implied by its title. It’s more impor­tant to him that the book expands the swath of human endeav­or that its read­ers con­sid­er to be art. “Cre­ativ­i­ty is some­thing that is born into humans,” he says, and the goal is “reawak­en­ing that, say­ing to peo­ple, ‘You can actu­al­ly do it. What­ev­er it is, it’s your thing, you can do it.’ I like to say, it’s every­thing from Cézanne to cake dec­o­ra­tion.” As “the place where peo­ple exper­i­ment with their feel­ings about things” and come to under­stand those feel­ings, art can hap­pen any­where, from the painter’s ate­lier or musi­cian’s stu­dio to the hair salon and the bak­ery: all set­tings, Eno’s fans would sure­ly agree, that could ben­e­fit from the occa­sion­al Oblique Strat­e­gy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

Eno: The New “Gen­er­a­tive Doc­u­men­tary” on Bri­an Eno That’s Nev­er the Same Movie Twice

Bri­an Eno’s Beau­ti­ful New Turntable Glows & Con­stant­ly Changes Col­ors as It Plays

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

David Byrne Gives Us the Low­down on How Music Works (with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin)

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

Flannery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand

in Literature | February 14th, 2025

In a let­ter dat­ed May 31, 1960, Flan­nery O’Con­nor, the author best known for her clas­sic sto­ry, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (lis­ten to her read the sto­ry here) penned a let­ter to her friend, the play­wright Mary­at Lee. It begins rather abrupt­ly, like­ly because it’s respond­ing to some­thing Mary­at said in a pre­vi­ous let­ter:

I hope you don’t have friends who rec­om­mend Ayn Rand to you. The fic­tion of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fic­tion. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the sub­way and threw it in the near­est garbage pail. She makes Mick­ey Spillane look like Dos­to­evsky.

The let­ter, which you can read online or find in the book The Habit of Being, then turns to oth­er mat­ters.

O’Con­nor’s crit­i­cal appraisal of Ayn Rand’s books is pret­ty straight­for­ward. But here’s one fac­toid worth know­ing. Mick­ey Spillane (ref­er­enced in O’Con­nor’s let­ter) was a huge­ly pop­u­lar mys­tery writer, who sold some 225 mil­lion books dur­ing his life­time. Accord­ing to his Wash­ing­ton Post obit, “his spe­cial­ty was tight-fist­ed, sadis­tic revenge sto­ries, often fea­tur­ing his alco­holic gumshoe Mike Ham­mer and a cast of evil­do­ers.” Crit­ics, appalled by the sex and vio­lence in his books, dis­missed his writ­ing. But Ayn Rand defend­ed him. In pub­lic, she said that Spillane was under­rat­ed. In her book The Roman­tic Man­i­festo, Rand put Spillane in some unex­pect­ed com­pa­ny when she wrote: “[Vic­tor] Hugo gives me the feel­ing of enter­ing a cathedral–Dostoevsky gives me the feel­ing of enter­ing a cham­ber of hor­rors, but with a pow­er­ful guide–Spillane gives me the feel­ing of lis­ten­ing to a mil­i­tary band in a pub­lic park–Tolstoy gives me the feel­ing of an unsan­i­tary back­yard which I do not care to enter.”

All of this goes to show that _____. We’ll let you fill in the blank.

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:

Why Should We Read Flan­nery O’Connor? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

When Ayn Rand Col­lect­ed Social Secu­ri­ty & Medicare, After Years of Oppos­ing Ben­e­fit Pro­grams

Christo­pher Hitchens Dis­miss­es the Cult of Ayn Rand: There’s No “Need to Have Essays Advo­cat­ing Self­ish­ness Among Human Beings; It Requires No Rein­force­ment”

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

Hear Flan­nery O’Connor Read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1959)

Ayn Rand Issues 13 Com­mand­ments to Film­mak­ers for Mak­ing Good Cap­i­tal­ist Movies (1947)

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

What It Was Like to Get a Meal at a Medieval Tavern

in Food & Drink, History | February 12th, 2025

At least since The Can­ter­bury Tales, the set­ting of the medieval tav­ern has held out the promise of adven­ture. For their cus­tomer base dur­ing the actu­al Mid­dle Ages, how­ev­er, they had more util­i­tar­i­an virtues. “If you ever find your­self in the late medieval peri­od, and you are in need of food and drink, you’d bet­ter find your­self an inn, tav­ern, or ale­house,” says Tast­ing His­to­ry host Max Miller in the video above. The dif­fer­ences between them had to do with qual­i­ty: the tav­erns were nicer than the ale­hous­es, and the inns were nicer than the tav­erns, hav­ing begun as full-ser­vice estab­lish­ments where cus­tomers could stay the night.

As for what inn‑, tavern‑, or ale­house-goers would actu­al­ly con­sume, Miller men­tions that the local avail­abil­i­ty of ingre­di­ents would always be a fac­tor. “You might just get a veg­etable potage; in some places it would just be beans and cab­bage.”

Else­where, though, it could be “a fish stew, or some­thing with real­ly qual­i­ty meat in it.” For the recipe of the episode — this being a cook­ing show, after all — Miller choos­es a com­mon medieval meat stew called buke­nade or bok­nade. The actu­al instruc­tions he reads con­tain words reveal­ing of their time peri­od: the Bib­li­cal sound­ing smyte for cut, for instance, or eyroun, the Mid­dle Eng­lish term that ulti­mate­ly lost favor to eggs.

The cus­tomers of tav­erns would orig­i­nal­ly have drunk wine, which in Eng­land was import­ed from France at some expense. As they grew more pop­u­lar, these busi­ness­es diver­si­fied their menus, offer­ing “cider from apples and per­ry from pears,” as well as the pre­mi­um option of mead made with hon­ey. Ale­hous­es, as their name would sug­gest, began as pri­vate homes whose wives sold ale, at least the excess that the fam­i­ly itself could­n’t drink. How­ev­er infor­mal they sound, they were still sub­ject to the same reg­u­la­tions as oth­er drink­ing spots, and alewives found to be sell­ing an infe­ri­or prod­uct were sub­ject to the same kind of pub­lic humil­i­a­tions inflict­ed upon any medieval mis­cre­ant — the likes of whom we might rec­og­nize from any num­ber of the high-fan­ta­sy tales we read today.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Medieval Tav­erns: Learn the His­to­ry of These Rough-and-Tum­ble Ances­tors of the Mod­ern Pub

Tast­ing His­to­ry: A Hit YouTube Series Shows How to Cook the Foods of Ancient Greece & Rome, Medieval Europe, and Oth­er Places & Peri­ods

How to Make Medieval Mead: A 13th Cen­tu­ry Recipe

How to Make Ancient Mesopotami­an Beer: See the 4,000-Year-Old Brew­ing Method Put to the Test

The Entire Man­u­script Col­lec­tion of Geof­frey Chaucer Gets Dig­i­tized: A New Archive Fea­tures 25,000 Images of The Can­ter­bury Tales & Oth­er Illus­trat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Who Was the Greatest Scientific Mind in History

in History, Science | February 10th, 2025

Neil deGrasse Tyson has spent his career talk­ing up not just sci­ence itself, but also its prac­ti­tion­ers. If asked to name the great­est sci­en­tist of all time, one might expect him to need a minute to think about it — or even to find him­self unable to choose. But that’s hard­ly Tyson’s style, as evi­denced by the clip above from his 92nd Street Y con­ver­sa­tion with Fareed Zakaria. “Who do you think is the most extra­or­di­nary sci­en­tif­ic mind that human­i­ty has pro­duced?” Zakaria asks. “There’s no con­test,” Tyson imme­di­ate­ly responds. “Isaac New­ton.”

Those famil­iar with Tyson will know he would be pre­pared for the fol­low-up. By way of expla­na­tion, he nar­rates cer­tain events of New­ton’s life: “He, work­ing alone, dis­cov­ers the laws of motion. Then he dis­cov­ers the law of grav­i­ty.” Faced with the ques­tion of why plan­ets orbit in ellipses rather than per­fect cir­cles, he first invents inte­gral and dif­fer­en­tial cal­cu­lus in order to deter­mine the answer. Then he dis­cov­ers the laws of optics. “Then he turns 26.” At this point in the sto­ry, young lis­ten­ers who aspire to sci­en­tif­ic careers of their own will be ner­vous­ly recal­cu­lat­ing their own intel­lec­tu­al and pro­fes­sion­al tra­jec­to­ries.

They must remem­ber that New­ton was a man of his place and time, specif­i­cal­ly the Eng­land of the late sev­en­teenth and ear­ly eigh­teenth cen­turies. And even there, he was an out­lier the likes of which his­to­ry has hard­ly known, whose eccen­tric ten­den­cies also inspired him to come up with pow­dered toad-vom­it lozenges and pre­dict the date of the apoc­a­lypse (not that he’s yet been proven wrong on that score). But in our time as in his, future (or cur­rent) sci­en­tists would do well to inter­nal­ize New­ton’s spir­it of inquiry, which got him pre­scient­ly won­der­ing whether, for instance, “the stars of the night sky are just like our sun, but just much, much far­ther away.”

“Great sci­en­tists are not marked by their answers, but by how great their ques­tions are.” To find such ques­tions, one needs not just curios­i­ty, but also humil­i­ty before the expanse of one’s own igno­rance. “I do not know what I may appear to the world,” New­ton once wrote, “but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy play­ing on the seashore, and divert­ing myself in now and then find­ing a smoother peb­ble or a pret­ti­er shell than ordi­nary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undis­cov­ered before me.” Near­ly three cen­turies after his death, that ocean remains for­bid­ding­ly but promis­ing­ly vast — at least to those who know how to look at it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Stag­ger­ing Genius of Isaac New­ton

Isaac New­ton Con­ceived of His Most Ground­break­ing Ideas Dur­ing the Great Plague of 1665

Neil deGrasse Tyson Presents a Brief His­to­ry of Every­thing in an 8.5 Minute Ani­ma­tion

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dict­ed That the World Will End in 2060

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Isaac New­ton Cre­ates a List of His 57 Sins (Cir­ca 1662)

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

When Charlie Chaplin Entered a Chaplin Look-Alike Contest & Came in 20th Place

in Film | February 4th, 2025

Char­lie Chap­lin start­ed appear­ing in his first films in 1914—40 films, to be precise—and, by 1915, the Unit­ed States had a major case of “Chap­lini­tis.” Chap­lin mus­tach­es were sud­den­ly pop­ping up every­where–as were Chap­lin imi­ta­tors and Chap­lin look-alike con­tests. A young Bob Hope appar­ent­ly won one such con­test in Cleve­land. Chap­lin Fever con­tin­ued burn­ing hot through 1921, the year when the Chap­lin look-alike con­test, shown above, was held out­side the Lib­er­ty The­atre in Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton.

Accord­ing to leg­end, some­where between 1915 and 1921, Chap­lin decid­ed to enter a Chap­lin look-alike con­test, and lost, bad­ly.

A short arti­cle called “How Char­lie Chap­lin Failed,” appear­ing in The Straits Times of Sin­ga­pore in August of 1920, read like this:

Lord Des­bor­ough, pre­sid­ing at a din­ner of the Anglo-Sax­on club told a sto­ry which will have an endur­ing life. It comes from Miss Mary Pick­ford who told it to Lady Des­bor­ough, “Char­lie Chap­lin was one day at a fair in the Unit­ed States, where a prin­ci­pal attrac­tion was a com­pe­ti­tion as to who could best imi­tate the Char­lie Chap­lin walk. The real Char­lie Chap­lin thought there might be a chance for him so he entered for the per­for­mance, minus his cel­e­brat­ed mous­tache and his boots. He was a fright­ful fail­ure and came in twen­ti­eth.

A vari­a­tion on the same sto­ry appeared in a New Zealand news­pa­per, the Pover­ty Bay Her­ald, again in 1920. As did anoth­er sto­ry in the Aus­tralian news­pa­per, the Albany Adver­tis­er, in March, 1921.

A com­pe­ti­tion in Char­lie Chap­lin imper­son­ations was held in Cal­i­for­nia recent­ly. There was some­thing like 40 com­peti­tors, and Char­lie Chap­lin, as a joke, entered the con­test under an assumed name. He imper­son­at­ed his well known film self. But he did not win; he was 27th in the com­pe­ti­tion.

Did Chap­lin come in 20th place? 27th place? Did he enter a con­test at all? It’s fun to imag­ine that he did. But, a cen­tu­ry lat­er, many con­sid­er the sto­ry the stuff of urban leg­end. When one researcher asked the Asso­ci­a­tion Chap­lin to weigh in, they appar­ent­ly had this to say: “This anec­dote told by Lord Des­bor­ough, who­ev­er he may have been, was quite wide­ly report­ed in the British press at the time. There are no oth­er ref­er­ences to such a com­pe­ti­tion in any oth­er press clip­ping albums that I have seen so I can only assume that this is the source of that rumour, urban myth, what­ev­er it is. How­ev­er, it may be true.”

I’d like to believe it is.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in ear­ly 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

6o+ Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online

What Would the World of Char­lie Chap­lin Look Like in Col­or?: Watch a Col­or­ful­ly Restored Ver­sion of A Night at the Show (1915)

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

Char­lie Chap­lin Gets Strapped into a Dystopi­an “Rube Gold­berg Machine,” a Fright­ful Com­men­tary on Mod­ern Cap­i­tal­ism

Char­lie Chap­lin Films a Scene Inside a Lion’s Cage in 200 Takes

Mahatma Gandhi’s List of the Seven Social Sins; or Tips on How to Avoid Living the Bad Life

in History, Life, Religion, Uncategorized | January 29th, 2025

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 590 AD, Pope Gre­go­ry I unveiled a list of the Sev­en Dead­ly Sins – lust, glut­tony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride – as a way to keep the flock from stray­ing into the thorny fields of ungod­li­ness. These days, though, for all but the most devout, Pope Gregory’s list seems less like a means to moral behav­ior than a descrip­tion of cable TV pro­gram­ming.

So instead, let’s look to one of the saints of the 20th cen­tu­ry–Mahat­ma Gand­hi. On Octo­ber 22, 1925, Gand­hi pub­lished a list he called the Sev­en Social Sins in his week­ly news­pa­per Young India.

• Pol­i­tics with­out prin­ci­ples.
• Wealth with­out work.
• Plea­sure with­out con­science.
• Knowl­edge with­out char­ac­ter.
• Com­merce with­out moral­i­ty.
• Sci­ence with­out human­i­ty.
• Wor­ship with­out sac­ri­fice.

The list sprang from a cor­re­spon­dence that Gand­hi had with some­one only iden­ti­fied as a “fair friend.” He pub­lished the list with­out com­men­tary save for the fol­low­ing line: “Nat­u­ral­ly, the friend does not want the read­ers to know these things mere­ly through the intel­lect but to know them through the heart so as to avoid them.”

Unlike the Catholic Church’s list, Gandhi’s list is express­ly focused on the con­duct of the indi­vid­ual in soci­ety. Gand­hi preached non-vio­lence and inter­de­pen­dence and every sin­gle one of these sins are exam­ples of self­ish­ness win­ning out over the com­mon good.

It’s also a list that, if ful­ly absorbed, will make the folks over at the US Cham­ber of Com­merce and Ayn Rand Insti­tute itch. After all, “Wealth with­out work,” is a pret­ty accu­rate descrip­tion of America’s 1%. (Invest­ments ain’t work. Ask Thomas Piket­ty.) “Com­merce with­out moral­i­ty” sounds a lot like every sin­gle oil com­pa­ny out there and “knowl­edge with­out char­ac­ter” describes half the hacks on cable news. “Pol­i­tics with­out prin­ci­ples” describes the oth­er half.

In 1947, Gand­hi gave his fifth grand­son, Arun Gand­hi, a slip of paper with this same list on it, say­ing that it con­tained “the sev­en blun­ders that human soci­ety com­mits, and that cause all the vio­lence.” The next day, Arun returned to his home in South Africa. Three months lat­er, Gand­hi was shot to death by a Hin­du extrem­ist.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tol­stoy and Gand­hi Exchange Let­ters: Two Thinkers’ Quest for Gen­tle­ness, Humil­i­ty & Love (1909)

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

Isaac New­ton Cre­ates a List of His 57 Sins (Cir­ca 1662)

Mahat­ma Gand­hi Talks (in First Record­ed Video)

When Mahat­ma Gand­hi Met Char­lie Chap­lin (1931)

Hear Gandhi’s Famous Speech on the Exis­tence of God (1931)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions,

The Oldest Beer Receipt (Circa 2050 BC)

in Food & Drink, History | January 23rd, 2025

Above, we have the Alu­lu Beer Receipt. Writ­ten in cuneiform on an old clay tablet, the 4,000-year-old receipt doc­u­ments a trans­ac­tion. A brew­er, named Alu­lu, deliv­ered “the best” beer to a recip­i­ent named Ur-Amma, who appar­ent­ly also served as the scribe. The Mesopotami­ans drank beer dai­ly. And while they con­sid­ered it a sta­ple of every­day life, they also regard­ed it as a divine gift—something that con­tributed to human hap­pi­ness and well-being.

In our archive, you can find the recipe for Sumer­ian beer and also watch it get made. That’s all free. No receipts will be issued.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

How to Make Ancient Mesopotami­an Beer: See the 4,000-Year-Old Brew­ing Method Put to the Test

5,000-Year-Old Chi­nese Beer Recipe Gets Recre­at­ed by Stan­ford Stu­dents