Stephen Hawking’s Black Hole Paradox Explained in Animation

in Astronomy, Physics, Science | November 21st, 2019

Many of us have heard of Stephen Hawk­ing but know him only as a sym­bol of a pow­er­ful mind ded­i­cat­ed for a life­time to the thorni­est prob­lems in astro­physics. Even more of us have heard of black holes but know of them only as those dan­ger­ous things in sci-fi movies that suck in space­ships. But if we gain an under­stand­ing of Hawk­ing’s work on black holes, how­ev­er basic, we gain a much clear­er view of both enti­ties and what they mean to the human endeav­or of grasp­ing the work­ings of real­i­ty. What it all has to do with “one of the biggest para­dox­es in the uni­verse,” and why that para­dox “threat­ens to unrav­el mod­ern sci­ence,” pro­vide the sub­ject mat­ter for the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above.

In order to explain what’s called the “Black Hole Infor­ma­tion Para­dox,” astro­physi­cist Fabio Pacuc­ci must first explain “infor­ma­tion,” which in this usage con­sti­tutes every part of the real­i­ty in which we live. “Typ­i­cal­ly, the infor­ma­tion we talk about is vis­i­ble to the naked eye,” he says. “This kind of infor­ma­tion tells us that an apple is red, round, and shiny.” But what physi­cists care about is “quan­tum infor­ma­tion,” which “refers to the quan­tum prop­er­ties of all the par­ti­cles that make up that apple, such as their posi­tion, veloc­i­ty and spin.” The par­ti­cles that make up every object of the uni­verse have “unique quan­tum prop­er­ties,” and the laws of physics as cur­rent­ly under­stood hold that “the total amount of quan­tum infor­ma­tion in the uni­verse must be con­served.”

Smash the apple into sauce, in oth­er words, and you don’t cre­ate or destroy any quan­tum infor­ma­tion, you just move it around. But in the parts of space­time with grav­i­ty so strong that noth­ing can escape them, bet­ter known as black holes, that par­tic­u­lar law of physics may not apply. “When an apple enters a black hole, it seems as though it leaves the uni­verse, and all its quan­tum infor­ma­tion becomes irre­triev­ably lost,” says Pacuc­ci. “How­ev­er, this doesn’t imme­di­ate­ly break the laws of physics. The infor­ma­tion is out of sight, but it might still exist with­in the black hole’s mys­te­ri­ous void.”

Then we have Hawk­ing Radi­a­tion, the epony­mous genius’ con­tri­bu­tion to the study of black holes, which shows that “black holes are grad­u­al­ly evap­o­rat­ing,” los­ing mass over “incred­i­bly long peri­ods of time” in such a way that sug­gests that “a black hole and all the quan­tum infor­ma­tion it con­tains could be com­plete­ly erased” in the process. What might go into the black hole as an apple’s infor­ma­tion does­n’t come out look­ing like an apple’s infor­ma­tion. Quan­tum infor­ma­tion seems to be destroyed by black holes, yet every­thing else about quan­tum infor­ma­tion tells us it can’t be destroyed: like any para­dox, or con­tra­dic­tion between two known or prob­a­ble truths, “the destruc­tion of infor­ma­tion would force us to rewrite some of our most fun­da­men­tal sci­en­tif­ic par­a­digms.”

But for a sci­en­tist in the Hawk­ing mold, this dif­fi­cul­ty just makes the chase for knowl­edge more inter­est­ing. Pacuc­ci cites a few hypothe­ses: that “infor­ma­tion actu­al­ly is encod­ed in the escap­ing radi­a­tion, in some way we can’t yet under­stand,” that “the para­dox is just a mis­un­der­stand­ing of how gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty and quan­tum field the­o­ry inter­act, that “a solu­tion to this and many oth­er para­dox­es will come nat­u­ral­ly with a ‘uni­fied the­o­ry of every­thing,’ ” and most bold­ly that, because “the 2D sur­face of an event hori­zon” — the inescapable edge of a black hole — “can store quan­tum infor­ma­tion,” the bound­ary of the observ­able uni­verse “is also a 2D sur­face encod­ed with infor­ma­tion about real, 3D objects,” imply­ing that “real­i­ty as we know it is just a holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tion of that infor­ma­tion.” Big if true, as they say, but as Hawk­ing seems to have known, the truth about our real­i­ty is sure­ly big­ger than any of us can yet imag­ine.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Hawking’s Final Book and Sci­en­tif­ic Paper Just Got Pub­lished: Brief Answers to the Big Ques­tions and “Infor­ma­tion Para­dox”

Stephen Hawking’s Lec­tures on Black Holes Now Ful­ly Ani­mat­ed with Chalk­board Illus­tra­tions

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

Stephen Hawking’s Uplift­ing Mes­sage: You Can Get Your­self Out of Any Hole, No Mat­ter What Their Size

The Largest Black Holes in the Uni­verse: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion

Watch a Star Get Devoured by a Super­mas­sive Black Hole

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

82 Animated Interviews with Living, Dead, Celebrated & Sometimes Disgraced Celebrities

in Animation, Film, Music, Television | November 19th, 2019

Who wants to live in the present? It’s such a lim­it­ing peri­od, com­pared to the past.

—Roger Ebert, Play­boy 1990

Were Ebert alive today would he still express him­self thus­ly in a record­ed inter­view? His remarks are spe­cif­ic to his cin­e­mat­ic pas­sion, but still. As a smart Mid­west­ern­er, he would have real­ized that the corn has ears and the pota­toes have eyes. Remarks can be tak­en out of con­text. (Wit­ness the above.)

Recent his­to­ry has shown that not every­one is keen to roll back the clock—women, peo­ple of col­or, and gen­der non-con­form­ing indi­vid­u­als have been reclaim­ing their nar­ra­tives in record num­bers, air­ing secrets, expos­ing injus­tice, and artic­u­lat­ing offens­es that can no longer stand.

If pow­er­ful, old­er, white het­ero­sex­u­al men in the enter­tain­ment busi­ness are exer­cis­ing ver­bal cau­tion these days when speak­ing as a mat­ter of pub­lic record, there’s some good­ly cause for that.

It also makes the archival celebri­ty inter­views excerpt­ed for Quot­ed Stu­dios’ ani­mat­ed series, Blank on Blank, feel very vibrant and uncen­sored, though be fore­warned that your blood may boil a bit just review­ing the celebri­ty line up—Michael Jack­son, Woody Allen, Clint East­wood hold­ing forth on the Pussy Gen­er­a­tion 10 years before the Pussy­hat Project legit­imized com­mon usage of that charged word….

(In full dis­clo­sure, Blank on Blank is an oft-report­ed favorite here at Open Cul­ture.)

Here’s rap­per Tupac Skakur, a year and a half before he was killed in a dri­ve by shoot­ing, cast­ing him­self as a trag­ic Shake­speare­an hero,

His mus­ings on how dif­fer­ent­ly the pub­lic would have viewed him had he been born white seem even more rel­e­vant today. Read­ers who are only pass­ing­ly acquaint­ed with his artis­tic out­put and leg­end may be sur­prised to hear him trac­ing his alle­giance to “thug life” to the pos­i­tive role he saw the Black Pan­thers play­ing in his sin­gle mother’s life when he was a child.

On the oth­er hand, Shakur’s lav­ish and freely expressed self pity at the way the press report­ed on his rape charge (for which he even­tu­al­ly served 9 months) does not sit at all well in 2019, nor did it in 1994.

Like the major­i­ty of Blank on Blank entries, the record­ing was not the interview’s final form, but rather a jour­nal­is­tic ref­er­ence. Ani­ma­tor Patrick Smith may add a lay­er of visu­al edi­to­r­i­al, but in terms of nar­ra­tion, every sub­ject is telling their own undi­lut­ed truth.

It is inter­est­ing to keep in mind that this was one of the first inter­views the Blank on Blank team tack­led, in 2013.

Six years lat­er, it’s hard to imag­ine they would risk choos­ing that por­tion of the inter­view to ani­mate. Had Shakur lived, would he be can­celled?

Guess who was the star of the very first Blank on Blank to air on PBS back in 2013?

Broad­cast­er and tele­vi­sion host Lar­ry King. While King has stead­fast­ly rebutted accu­sa­tions of grop­ing, we sus­pect that if the Blank on Blank team was just now get­ting around to this sub­ject, they’d focus on a dif­fer­ent part of his 2001 Esquire pro­file than the part where he regales inter­view­er Cal Fuss­man with tales of pre-cell­phone “seduc­tion.”

It’s only been six years since the series’ debut, but it’s a dif­fer­ent world for sure.

If you’re among the eas­i­ly trig­gered, liv­ing leg­end Meryl Streep’s thoughts on beau­ty, har­vest­ed in 2014 from a 2008 con­ver­sa­tion with Enter­tain­ment Weekly’s Chris­tine Spines, won’t offer total respite, but any indig­na­tion you feel will be in sup­port of, not because of this celebri­ty sub­ject.

It’s actu­al­ly pret­ty rous­ing to hear her mer­ri­ly expos­ing Hol­ly­wood play­ers’ pig­gish­ness, sev­er­al years before the Har­vey Wein­stein scan­dal broke.

For even more evi­dence of “a dif­fer­ent world,” check out inter­view­er Howard Smith’s remark to Janis Joplin in her final inter­view-cum-Blank-on-Blank episode, four days before here 1970 death:

A lot of women have been say­ing that the whole field of rock music is noth­ing more than a big male chau­vin­ist rip off and when I say, “Yeah, what about Janis Joplin? She made it,” they say, “Oh…her.” It seems to both­er a lot of women’s lib peo­ple that you’re kind of so up front sex­u­al­ly.

Joplin, stung, unleash­es a string of invec­tives against fem­i­nists and women, in gen­er­al. One has to won­der if this reac­tion was Smith’s goal all along. Or maybe I’m just hav­ing flash­backs to mid­dle school, when the pop­u­lar girls would always send a del­e­gate dis­guised as a con­cerned friend to tell you why you were being shunned, prefer­ably in a high­ly pub­lic glad­i­a­to­r­i­al are­na such as the lunch­room.

I pre­sume that sort of stuff occurs pri­mar­i­ly over social media these days.

Good on the Blank on Blank staff for pick­ing up on the tenor of this inter­view and titling it “Janis Joplin on Rejec­tion.”

You can binge watch a playlist of 82 Blank on Blank episodes, fea­tur­ing many thoughts few express so open­ly any­more, here or right below.

When you’re done with that, you’ll find even more Blank on Blank entries on the cre­ators’ web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock Med­i­tates on Sus­pense & Dark Humor in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

Joni Mitchell Talks About Life as a Reluc­tant Star in a New Ani­mat­ed Inter­view

The Out­siders: Lou Reed, Hunter S. Thomp­son, and Frank Zap­pa Reveal Them­selves in Cap­ti­vat­ing­ly Ani­mat­ed Inter­views

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Seven Road-Tested Habits of Effective Artists

in Art, Computer Science, How to Learn for Free, Life, Philosophy, Software | November 15th, 2019

Fif­teen years ago, a young con­struc­tion work­er named Andrew Price went in search of free 3d soft­ware to help him achieve his goal of ren­der­ing a 3D car.

He stum­bled onto Blender, a just-the-tick­et open source soft­ware that helps users with every aspect of 3D creation—modeling, rig­ging, ani­ma­tion, sim­u­la­tion, ren­der­ing, com­posit­ing, and motion track­ing.

Price describes his ear­ly learn­ing style as “play­ing it by ear,” sam­pling tuto­ri­als, some of which he couldn’t be both­ered to com­plete.

Desire for free­lance gigs led him to forge a new iden­ti­ty, that of a Blender Guru, whose tuto­ri­als, pod­casts, and arti­cles would help oth­er new users get the hang of the soft­ware.

But it wasn’t declar­ing him­self an expert that ulti­mate­ly improved his artis­tic skills. It was hold­ing his own feet over the fire by plac­ing a bet with his younger cousin, who stood to gain $1000 if Price failed to rack up 1,000 “likes” by post­ing 2D draw­ings to Art­Sta­tion with­in a 6‑month peri­od.

(If he succeeded—which he did, 3 days before his self-imposed deadline—his cousin owed him noth­ing. Loss aver­sion proved to be a more pow­er­ful moti­va­tor than any car­rot on a stick…)

In order to snag the req­ui­site likes, Price found that he need­ed to revise some habits and com­mit to a more robust dai­ly prac­tice, a jour­ney he detailed in a pre­sen­ta­tion at the 2016 Blender Con­fer­ence.

Price con­fess­es that the chal­lenge taught him much about draw­ing and paint­ing, but even more about hav­ing an effec­tive artis­tic prac­tice. His sev­en rules apply to any num­ber of cre­ative forms:

Andrew Price’s Rules for an Effec­tive Artist Prac­tice:

1. Prac­tice Dai­ly

A num­ber of pro­lif­ic artists have sub­scribed to this belief over the years, includ­ing nov­el­ist (and moth­er!) JK Rowl­ing, come­di­an Jer­ry Sein­feld, auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal per­former Mike Bir­bli­gia, and mem­oirist David Sedaris.

If you feel too fried to uphold your end of the bar­gain, pre­tend to go easy on your­self with a lit­tle trick Price picked up from music pro­duc­er Rick Rubin: Do the absolute min­i­mum. You’ll like­ly find that per­form­ing the min­i­mum posi­tions you to do much more than that. Your resis­tance is not so much to the doing as it is to the embark­ing.

2. Quan­ti­ty over Per­fec­tion­ism Mas­querad­ing as Qual­i­ty

This harkens back to Rule Num­ber One. Who are we to say which of our works will be judged wor­thy. Just keep putting it out there—remember it’s all prac­tice, and law of aver­ages favors those whose out­put is, like Picasso’s, prodi­gious. Don’t stand in the way of progress by split­ting a sin­gle work’s end­less hairs.

3. Steal With­out Rip­ping Off

Immerse your­self in the cre­ative bril­liance of those you admire. Then prof­it off your own improved efforts, a prac­tice advo­cat­ed by the likes of musi­cian David Bowie, com­put­er vision­ary Steve Jobs, and artist/social com­men­ta­tor Banksy.

4. Edu­cate Your­self

As a stand-alone, that old chest­nut about prac­tice mak­ing per­fect is not suf­fi­cient to the task. Whether you seek out online tuto­ri­als, as Price did, enroll in a class, or des­ig­nate a men­tor, a con­sci­en­tious com­mit­ment to study your craft will help you to bet­ter mas­ter it.

5. Give your­self a break

Bang­ing your head against the wall is not good for your brain. Price cel­e­brates author Stephen King’s prac­tice of giv­ing the first draft of a new nov­el six weeks to mar­i­nate. Your break may be short­er. Three days may be ample to juice you up cre­ative­ly. Just make sure it’s in your cal­en­dar to get back to it.

6. Seek Feed­back

Film­mak­er Tai­ka Wait­i­ti, rap­per Kanye West, and the big goril­las at Pixar are not threat­ened by oth­ers’ opin­ions. Seek them out. You may learn some­thing.

7. Cre­ate What You Want To

Pas­sion projects are the key to cre­ative longevi­ty and plea­sur­able process. Don’t cater to a fick­le pub­lic, or the shift­ing sands of fash­ion. Pur­sue the sorts of things that inter­est you.

Implic­it in Price’s sev­en com­mand­ments is the notion that some­thing may have to budge—your night­ly cock­tails, the num­ber of hours spent on social media, that extra half hour in bed after the alarm goes off… Don’t neglect your famil­ial or civic oblig­a­tions, but nei­ther should you short­change your art. Life’s too short.

Read the tran­script of Andrew Price’s Blender Con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & More

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

How to Read Many More Books in a Year: Watch a Short Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing Some of the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Book­stores

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Why David Sedaris Hates America’s Favorite Word, “Awesome”

in English Language | November 11th, 2019

David Sedaris has made his name as a humorist, not­ing the absur­di­ties of every­thing from life with his par­ents and sib­lings to the per­pet­u­al cycle of world trav­el and book-sign­ing into which fame has launched him. But as his long­time read­ers know, he’s real­ly a stu­dent of lan­guage: not only has his own voice on the page been shaped by close obser­va­tion of Eng­lish, he’s stud­ied and con­tin­ues to study a host of for­eign lan­guages as well. Long­time read­ers will remem­ber how much mate­r­i­al he got out of the French class­es that gave his book Me Talk Pret­ty One Day its title, and he has more recent­ly writ­ten of his strug­gles to get a han­dle on such diverse tongues as Ger­man, Japan­ese, and Slovene. (I myself wrote an essay about Sedaris’ lan­guage-learn­ing in the Los Ange­les Review of Books.)

Though he’s nev­er explic­it­ly cit­ed it as part of his writ­ing process, these stud­ies have clear­ly honed Sedaris’ ear for lan­guage in gen­er­al, espe­cial­ly when it comes to its local tics and eccen­tric­i­ties. “In France the most often used word is ‘con­ner­ie,’ which means ‘bull­shit,’ ” he says in the audio­book clip at the top of the post from his lat­est col­lec­tion Calyp­so, “and in Amer­i­ca it’s hands-down ‘awe­some,’ which has replaced ‘incred­i­ble,’ ‘good,’ and even ‘just OK.’ Pret­ty much every­thing that isn’t ter­ri­ble is awe­some in Amer­i­ca now.” What once denot­ed a sight or expe­ri­ence filled with the emo­tion of “dread, ven­er­a­tion, and won­der that is inspired by author­i­ty or by the sacred or sub­lime” has become, in Sedaris’ view, a syn­onym for “fine.”

“It just got out of hand to me,” Sedaris explains to USA Today. “Everything’s awe­some all the time. I was in Boul­der, Col­orado” — a city he has else­where described as “the ‘awe­some’ cap­i­tal” — “and some­one said, ‘I’ll have a dou­ble espres­so, awe­some,’ and the oth­er per­son said, ‘Awe­some.’ ”

(In anoth­er inter­view, he men­tions that he often fines peo­ple “a dol­lar a time at events for using the A‑word. I warn them first, because it’s only fair, but I can make pret­ty good mon­ey that way.”) This may sound like a futile objec­tion to inevitable lin­guis­tic change, but only to those who haven’t noticed the under­ly­ing debase­ment of mean­ing. If “awe­some” can now describe a cof­fee, what word, if any, indi­cates gen­uine awe?

A sim­i­lar fate has befall­en oth­er Eng­lish words and expres­sions. “Great” pre­ced­ed “awe­some” into the seman­tic haze, and “to beg the ques­tion” has become a stan­dard exam­ple of a phrase to whose orig­i­nal mean­ing only a pedant would cling. Peo­ple now often use it syn­ony­mous­ly with “rais­ing the ques­tion,” but if we accept that as its mean­ing, we’re left with no way to refer to ques­tion-beg­ging itself, a rhetor­i­cal prac­tice still as ram­pant as ever.  To crit­i­cize the mod­ern loos­en­ing of these usages is to keep sharp and com­plete one’s array of tools for expres­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion; we con­demn the overuse of a word not out of pure hatred but out of under­stand­ing the neces­si­ty of its true mean­ing. Even David Sedaris grants “awe­some” its prop­er time and place: “I went to the Great Wall of Chi­na once, and I have to say, that was awe­some. But that’s the only thing I can think of. Not a lat­te.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Sedaris: A Sam­pling of His Inim­itable Humor

David Sedaris Breaks Down His Writ­ing Process: Keep a Diary, Car­ry a Note­book, Read Out Loud, Aban­don Hope

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Cre­ates Lists of His Favorite Words: “Mau­gre,” “Taran­tism,” “Ruck,” “Prima­para” & More

Bertrand Rus­sell Lists His 20 Favorite Words in 1958 (and What Are Some of Yours?)

The Largest His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of Eng­lish Slang Now Free Online: Cov­ers 500 Years of the “Vul­gar Tongue”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

A Map of How the Word “Tea” Spread Across the World

in Food & Drink, History | November 8th, 2019

When I order a cup of tea in Korea, where I live, I ask for cha (차); when trav­el­ing in Japan, I ask for the hon­orif­ic-affixed ocha (お茶). In Span­ish-speak­ing places I order té, which I try to pro­nounce as dis­tinct­ly as pos­si­ble from the thé I order in French-speak­ing ones. And on my trips back to Unit­ed States, where I’m from, I just ask for tea. Not that tea, despite its awe-inspir­ing ven­er­a­bil­i­ty, has ever quite matched the pop­u­lar­i­ty of cof­fee in Amer­i­ca, but you can still find it most every­where you go. And for decades now, no less an Amer­i­can cor­po­rate cof­fee jug­ger­naut than Star­bucks has labeled cer­tain of its teas chai, which has pop­u­lar­ized that alter­na­tive term but also cre­at­ed a degree of pub­lic con­fu­sion: what’s the dif­fer­ence, if any, between chai and tea?

Both words refer, ulti­mate­ly, to the same bev­er­age invent­ed in Chi­na more than three mil­len­nia ago. Tea may now be drunk all over the world, but peo­ple in dif­fer­ent places pre­fer dif­fer­ent kinds: fla­vors vary from region to region with­in Chi­na, and Chi­nese teas taste dif­fer­ent from, say, Indi­an teas. Star­bucks pre­sum­ably brands its Indi­an-style tea with the word chai because it sounds like the words used to refer to tea in India.

It also sounds like the words used to refer to tea in Far­si, Turk­ish, and even Russ­ian, all of them sim­i­lar to chay. But oth­er coun­tries’ words for tea sound dif­fer­ent: the May­lay teh, the Finnish tee, the Dutch thee. “The words that sound like ‘cha’ spread across land, along the Silk Road,” writes Quartz’s Nikhil Son­nad. “The ‘tea’-like phras­ings spread over water, by Dutch traders bring­ing the nov­el leaves back to Europe.”

“The term cha (茶) is ‘Sinitic,’ mean­ing it is com­mon to many vari­eties of Chi­nese,” writes Son­nad. “It began in Chi­na and made its way through cen­tral Asia, even­tu­al­ly becom­ing ‘chay’ (چای) in Per­sian. That is no doubt due to the trade routes of the Silk Road, along which, accord­ing to a recent dis­cov­ery, tea was trad­ed over 2,000 years ago.” The te form “used in coastal-Chi­nese lan­guages spread to Europe via the Dutch, who became the pri­ma­ry traders of tea between Europe and Asia in the 17th cen­tu­ry, as explained in the World Atlas of Lan­guage Struc­tures. The main Dutch ports in east Asia were in Fujian and Tai­wan, both places where peo­ple used the te pro­nun­ci­a­tion. The Dutch East India Company’s expan­sive tea impor­ta­tion into Europe gave us the French thé, the Ger­man Tee, and the Eng­lish tea.”

And we must­n’t leave out the Por­tuguese, who in the 1500s “trav­elled to the Far East hop­ing to gain a monop­oly on the spice trade,” as Cul­ture Trip’s Rachel Dea­son writes, but “decid­ed to focus on export­ing tea instead. The Por­tuguese called the drink cha, just like the peo­ple of south­ern Chi­na did,” and under that name shipped its leaves “down through Indone­sia, under the south­ern tip of Africa, and back up to west­ern Europe.” You can see the glob­al spread of tea, tee, thé, chai, chay, cha, or what­ev­er you call it in the map above, recent­ly tweet­ed out by East Asia his­to­ri­an Nick Kapur. (You may remem­ber the fan­tas­ti­cal Japan­ese his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca he sent into cir­cu­la­tion last year.) Study it care­ful­ly, and you’ll be able to order tea in the lands of both te and cha. But should you find your­self in Bur­ma, it won’t help you: just remem­ber that the word there is lakphak.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Tea

1934 Map Resizes the World to Show Which Coun­try Drinks the Most Tea

10 Gold­en Rules for Mak­ing the Per­fect Cup of Tea (1941)

George Orwell’s Rules for Mak­ing the Per­fect Cup of Tea: A Short Ani­ma­tion

Epic Tea Time with Alan Rick­man

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

Martin Scorsese Explains the Difference Between Cinema and Movies

in Film | November 6th, 2019

Image by “Sieb­bi,” Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

There is a bat­tle rag­ing on the inter­net, and you may count your­self lucky if you’ve heard noth­ing about it since it involves the usu­al unnec­es­sary esca­la­tions and knee-jerk reac­tions: the bat­tle of super­hero movies ver­sus the art form known as “cin­e­ma.” The first shot, one might say, was fired by Mar­tin Scors­ese, who has cer­tain­ly earned the right to make pro­nounce­ments on the sub­ject. Asked for his thoughts on the MCU (that’s Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse for the unini­ti­at­ed) dur­ing an inter­view with Empire mag­a­zine, Scors­ese opined, “that’s not cin­e­ma. Hon­est­ly, the clos­est I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the cir­cum­stances, is theme parks.”

This writer is of the opin­ion that one can enjoy film both as art and as pure spec­ta­cle, while rec­og­niz­ing clear dif­fer­ences between them. They share a medi­um, but they aim at and pro­duce dif­fer­ent effects. Com­par­ing the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing Avengers: Endgame or most any oth­er Mar­vel film to rid­ing a roller­coast­er seems per­fect­ly appo­site to me. Still, com­ic film fans went wild online, lob­bing all sorts of accu­sa­tions at Scors­ese and fel­low direc­tors who deliv­ered even less char­i­ta­ble takes on the Mar­vel movie phe­nom. Twit­ter memes and jokes pro­lif­er­at­ed; Disney’s CEO weighed in with what must sure­ly be a dis­in­ter­est­ed crit­i­cal opin­ion.

Let’s look past dis­tract­ing hot takes, mar­ket­ing strate­gies, and gen­er­a­tional war­fare. Scors­ese has elo­quent­ly clar­i­fied his posi­tion in a New York Times op-ed, and his argu­ments are worth our atten­tion. For one thing, the direc­tor approach­es the sub­ject with humil­i­ty, admit­ting his own bias­es. “The fact that [Mar­vel] films don’t them­selves inter­est me is a mat­ter of per­son­al taste and tem­pera­ment,” he writes. “I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a lat­er time, I might have been excit­ed by these pic­tures and maybe even want­ed to make one myself.”

He details his own sense of what cin­e­ma should be, one drawn prin­ci­pal­ly from his influ­ences: Bergman, Godard, Hitch­cock (whose movies might also be called theme parks in a way, Scors­ese grants, but rely more on char­ac­ter­i­za­tion than grand set pieces and spe­cial effects). He also lists cur­rent favorites: Ari Aster, Spike Lee, Kathryn Bigelow, Paul Thomas Ander­son. As an auteur him­self, he has a clear bias in favor of oth­er auteurs. Yet there’s more at stake than taste or what some have seen as elit­ism. “Why not just let super­hero films and oth­er fran­chise films be?” he asks. “The rea­son is sim­ple. In many places around this coun­try and around the world, fran­chise films are now your pri­ma­ry choice if you want to see some­thing on the big screen.”

Super­hero movies have dom­i­nat­ed the mar­ket, edg­ing out oth­er kinds of films with oth­er kinds of aspi­ra­tions. The “finan­cial dom­i­nance” of what Scors­ese calls “world­wide audio­vi­su­al enter­tain­ment” is “being used to mar­gin­al­ize and even belit­tle the exis­tence” of cinema—of small­er films that take cre­ative risks and are not com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed prod­ucts of mar­ket research and audi­ence test­ing for max­i­mum box-office con­sump­tion. Hav­ing grown up him­self in the Hol­ly­wood stu­dio sys­tem, Scors­ese doesn’t dis­miss film as a busi­ness, but he laments the loss of a “pro­duc­tive ten­sion” between “the artists and the peo­ple who ran the busi­ness.” With­out that ten­sion, the indus­try becomes an effi­cient, but inhu­man, machine.

It’s a prob­lem, in oth­er words, of a pow­er imbal­ance in which studios—vertically inte­grat­ed into mega-cor­po­ra­tions like Disney—push prof­it over most oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions. This severe­ly lim­its the risks they’re will­ing to take, and it push­es inde­pen­dent and exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ers fur­ther into the mar­gins, and out of the­aters alto­geth­er, where their works were meant to be seen. Net­flix and oth­er stream­ing ser­vices may open up unique oppor­tu­ni­ties, but they dimin­ish film by rel­e­gat­ing it to tele­vi­sion screens (and, worse, tablets and phones).

Scorsese’s argu­ment is only part­ly an aes­thet­ic one—he may object to Mar­vel movies on the grounds that they’re for­get­table and pre­dictable. But the pri­ma­ry con­cern he voic­es in his essay is a prob­lem of pro­por­tion. The Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Universe—like the vil­lain in Avengers: Endgame (which Scors­ese hasn’t seen)—threatens to take over and half-destroy the uni­verse of cin­e­ma in all its vari­ety of forms and expres­sions. It is large­ly suc­ceed­ing. “For any­one who dreams of mak­ing movies or who is just start­ing out, the sit­u­a­tion at this moment is bru­tal and inhos­pitable to art,” Scors­ese writes. “And the act of sim­ply writ­ing those words fills me with ter­ri­ble sad­ness.” Read his essay here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese to Teach His First Online Course on Film­mak­ing

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

Frank Zap­pa Explains the Decline of the Music Busi­ness (1987)

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

Behold Félix Nadar’s Pioneering Photographs of the Paris Catacombs (1861)

in History, Photography | November 6th, 2019

As a tourist in Eng­land, one may be per­suad­ed to pick a piece of mer­chan­dise with the now-ubiq­ui­tous slo­gan “Keep Calm and Car­ry On,” from a lit­tle-dis­played World War II moti­va­tion­al poster redis­cov­ered in 2000 and turned into the 21st-cen­tu­ry’s most cheeky emblem of stiff-upper-lip-ness. Trav­el across the Chan­nel, how­ev­er, and you’ll find anoth­er ver­sion of the sen­ti­ment, drawn not from war mem­o­ra­bil­ia but the ancient warn­ing of memen­to mori.

“Keep Calm and Remem­ber You Will Die” say mag­nets, key chains, and oth­er sou­venirs embla­zoned with the logo of the Paris Cat­a­combs, a major tourist attrac­tion that sells timed tick­ets “to man­age the large queue that forms dai­ly out­side the non­de­script entrance on the Place Den­fert-Rochere­au (for­mer­ly called the Place d’Enfer, or Hell Square),” writes Alli­son Meier at Pub­lic Domain Review. Still pro­found­ly creepy, the Cat­a­combs were once as for­bid­ding to descend into as their walls of skulls and bones are to gaze upon, requir­ing vis­i­tors to car­ry flam­ing torch­es into their depths.

When pio­neer­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er Félix Nadar “descend­ed into this ‘empire of death’ in the 1860s arti­fi­cial light­ing was still in its infan­cy.” Using Bun­sen bat­ter­ies “and a good deal of patience,” Nadar cap­tured the Cat­a­combs as they had nev­er been seen. He also doc­u­ment­ed the com­ple­tion of “artis­tic facades” of skulls and long bones, built “to hide piles of oth­er bones,” notes Strange Remains, from an esti­mat­ed six mil­lion corpses exhumed from over­crowd­ed Parisian ceme­ter­ies in the 18th and 19th cen­turies.

Nadar (the pseu­do­nym of Gas­pard-Félix Tour­na­chon, born 1820), helped turn the Cat­a­combs into the glob­al­ly famous des­ti­na­tion they became. His “sub­ter­ranean pho­tographs,” writes Matthew Gandy in The Fab­ric of Space: Water, Moder­ni­ty, and the Urban Imag­i­na­tion, “played a key role in fos­ter­ing the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of sew­ers and cat­a­combs among mid­dle-class Parisians, and from the 1867 Expo­si­tion onward the city author­i­ties began offer­ing pub­lic tours of under­ground Paris.” The Cat­a­combs became, in Nadar’s own words, “one of those places that every­one wants to see and no one wants to see again.”

Vis­i­tors came seek­ing the grim fas­ci­na­tions they had seen in Nadar’s pho­tos, tak­en dur­ing a “sin­gle three-month cam­paign,” Meier notes, some­time in 1861, after the pho­tog­ra­ph­er “pio­neered new approach­es to arti­fi­cial light.” The project was an irre­sistible pho­to­graph­ic essay on the lev­el­ing force of mor­tal­i­ty. In an essay titled “Paris Above and Below,” pub­lished in the 1867 Expo­si­tion guide, Nadar described the “egal­i­tar­i­an con­fu­sion of death,” in which “a Merovin­gian king remains in eter­nal silence next to those mas­sa­cred in Sep­tem­ber ’92.”

The ancient and the mod­ern dead, peas­ants, aris­to­crats, vic­tims of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary ter­ror all piled togeth­er, “every trace implaca­bly lost in the unac­count­able clut­ter of the most hum­ble, the anony­mous.” The huge necrop­o­lis ini­tial­ly had no shape or order. Its 19th cen­tu­ry redesign reflect­ed that of the Parisian streets above. In 1810, Napoleon autho­rized quar­ries inspec­tor Héri­cart de Thury to under­take a ren­o­va­tion that account­ed for what Thury called “the inti­mate rap­port that will sure­ly exist between the Cat­a­combs and the events of the French Rev­o­lu­tion.”

This “rap­port” not only includ­ed the “mass bur­ial of the vic­tims of the 1792 Sep­tem­ber Mas­sacres” Nadar ref­er­ences in his essay, but also, Meier points out, the arrange­ment of bones in “pat­terns, rows, and cross­es; altars and columns were installed below the earth. Plaques with evoca­tive quo­ta­tions were added to encour­age vis­i­tors to reflect on mor­tal­i­ty.” Because of the long expo­sure times the pho­tographs required, Nadar used man­nequins to stand in for the liv­ing work­ers who com­plet­ed this work. The only liv­ing body he cap­tured was his own, in the self-por­trait above.

Learn more about the his­to­ry of the Cat­a­combs and Nadar’s now-leg­endary pho­to­graph­ic project at Pub­lic Domain Review and see many more memen­to mori images here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Notre Dame Cap­tured in an Ear­ly Pho­to­graph, 1838

Take a Visu­al Jour­ney Through 181 Years of Street Pho­tog­ra­phy (1838–2019)

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

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

How to Find Silence in a Noisy World

in Life, Nature | November 1st, 2019

“Take a walk at night,” wrote avant-garde com­pos­er Pauline Oliv­eros in her 1974 “Son­ic Med­i­ta­tions,” a set of instruc­tions for what she called deep lis­ten­ing. “Walk so silent­ly that the bot­tom of your feet become ears.” Lis­ten­ing to silence opens up rich new worlds of sound. It can be a life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence.

“It’s hard to imag­ine that a sound can trans­form some­one’s life, but it hap­pened to me,” says acoustic ecol­o­gist Gor­don Hemp­ton in the short 360-degree doc­u­men­tary above, “How to Find Silence in a Noisy World.” Hemp­ton learned to walk silent­ly while car­ry­ing a micro­phone, doc­u­ment­ing his lis­ten­ing jour­ney through remote places like the Hoh Rain­for­est in Wash­ing­ton state, con­sid­ered one of the qui­etest places in North Amer­i­ca.

“By hold­ing a micro­phone, I became a bet­ter lis­ten­er. I learned that the micro­phone doesn’t lis­ten for what’s impor­tant, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t inter­fere.” The micro­phone, that is, has no ego. Record­ed and ampli­fied, the silence of the Hoh becomes cacoph­o­ny, or a sym­pho­ny, depend­ing on how we describe it. Maybe any descrip­tion gets in the way of lis­ten­ing. “Just lis­ten,” says Hemp­ton. “Silence is the poet­ics of space. What it means to be in a place… Silence isn’t the absence of some­thing, but the pres­ence of every­thing

If silence is full of sound, why might we crave it when we’re stressed? Because we are bom­bard­ed by noise pol­lu­tion, “sounds that have noth­ing to do with the nat­ur­al acoustic sys­tem.” These sounds have been encroach­ing on places like the Hoh Rain­for­est for many decades, and Hemp­ton has doc­u­ment­ed their incur­sion over the past 30 years, build­ing a col­lec­tion of over 100 record­ings “equipped with a 3‑D micro­phone sys­tem that repli­cates human hear­ing,” notes Brain Pick­ings.

“Ema­nat­ing from his col­lec­tion… is the idea that ‘there is a fun­da­men­tal fre­quen­cy for each habitat’—a tonal qual­i­ty that shapes the sense of place and qual­i­ty of pres­ence.” Hempton’s work com­ple­ments the nature record­ings of Bernie Krause, for­mer musi­cian turned renowned expert on nat­ur­al sound, whose the­o­ry of bio­pho­ny describes how nat­ur­al sounds work togeth­er to fill in the spec­trum, each one estab­lish­ing its own spe­cif­ic band­width so as not to drown out the oth­ers.

Nat­ur­al sounds cre­ate a kind of self-reg­u­lat­ing har­mo­ny. In order to ful­ly inhab­it the space we’re in, we must be able to hear them. But as the record­ings made by Hemp­ton and Krause show us, humans have a unique abil­i­ty to feel our­selves deeply immersed in oth­er places, too, by lis­ten­ing to record­ings of their silences. Hemp­ton implies that record­ings may soon be all we have left.

“Silence,” he says, “is on the verge of extinc­tion. There is not one place left on plan­et Earth that is set aside and off lim­its to noise pol­lu­tion.” It inter­feres with the cycles of mat­ing ani­mals, dis­rupts call and response pat­terns ecosys­tems use to coor­di­nate them­selves. Silence is part of a glob­al biofeed­back sys­tem, telling us to qui­et down, slow down, and become part of all that’s hap­pen­ing around us. We ignore it to our great detri­ment.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

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

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

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

The Entire History of the British Isles Animated: 42,000 BCE to Today

in Animation, History | November 1st, 2019

The Unit­ed King­dom is a con­fus­ing place for many peo­ple, and their not-quite-answered ques­tions about it go all the way to what does and does not con­sti­tute the Unit­ed King­dom in the first place. Not to give the end­ing away, but the ani­mat­ed map above by his­tor­i­cal-car­to­graph­i­cal Youtu­ber Ollie Bye even­tu­al­ly reveals that, if you’re look­ing at the British Isles, you’re look­ing at the UK — unless, of course, you’re look­ing at the Repub­lic of Ire­land. But tak­ing the long view, the polit­i­cal divi­sion of the British Isles has sel­dom been so sim­ple. We know they were pop­u­lat­ed by what we now call cau­ca­soids at least 44,000 years ago, but by 700 BC three groups had divid­ed them up: the Britons, the Picts, and the Gaels.

The com­pli­ca­tions real­ly start at the time of the Roman Empire, when, depend­ing on where in the British Isles you went, you’d have encoun­tered the Icenii, the Parisi, the Cale­donii, the Iverni, and many oth­er dis­tinct peo­ples besides. When the Roman Empire gave way to the Roman Repub­lic, Bri­tan­nia, or Roman Britain, began its expan­sion (and its road-build­ing) across the Isles, start­ing from the south­east.

But with Rome’s with­draw­al in 410 a great many new bor­ders appear like spi­der­web cracks across the land. For cen­turies there­after, the British Isles is a place of many king­doms: Mer­cia, Wes­sex, Northum­bria, Gwynedd, and Deheubarth, to name but a few. (Not to men­tion the Vikings.) And then you have a year like 1066, when the Nor­man con­quest redraws a large chunk of the map at a stroke.

Even those most igno­rant of British his­to­ry will rec­og­nize a few of the king­doms that arise lat­er on in this peri­od: the King­dom of Scot­land, for exam­ple, or the King­dom of Wales. Start­ing from the mid-12th cen­tu­ry, a cer­tain King­dom of Eng­land begins to paint the map red. By 1604, the British Isles are clean­ly divid­ed between the King­dom of Eng­land and the King­dom of Scot­land; by 1707, the King­dom of Great Britain is run­ning the whole place. The sit­u­a­tion has­n’t changed much since, though any­one who has trav­eled across the British Isles knows that the osten­si­ble lack of polit­i­cal frac­tious­ness masks many endur­ing cul­tur­al divi­sions sub­tle to the out­sider: while every­one liv­ing every­where from John o’ Groats to Land’s End may offi­cial­ly be British, few would coun­te­nance being lumped togeth­er with all the rest of them.

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 the Rise and Fall of the British Empire in an Ani­mat­ed Time-Lapse Map ( 519 A.D. to 2014 A.D.)

The Roman Roads of Britain Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map

Watch the His­to­ry of the World Unfold on an Ani­mat­ed Map: From 200,000 BCE to Today

The His­to­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion Mapped in 13 Min­utes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

A His­to­ry of the Entire World in Less Than 20 Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Novel Adaptation

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, History, K-12, Literature | November 1st, 2019

The human imag­i­na­tion can be an extra­or­di­nary cop­ing device in times of trou­ble, a tiny win­dow pro­vid­ing men­tal escape from what­ev­er cell fate has con­signed us to.

Diarist and aspir­ing pro­fes­sion­al writer Anne Frank, who died in the Bergen-Belsen con­cen­tra­tion camp at the age of 15, chafed at her now-uni­ver­sal­ly-known con­fine­ment in the Secret Annex. She chafed at her mother’s author­i­ty and the seem­ing­ly effort­less saint­li­ness of her old­er sis­ter. Doc­u­ment­ing her dai­ly phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al real­i­ty offered tem­po­rary respite from it.

The lib­er­at­ing pow­er of the cre­ative mind is one of the aspects writer Ari Fol­man and illus­tra­tor David Polon­sky sought to tease out when adapt­ing Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl as a graph­ic nov­el.

The graph­ic nov­el for­mat decreed that entire pas­sages would be cut or con­densed. Polon­sky can use a sin­gle pan­el to show logis­tics it took Anne para­graphs to describe. The inter­per­son­al con­flicts she dwelt on are now con­veyed by facial expres­sions and body lan­guage.

As with Sid Jacob­son and Ernie Colón’s 2010 Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Autho­rized Graph­ic Biog­ra­phy, the diary’s small stage is expand­ed to give read­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those unac­quaint­ed with the orig­i­nal text, a his­tor­i­cal con­text for under­stand­ing the wider social impli­ca­tions of Anne’s tragedy.

But this graph­ic retelling is unique in that it traf­fics in mag­ic real­ist visu­als that should play well with 21st-cen­tu­ry youth, who cut their teeth on CGI, fast-paced edits, and stream­ing teen-focused enter­tain­ments where­in char­ac­ters are apt to break the fourth wall or break into song.

These are the read­ers to whom the project is most inten­tion­al­ly pitched. As Fol­man told Teen Vogue’s Emma Sar­ran Web­ster:

I tru­ly believe that in a few years, when the very last sur­vivors will have died, the angle that will be tak­en from the sto­ry will be that with every year, we are 10 years fur­ther away from the orig­i­nal. […] There is a severe threat that the things we have to learn from it will not be taught and learned if we don’t find a new lan­guage for them. So any new lan­guage in my opin­ion is blessed, as long as it stays with­in the frame­work and reach­es young audi­ences by means of their tools, which are now very visu­al.

Ergo, Kit­ty, Anne’s nick­name for her diary, has been per­son­i­fied, emerg­ing from the lit­tle plaid book’s pages like Peter Pan’s shad­ow, ear atten­tive­ly cocked toward the secrets Anne whis­pers into it.

The melo­dra­mat­ic Mrs. van Daan’s prized fur coat has an anthro­po­mor­phized rab­bit head col­lar, capa­ble of join­ing in the dia­logue.

Polon­sky pays homage to artists Edvard Munch, whose “degen­er­a­tive” work Hitler had removed from Ger­man muse­ums, and Gus­tav Klimt, who paint­ed many works that were con­fis­cat­ed from their Jew­ish own­ers by Nazi decree.

Young read­ers’ mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties also guid­ed Folman’s approach to the text. The spir­it of the orig­i­nal is pre­served, but cer­tain phras­ings have been giv­en a 21st cen­tu­ry update.

The snarky Secret Annex menus and diet tips he allows his hero­ine harken to the direct address of var­i­ous meta teen come­dies, as well as the blis­ter­ing par­o­dy of the Sara­je­vo Sur­vival Guide, a pur­port­ed trav­el guide writ­ten dur­ing the Siege.

Noble goal of engag­ing the next gen­er­a­tion aside, there are no doubt some purists who will view these inno­va­tions as impo­si­tion. Rest assured that Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graph­ic Adap­ta­tion is sanc­tioned by Anne Frank Fonds, the char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion estab­lished by Anne’s father, Otto.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Only Known Footage of Anne Frank

Read the Poignant Let­ter Sent to Anne Frank by George Whit­man, Own­er of Paris’ Famed Shake­speare & Co Book­shop (1960): “If I Sent This Let­ter to the Post Office It Would No Longer Reach You”

How Art Spiegel­man Designs Com­ic Books: A Break­down of His Mas­ter­piece, Maus

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 4 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Louise Jor­dan Miln’s “Woo­ings and Wed­dings in Many Climes (1900). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.