Animated Stories Written by Tom Waits, Nick Cave & Other Artists, Read by Danny Devito, Zach Galifianakis & More

in Art, Audio Books, Music | April 28th, 2017

Ten years ago, Jeff Ante­bi, the founder of the record com­pa­ny Wax­ploita­tion, asked musi­cians and con­tem­po­rary painters to col­lab­o­rate on a col­lec­tion of children’s sto­ries for grown-ups. Today, you can find the fruits of their labor col­lect­ed in a new, 350-page book project called Sto­ries for Ways & Means. The book fea­tures tales by Tom Waits (above), Nick Cave, Bon Iver, The Pix­ies’ Frank Black and oth­er artists. (Note: the sto­ries con­tain “out­re art, weird images, graph­ic dis­plays of nasty stuff and cuss words.”) Also, you can now watch a series of short pro­mo films where celebs like Dan­ny Devi­to, Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis and Nick Offer­man read items in the col­lec­tion.

As a quick week­end treat, we’ve high­light­ed some of those read­ings on this page. More read­ings can be viewed here. Pro­ceeds from Sto­ries for Ways & Means (pur­chase a copy here) will sup­port NGOs and non­prof­its advanc­ing children’s caus­es around the world, includ­ing Room to Read, Pen­cils of Promise, and 826 Nation­al.

Dan­ny Devi­to Reads “Doug the Bug” by Frank Black 

Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis Reads “Next Big Thing” by Gib­by Haynes

“The Lone­ly Giant” by Nick Cave, Read by Andre Royo (aka Bub­bles from The Wire)

“Wish­ing Well Foun­tain,” Writ­ten and Nar­rat­ed by Ali­son Mosshart

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:

Tom Waits Reads Two Charles Bukows­ki Poems, “The Laugh­ing Heart” and “Nir­vana”

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time

Rick Wakeman’s Prog-Rock Opera Adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984

in Music | April 28th, 2017

We’ve seen sales of George Orwell’s dystopi­an night­mare sce­nario 1984 peak in recent months. Mil­lions of read­ers seek to under­stand the brave new world we live in through Orwell’s vision. Par­al­lels abound. We might rea­son­ably ascribe to the rul­ing par­ty in the U.S. and its media appa­ra­tus the slo­gan “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” But our expe­ri­ence of real­i­ty nev­er fails to val­i­date that old saw about truth and fic­tion. As Case West­ern Reserve pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry John Broich writes, “2017 is stranger than Orwell imag­ined.”

The state doesn’t need a Min­istry of Truth to cen­sure the infor­ma­tion that reach­es us. We are sim­ply over­whelmed with “alter­na­tive author­i­ties and real­i­ties” who dele­git­imize the facts and accel­er­ate “the decline in stan­dards of evi­dence and rea­son­ing in the US elec­torate.” A sad state of affairs. But in every decade since the pub­li­ca­tion of Orwell’s nov­el, crit­ics, jour­nal­ists, and pun­dits have seen evi­dence of his dire fore­cast. In the tit­u­lar year itself, Man­hat­tan Col­lege pro­fes­sor Edmond van den Boss­che summed up the gen­er­al tenor in The New York Times: “In our 1984… the warn­ings of George Orwell are more than ever rel­e­vant.”

Van den Boss­che wrote of NATO and the UN. But he might have writ­ten about MTV and CNN— both in their infancy—who birthed 24-hour cable news and real­i­ty TV.  What Orwell under­stood about state pow­er, lat­er thinkers like Guy DeBord, Roland Barthes, and Jean Bau­drillard built careers writ­ing about: the impor­tance not only of sur­veil­lance, but also of spec­ta­cle that blurs the lines of truth and fic­tion as it over­whelms our sens­es. It’s large­ly this key theme, I’d argue, that has ren­dered 1984 so attrac­tive to some of the most spec­tac­u­lar of musi­cians, includ­ing David Bowie—whose attempts to make an Orwell con­cept album formed part of his Dia­mond Dogs—and Rick Wake­man, the vir­tu­oso prog-rock key­boardist of Yes fame.

After releas­ing as a solo artist such rock-lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions as 1974’s Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth and the fol­low­ing year’s The Myths and Leg­ends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Wake­man turned Orwell’s clas­sic into a rock opera. The 1981 pro­duc­tion is an extrav­a­gan­za of musi­cal excess, with lyrics and vocals by Tim Rice, riv­et­ing per­for­mances by Cha­ka Khan (above) and Wakeman’s for­mer Yes band­mate Jon Ander­son, and eclec­tic orches­tral instru­men­ta­tion woven in with Wakeman’s bat­tery of key­boards and syn­the­siz­ers. The record has become a fan favorite and All­mu­sic describes it as one of Wakeman’s “most well-round­ed albums.”

The per­fec­tion­is­tic Wake­man him­self looks back on his 1984 with embar­rass­ment. “In ret­ro­spect, a mis­take,” he has said. “The wrong album at the wrong time, with all the wrong peo­ple around at the time…. I formed the wrong band, (the worst I have ever had), the deal for the stage show fell through and all in all I lis­ten back to the music with my head in my hands.” Luck­i­ly, we are not bound to respect an artist’s assess­ment of his work. Wakeman’s music and Rice’s lyrics take the lead­en, gray world of Win­ston Smith and Julia and turn it into a car­ni­val, mov­ing from soar­ing bal­lads to rock­ers with the sneer­ing vaude­vil­lian satire of The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show. (See espe­cial­ly “The Pro­les,” above, the penul­ti­mate num­ber before the final title track.)

Orwell’s nov­el is not what one would call an enter­tain­ing book; it is gloomy—though not with­out its own kind of dark humor—and its mono­chro­mat­ic tone was per­fect­ly cap­tured by Michael Radford’s 1984 film adap­ta­tion. But it heav­i­ly sug­gest­ed the world to come, one con­stant­ly illu­mi­nat­ed and obscured by mass media, with screens in every home and pock­et, for­ev­er broad­cast­ing some col­or­ful dis­trac­tion. In the videos above, you’ll see excerpts from the movie mixed with daz­zling live per­for­mance footage of Wake­man and band play­ing their 1984 live, synced to the stu­dio record­ings, cour­tesy of Youtu­ber ROLT (Ronal­do Lopes Teix­eira.) Watch his full project at the top of the post. The mash-up suit­ably shows how these very dif­fer­ent interpretations—the more straight­for­ward­ly dour and the prog-rock operatic—somehow both do jus­tice to Orwell’s pre­scient nov­el. Just above, you can hear Wake­man’s full album on Spo­ti­fy (whose soft­ware you can down­load for free here).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Dreamed of Turn­ing George Orwell’s 1984 Into a Musi­cal: Hear the Songs That Sur­vived the Aban­doned Project

Hear the Very First Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Star­ring David Niv­en (1949)

George Orwell’s 1984 Staged as an Opera: Watch Scenes from the 2005 Pro­duc­tion in Lon­don

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson Says This Short Film on Science in America Contains Perhaps the Most Important Words He’s Ever Spoken

in Politics, Science | April 26th, 2017

Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson has won a rep­u­ta­tion as a genial, yet pedan­tic nerd, a sci­en­tif­ic gad­fly whose point of view may near­ly always be tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect, but whose mode of deliv­ery some­times miss­es the point, like some­one who explains a joke. His earnest­ness is endear­ing; it’s what makes him so relat­able as a sci­ence edu­ca­tor. He’s whole­heart­ed­ly devot­ed to his sub­ject, like his boy­hood hero Carl Sagan, whose shoes Tyson did his best to fill in a remake of the clas­sic Cos­mos series. Tyson’s coun­try­men and women, how­ev­er, have made his job a lot hard­er than they did in Sagan’s day, when ordi­nary Amer­i­cans were hun­gry for sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion.

The change has been decades in the mak­ing. Like Sagan, Tyson’s voice fills with awe as he con­tem­plates the mys­ter­ies of nature and won­ders of sci­ence, and with alarm as he com­ments on wide­spread Amer­i­can igno­rance and hos­til­i­ty to crit­i­cal inquiry and the sci­en­tif­ic method. These atti­tudes have led us to a cri­sis point. Elect­ed and appoint­ed offi­cials at the high­est lev­els of gov­ern­ment deny the facts of cli­mate change and are active­ly gut­ting all efforts to com­bat it. The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ Com­mit­tee on Sci­ence, Space, and Tech­nol­o­gy mocks cli­mate sci­ence on social media even as NASA announces that the evi­dence is “unequiv­o­cal.”

How did this hap­pen? Are we rapid­ly return­ing, as Sagan warned before his death, to an age of “super­sti­tion and dark­ness”? Tyson has recent­ly addressed these ques­tions with earnest­ness and urgency in a short video called “Sci­ence in Amer­i­ca,” which you can watch above, “con­tain­ing,” he wrote on Face­book, “what may be the most impor­tant words I have ever spo­ken.” He opens with a state­ment that echoes Sagan’s dire pre­dic­tions: “It seems to me that peo­ple have lost the abil­i­ty to judge what is true and what is not.” The prob­lem is not sim­ply an aca­d­e­m­ic one, but a press­ing­ly polit­i­cal one: “When you have peo­ple,” says Tyson, “who don’t know much about sci­ence, stand­ing in denial of it, and ris­ing to pow­er, that is a recipe for the com­plete dis­man­tling of our informed democ­ra­cy.”

One must ask if the issue sole­ly comes down to edu­ca­tion. We are fre­quent­ly remind­ed of how much denial is moti­vat­ed and will­ful when, for exam­ple, a gov­ern­ment offi­cial begins a com­plete­ly unsup­port­ed claim with, “I’m not a sci­en­tist, but….” We know that fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies like Exxon have known the facts about cli­mate change for forty years, and have hid­den or mis­rep­re­sent­ed them. But the prob­lem is even more wide­spread. Evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy, vac­cines, GMOs… the amount of mis­in­for­ma­tion and “alter­na­tive fact” in the pub­lic sphere has drowned out the voic­es of sci­en­tists. “That’s not the coun­try I remem­ber grow­ing up in,” Tyson laments.

There are plen­ty of good philo­soph­i­cal rea­sons for skep­ti­cism, such as those raised by David Hume or by crit­i­cal the­o­rists and his­to­ri­ans who point out the ways in which sci­en­tif­ic research has been dis­tort­ed and mis­used for some very dark, inhu­mane pur­pos­es. Yet cri­tiques of method­ol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, and ethics only strength­en the sci­en­tif­ic enter­prise, which—as Tyson pas­sion­ate­ly explains—thrives on vig­or­ous and informed debate. We can­not afford to con­fuse thought­ful delib­er­a­tion and hon­est reflec­tion with spe­cious rea­son­ing and will­ful igno­rance.

I imag­ine we’ll have a good laugh at cre­ative rede­ploy­ments of some clas­sic Tyson harangues. (“This is sci­ence! It’s not some­thing to toy with!”) And a good laugh some­times feels like all we can do to relieve the ten­sion. The real dan­ger is that many peo­ple will dis­miss his mes­sage as “politi­ciz­ing” sci­ence rather than defend­ing the very basis of its exis­tence. We must agree on the basis of sci­en­tif­ic truth, as dis­cov­er­able through rea­son and evi­dence, Tyson warns, before we can even get to the polit­i­cal ques­tions over cli­mate change, vac­cines, etc. Whether Amer­i­cans can still do that has become an unset­tling­ly open ques­tion.

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

An Ani­mat­ed Neil deGrasse Tyson Gives an Elo­quent Defense of Sci­ence in 272 Words, the Same Length as The Get­tys­burg Address

Neil deGrasse Tyson Remem­bers His First Meet­ing with Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)

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

The Day When Chivalry Officially Came to an End in 1363 AD: A Short Comedy Film

in Comedy | April 19th, 2017

When did chival­ry come to an end? Some would say it’s a mat­ter of his­tor­i­cal debate. But not for Jake Mahaffy. His short, fun­ny film lets you see the embar­rass­ing cir­cum­stances under which chival­ry died, some­where in a marsh in 1363. 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!

via Vimeo Staff Picks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s It Like to Fight in 15th Cen­tu­ry Armor?: A Sur­pris­ing Demon­stra­tion

Yoda’s Long Lost Twin Found in a 14th Cen­tu­ry Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

See The Guidon­ian Hand, the Medieval Sys­tem for Read­ing Music, Get Brought Back to Life

Test Ad Page

in | April 18th, 2017

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, con­secte­tur adip­isc­ing elit. Nunc vel elit vel tel­lus bland­it imperdi­et. Vestibu­lum ut ligu­la sit amet jus­to ali­quam male­sua­da ac auc­tor dui. Viva­mus quis odio male­sua­da, cur­sus tel­lus et, luc­tus lacus. Ali­quam bland­it vene­natis dolor quis dapibus. Nam ut rutrum jus­to. Inte­ger facil­i­sis com­mo­do molestie. Cur­abitur quis leo sed neque pel­len­tesque com­mo­do eget nec eros. Nul­lam sodales mat­tis nunc. Viva­mus eu orci vulpu­tate, rhon­cus nul­la et, ali­quet odio. Nul­lam elit dolor, con­secte­tur nec dolor ut, sagit­tis sagit­tis magna. Proin lec­tus felis, volut­pat vitae orci sed, ornare scelerisque libero. Mae­ce­nas molestie feu­giat augue, at sus­cip­it dui dapibus eget. Phasel­lus a mau­ris sit amet elit ali­quet mat­tis in a mau­ris. Sus­pendisse ac magna sapi­en. Sus­pendisse dic­tum libero ac quam pul­v­inar lacinia. Prae­sent eros neque, tem­pus sed augue id, tin­cidunt ultricies libero.

Oscar-Winning Actress Viola Davis Reads the Children’s Story, Rent Party Jazz, for Jazz Appreciation Month

in Film, K-12, Music | April 18th, 2017

FYI: In hon­or of Jazz Appre­ci­a­tion Month, Vio­la Davis treats us to a read­ing of Rent Par­ty Jazz, a chil­dren’s book writ­ten by William Miller and illus­trat­ed by Char­lotte Riley-Webb. Here’s a quick syn­op­sis of the sto­ry:

This sto­ry is set in New Orleans in the 1930s. Son­ny and his moth­er are scrap­ing by to pay their rent. Mama works in a fish can­ning fac­to­ry, and Son­ny works for the coal man before school each morn­ing. When Mama los­es her job, they no longer have enough mon­ey for the rent and fear that the land­lord will turn them out. One day Son­ny meets Smilin’ Jack, a jazz musi­cian who is play­ing his trum­pet in Jack­son Square. Smilin’ Jack offers to play at a par­ty at Sonny’s house to help raise mon­ey for the rent. The neigh­bors all come to sing and dance and before they leave, drop some coins in a buck­et. Son­ny learns how peo­ple can help one anoth­er “if they put their minds and hearts to it.”

For any­one not famil­iar with them, rent par­ties start­ed in Harlem dur­ing the 1920s, when jazz musi­cians would play at a friend’s apart­ment to help them raise enough mon­ey to pay the rent. If you hop over to the web­site of Yale’s Bei­necke Library, you can see a col­lec­tion of rent cards that belonged to Langston Hugh­es.

This video comes from the Sto­ry­line Online Youtube Chan­nel, spon­sored by the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s children’s lit­er­a­cy web­site. The chan­nel fea­tures cel­e­brat­ed actors “read­ing children’s books along­side cre­ative­ly pro­duced illus­tra­tions, help­ing to inspire a love of read­ing in chil­dren.”

Vio­la Davis’ read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Stars Read Clas­sic Children’s Books: Bet­ty White, James Earl Jones, Rita Moreno & Many More

Enter an Archive of 6,000 His­tor­i­cal Children’s Books, All Dig­i­tized and Free to Read Online

Langston Hugh­es Reveals the Rhythms in Art & Life in a Won­der­ful Illus­trat­ed Book for Kids (1954)

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

Sad 7‑Foot Tall Clown Sings “Pinball Wizard” in the Style of Johnny Cash, and Other Hits by Roy Orbison, Cheap Trick & More

in Comedy, Life, Music, Theatre | April 14th, 2017

Read­ers, are you over­come with the Fri­day Feels?

Pud­dles Pity Par­ty, a 6’8” Pier­rot from Atlanta, empathizes.

The ‘Sad Clown with the Gold­en Voice’ has tak­en to releas­ing emo­tion­al­ly-freight­ed cov­ers on select Fri­days.

There’s some­thing about a giant sad singing clown that com­forts us, let’s us know it’s ok to feel, to show our feel­ings. It’s a sad and beau­ti­ful world, and we’re all in it togeth­er, even when we’re total­ly alone.

So quoth Big Mike Geier, the founder and front­man of the band King­sized, and the man behind Pud­dles’ white make­up and rick­rack-trimmed clown suit.

What­ev­er he’s tapped into, it’s real. The New York Times’ Jason Zin­no­man, in a slight­ly skeeved-out think piece on clowns last year, wrote:

What makes him tran­scend the trope is his vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. When you first see him charg­ing down the aisle, he’s an intim­i­dat­ing fig­ure, but his body is actu­al­ly not aggres­sive. It slumps, pas­sive­ly. When he asks for a hug, it looks as if he real­ly needs it. He makes you feel bad for find­ing him off-putting, and then he belts out a love­ly song.

Fri­day, March 3 found Pud­dles accom­pa­ny­ing him­self on a red gui­tar for “It’s a Heartache,” a hit for Bon­nie Tyler and lat­er, Rod Stew­art. They both have their strengths, but Pud­dles is unique­ly suit­ed to tap into the heartache of ‘stand­ing in the cold rain, feel­ing like a clown.”

A pre­vi­ous Fri­day Feel, Roy Orbison’s “Cry­ing,” was a fan request. (Yes, he’s still tak­ing them.)

The video for “She’s Gone Again”—previously cov­ered by Don Ho—touch­es on Pud­dles’  obses­sion with actor Kevin Cost­ner.

Feb­ru­ary 10’s Fri­day Feel brought new lis­ten­ers to a younger artist, Brett Den­nen. Pud­dles praised his “Heav­en” as “beau­ti­ful and thought­ful song,” con­fess­ing that he “bare­ly held it togeth­er on this one.” Also see Cheap Trick­’s “I Want You to Want Me” down below.

The piece de resis­tance, where­in the lyrics of Pin­ball Wiz­ard are sung to the tune of Fol­som Prison Blues, is at the top of the page. It’s no great sur­prise that that one’s gone viral. Pud­dles is trans­par­ent, how­ev­er, giv­ing cred­it to the late Gre­go­ry Dean Smal­l­ey, an Atlanta-based song­writer who died of AIDS in the late 90s:

 Back in 1994 or so, I saw (him) per­form this mashup at the Star Com­mu­ni­ty Bar. I was floored. Greg was a force of super­nat­ur­al pro­por­tions and he is missed. Many peo­ple have done it pri­or to me doing it. I guess it was always meant to be.

You can lis­ten to more of Pud­dles Pity Par­ty on Spo­ti­fy, or sup­port the artist with a pur­chase on Google Play or iTunes. Sub­scribe to his youtube chan­nel to stay abreast of future Fri­day Feels, or request a song.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Stephen Sond­heim Teach a Kid How to Sing “Send In the Clowns”

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)       

Hear John­ny Cash Deliv­er Lincoln’s Get­tys­burg Address

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

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Babylon, Rome, and the Islamic World

in History, Maps | April 13th, 2017

One of the great­est chal­lenges for writ­ers and great­est joys for read­ers of fan­ta­sy and sci­ence fic­tion is what we call “world build­ing,” the art of cre­at­ing cities, coun­tries, con­ti­nents, plan­ets, galax­ies, and whole uni­vers­es to peo­ple with war­ring fac­tions and nomadic truth seek­ers. Such writ­ing is the nat­ur­al off­spring of the Medieval trav­el­ogue, a genre once tak­en not as fan­ta­sy but fact, when sailors, cru­saders, pil­grims, mer­chants, and mer­ce­nar­ies set out to chart, trade for, and con­vert, and con­quer the world, and returned home with out­landish tales of glit­ter­ing empires and peo­ple with faces in their chests or hop­ping around on a sin­gle foot so big they could use it to shade them­selves.

One of the most famous of such chron­i­clers, Sir John Man­dev­ille, may now be most­ly for­got­ten, but for cen­turies his Trav­els was so pop­u­lar with aspir­ing nav­i­ga­tors and lit­er­ary men like Shake­speare, Mil­ton, and Keats that “until the Vic­to­ri­an era,” writes Giles Mil­ton, it was he, “not Chaucer, who was known as ‘the father of Eng­lish prose.’”

Man­dev­ille, like Mar­co Polo half a cen­tu­ry before him, may have been part adven­tur­er, part char­la­tan, but in any case, both drew their itin­er­aries, as did lat­er nav­i­ga­tors like Colum­bus and Wal­ter Raleigh, from a very long tra­di­tion: the mak­ing of spec­u­la­tive world maps, which far pre­dates the ear­ly Mid­dle Ages of pil­grim­age and thirst for East­ern spices and gold.

In the West­ern tra­di­tion, we can trace world map­mak­ing all the way back to 6th cen­tu­ry B.C.E., Pre-Socrat­ic thinker Anax­i­man­der, stu­dent of Thales, whom Aris­to­tle regard­ed as the first Greek philoso­pher. We have no copy of the map, but we have some idea what it might have looked since Herodotus described it in detail, a cir­cu­lar known world sit­ting atop an earth the shape of a drum. (Anax­i­man­der was also an orig­i­nal spec­u­la­tive astronomer.) His map con­tained two con­ti­nents, or halves, “Europe” and “Asia”—which includ­ed the known coun­tries of North Africa. “Two rel­a­tive­ly small strips of land north and south of the Mediter­ranean Sea,” with ten inhab­it­ed regions in total, that illus­trate the very ear­ly dichotomiz­ing of the world—in this case divid­ed top to bot­tom rather than west and east.

Anax­i­man­der may have been the first Greek geo­g­ra­ph­er, but it is the 2nd cen­tu­ry B.C.E. that Libyan-Greek sci­en­tist and philoso­pher Eratos­thenes who has his­tor­i­cal­ly been giv­en the title “Father of Geog­ra­phy” for his three-vol­ume Geog­ra­phy, his dis­cov­ery that the earth is round, and his accu­rate cal­cu­la­tion of its cir­cum­fer­ence. Lost to his­to­ry, Eratos­thenes’ Geog­ra­phy has been pieced togeth­er from descrip­tions by Roman authors, as has his map of the world—at the top in a 19th-cen­tu­ry reconstruction—showing a con­tigu­ous inhab­it­ed land­mass resem­bling a lob­ster claw.

You’ll note that Eratos­thenes drew pri­mar­i­ly on Anaximander’s descrip­tion of the world. In turn, his map had a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on lat­er Medieval geo­g­ra­phers. A Baby­lon­ian world map, inscribed on a clay tablet around the time Anax­i­man­der imag­ined the world (and thought to be the ear­li­est extant exam­ple of such a thing), may have influ­enced Euro­pean map-mak­ing in the age of dis­cov­ery as well. It depicts a flat, round world, with Baby­lon at the cen­ter (see the British Muse­um for a detailed trans­la­tion and com­men­tary of the map’s leg­end).

The Baby­lon­ian map is said to sur­vive in the sim­i­lar-look­ing “T and O map” (third image from top), rep­re­sent­ing the words orbis ter­rar­i­um and orig­i­nat­ing from descrip­tions in 7th cen­tu­ry C.E. Span­ish schol­ar Isado­ra of Seville’s Ety­molo­giae. The “T” is the Mediter­ranean and the “O” the ocean. In the ver­sion above, a recre­ation of an 8th cen­tu­ry draw­ing, and every deriva­tion there­after, we see the three known con­ti­nents, Asia, Europe, and Africa, with the holy city, Jerusalem, at the cen­ter. This map great­ly informed ear­ly Medieval con­cep­tions of the world, from cru­saders to gar­ru­lous knights errant like Man­dev­ille, and racon­teur mer­chants like Polo, both of whom made quite an impres­sion on Colum­bus and Raleigh, as did the cir­ca 1300 map from Con­stan­tino­ple above, the old­est of many drawn from the thou­sands of coor­di­nates in Roman geo­g­ra­ph­er and astronomer Ptolemy’s Geo­graphia.

It wouldn’t be until 100 years after the trans­la­tion of Ptolemy’s text from Greek to Latin in 1407 that his geo­graph­i­cal pre­ci­sion became wide­ly known. Until this, “all knowl­edge of these co-ordi­nates had been lost in the West,” writes the British Library.  This would not be so in the East, how­ev­er, where world maps like Ibn Hawqal’s, above from 980 C.E., show the influ­ence of Ptole­my, already so long dom­i­nant in geog­ra­phy in the Islam­ic world that it was begin­ning to wane. Many more world maps sur­vive from 11–12th cen­tu­ry Britain, Turkey, and Sici­ly, from 16th cen­tu­ry Korea, and from that wan­der­ing age of Colum­bus and Raleigh, begin­ning to increas­ing­ly resem­ble the world maps we’re famil­iar with today. (See a 15th cen­tu­ry recon­struc­tion of Ptolemy’s geog­ra­phy below.)

For most of record­ed his­to­ry, knowl­edge of the world from any one place in it was almost whol­ly or part­ly spec­u­la­tive and imag­i­na­tive, often peo­pled with mon­sters and won­ders. “All cul­tures have always believed that the map they val­orize is real and true and objec­tive and trans­par­ent,” as Jer­ry Brot­ton Pro­fes­sor at Queen Mary Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don tells Uri Fried­man at The Atlantic. Colum­bus believed in his spec­u­la­tive maps, even when he ran into islands off the coast of con­ti­nents chart­ed on none of them. We are still con­cep­tu­al prisoners—or con­sumers, users, read­ers, view­ers, audiences—of maps, though we’ve phys­i­cal­ly plot­ted every cor­ner of the globe. Per­spec­tives can­not be ren­dered objec­tive. No gods-eye views exist.

Nonethe­less, sev­er­al cul­tur­al­ly for­ma­tive pro­jec­tions of the world since Ptolemy’s Geog­ra­phy and well before it have changed the whole world, point­ing to the pow­er of human imag­i­na­tion and the leg­en­dar­i­ly imag­i­na­tive, as well as leg­en­dar­i­ly bru­tal, acts of “world build­ing” in real life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Inno­va­tion that Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Map Design (1943)       

“Every Coun­try in the World”–Two Videos Tell You Curi­ous Facts About 190+ Coun­tries       

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

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Very First Film, La Cravate, Based on a Novella by Thomas Mann (1957)

in Film, Literature | April 10th, 2017

Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky may have rede­fined the film-view­ing expe­ri­ence for a cou­ple gen­er­a­tions of art-house thrillseek­ers, but he did­n’t start his cre­ative jour­ney in cin­e­ma. Decades before he sent his audi­ences on the mind-alter­ing fea­ture-length trips (whether or not they came pre­pared for them with their own mind-alter­ing sub­stances) like El Topo and The Holy Moun­tain, he wrote poet­ry, worked as a clown, found­ed and direct­ed a the­ater troupe, and after relo­cat­ing from his native Chile to France, stud­ied mime and per­formed with Mar­cel Marceau. Only then had life pre­pared him to make his first film, 1957’s La Cra­vate.

Telling its sto­ry in vivid col­or but with­out words, the short (which also goes under such titles as Les têtes inter­ver­ties, The Trans­posed Heads, and most sen­sa­tion­al­is­ti­cal­ly The Sev­ered Heads) draws on Jodor­owsky and his col­lab­o­ra­tors’ skills devel­oped in the per­form­ing arts to con­vert into cin­e­mat­ic mime Thomas Man­n’s 1950 novel­la The Trans­posed Heads: A Leg­end of India. Nov­el­ist Rayo Casablan­ca quotes Jodor­owsky describ­ing the tale as one of “a woman who has an intel­lec­tu­al hus­band, who is very weak phys­i­cal­ly. She also has a mus­cu­lar but idi­ot­ic lover. She cuts the heads off of the two men and inter­changes them. She remains with the mus­cu­lar body and the head of the intel­lec­tu­al. How­ev­er, after a cer­tain time, the body of the ath­lete is soft­ened and the body of the intel­lec­tu­al becomes vig­or­ous and mus­cu­lar.”

Mann, in Jodor­owsky’s read­ing, “want­ed to thus say that it is the intel­lect which makes the body,” but for near­ly fifty years, his own visu­al inter­pre­ta­tion went unseen. Not long after its pre­miere at Rome’s Cin­e­ma Auteur Fes­ti­val in 1957 it went miss­ing, pre­sumed lost, until the sole print­’s redis­cov­ery in a Ger­man attic in 2006. Final­ly, Jodor­owsky’s fans could see not just his direc­to­r­i­al debut but his first star­ring role onscreen, with a sup­port­ing cast that includ­ed the Bel­gian sur­re­al humorist Ray­mond Devos. The film’s moral, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Paul Gal­lagher, “is nev­er to lose your head over unre­quit­ed love, but find some­one who loves you as you are,” but as with all of Jodor­owsky’s works, feel free to take from it what­ev­er mes­sage finds its way into your head.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing

Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky Explains How Tarot Cards Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

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

Watch Mar­cel Marceau Mime The Mask Mak­er, a Sto­ry Cre­at­ed for Him by Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky (1959)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

BritBox Now Streaming Now Streaming 550 Episodes Doctor Who and Many Other British TV Shows

in Sci Fi, Television | April 10th, 2017

Back in the day, Amer­i­cans could watch an occa­sion­al British TV show on PBS or UHF. A lit­tle Ben­ny Hill. Some Upstairs Down­stairs, but not a whole lot more.

Those days of scarci­ty are now long gone. Last month, BBC World­wide and ITV launched Brit­box, a stream­ing ser­vice that fea­tures the biggest col­lec­tion of British TV shows ever. And, accord­ing to Nerdist, that col­lec­tion now includes 550 clas­sic Doc­tor Who episodes, orig­i­nal­ly aired between 1963 and 1989. For those not famil­iar with Doc­tor Who, Den of Geek has a handy guide that will help you get start­ed.

Brit­box cur­rent­ly offers a one-week free tri­al. Ergo, you can start binge-watch­ing some Doc­tor Who shows for the next 168 hours. After the free tri­al, the ser­vice costs $6.99 per month, and you can can­cel, has­sle free, when­ev­er you want.

Oth­er Brit­box shows include Sher­lock Holmes, Eas­t­En­ders, Upstairs Down­stairs, Black­ad­der, Bleak House, Inspec­tor Morse, pro­grams with Louis Ther­oux, A Stitch Through Time, and more.

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:

The BBC Cre­ates Step-by-Step Instruc­tions for Knit­ting the Icon­ic Dr. Who Scarf: A Doc­u­ment from the Ear­ly 1980s

Vin­cent van Gogh Vis­its a Mod­ern Muse­um & Gets to See His Artis­tic Lega­cy: A Touch­ing Scene from Doc­tor Who

42 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner, Alien, Star Trek and Doc­tor Who Will Help You Relax & Sleep