John Cleese on The Importance of Making and Embracing Mistakes

in Business, Life | January 20th, 2016

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Paul Box­ley

In his essay “The Rel­a­tiv­i­ty of Wrong,” Isaac Asi­mov argues per­sua­sive­ly against the com­mon belief that “’right’ and ‘wrong’ are absolute; that every­thing that isn’t per­fect­ly and com­plete­ly right is total­ly and equal­ly wrong.” Instead, he says, “it seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy con­cepts,” and that cer­tain ideas can be true in a sense, but still in need of fur­ther cor­rec­tion with new infor­ma­tion. I can’t tes­ti­fy as to the strength of his argu­ment when it comes to the­o­ret­i­cal physics, but as far as basic induc­tive rea­son­ing goes it seems per­fect­ly sound to me, and a point worth mak­ing fre­quent­ly. We don’t expe­ri­ence a world of bina­ries, but one full of “fuzzi­ness” and near miss­es of all kinds.

As in science—argues for­mer Mon­ty Python mem­ber, com­e­dy writer, and intel­lec­tu­al gad­fly John Cleese—so in busi­ness. Cleese gave a moti­va­tion­al speech called “The Impor­tance of Mis­takes” in 1988 to an audi­ence of 500 busi­ness­man at the British-Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce, a demo­graph­ic he has addressed remote­ly since 1972 with a series of busi­ness train­ing videos made by his com­pa­ny, Video Arts. (“Bet­ter job train­ing through enter­tain­ment,” as Kate Callen at UPI describes the com­pa­ny’s mis­sion. Videos have titles like “Meet­ings, Bloody Meet­ings,” and “If Looks Could Kill.”)

In “The Impor­tance of Mis­takes,” Cleese explains that we do not veer wild­ly off course into total wrong­ness every time we make an error. Instead, our mis­takes pro­vide us with oppor­tu­ni­ties for feed­back, which enables us to make course cor­rec­tions, where we will inevitably make anoth­er mis­take, receive more feed­back, etc., until we hit the mark. These metaphors are not mine; Cleese uses a sto­ry called Gor­don the Guid­ed Mis­sile as his pri­ma­ry example—which he dubi­ous­ly claims was “the first nurs­ery sto­ry I ever remem­ber my moth­er read­ing to me”:

Gor­don the guid­ed mis­sile sets off in pur­suit of its tar­get. It imme­di­ate­ly sends out sig­nals to dis­cov­er if it is on the right course to hit that tar­get. Sig­nals come back: “No, you are not on course. So change it. Up a bit and slight­ly to the left.” And Gor­don changes course as instruct­ed and then, ratio­nal lit­tle fel­low that he is, sends out anoth­er sig­nal. “Am I on course now?” Back comes the answer, “No, but if you adjust your present course a bit fur­ther up and a bit fur­ther to the left, you will be.” He adjusts his course again and sends out anoth­er request for infor­ma­tion. Back comes the answer, “No, Gor­don, you’ve still got it wrong. Now you must come down a bit and a foot to the right.” And the guid­ed mis­sile goes on and on mak­ing mis­takes, and on and on lis­ten­ing to feed­back and on and on cor­rect­ing its behav­ior until it blows up the nasty ene­my thing. And we applaud the mis­sile for its skill. If, how­ev­er some crit­ic says, “Well, it cer­tain­ly made a lot of mis­takes on the way”, we reply, “Yes, but that didn’t mat­ter, did it? It got there in the end.” All its mis­takes were lit­tle ones, in the sense that they could be imme­di­ate­ly cor­rect­ed. And as a results of mak­ing many hun­dreds of mis­takes, even­tu­al­ly the mis­sile suc­ceed­ed in avoid­ing the one mis­take which real­ly would have mat­tered: miss­ing the tar­get.

The sto­ry illus­trates, Cleese says, the impor­tance of a “tol­er­ant atti­tude towards mistakes”—even, a “pos­i­tive atti­tude.” To take any oth­er view would be to behave “irra­tional­ly, unsci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, and unsuc­cess­ful­ly.” Cleese more or less rec­om­mends his audi­ence adopt Asimov’s sci­en­tif­ic per­spec­tive on error: mis­takes are not dis­as­trous­ly irrecov­er­able mis­steps, but ways of learn­ing how to get things “less wrong.”

Some clar­i­fi­ca­tion: Cleese means to val­i­date only “those mis­takes which, at the time they were com­mit­ted, did have a chance.” A rea­son­ably good try, in oth­er words. There are some absolutes in the world, after all, and there are “true cop­per bot­tomed mis­takes, like spelling the word ‘rab­bit with three m’s or … start­ing a land war in Asia.” But the point stands. We’re usu­al­ly in the realm of in-between, and instead of let­ting the anx­i­ety of inde­ter­mi­na­cy over­whelm us, Cleese rec­om­mends we take risks and “gain the con­fi­dence to con­tribute spon­ta­neous­ly to what’s hap­pen­ing,” thus over­com­ing inhi­bi­tions and the fear of look­ing ridicu­lous.

Cleese deliv­ered this speech to a body of peo­ple not typ­i­cal­ly known for act­ing spon­ta­neous­ly. And while it seems to me that these days top exec­u­tives can make egre­gious errors (or com­mit egre­gious fraud) and land square­ly on their feet, I won­der if those on the tiers below have the priv­i­lege of dar­ing to make errors in most indus­tries. In any case, whether an assem­bly of cor­po­rate man­agers can afford to loosen up, the rest of us prob­a­bly can, if we’re will­ing to adopt a “pos­i­tive atti­tude” toward mis­takes and consistently—scientifically, even—view them as oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn.

All of this requires a fine bal­ance of the con­fi­dence to screw up and the humil­i­ty to take con­struc­tive feed­back when you do. “Healthy behav­ior actu­al­ly aris­es out of con­fi­dence,” Cleese observed in an inter­view after his speech, and yet, “the worst prob­lem in management—in fact, the worst prob­lem in life—is the ego.”

Read many more excerpts from Cleese’s speech here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

John Cleese Explores the Health Ben­e­fits of Laugh­ter

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

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

Celebrate Edgar Allan Poe’s Birthday With Three Animations of “The Tell-Tale Heart”

in Animation, Literature | January 19th, 2016

Today is Edgar Allan Poe’s birth­day, or would be had he lived to be 207 years old. I can’t imag­ine he would have rel­ished the prospect. When Poe did meet his end, it was under mys­te­ri­ous and rather awful cir­cum­stances, fit­ting­ly (in a grim­ly iron­ic sort of way) for the man often cred­it­ed with the inven­tion of detec­tive fic­tion and the per­fect­ing of the goth­ic hor­ror sto­ry.

“True!” begins his most famous sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”—“ner­vous, very, very dread­ful­ly ner­vous I had been and am,” and we sure­ly believe it. But when he fin­ish­es his inti­mate intro­duc­tion to us, we are much less inclined to trust his word:

But why will you say that I am mad? The dis­ease had sharp­ened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hear­ing acute. I heard all things in the heav­en and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hear­ken! and observe how healthily—how calm­ly I can tell you the whole sto­ry.

Have we ever been con­front­ed with a more unnerv­ing and unre­li­able nar­ra­tor? Poe’s genius was to draw us into the con­fi­dence of this ter­ri­fy­ing char­ac­ter and keep us there, rapt in sus­pense, even though we can­not be sure of any­thing he says, or whether the entire sto­ry is noth­ing more than a para­noid night­mare. And it is that, indeed.

In the ani­ma­tion above by Annette Jung—adapted from Poe’s chill­ing tale—the mad­man Ed resolves to take the life of an old man with a creepy, star­ing eye. In this ver­sion, how­ev­er, a cen­tral ambi­gu­i­ty in Poe’s sto­ry is made clear. We’re nev­er entire­ly sure in the orig­i­nal what the rela­tion­ship is between Poe’s nar­ra­tor and the doomed old man. In Jung’s ver­sion, they are father and son, and the old man is ren­dered even more grotesque, Ed’s psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ments even more… shall we say, ani­mat­ed, with clear­ly com­ic intent. Jung pub­lish­es a web com­ic called Apple­head, and on her short film’s web­site (in Ger­man), she refers to her “Tell-Tale Heart” as “an ani­mat­ed satire.”

Poe’s tal­ent for sus­tain­ing con­trolled hyper­bole and for cre­at­ing unfor­get­table images like the old man’s evil eye and loud­ly beat­ing heart make his work espe­cial­ly invit­ing to ani­ma­tors, and we’ve fea­tured many ani­ma­tions of that work in the past. Just above, see the orig­i­nal ani­mat­ed “Tell-Tale Heart” from 1954. Nar­rat­ed by the ide­al­ly creepy-voiced James Mason, the film received an “X” rat­ing in the UK upon its release, then went on to an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion for Best Ani­mat­ed Short (though it did not win). Just below, Aaron Quinn—who has also ani­mat­ed Poe’s “The Raven” and oth­er 19th cen­tu­ry clas­sics by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Car­roll and others—updates Mason’s nar­ra­tion with his own fright­en­ing­ly stark, ani­mat­ed take on the sto­ry. Poe, had he lived to see the age of ani­ma­tion, may not have been pleased to see his sto­ry adapt­ed in such graph­ic styles, but we, as his devot­ed read­ers over 150 years lat­er, can be grate­ful that he left us such won­der­ful­ly weird source mate­r­i­al for ani­mat­ed films.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Edgar Allan Poe & The Ani­mat­ed Tell-Tale Heart

New Film Extra­or­di­nary Tales Ani­mates Edgar Poe Sto­ries, with Nar­ra­tions by Guiller­mo Del Toro, Christo­pher Lee & More

Edgar Allan Poe Ani­mat­ed: Watch Four Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries

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

How to Take Advantage of Boredom, the Secret Ingredient of Creativity

in Creativity, Psychology | January 14th, 2016

Pierre-August Renoir, La Tasse de choco­lat

Last year we told you about the impor­tance of messy desks and walk­ing to cre­ativ­i­ty. This year, the time has come to real­ize how much cre­ativ­i­ty also depends on bore­dom. In a sense, of course, humankind has utter­ly van­quished bore­dom, what with our mod­ern tech­nolo­gies — com­put­ers, high-speed inter­net, smart­phones — that make pos­si­ble sources of rich and fre­quent stim­u­la­tion such as, well, this very site. But what if we need a lit­tle bore­dom? What if bore­dom, that state we 21st-cen­tu­ry first-worlders wor­ry about avoid­ing more than any oth­er, actu­al­ly helps us cre­ate?

Even if we feel no bore­dom in our free time, sure­ly we still endure the occa­sion­al bout of it at work. “Admit­ting that bore­dom to cowork­ers or man­agers is like­ly some­thing few of us have ever done,” writes the Har­vard Busi­ness Review’s David Burkus. “It turns out, how­ev­er, that a cer­tain lev­el of bore­dom might actu­al­ly enhance the cre­ative qual­i­ty of our work.”

He cites a well-known sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ment which found that vol­un­teers did bet­ter at a cre­ative task (like find­ing dif­fer­ent uses for a pair of plas­tic cups) when first sub­ject­ed to a bor­ing one (like copy­ing num­bers out of the phone book) which “height­ens the ‘day­dream­ing effect’ on cre­ativ­i­ty — the more pas­sive the bore­dom, the more like­ly the day­dream­ing and the more cre­ative you could be after­ward.”

Burkus also refers to anoth­er paper doc­u­ment­ing the per­for­mance of dif­fer­ent sub­jects on word-asso­ci­a­tion tests after watch­ing dif­fer­ent video clips, one of them delib­er­ate­ly bor­ing. Who came up with the most cre­ative asso­ci­a­tions? You guessed it: those who watched the bor­ing video first. Bore­dom, the exper­i­menters sug­gest, “moti­vates peo­ple to approach new and reward­ing activ­i­ties. In oth­er words, an idle mind will seek a toy. (Any­one who has tak­en a long car ride with a young child has sure­ly expe­ri­enced some ver­sion of this phe­nom­e­non.)”

Writ­ing about those same exper­i­ments, Fast Com­pa­ny’s Vivian Giang quotes researcher Andreas Elpi­dorou of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisville as claim­ing that “bore­dom helps to restore the per­cep­tion that one’s activ­i­ties are mean­ing­ful or sig­nif­i­cant.” He describes it as a “reg­u­la­to­ry state that keeps one in line with one’s projects. In the absence of bore­dom, one would remain trapped in unful­fill­ing sit­u­a­tions, and miss out on many emo­tion­al­ly, cog­ni­tive­ly, and social­ly reward­ing expe­ri­ences. Bore­dom is both a warn­ing that we are not doing what we want to be doing and a ‘push’ that moti­vates us to switch goals and projects.”

“Bore­dom is a fas­ci­nat­ing emo­tion because it is seen as so neg­a­tive yet it is such a moti­vat­ing force,” says Dr. San­di Mann of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Lan­cashire, one of the mas­ter­minds of the exper­i­ments with the phone book and the plas­tic cups, quot­ed by Tele­graph sci­ence edi­tor Sarah Knap­ton. “Being bored is not the bad thing every­one makes it out to be. It is good to be bored some­times! I think up so many ideas when I am com­mut­ing to and from work – this would be dead time, but thanks to the bore­dom it induces, I come up with all sorts of projects.” (This also man­i­fests in her par­ent­ing: “I am quite hap­py when my kids whine that they are bored,” she said: “Find­ing ways to amuse them­selves is an impor­tant skill.”)

David Fos­ter Wal­lace took on the rela­tion­ship between bore­dom and cre­ativ­i­ty in an ambi­tious way when he start­ed writ­ing The Pale King, his unfin­ished nov­el (which he pri­vate­ly called “the Long Thing”) set in an Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice branch office in mid-1980s Peo­ria. The papers relat­ed to the project he left behind includ­ed a note about the book’s larg­er theme:

It turns out that bliss – a sec­ond-by-sec­ond joy + grat­i­tude at the gift of being alive, con­scious – lies on the oth­er side of crush­ing, crush­ing bore­dom. Pay close atten­tion to the most tedious thing you can find (tax returns, tele­vised golf), and, in waves, a bore­dom like you’ve nev­er known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like step­ping from black and white into col­or. Like water after days in the desert. Con­stant bliss in every atom.

This, as well as the more every­day sug­ges­tions about work­ing more cre­ative­ly by doing the bor­ing bits first, would seem to share a basis with the ancient tra­di­tion of med­i­ta­tion. If indeed human­i­ty has gone too far in its mis­sion to alle­vi­ate the dis­com­fort of bore­dom, it has pro­duced the even more per­ni­cious con­di­tion in which we all feel con­stant­ly and unthink­ing­ly des­per­ate for new dis­trac­tions (which Shop Class as Soul­craft author Matthew B. Craw­ford mem­o­rably called “obe­si­ty of the mind”) while know­ing full well that those dis­trac­tions keep us from our impor­tant work, be it design­ing a sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ment, com­ing up with a sales strat­e­gy, or writ­ing a nov­el.

Maybe we can undo some of the dam­age by delib­er­ate­ly, reg­u­lar­ly shut­ting off our per­son­al flow of inter­est­ing sen­so­ry input for a while, whether through med­i­ta­tion, data entry, phone-book copy­ing, of whichev­er method feels right to you. (WNY­C’s Manoush Zomoro­di even launched a project last year called “Bored and Bril­liant: The Lost Art of Spac­ing Out,” which chal­lenged lis­ten­ers to min­i­mize their phone-check­ing and put the time gained to more cre­ative use.)  But we all need some high-qual­i­ty stim­u­la­tion soon­er or lat­er, so when you feel ready for anoth­er dose of it, you know where to find us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

The Psy­chol­o­gy of Messi­ness & Cre­ativ­i­ty: Research Shows How a Messy Desk and Cre­ative Work Go Hand in Hand

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

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.

Plato’s Cave Allegory Animated Monty Python-Style

in Animation, Philosophy | January 13th, 2016

There’s some­thing about Pla­to’s Alle­go­ry of the Cave that inspires peo­ple to get cre­ative. Orson Welles once nar­rat­ed an ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of the Cave alle­go­ry. The folks at Bull­head Enter­tain­ment brought to life the alle­go­ry appear­ing in Book VII of Pla­to’s Repub­lic using some fine clay­ma­tion. And Alex Gendler recent­ly craft­ed a ver­sion in an aes­thet­ic that calls Dr. Seuss to mind. Now, comes anoth­er one by The School of Life, done in a style rem­i­nis­cent of Ter­ry Gilliam’s cut-out ani­ma­tions for Mon­ty Python. It’s part of a series of 22 ani­mat­ed phi­los­o­phy videos, which takes you from the Ancients (Aris­to­tle, Pla­to, and the Sto­ics) straight through to the Mod­erns (Sartre, Camus, and Fou­cault). Find a com­plete playlist here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Alle­go­ry of the Cave: One Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, Anoth­er Made with Clay

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

What is the Good Life? Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Niet­zsche, & Kant’s Ideas in 4 Ani­mat­ed Videos

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

29 Sketchbooks by Renowned Artist Richard Diebenkorn, Containing 1,045 Drawings, Now Freely Viewable Online

in Art, Stanford | January 13th, 2016

We owe the way we see Cal­i­for­nia today in part to the painter Richard Diebenko­rn, “whose deeply lyri­cal abstrac­tions evoked the shim­mer­ing light and wide-open spaces” of the state “where he spent vir­tu­al­ly his entire life.” Those words come from his 1993 New York Times obit­u­ary, which sug­gest­ed that Diebenko­rn’s resis­tance to brief aes­thet­ic move­ments and art-world fads (a resis­tance aid­ed by the dis­tance between Cal­i­for­nia and New York) would ensure that the influ­ence of his vision long sur­vive him. Now, thanks to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s Can­tor Arts Cen­ter, we can look more close­ly than ever at what went into that vision in a new online exhi­bi­tion of Diebenko­rn’s sketch­books.

“Through­out his long career,” writes the Stan­ford Report’s Anna Koster, “Diebenko­rn, AB ’49, kept a sketch­book – a ‘portable stu­dio,’ as he called it – to cap­ture his ideas. These books, now in the Can­tor’s col­lec­tion, span 50 years and rep­re­sent the range of styles and sub­jects he explored, includ­ing deeply per­son­al por­traits of his wife, stud­ies of the fig­ure, land­scape stud­ies and com­po­si­tions that point to Diebenko­rn’s sig­na­ture blend of fig­u­ra­tion and abstrac­tion.” The sketch­books, donat­ed by the artist’s wid­ow and the Diebenko­rn Foun­da­tion, cur­rent­ly sit on dis­play at the Can­tor’s exhi­bi­tion Richard Diebenko­rn: The Sketch­books Revealed, which runs through August 22, 2016.

But if you can’t make it to north­ern Cal­i­for­nia before then, you can have a look at all of them online and behold in detail their 1,045 draw­ings span­ning fifty years of Diebenko­rn’s life. They give not only an insight into how he ren­dered the mate­r­i­al for so many of our Cal­i­for­nia dreams, but how he han­dled his famous­ly con­trar­i­an oscil­la­tions between styles, from Abstract Expres­sion­ism to fig­u­ra­tion and back to the abstract again, with some of his rich­est work in-between. “I was nev­er throw­ing things away when I switched from one way of paint­ing to anoth­er,” he once said. “You can see a con­tin­u­um from rep­re­sen­ta­tion to abstrac­tion, although I must say it nev­er felt like a smooth tran­si­tion while I was in the mid­dle of it.”

via Stan­ford News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

45,000 Works of Art from Stan­ford University’s Can­tor Arts Cen­ter Now Freely View­able Online

178,000 Images Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of the Car Now Avail­able on a New Stan­ford Web Site

The Art of Liv­ing: A Free Stan­ford Course Explores Time­less Ques­tions

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

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.

David Bowie as Tilda Swinton, and Vice Versa

in Music | January 11th, 2016

Just a great pho­to on Twit­ter via @ThatEricAlper and had to share :)

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!

David Bowie Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Performance, 2006

in Life, Music | January 10th, 2016

Note: This post was pub­lished on our site less than two weeks ago–December 29, 2015–when we had no idea that David Bowie was in the final days of an 18 month bat­tle with can­cer. In the post, Josh Jones won­dered whether the video fea­tured above would be Bowie’s last live per­for­mance. And, alas, tonight we dis­cov­er that it’s appar­ent­ly so. David Bowie’s offi­cial Twit­ter and Face­book accounts, not to men­tion major news­pa­pers, have just report­ed that David Bowie has died, only two days after his 69th birth­day and the release of his new album Black­star. We’ll have more to say about Bowie, a hero of ours, in the com­ing days. But, for now, we leave you with the sad news and this now his­toric per­for­mance caught on lam­en­ta­bly grainy video. –D.C

The man of a thou­sand hair­cuts, David Bowie has been the van­guard for cre­ative rein­ven­tion for longer than many of his fans have been alive. As soon as he’s made us think he’s exhaust­ed his imag­i­na­tion, he reap­pears with yet anoth­er album, anoth­er look, anoth­er the­atri­cal tour. Except that last bit isn’t like­ly to hap­pen again. We may have seen the end of Bowie the per­former some time ago, accord­ing to such sources as long­time Bowie pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti (who worked with him on 2013’s The Next Day) and British con­cert pro­mot­er John Gid­dings.

“David is one of the best artists I’ve ever worked with,” said Gid­dings in Octo­ber, ”but every time I see him now, before I even speak to him, he goes, ‘I’m not tour­ing.’” Does this rule out the odd one-off appear­ance? Who knows. Noth­ing is for cer­tain with Bowie. But it may well be that the per­for­mance above, a duet of “Changes” with Ali­cia Keys from 2006, rep­re­sents the leg­endary shape shifter’s last gig. (And if so, we hope some bet­ter-qual­i­ty video of it sur­faces.)

Bowie appeared with Keys, Dami­an Mar­ley, and come­di­an Wan­da Sykes at New York’s Ham­mer­stein Ball­room for a fundrais­er and sang Sta­tion to Sta­tion’s “Wild is the Wind” and Lodger’s “Fan­tas­tic Voy­age” in addi­tion to “Changes,” all fit­ting notes to end on, if this is indeed the end of his live per­form­ing career. He had rarely tak­en the stage since his 2004 heart attack dur­ing the Real­i­ty tour, but, Rolling Stone points out, “that didn’t stop him from play­ing with Arcade Fire twice in 2005 and David Gilmour the fol­low­ing year.”

But that was ten years ago. Dur­ing the record­ing of The Next Day, Vis­con­ti report­ed that Bowie insist­ed there would be no live shows, and there weren’t. Now, Bowie’s sur­prised us again with a new album, Black­star, and a ten-minute video, above, that looks like all the para­noid dystopi­an visions in 90s albums like Out­side, Earth­ling, and Hea­then come ter­ri­fy­ing­ly true. I can imag­ine this most recent, per­haps final, entry in the Bowie canon would make for a hell of a stage show, but it looks like he will pass that torch to the younger artists who con­tin­ue to inspire him as he ages grace­ful­ly. Black­star will be released on Jan­u­ary 8th, Bowie’s 69th birth­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie Becomes a DJ on BBC Radio in 1979; Intro­duces Lis­ten­ers to The Vel­vet Under­ground, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

Ricky Ger­vais Cre­ates Out­landish Com­e­dy with David Bowie

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

The Memorial Service & Celebration of “Lemmy” Kilmister, Motörhead Frontman, is Now Streaming Live

in Music | January 9th, 2016

Note: Though the ser­vice came to an end ear­li­er today, it looks like you can now watch a record­ing of the farewell cer­e­mo­ny above. If you make it to the end, you’ll notice that there was an issue with the audio when Dave Grohl began speak­ing. You can hear a slight­ly touched-up ver­sion here.

Just a quick note: “Lem­my” Kilmis­ter’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice is now stream­ing live on Youtube. Click play above. Ian Fras­er Kilmis­ter was an Eng­lish musi­cian, singer and song­writer who found­ed and front­ed the rock band Motör­head. He died on Decem­ber 29th, at the age of 70.

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Making Chocolate the Traditional Way, From Bean to Bar: A Short French Film

in Film, Food & Drink | January 8th, 2016

Chef turned restau­ra­teur Alain Ducasse has rather a lot to say on the sub­ject of choco­late.

On the web­site of Le Man­u­fac­ture, the small-batch choco­late fac­to­ry he found­ed in a for­mer Renault Garage, he wax­es poet­ic, shar­ing wide-eyed child­hood mem­o­ries of the “ter­ri­bly sen­su­al and bewitch­ing sub­stance.”

He’s a bit more mer­ce­nary in the pages of the The Wall Street Jour­nal and Har­vard Busi­ness Review, not­ing that the choco­late oper­a­tion grew out of his desire to con­trol the process from cacao beans to dessert plates in his numer­ous fine din­ing estab­lish­ments.

His involve­ment in the day-to-day oper­a­tions is like­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al, but in a choco­late mak­ing stint ear­ly in his career, he found the “olfac­to­ry uni­verse” plea­sur­able and “intox­i­cat­ing to the point of being dis­turb­ing.”

Take that, Her­sheys!

His fond­ness for vin­tage machin­ery and tra­di­tion­al meth­ods opens the door to some seri­ous cacao porn, above, star­ring for­mer exec­u­tive pas­try chef Nico­las Berg­er.

The word “metic­u­lous” comes up more than once in the voiceover nar­ra­tion. Hope­ful­ly, Sat­ur­day Night Live will take note. Tasked by Epi­cu­ri­ous to iden­ti­fy a guilty plea­sure on the order of choco­late or wine, Ducasse named BLT sand­wich­es, but he musters the req­ui­site, par­o­dy-wor­thy roman­ti­cism for direc­tor Simon Péno­chet:

Beyond gour­man­dise, we are seek­ing truth, a quest which is more pri­mal than orig­i­nal.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mar­velous Health Ben­e­fits of Choco­late: A Curi­ous Med­ical Essay from 1631

An Ivory Coast Cocoa Farmer Gets His Very First Taste of Choco­late

How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Mas­ter Sushi Chef

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

An Animated Carol Dweck on Why Parents Who Tell Their Kids How Smart They Are Aren’t Doing Them Any Favors

in Animation, Education, Psychology | January 5th, 2016

After a long hia­tus, the RSA (The Roy­al Soci­ety for the Encour­age­ment of Arts, Man­u­fac­tures and Com­merce) has returned with anoth­er one of the white­board ani­mat­ed-lec­tures they pio­neered five years ago.

The orig­i­nal set of videos, you might recall, fea­tured Slavoj Zizek on the Sur­pris­ing Eth­i­cal Impli­ca­tions of Char­i­ta­ble Giv­ing; Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich (author of Nick­el and Dimed) on The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy; Daniel Pink on The Sur­pris­ing Truth About What Moti­vates Us, and Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gist Philip Zim­bar­do on The Secret Pow­ers of Time.

The ani­mat­ed reboot (above) brings to life the thoughts of anoth­er Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, Car­ol S. Dweck. The author of Mind­set: The New Psy­chol­o­gy of Suc­cess (a book that appeared on Bill Gates’s Best of 2015 list), Dweck has looked close­ly at how our beliefs/mindsets strong­ly influ­ence the paths we take in life. And, in this clip, she talks about how well-mean­ing par­ents, despite their best inten­tions, might be cre­at­ing the wrong mind­sets in their kids, paving the way for prob­lems down the road. You can watch the com­plete, unan­i­mat­ed lec­ture here.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

Daniel Pink: The Sur­pris­ing Truth about What Moti­vates Us

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

The Secret Pow­ers of Time

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