Bill Gates, Book Critic, Names His Top 5 Books of 2015

in Books | January 4th, 2016

When you think Bill Gates, you think Microsoft co-founder and big-time phil­an­thropist. Now you can add to the list, book crit­ic. This week­end, The New York Times pro­filed Bill Gates’ pen­chant for review­ing books on his blog, Gates Notes, and how (much like Oprah) when Gates gives a book a thumbs up, it moves copies. Many copies.

Above, you can watch a Gates-nar­rat­ed video high­light­ing his five favorite books of 2015. It includes: 1.) Thing Explain­er: Com­pli­cat­ed Stuff in Sim­ple Words by Ran­dall Munroe, which “explains var­i­ous subjects—from how smart­phones work to what the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion says—using only the 1,000 most com­mon words in the Eng­lish lan­guage and blue­print-style dia­grams”; 2) Mind­set: The New Psy­chol­o­gy of Suc­cess by Car­ol S. Dweck, a best­selling book that uses “clever research stud­ies and engag­ing writ­ing” to illu­mi­nate “how our beliefs about our capa­bil­i­ties exert tremen­dous influ­ence on how we learn and which paths we take in life”; and 3) Sus­tain­able Mate­ri­als With Both Eyes Open, a book writ­ten by Cam­bridge researchers that explores the ques­tion, “How much can we reduce car­bon emis­sions that come from mak­ing and using stuff?”. Oth­er books on Gates’ short list includes David Brooks’ The Road to Char­ac­ter and Being Nixon: A Man Divid­ed, by Evan Thomas.

You can find a num­ber of Gates’ book reviews in the Books sec­tion of his site.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Six Books (and One Blog) Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer

Take Big His­to­ry: A Free Short Course on 13.8 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry, Fund­ed by Bill Gates

View Bill Gates’ Mobile Library: The Books & Cours­es That Help Him Change The World

The Story of WHER, America’s Pioneering, First All-Woman Radio Station (1955)

in Radio | December 31st, 2015

Sam Phillips changed the course of music his­to­ry with his label Sun Records, which gave us Elvis Pres­ley, Carl Perkins, John­ny Cash, and Roy Orbi­son and essen­tial­ly the sec­ond half of the 20th Century’s pop cul­ture. But he had a sec­ond act in a life where most peo­ple would have rest­ed on their lau­rels. Although not as well known, Phillips helped the course of female lib­er­a­tion when he found­ed the country’s first all-female radio sta­tion WHER in 1955, bought with the mon­ey he received from sell­ing Presley’s record­ing con­tract.

In this intrigu­ing and his­to­ry-packed two-part audio doc­u­men­tary from Fugi­tive Waves, we hear from Phillips and many of the disc jock­eys who worked at the Mem­phis sta­tion that broad­cast from the third-ever Hol­i­day Inn built in the coun­try.

Philips thought the hotel con­cept was pret­ty cool and want­ed to be asso­ci­at­ed with its mod­ern design. The stu­dio, called “the Doll Bin,” was tiny, pink and pur­ple and dec­o­rat­ed with bras and panties hang­ing from a clothes­line. “1000 Beau­ti­ful Watts” was the slo­gan, and though, yes, that’s a bit cloy­ing to mod­ern ears, in 1955 it was one of the first cracks in the wall of male media dom­i­nance.

For an exam­ple of the sex­ism of the time, the pod­cast plays an except from anoth­er Mem­phis radio sta­tion, of Kit­ty Kel­ly inter­view­ing musi­cian and com­pos­er Sig­mund Romberg, who uses the live inter­view as a chance to drool over his host.

Phillips cre­at­ed the sta­tion out of his love of radio and his curios­i­ty over hear­ing women’s voic­es on the air­waves. His wife Becky was one of the first DJs at WHER and she, along with many of the women who worked there, nar­rate the tale. Women ran the entire oper­a­tion from the voice to the engi­neer booth. Phillips was used to tak­ing in women with no expe­ri­ence, because he had done the same thing at Sun Records.

WHER last­ed through 1973, only two years after the Nation­al Press Club opened its mem­ber­ship to women. Iron­i­cal­ly, as women claimed more and more rights, men began to work at the sta­tion on and off air.

The full doc­u­men­tary is less than an hour and worth the lis­ten, as it proves that one of the vol­leys in the bat­tle for wom­en’s lib­er­a­tion came not from either of the coasts of Amer­i­ca, but right from the heart­land.

The Kitchen Sis­ters podcast–the cre­ator of the episode above–is fea­tured in our col­lec­tion, The 150 Best Pod­casts to Enrich Your Mind

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975)

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

The Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Elec­tric Live Per­for­mances

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Hear Jeremy Irons Read T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Naming of Cats’ (For a Limited Time)

in Audio Books, Poetry | December 30th, 2015

Briefly not­ed: For a lim­it­ed time (for the next 23 days, to be pre­cise), you can hear Jere­my Irons read­ing “The Nam­ing of Cats,” a poem from T.S. Eliot’s Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats (1939). The poem will cer­tain­ly sound famil­iar to any­one who has ever seen Andrew Lloyd Web­ber’s musi­cal, Cats.

As a bonus, if you revis­it this post in our archive, you can hear Eliot, him­self, read­ing poems from the very same col­lec­tion. And this oth­er Open Cul­ture post fea­tures Eliot’s own cov­er design for Old Pos­sum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats. What angle haven’t we cov­ered?

The clip above comes cour­tesy of BBC Radio 4.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats & Oth­er Clas­sic Poems (75 Min­utes, 1955)

T.S. Eliot Illus­trates His Let­ters and Draws a Cov­er for Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

David Bowie Sings “Changes” in 2006: The Last Time He Performed Live, and Maybe His Last Live Performance Ever

in Music | December 29th, 2015

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:

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

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

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

The Overlook Hotel from The Shining Recreated with Gingerbread & Rice Krispies

in Film, Food & Drink | December 29th, 2015

From “eudi­cotyle­don” on Red­dit comes a hol­i­day project you, too, can maybe try at home. He says: “My fam­i­ly made a gin­ger­bread ren­di­tion of the Over­look Hotel from Kubrick­’s “The Shin­ing,” com­plete with a Rice Krispies treat maze and inte­ri­or rooms depict­ing famous scenes.” You can flip through 29 images in the gallery above, show­ing the edi­ble cre­ation from dif­fer­ent points of view. Then see a “mak­ing-of” gallery here. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Doc­u­men­tary View from the Over­look: Craft­ing The Shin­ing Looks at How Kubrick Made “the World’s Scari­est Movie”

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

The Hedge Maze from The Shin­ing Gets Recre­at­ed by Mythbuster’s Adam Sav­age

The Mak­ing of The Shin­ing

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

in Animation, Philosophy | December 28th, 2015

We all have some vision of what the good life should look like. Days filled with read­ing and strolls through muse­ums, retire­ment to a trop­i­cal island, unlim­it­ed amounts of time for video games…. What­ev­er they may be, our con­cepts tend toward fan­ta­sy of the grass is green­er vari­ety. But what would it mean to live the good life in the here and now, in the life we’re giv­en, with all its warts, rou­tines, and dai­ly oblig­a­tions? Though the work of philoso­phers for the past hun­dred years or so may seem divorced from mun­dane con­cerns and desires, this was not always so. Thinkers like Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Niet­zsche once made the ques­tion of the good life cen­tral to their phi­los­o­phy. In the videos here, Uni­ver­si­ty of New Orleans phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Chris Sur­prenant sur­veys these four philoso­phers’ views on that most con­se­quen­tial sub­ject.

The view we’re like­ly most famil­iar with comes from Socrates (as imag­ined by Pla­to), who, while on tri­al for cor­rupt­ing the youth, tells his inquisi­tors, “the unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing.” Pithy enough for a Twit­ter bio, the state­ment itself may too often go unex­am­ined. Socrates does not endorse a life of pri­vate self-reflec­tion; he means that “an indi­vid­ual become a mas­ter of him­self,” says Surprenant,”using his rea­son to reign in his pas­sions, as well as doing what he can to help pro­mote the sta­bil­i­ty of his com­mu­ni­ty.” In typ­i­cal ancient Greek fash­ion, Pla­to and his men­tor Socrates define the good life in terms of rea­son­able restraint and civic duty.

The Pla­ton­ic ver­sion of the good life comes in for a thor­ough drub­bing at the hands of Friedrich Niet­zsche, as do Aris­totelian, Kant­ian, and Judeo-Chris­t­ian ideals. Nietzsche’s dec­la­ra­tion that “God is dead,” and in par­tic­u­lar the Chris­t­ian god, “allows us the pos­si­bil­i­ty of liv­ing more mean­ing­ful and ful­fill­ing lives,” Sur­prenant says. Niet­zsche, who describes him­self as an “amoral­ist,” uses the pro­posed death of god—a metaphor for the loss of reli­gious and meta­phys­i­cal author­i­ty gov­ern­ing human behavior—to stage what he calls a “reval­u­a­tion of val­ues.” His cri­tique of con­ven­tion­al moral­i­ty pits what he calls life-deny­ing val­ues of self-restraint, democ­ra­cy, and com­pas­sion (“slave moral­i­ty”) against life-affirm­ing val­ues.

For Niet­zsche, life is best affirmed by a striv­ing for indi­vid­ual excel­lence that he iden­ti­fied with an ide­al­ized aris­toc­ra­cy. But before we begin think­ing that his def­i­n­i­tion of the good life might accord well with, say, Ayn Rand’s, we should attend to the thread of skep­ti­cism that runs through­out all his work. Despite his con­tempt for tra­di­tion­al moral­i­ty, Niet­zsche did not seek to replace it with uni­ver­sal pre­scrip­tions, but rather to under­mine our con­fi­dence in all such notions of uni­ver­sal­i­ty. As Sur­prenant points out, “Niet­zsche is not look­ing for fol­low­ers,” but rather attempt­ing to “dis­rupt old con­cep­tu­al schemes,” in order to encour­age us to think for our­selves and, as much as it’s pos­si­ble, embrace the hand we’re dealt in life.

For con­trast and com­par­i­son, see Surprenant’s sum­maries of Aris­to­tle and Kant’s views above and below. This series of ani­mat­ed videos comes to us from Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy (Wi-Phi for short), a project joint­ly cre­at­ed by Yale and MIT in 2013. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured video series on meta­phys­i­cal prob­lems like free will and the exis­tence of god and log­i­cal prob­lems like com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es. The series here on the good life should give you plen­ty to reflect on, and to study should you decide to take up the chal­lenge and read some of the philo­soph­i­cal argu­ments about the good life for your­self, if only to refute them and come up with your own. But as the short videos here should make clear, think­ing rig­or­ous­ly about the ques­tion will like­ly force us to seri­ous­ly re-exam­ine our com­fort­able illu­sions.

For many more open access phi­los­o­phy videos, check out the Wi Phi Youtube chan­nel. You can also find com­plete cours­es by Prof. Sur­prenant in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

105 Ani­mat­ed Phi­los­o­phy Videos from Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy: A Project Spon­sored by Yale, MIT, Duke & More

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

How to Live a Good Life? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry on Aris­to­tle, Ayn Rand, Max Weber & More

Learn Right From Wrong with Oxford’s Free Course A Romp Through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners

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

John Astin, From The Addams Family, Recites “The Raven” as Edgar Allan Poe

in Literature, Poetry, Television, Theatre | December 28th, 2015

How fit­ting that the head of The Addams Fam­i­ly would har­bor a life­long obses­sion with author Edgar Allan Poe.

In the spir­it of full dis­clo­sure, we should clar­i­fy that the true Poe fan­boy is not the fic­tion­al Gomez Addams, but rather the first actor to bring the char­ac­ter to life, John Astin, of tele­vi­sion fame.

Astin’s intro­duc­tion to the Mas­ter of the Macabre came as a child, when his moth­er retold him the sto­ry of “The Mur­ders in the Rue Morgue,” fol­low­ing it up with a copy of “The Pur­loined Let­ter.”

His fas­ci­na­tion with those tales foment­ed a rav­en­ous (sor­ry) appetite for all things Poe.

As Astin told the Bal­ti­more Sun:

His dis­cov­er­ies about human nature were so right, and so accu­rate, that it’s almost a won­der to read, or reread. There are con­tin­u­al­ly dis­cov­er­ies, in the read­ing of Poe, about humankind.

Now the direc­tor of Johns Hop­kins’ Under­grad­u­ate Pro­gram in The­atre Arts and Stud­ies, Astin col­lab­o­rat­ed with writ­ers Ron Magid and Paul Day Clemens on Edgar Allan Poe — Once Upon a Mid­night, a one-man show that toured exten­sive­ly through­out the late 90s and ear­ly 2000s. In addi­tion to get­ting across a pas­sel of grim bio­graph­i­cal details, the play­wrights tasked Astin’s Poe with an unabridged recita­tion of his best known poem, “The Raven,” above.

Philip Bran­des, review­ing a per­for­mance in the Los Ange­les Times wrote:

Recit­ing “The Raven” in its entire­ty, Astin can­not afford to milk each line for atmos­phere à la Vin­cent Price; it would take him most of the sec­ond act.

Instead, he races through the poem as an author would in recall­ing his own famil­iar words, grad­u­al­ly get­ting caught up in their pow­er and fin­ish­ing on a dra­mat­ic crescen­do.

Pow­er­ful stuff. Nev­er­more!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Great Stan Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

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

Watch David Lynch’s Playstation 2 Commercial, Then Go Behind the Scenes and Watch Him Make It

in Film, Video Games | December 25th, 2015

Hav­ing lost track of video gam­ing some­where around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, I admit that I have no idea which gen­er­a­tion of Playsta­tion you or a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber may have joy­ful­ly unwrapped this Christ­mas morn­ing. I only know that it prob­a­bly did­n’t come adver­tised with a com­mer­cial by David Lynch, so why not take a moment out of your Christ­mas day to revis­it the Playsta­tion — the Playsta­tion 2, to be pre­cise — that did? At the top of the post, we have Lynch’s char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sur­re­al spot “Wel­come to the Third Place,” fea­tur­ing flames, a mys­te­ri­ous glow­ing woman, omi­nous foot­steps, skewed per­spec­tives, organ­ic odd­i­ties, a talk­ing duck (whose voice actor I chal­lenge you to iden­ti­fy) — every­thing, in oth­er words, that a Lynchi­an hopes for.

What goes on in this Third Place? Why, the sort of vivid, inex­plic­a­ble sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences not acces­si­ble in every­day life — unless, as the adver­tis­ing log­ic goes, you choose to pass through the por­tal of the Playsta­tion. But the man behind Twin Peaks and Blue Vel­vet has “been liv­ing in The Third Place for quite a few years,” says Playsta­tion Euro­pean mar­ket­ing direc­tor David Pat­ton in the mak­ing-of-video just below, shot by Luke Forsythe, who also worked on the com­mer­cial. “If there was one per­son that was gonna to under­stand what we need­ed to com­mu­ni­cate, it was gonna be David Lynch.”

“I was 24 and it was easy to think hav­ing worked for so many impres­sive direc­tors, that I was­n’t bull­ish or hard enough to be a direc­tor,” remem­bers Forsythe. “I was liv­ing with my par­ents watch­ing films end­less­ly hav­ing to try and con­vince my mum that I was actu­al­ly work­ing. The next minute I’m in LA film­ing this. Meet­ing David Lynch, see­ing how he worked so play­ful­ly and polite­ly made me realise there are lots of ways to direct and be a direc­tor. It could­n’t have been bet­ter. 15 years lat­er I’m still direct­ing and still full of mem­o­ries of this love­ly man and the time spent see­ing him make.”

“The result­ing one-minute B&W trail­er, shown in the­aters in over a hun­dred coun­tries except the U.S., end­ed up being clas­sic David Lynch alright,” says fan site Wel­come to Twin Peaks. “Except maybe for the 24 major visu­al effects in just 60 sec­onds.” Known as quite pos­si­bly the art-housi­est house­hold-name film­mak­er alive, Lynch has shown more enthu­si­asm for mak­ing com­mer­cials than have many of his peers: “The mon­ey’s good,” he once said, “and the added bonus is that I get to use and learn about the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy.” And though he has­n’t made a movie in almost a decade, he has­n’t announced his retire­ment either. Maybe the U.S. cam­paign for the next Playsta­tion — and wow, now that I look it up, it’ll be the Playsta­tion 5 already — needs his ser­vices. Fif­teen years have passed since “Wel­come to the Third Place”; I’d say Amer­i­ca’s ready.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

Cof­fee is for Peo­ple, Not Robots: The New Ad for David Lynch’s Line of Organ­ic Cof­fee

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch’s Per­fume Ads Based on the Works of Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & D.H. Lawrence

Cig­a­rette Com­mer­cials from David Lynch, the Coen Broth­ers and Jean-Luc Godard

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.

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Greatest Performances (1972)

in Music | December 23rd, 2015

“I was told that some of you dudes don’t know any­thing about blues,” he said from the stage before begin­ning what he would go on to call the one of the great­est shows of his career: “So I wan­na say this to you: I came to swap some with you. I imag­ine that quite a few of you dudes have the blues already.” After a lit­tle more friend­ly ban­ter and an acknowl­edg­ment that it is Thanks­giv­ing Day, B.B. King launch­es into “Down­heart­ed” (or “How Blue Can You Get”) in front of his admir­ing audi­ence of inmates at Sing Sing Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty in Ossin­ing, New York.

It is three years after John­ny Cash per­formed at San Quentin (four years after his Fol­som con­cert) and one year after Nixon declared the “war on drugs” and began the peri­od of mass incar­cer­a­tion that has reached epi­dem­ic pro­por­tions today.

The con­cert at Sing Sing includ­ed not only King but also per­for­mances from come­di­an Jim­my Walk­er (J.J. from Good Times, who intro­duces King at the top), ensem­ble vocal group Voic­es of East Harlem, and Joan Baez and her sis­ter Mimi Far­iña, who you can see below sing “I Shall Be Released” and “Viva mi patria Bolivia.” In-between the stars per­for­mances, inmates put on a play and recit­ed orig­i­nal poet­ry.

Baez, as you’ll see, was very well received, but the star of the night was King. The entire show was cap­tured on film by doc­u­men­tary direc­tor David Hoff­man, who had been teach­ing film at the prison and who orga­nized the show. In the clips above, Hoff­man shows us sev­er­al close-ups of the inmates’ faces in beau­ti­ful­ly human­iz­ing por­traits rem­i­nis­cent of the pho­tographs of Gor­don Parks. You can see Hoff­man below briefly describe the cir­cum­stances of the con­cert before anoth­er clip of the “Down­heart­ed” per­for­mance and more.

See a few more clips from the con­cert on Youtube here, and buy a copy of the com­plete DVD here (Richard and Mimi Fariña’s web­site has a com­plete list­ing of per­for­mances). The Sing Sing con­cert had an impact on the per­form­ers as well as the inmates. Baez wrote an orig­i­nal song for the film’s cred­its (below) and her sis­ter Mimi was inspired after­ward to found Bread & Ros­es, which orga­nizes con­certs for peo­ple in hos­pi­tals, home­less shel­ters, pris­ons, and oth­er insti­tu­tions (“any­where they serve Jell‑O,” joked come­di­an Don Nov­el­lo).

This was not the first time King had per­formed at a prison. The year pre­vi­ous, in 1971, he put on a con­cert at Chicago’s Cook Coun­ty Jail. The result­ing record made Rolling Stone’s 500 best albums list, though it didn’t mer­it the most favor­able review from the mag­a­zine. Nonethe­less, All­mu­sic pro­nounced it a “live album with some real sparks to it,” and “pos­si­bly the best live ver­sion of ‘The Thrill is Gone’ of all its many incar­na­tions.” Hear it below and decide for your­self, and hear the full Cook Coun­ty live album here.

Of that ear­li­er prison con­cert, King’s key­boardist Ron Levy remarked, “If any­body had the blues, it was those peo­ple incar­cer­at­ed. And B.B. real­ly felt com­pas­sion for those guys…. Peo­ple don’t real­ize B.B. King was much more than just a musi­cian and enter­tain­er. He’s a human being, a human­i­tar­i­an. He cared. He’s one of the real­ly good guys. There aren’t many like him in his­to­ry. He’s not just the king of the blues. He’s one of the kings of human­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Elec­tric Live Per­for­mances

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

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

In 1911, Thomas Edison Predicts What the World Will Look Like in 2011: Smart Phones, No Poverty, Libraries That Fit in One Book

in History, Magazines, Science | December 21st, 2015

The end of 2015 has been dom­i­nat­ed by crises. At times, amidst the dai­ly bar­rage of fear­ful spec­ta­cle, it can be dif­fi­cult to con­ceive of the years around the cor­ner in ways that don’t resem­ble the next crop of blow-em-up action movies, near­ly every one of which depicts some vari­a­tion on the seem­ing­ly inex­haustible theme of the end-of-the-world. There’s no doubt many of our cur­rent chal­lenges are unprece­dent­ed, but in the midst of anx­i­eties of all kinds it’s worth remem­ber­ing that—as Steven Pinker has thor­ough­ly demon­strat­ed—“vio­lence has declined by dra­mat­ic degrees all over the world.”

In oth­er words, as bad as things can seem, they were much worse for most of human his­to­ry. It’s a long view cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an Otto Friedrich took in a grim sur­vey called The End of the World: A His­to­ry. Writ­ten near the end of the Cold War, Friedrich’s book doc­u­ments some 2000 years of Euro­pean cat­a­stro­phe, dur­ing which one gen­er­a­tion after anoth­er gen­uine­ly believed the end was nigh. And yet, cer­tain far-see­ing indi­vid­u­als have always imag­ined a thriv­ing human future, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the pro­found­ly destruc­tive 20th cen­tu­ry.

In 1900, engi­neer John Elfreth Watkins made a sur­vey of the sci­en­tif­ic minds of his day. As we not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, some of those pre­dic­tions of the year 2000 seem pre­scient, some pre­pos­ter­ous; all bold­ly extrap­o­lat­ed con­tem­po­rary trends and fore­saw a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent human world. At the height of the Cold War in 1964, Isaac Asi­mov part­ly described our present in his 50 year fore­cast. In 1926, and again 1935, no less a vision­ary than Niko­la Tes­la looked into the 21st cen­tu­ry to envi­sion a world both like and unlike our own.

Sev­er­al years ear­li­er in 1911, Tesla’s rival Thomas Edi­son made his own set of futur­is­tic pre­dic­tions for 100 years hence in a Cos­mopoli­tan arti­cle. These were also sum­ma­rized in an arti­cle pub­lished that year by the Mia­mi Metrop­o­lis, which begins by laud­ing Edi­son as a “wiz­ard… who has wrest­ed so many secrets from jeal­ous Nature.” We’ve con­densed Edison’s pre­dic­tions in list form below. Com­pare these to Tesla’s visions for a fas­ci­nat­ing con­trast of two dif­fer­ent, yet com­ple­men­tary future worlds.

1. Steam pow­er, already on the wane, will rapid­ly dis­ap­pear: “In the year 2011 such rail­way trains as sur­vive will be dri­ven at incred­i­ble speed by elec­tric­i­ty (which will also be the motive force of all the world’s machin­ery).”

2. “[T]he trav­el­er of the future… will fly through the air, swifter than any swal­low, at a speed of two hun­dred miles an hour, in colos­sal machines, which will enable him to break­fast in Lon­don, trans­act busi­ness in Paris and eat his lun­cheon in Cheap­side.”

3. “The house of the next cen­tu­ry will be fur­nished from base­ment to attic with steel… a steel so light that it will be as easy to move a side­board as it is today to lift a draw­ing room chair. The baby of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry will be rocked in a steel cra­dle; his father will sit in a steel chair at a steel din­ing table, and his mother’s boudoir will be sump­tu­ous­ly equipped with steel fur­nish­ings….”

4. Edi­son also pre­dict­ed that steel rein­forced con­crete would replace bricks: “A rein­forced con­crete build­ing will stand prac­ti­cal­ly for­ev­er.” By 1941, he told Cos­mopoli­tan, “all con­struc­tions will be of rein­forced con­crete, from the finest man­sions to the tallest sky­scrap­ers.”

5. Like many futur­ists of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, and some few today, Edi­son fore­saw a world where tech would erad­i­cate pover­ty: “Pover­ty was for a world that used only its hands,” he said; “Now that men have begun to use their brains, pover­ty is decreas­ing…. [T]here will be no pover­ty in the world a hun­dred years from now.”

6. Antic­i­pat­ing agribusi­ness, Edi­son pre­dict­ed, “the com­ing farmer will be a man on a seat beside a push-but­ton and some levers.” Farm­ing would expe­ri­ence a “great shake-up” as sci­ence, tech, and big busi­ness over­took its meth­ods.

7. “Books of the com­ing cen­tu­ry will all be print­ed leaves of nick­el, so light to hold that the read­er can enjoy a small library in a sin­gle vol­ume. A book two inch­es thick will con­tain forty thou­sand pages, the equiv­a­lent of a hun­dred vol­umes.”

8. Machines, Edi­son told Cos­mopoli­tan, “will make the parts of things and put them togeth­er, instead of mere­ly mak­ing the parts of things for human hands to put togeth­er. The day of the seam­stress, weari­ly run­ning her seam, is almost end­ed.”

9. Tele­phones, Edi­son con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict­ed, “will shout out prop­er names, or whis­per the quo­ta­tions from the drug mar­ket.”

10. Antic­i­pat­ing the log­ic of the Cold War arms race, though under­es­ti­mat­ing the mass destruc­tion to pre­cede it, Edi­son believed the “pil­ing up of arma­ments” would “bring uni­ver­sal rev­o­lu­tion or uni­ver­sal peace before there can be more than one great war.”

11. Edi­son “sounds the death knell of gold as a pre­cious met­al. ‘Gold,’ he says, ‘has even now but a few years to live. They day is near when bars of it will be as com­mon and as cheap as bars of iron or blocks of steel.’”

He then went on, aston­ish­ing­ly, to echo the pre-sci­en­tif­ic alchemists of sev­er­al hun­dred years ear­li­er: “’We are already on the verge of dis­cov­er­ing the secret of trans­mut­ing met­als, which are all sub­stan­tial­ly the same mat­ter, though com­bined in dif­fer­ent pro­por­tions.’”

Excit­ed by the future abun­dance of gold, the Mia­mi Metrop­o­lis piece on Edison’s pre­dic­tions breath­less­ly con­cludes, “In the mag­i­cal days to come there is no rea­son why our great lin­ers should not be of sol­id gold from stem to stern; why we should not ride in gold­en taxi­cabs, or sub­sti­tut­ed gold for steel in our draw­ing rooms.”

In read­ing over the pre­dic­tions from shrewd thinkers of the past, one is struck as much by what they got right as by what they got often ter­ri­bly wrong. (Matt Novak’s Pale­o­fu­ture, which brings us the Mia­mi Metrop­o­lis arti­cle, has chron­i­cled the check­ered, hit-and-miss his­to­ry of futur­ism for sev­er­al years now.)  Edison’s tone is more stri­dent than most of his peers, but his accu­ra­cy was about on par, fur­ther sug­gest­ing that nei­ther the most con­fi­dent of tech­no-futur­ists, nor the most bale­ful of doom­say­ers knows quite what the future holds: their clear­est fore­casts obscured by the bias­es, tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions, and philo­soph­i­cal cat­e­gories of their present.

via Pale­o­fu­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Inter­net, 3D Print­ers and Trained Mon­key Ser­vants

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

Stephen Hawk­ing Won­ders Whether Cap­i­tal­ism or Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Doom the Human Race

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