The History & Legacy of Magna Carta Explained in Animated Videos by Monty Python’s Terry Jones

in History | March 24th, 2015

Even those who paid next to no atten­tion to their his­to­ry teach­ers know about Magna Car­ta — or at least they know it first came about in 1215. To deliv­er all the oth­er rel­e­vant details, we now have a new teacher in the form of Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones, who, on the occa­sion of this great char­ter’s 800th anniver­sary, pro­vides the nar­ra­tion for these two short ani­ma­tions, “Magna Car­ta: Medieval” and “Magna Car­ta: Lega­cy,” that tell the rest of its sto­ry.

These videos come as part of a whole web site put togeth­er by the British Library meant to help us all “dis­cov­er the his­to­ry and lega­cy of one of the world’s most cel­e­brat­ed doc­u­ments.” To this end, they’ve put up an intro­duc­tion to Magna Car­ta by Claire Breay and Julian Har­ri­son, which sum­ma­rizes both its ori­gins and its rel­e­vance today:

Orig­i­nal­ly issued by King John of Eng­land (r.1199–1216) as a prac­ti­cal solu­tion to the polit­i­cal cri­sis he faced in 1215, Magna Car­ta estab­lished for the first time the prin­ci­ple that every­body, includ­ing the king, was sub­ject to the law.

[ … ]

Three claus­es of the 1225 Magna Car­ta remain on the statute book today. Although most of the claus­es of Magna Car­ta have now been repealed, the many diver­gent uses that have been made of it since the Mid­dle Ages have shaped its mean­ing in the mod­ern era, and it has become a potent, inter­na­tion­al ral­ly­ing cry against the arbi­trary use of pow­er.

These ani­ma­tions, of course, add a great deal of visu­al, nar­ra­tive, and comedic vivid­ness to this impor­tant piece of West­ern polit­i­cal his­to­ry, fol­low­ing it from the reign of King John (“one of the worst kings in his­to­ry”), through civ­il war, the cre­ation of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, strug­gles for vot­ing rights and the free­dom of the press, right up to the writ­ing of the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights, in a sense Magna Car­ta’s mod­ern descen­dant. “Although very few of Magna Car­ta’s orig­i­nal claus­es remain valid in Eng­lish law,” says Jones, “it con­tin­ues to inspire peo­ple world­wide. Not a bad lega­cy for an 800-year-old doc­u­ment.”

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Online Gallery of 30,000 Items from The British Library, Includ­ing Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books And Mozart’s Diary

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

The British Library Puts Online 1,200 Lit­er­ary Trea­sures From Great Roman­tic & Vic­to­ri­an Writ­ers

Free Online Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Cookie Monster, Life Coach, Shows Why Cookies Are the Key to Happiness

in Food & Drink, Life | March 22nd, 2015

You can look for answers to life’s big ques­tions in the Zen teach­ings of Alan Watts, in the exis­ten­tial­ist mus­ings of Hunter S. Thomp­son, or some­where in our col­lec­tion of 130 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es. But maybe that’s over-think­ing things — pro­vid­ing com­pli­cat­ed answers when the key to life is real­ly quite sim­ple. Eat­ing cook­ies. Ladies and gen­tle­man, your favorite life coach and mine, Cook­ie Mon­ster.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Zen Teach­ings of Alan Watts: A Free Audio Archive of His Enlight­en­ing Lec­tures

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

An Animated Marc Maron Recalls Interviewing a Shirtless Iggy Pop in LA Garage

in Music, Podcasts | March 17th, 2015

Marc Maron’s WTF pod­cast now clocks in at 585 episodes. Cer­tain­ly one I remem­ber — and so does Maron too — is Episode 400, which fea­tured the god­fa­ther of punk, Iggy Pop. Above, an ani­mat­ed Marc Maron recalls the many musi­cians he’s inter­viewed in his Los Ange­les garage. And espe­cial­ly the sum­mer day when Pop paid a vis­it, tore off his shirt, and gave his own nip­ple a lit­tle twist. Good times in LA.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

Hear a Great Radio Doc­u­men­tary on William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rat­ed by Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop Con­ducts a Tour of New York’s Low­er East Side, Cir­ca 1993

Download Free NASA Software and Help Protect the Earth from Asteroids!

in Astronomy, Science, Software | March 16th, 2015

Yes, you can help save the world. And just by down­load­ing some free soft­ware. Writes NASA:

Pro­tect­ing the Earth from the threat of aster­oid impacts means first know­ing where they are. NASA is har­ness­ing the incred­i­ble poten­tial of inno­va­tors, mak­ers and cit­i­zen sci­en­tists by open­ing up the search. In an increas­ing­ly con­nect­ed world, NASA rec­og­nizes the val­ue of the pub­lic as a part­ner in address­ing some of the country’s most press­ing chal­lenges. We need your help in iden­ti­fy­ing aster­oids – and to help fur­ther this effort, we’ve built an appli­ca­tion that enables every­one, every­where, to help solve this glob­al chal­lenge.

To down­load the app and join the hunt for aster­oids, please click here. To get more infor­ma­tion on the project (in which Har­vard is a strate­gic par­tic­i­pant) click here.

Next up? Hope­ful­ly an app that saves Cal­i­for­nia, which, a NASA offi­cial projects, will run out of water by next year.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn 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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

How to Draw Don Draper: A Short Video Primer from Mad Men Insider Josh Weltman

in Comics/Cartoons, Television | March 12th, 2015

Josh Welt­man, a 25 year vet­er­an of the adver­tis­ing busi­ness, has been a part of Mad Men since the show’s first sea­son. He has worked close­ly, he tells us on his web site, “with Matthew Wein­er and the show’s writ­ers and pro­duc­ers to help ensure that Mad Men accu­rate­ly depicts the process of cre­at­ing ads and ser­vic­ing clients, and that the show’s adver­tis­ing and busi­ness sto­ries play true to life, true to char­ac­ter and true to peri­od. He also cre­ates most of the orig­i­nal ads seen on the show.”

On his Vimeo channel, you can find just one video. But it’s an essen­tial one — a short quick primer on how to draw Don Drap­er. Start prac­tic­ing. The final sea­son of Mad Men kicks off on Sun­day, April 5, at 10 p.m. on AMC.

via Devour

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus 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. Also, if you know of any great media we should share with your fel­low read­ers, please send it our way.

Hear John Lennon’s Final Interview, Taped on the Last Day of His Life (December 8, 1980)

in Music | March 12th, 2015

(Note: The clip above is the first of six parts. Hear the remain­ing parts here: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

John Lennon’s last days were filled with pro­fes­sion­al and domes­tic rou­tines char­ac­ter­is­tic of both a typ­i­cal wealthy New York­er and a leg­endary rock star and activist: mak­ing break­fast and watch­ing Sesame Street with his son Sean, going on epic shop­ping sprees, spend­ing late nights in the stu­dio, stag­ing demon­stra­tions, argu­ing with his ret­inue of ser­vants and hang­ers-on. After five years in semi-retire­ment, or “siege­like retreat,” spent rais­ing Sean, John Lennon seemed ready to emerge from seclu­sion and renew his career. On his final day, Decem­ber 8, 1980, he was feel­ing hope­ful about his cre­ative future. He had just learned that his album with Yoko, Dou­ble Fan­ta­sy, had gone gold, and he and Yoko were engaged in pro­mo­tion, and were look­ing for­ward to their next musi­cal endeav­or.

That morn­ing, Annie Lei­bovitz and her assis­tant came to the Lennon’s apart­ment build­ing, The Dako­ta, to shoot those now icon­ic pho­tographs for Rolling Stone of the Lennons in bed. Mean­while, a devot­ed fan named Paul Gore­sh, and Lennon’s mur­der­er Mark David Chap­man, start­ed to hang around out­side the build­ing. Less than two hours lat­er, a crew from San Francisco’s RKO radio arrived at The Dako­ta to inter­view John and Yoko. Inter­view­er Dave Sholin remem­bers meet­ing Lennon, who was get­ting dressed after the nude pho­to shoot: “the door opens and John jumps in with his arms extend­ed, like ‘here I am folks!’ We were meet­ing John Lennon and we were all maybe a lit­tle ner­vous but that just put us right at ease in prob­a­bly less than a minute.” “He was a reg­u­lar guy, very, very sharp and extreme­ly quick wit­ted,” Sholin con­tin­ued. “And he con­nect­ed with all of us. He had been out of the pub­lic eye for five years and he was open to speak­ing about any­thing. He did not hold back.”

You can hear that inter­view, in six parts, above, and read a tran­script here at Bea­t­les Archive. John and Yoko talk in great detail about Dou­ble Fan­ta­sy, about par­ent­ing, about meet­ing, falling in love, and work­ing togeth­er. Lennon also talks about his social vision and the need for “holis­tic” solu­tions to “stop this para­noia of 90-year old men play­ing macho games with the world and pos­si­bly the galaxy.” Notably, he offers his assess­ment of the cul­tur­al shifts from the six­ties through the sev­en­ties.

The bit about the six­ties we were all full of hope and then every­body got depressed and the sev­en­ties were ter­ri­ble – that atti­tude that every­body has; that the six­ties was there­fore negat­ed for being naïve and dumb. And the sev­en­ties is real­ly where it’s at, which means, you know, putting make­up on and danc­ing in the dis­co – which was fine for the sev­en­ties – but I don’t negate the six­ties. I don’t negate the sev­en­ties. The … the seeds that were plant­ed in the six­ties – and pos­si­bly they were plant­ed gen­er­a­tions before – but the seed… what­ev­er hap­pened in the six­ties the… the flow­er­ing of that is in the fem­i­nist, fem­i­niza­tion of soci­ety. The med­i­ta­tion, the pos­i­tive learn­ing that peo­ple are doing in all walks of life. That is a direct result of the open­ing up of the six­ties. Now, maybe in the six­ties we were naïve and like chil­dren every­body went back to their room and said, ‘Well, we didn’t get a won­der­ful world of just flow­ers and peace and hap­py choco­late and, and, and it wasn’t just pret­ty and beau­ti­ful all the time’ and that’s what every­body did, ‘we didn’t get every­thing we want­ed’ just like babies and every­body went back to their rooms and sulked. And we’re just gonna play rock and roll and not do any­thing else . We’re gonna stay in our rooms and the world is a nasty, hor­ri­ble place ’cause it didn’t give us every­thing we cried for’, right? Cryin’ for it wasn’t enough. The thing the six­ties did was show us the pos­si­bil­i­ty and the respon­si­bil­i­ty that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the pos­si­bil­i­ty, and the sev­en­ties every­body gone ‘Nya, nya, nya, nya’. And pos­si­bly in the eight­ies everybody’ll say, ‘Well, ok, let’s project the pos­i­tive side of life again’, you know? The world’s been goin’ on a long time, right? It’s prob­a­bly gonna go on a long time… ”

After the inter­view, Sholin board­ed a plane back to San Fran­cis­co, and John and Yoko went back to work, meet­ing with pro­duc­er Jack Dou­glas. When they returned home that night, they found Mark David Chap­man still wait­ing out­side The Dako­ta with his .38. At 11:15 that night, Lennon was pro­nounced dead at Roo­sevelt Hos­pi­tal. Sholin tells the sto­ry in a lengthy intro to the inter­view above. You can also lis­ten to a stream­lined ver­sion of the inter­view with­out the intro below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What We Heard 34 Years Ago on the Night John Lennon Was Shot: TV & Radio

Bed Peace Revis­its John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Viet­nam Protests

Down­load the John Lennon/Yoko Ono “War is Over (If You Want It)” Poster in 100+ Lan­guages

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

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games

in Philosophy | March 11th, 2015

In the world of the 8‑bit video game, there may be no more a frus­trat­ing, Sisy­phuse­an task than com­plet­ing the var­i­ous iter­a­tions of Mega Man. Each suc­ces­sive lev­el can feel end­less, as one dies and starts again, time after time, with no glo­ri­ous end in sight. It can feel like, as Friedrich Niet­zsche might say, being caught in a cycle of “eter­nal recur­rence,” des­tined to repeat the same actions, over and over again for eter­ni­ty.

The videos here then—part of the pop­u­lar trend of 8‑bit shorts—use the graph­ics and bleep­ing sound effects and music of Mega Man to illus­trate Nietzsche’s seem­ing­ly pes­simistic ideas. First, with a nod to Rust Cohle, we have the theory—or rather the thought experiment—of “eter­nal recur­rence.” Draw­ing on Arthur Schopen­hauer’s inter­pre­ta­tion of Bud­dhism, Niet­zsche imag­ined a uni­verse with no end and no begin­ning, an end­less loop of suf­fer­ing in which one is des­tined to make the same mis­takes for­ev­er.

If this seems ter­ri­fy­ing­ly bleak to you, you may approach life through a haze of resen­ti­ment, Niet­zsche might say, a bit­ter tan­gle of anger and blame that rejects the world as it is. The one who over­comes this snare—the uber­men­sch—has achieved self-mas­tery. Strong in the ways of the “will to pow­er” is he, and delight­ed by the prospect of liv­ing in the present moment an infi­nite num­ber of times, even if the uni­verse is cold, cru­el, and indif­fer­ent to human exis­tence. The “will to pow­er” gov­erns all life, for Niet­zsche, and human life in par­tic­u­lar is weak­ened by ignor­ing this fact and cling­ing to moral sys­tems of resen­ti­ment like that of Chris­tian­i­ty.

Niet­zsche’s argu­ment against Chris­tian­i­ty, as explained above at least, is that it encour­ages, even cel­e­brates medi­oc­rity and frowns upon excel­lence. That such is the gen­er­al tenor of our cur­rent age—an assess­ment the nar­ra­tor makes—is debat­able. Yes, we may pro­mote medi­oc­ri­ties at an alarm­ing rate, but we also at least nom­i­nal­ly cel­e­brate uber men (almost always men), who may not tru­ly be self made but who sure­ly live by the dic­tates of the will to pow­er, tak­ing what they want when they want it. Whether Nietzsche’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of this preda­to­ry behav­ior as the high­est of human pos­si­bil­i­ties inspires you or not may depend on how far you feel your­self to be above the com­mon herd.

Nietzsche’s amoral phi­los­o­phy has appealed to some pret­ty preda­to­ry char­ac­ters, but it also appeals to anti-author­i­tar­i­an, post-mod­ern types because of his crit­i­cal stance toward not only reli­gion, but also what can seem like its sec­u­lar replace­ment, sci­ence. Niet­zsche respect­ed the sci­en­tif­ic method, but he rec­og­nized its lim­i­ta­tions as a means of describ­ing, rather than explain­ing the world. All of our descrip­tions are inter­pre­ta­tions that do not pen­e­trate into the realm of ulti­mate caus­es or mean­ings, and can­not pro­vide a priv­i­leged, god-like van­tage point from which to make absolute judg­ments.

When, in the hopes of replac­ing the cer­tain­ties of reli­gious moral­i­ty and meta­physics, we ele­vate sci­ence to the posi­tion of ulti­mate truth for­mer­ly grant­ed to the mind of god, we lose sight of this basic lim­i­ta­tion; we com­mit the same fal­la­cy as the reli­gious, mis­tak­ing our sto­ries about the world for the world itself. Would Nietzsche’s extreme skep­ti­cism have made him sym­pa­thet­ic to today’s cli­mate sci­ence deniers and anti­vaxxers? Prob­a­bly not. He did rec­og­nize that, like the phys­i­cal bod­ies where thought takes place, some ideas are healthy descrip­tions of real­i­ty and some are not. Nonethe­less, our expla­na­tions, Niet­zsche argued, whether sci­en­tif­ic or oth­er­wise, are contingent—effects of lan­guage, not exposés of Truth, cap­i­tal T.

For more 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy, see our posts on Pla­to, Sartre, Der­ri­da, as well as Kierkegaard and Camus, all illus­trat­ed in short, nos­tal­gic recre­ations of clas­sic video games.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Niet­zsche: An Intro­duc­tion by Alain de Bot­ton

Niet­zsche Dis­pens­es Dat­ing Advice in a Short Screw­ball Film, My Friend Friedrich

The Dig­i­tal Niet­zsche: Down­load Nietzsche’s Major Works as Free eBooks

Human, All Too Human: 3‑Part Doc­u­men­tary Pro­files Niet­zsche, Hei­deg­ger & Sartre

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

Albert Einstein Sports a Native American Headdress and a Peace Pipe at the Grand Canyon, 1931

in History, Physics | March 9th, 2015

Click here to view the image in a larg­er for­mat.

In 1931, Cal­tech invit­ed Albert Ein­stein to spend some time on their cam­pus, with the hopes that he might even­tu­al­ly join their fac­ul­ty. While in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, he met Char­lie Chap­lin, took a pho­to with an Ein­stein pup­pet, enjoyed the mild win­ter, ruf­fled a few con­ser­v­a­tive feath­ers, then even­tu­al­ly left town. On the train ride back across the coun­try, he vis­it­ed the Hopi House, near the Grand Canyon, where he posed for a pic­ture with mem­bers of the Hopi tribe. The web­site Hanksville.org revis­its the clas­sic pho­to­graph (appar­ent­ly tak­en by Eugene O. Gold­beck) that doc­u­ment­ed his short vis­it:

There are sev­er­al strik­ing things about this pho­to­graph that deserve men­tion. It is clear that the head­dress that has been placed on Pro­fes­sor Ein­stein’s head and the pipe he has been giv­en to hold have no rela­tion­ship to the Indi­ans in this pho­to­graph. These Indi­ans are Hopis from the rel­a­tive­ly near­by Hopi pueb­los while the head­dress and pipe belong to the Plains Indi­an cul­ture.… The Hopis in this pic­ture were employ­ees of the Fred Har­vey Com­pa­ny who demon­strat­ed their arts there and, no doubt, posed for many oth­er pic­tures with tourists.

Besides Albert Ein­stein and his wife, there are 3 adult Hopis and one Hopi child in the pho­to­graph. Ein­stein is hold­ing the hand of a young Hopi girl in a very nat­ur­al man­ner; she is clutch­ing some­thing tight­ly in her oth­er hand and is quite intent upon some­thing out­side the frame. Prof. Ein­stein’s attrac­tion to chil­dren is seen in sev­er­al oth­er unof­fi­cial pho­tographs. He loved chil­dren and felt quite com­fort­able with them. The two men on the left side of the pho­to­graph were there to facil­i­tate the Ein­steins’ trip. The man on the left is J. B. Duffy, Gen­er­al Pas­sen­ger Agent of the ATSF (the famous Atich­son, Tokepa and San­ta Fe Rail­road); the oth­er man is Her­man Schweiz­er, Head of Fred Har­vey Curio, nor­mal­ly sta­tioned in Albu­querque. He may have spo­ken Ger­man and was there­fore present because Prof. Ein­stein was not com­plete­ly com­fort­able yet with Eng­lish.

Accord­ing to the Ein­stein Almanac, the Hopi “gave Ein­stein a peace pipe, rec­og­niz­ing his paci­fism, and dubbed him the ‘Great Rel­a­tive.’ ” You can see the pipe on dis­play in the pho­to.

As one web­site observed, what’s per­haps most notable about the his­toric image is this: It cap­tures lay­ers of commodification/fetishization. Here stands the most fetishized intel­lec­tu­al of the 20th cen­tu­ry pos­ing with one of the most fetishized peo­ples. Or maybe that’s just over­think­ing things.

Note: Some sources date the clas­sic pho­to back to 1922, but that seems less plau­si­ble. The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter pro­vides an image avail­able for down­load here.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus 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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten as Albert Ein­stein Calls for Peace and Social Jus­tice in 1945

Albert Ein­stein Hold­ing an Albert Ein­stein Pup­pet (Cir­ca 1931)

“Do Sci­en­tists Pray?”: A Young Girl Asks Albert Ein­stein in 1936. Ein­stein Then Responds.

Ein­stein for the Mass­es: Yale Presents a Primer on the Great Physicist’s Think­ing

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 1100 Free Online Cours­es

Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

in Food & Drink, Philosophy | March 6th, 2015

I think I speak for many of us when I say that cof­fee fuels our great­est intel­lec­tu­al efforts. And even as we get the jit­ters and leave brown rings on our desks, we can take com­fort in the fact that so it also went with some of the most notable philoso­phers in the his­to­ry of the dis­ci­pline. As far back as the 18th cen­tu­ry, no less a writer, thinker, and agi­ta­tor than François-Marie Arou­et, bet­ter known as Voltaire, “report­ed­ly con­sumed some­where between 40 and 50 cups of joe a day, appar­ent­ly of a choco­late-cof­fee mix­ture. He lived into his eight­ies, though his doc­tor warned him that his beloved cof­fee would kill him.”

That comes from Aman­da Scherk­er at The Huff­in­g­ton Post writ­ing up “9 Famous Genius­es Who Were Also Huge Cof­fee Addicts.” Voltaire’s java habit also comes up on “10 Odd Obses­sions of Famous Philoso­phers” by Vir­ginia Muir at List­verse, who names his drink­ing venue of choice (the Café Pro­cope in Paris) and indi­cates the extent of his enthu­si­asm by not­ing that “he even reg­u­lar­ly paid exor­bi­tant fees to have lux­u­ry cof­fee import­ed for his per­son­al use” — which cer­tain­ly does­n’t seem so eccen­tric today.

Lat­er that cen­tu­ry, Immanuel Kant took up cof­fee in his last days. Writ­ing first-hand on the sub­ject in the apt­ly titled The Last Days of Immanuel Kant, Thomas De Quincey (no stranger to life-chang­ing habits him­self) describes the philoso­pher’s “cus­tom of tak­ing, imme­di­ate­ly after din­ner, a cup of cof­fee,” a rit­u­al he so came to rel­ish that, when­ev­er he sensed he may not get his new favorite bev­er­age, there “com­menced a scene of some inter­est. Cof­fee must be brought ‘upon the spot’ (a word he had con­stant­ly on his mouth dur­ing his lat­ter days) ‘in a moment.’ ” Know­ing this would hap­pen, De Quincey made sure “the cof­fee was ground; the water was boil­ing; and the very moment the word was giv­en, [Kan­t’s] ser­vant shot in like an arrow and plunged the cof­fee into the water.… But this tri­fling delay seemed unen­durable to Kant.”

(pic­tured: Søren Kierkegaard cof­fee mug)

In the 19th cen­tu­ry, Søren Kierkegaard would also get into a cof­fee rit­u­al. He “had his own quite pecu­liar way of hav­ing cof­fee,” writes biog­ra­ph­er Joakim Garff. “Delight­ed­ly he seized hold of the bag con­tain­ing the sug­ar and poured sug­ar into the cof­fee cup until it was piled up above the rim. Next came the incred­i­bly strong, black cof­fee, which slow­ly dis­solved the white pyra­mid.” I always drink it black myself, but who among us dares think our­selves too good for the teeth-aching pre­ferred by the author of Fear and Trem­bling?

We must always bear in mind, too, that while cof­fee may con­sti­tute a nec­es­sary con­di­tion for our intel­lec­tu­al achieve­ments, it nev­er con­sti­tutes a suf­fi­cient one. Before pour­ing your next cup, whether your first of the day or your fifti­eth, whether before or after din­ner, and whether into a pyra­mid of sug­ar or not, ask your­self how much progress you’ve made on your own Can­dide or Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son. A sober­ing ques­tion, to be sure — but after enough caf­feine, you feel pret­ty sober any­way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Errol Morris Celebrates The Madness of Sports with Six New Mini-Docs: Watch Them Free Online

in Film, Sports | March 5th, 2015

In hon­or of Errol Mor­ris’ 67th birth­day, which just passed on Feb­ru­ary 9, Grantland.com is cel­e­brat­ing with a full week of new doc­u­men­taries shot for ESPN by the film­mak­er. Fre­quent­ly named one of the most impor­tant doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers of our times, he rose to fame with 1978’s pet ceme­tery doc Gates of Heav­en, then cement­ed it with The Thin Blue Line, which helped save a man from the elec­tric chair. (It also start­ed his long col­lab­o­ra­tion with com­pos­er Philip Glass.) Mor­ris has been a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, a jour­nal­ist, and a mak­er of com­mer­cials, all of which pro­vide the men­tal fuel (and fund­ing) for his film­mak­ing. He invent­ed the “Inter­ro­tron” a vari­a­tion on the teleprompter, which allowed his sub­jects to talk straight into the cam­era while he inter­viewed them. It added an unset­tling jolt to his two con­ver­sa­tions with the men vot­ed most like­ly to be war crim­i­nals, Robert McNa­ma­ra and Don­ald Rums­feld. But as Mor­ris says in a Grant­land inter­view, he is not here to accuse or pros­e­cute.

When I was inter­view­ing killers years ago, I enjoyed talk­ing to them. I enjoyed being with them. I wasn’t there to mor­al­ize with them or tem­po­rize with them, I was there to talk to them. And I think that’s still true. Rums­feld pushed it, I have to say.

It’s been two years since his last film, the Rums­feld inter­view The Unknown Known, and, while we wait for his next fea­ture and pos­si­bly a third book, Mor­ris has giv­en us six short docs that range between 10 and 20 min­utes. The Sub­ter­ranean Sta­di­um (at the top of this post) delves into the sub-cul­ture of table­top elec­tron­ic foot­ball games that have been around since the 1940s, and the grown-ups who still play them.

The Heist exam­ines, with dia­grams and sus­pense­ful music, the four col­lege stu­dents who stole Michael Jordan’s jer­sey from the vault­ed heights of a sta­di­um.

The Streak­er pro­files Mark Roberts, the affa­ble Liv­er­pudlian who has streaked at “every major sport­ing event in the world.”

There are three more videos wait­ing to be doled out. (Find them here.) One is on A.J. Mass, a writer for ESPN; anoth­er about sports col­lectibles; and the oth­er about horse rac­ing. The con­stant theme is the par­tic­u­lar mad­ness of sports fans, obses­sion being a major theme of Mor­ris’ work.

The oth­er link in all these films is the sound of Mor­ris, who choos­es not to edit out his off­screen voice. It’s the sound of a man clear­ly hav­ing a good time. How­ev­er:

“I’m sick of inter­view­ing,” he says. “I am real­ly sick of it. I’m not gonna say I do it bet­ter than any­body else, but I do it dif­fer­ent­ly than any­body else. I am good at it, for what­ev­er rea­son. There are a lot of dif­fer­ent rea­sons, but if that’s all I’m going to do for the rest of my life is stick a cam­era in front of peo­ple and say to them, “I don’t have a first ques­tion, what’s your first answer?” I think I would be very sad.”

So let’s cel­e­brate Mor­ris before he changes his mind.

This new series of short films will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online. Find more films in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

30 Errol Mor­ris Movies That Can Be Streamed Online

Wern­er Her­zog Los­es a Bet to Errol Mor­ris, and Eats His Shoe

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.