Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky Demystifies Depression, Which, Like Diabetes, Is Rooted in Biology

in Biology, Life | August 13th, 2014

We know that depres­sion affects peo­ple from all walks of life. Rich. Poor. Celebs. Ordi­nary Joes. Young. Old. But, some­how after the death of Robin Williams, there’s a renewed focus on depres­sion, and my mind turned imme­di­ate­ly to a lec­ture we fea­tured on the site way back in 2009. The lec­ture is by Robert Sapol­sky, a Stan­ford biol­o­gist, who has a tal­ent for mak­ing sci­en­tif­ic sub­jects pub­licly acces­si­ble. A recip­i­ent of the MacArthur genius grant, Sapol­sky notes that depres­sion — cur­rent­ly the 4th great­est cause of dis­abil­i­ty world­wide, and soon the 2nd — is deeply bio­log­i­cal. Depres­sion is root­ed in biol­o­gy, much as is, say, dia­betes. As the lec­ture unfolds, you will see how depres­sion changes the body. When depressed, our brains func­tion dif­fer­ent­ly while sleep­ing, our stress response goes way up 24/7, our bio­chem­istry lev­els change, etc. You will see that biol­o­gy is at work.

Sapol­sky is one com­pelling teacher. So you might not want to miss his Stan­ford course, Intro­duc­tion to Human Biol­o­gy. It’s equal­ly worth your time. You can always find it housed in our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

Andrei Tarkovsky Creates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

in Film | August 11th, 2014

If you, as a film­go­er, have any­thing in com­mon with me — and if you hap­pen to live in Los Ange­les as well — you’ve spent the past few weeks excit­ed about the Andrei Tarkovsky dou­ble-bill com­ing up at the Quentin Taran­ti­no-owned New Bev­er­ly Cin­e­ma. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the famous­ly (and extreme­ly) cinephilic Taran­ti­no’s lists of favorite films, but what about Tarkovsky? What movies did the man who made The Mir­ror and Nos­tal­ghia — to name only two of his most strik­ing­ly per­son­al films, not to men­tion the same ones com­ing up at the New Bev­er­ly — look to for inspi­ra­tion? Nostalghia.com has one set of answers in the form of a list Tarkovsky once gave film crit­ic Leonid Kozlov. “I remem­ber that wet, grey day in April 1972 very well,” writes Kozlov in a Sight and Sound arti­cle re-post­ed there. “We were sit­ting by an open win­dow and talk­ing about var­i­ous things when the con­ver­sa­tion turned to Otar Ioselian­i’s film Once Upon a Time There Lived a Singing Black­bird.”

Tarkovsky strug­gled toward an assess­ment of that pic­ture, even­tu­al­ly deem­ing it “a very good film.” Kozlov then asked the film­mak­er to draw up a list of his favorites. “He took my propo­si­tion very seri­ous­ly and for a few min­utes sat deep in thought with his head bent over a piece of paper,” the crit­ic recalls. “Then he began to write down a list of direc­tors’ names — Buñuel, Mizoguchi, Bergman, Bres­son, Kuro­sawa, Anto­nioni, Vigo. One more, Drey­er, fol­lowed after a pause. Next he made a list of films and put them care­ful­ly in a num­bered order. The list, it seemed, was ready, but sud­den­ly and unex­pect­ed­ly Tarkovsky added anoth­er title — City Lights.” The fruit of his inter­nal delib­er­a­tions reads as fol­lows:

1. Diary of a Coun­try Priest (Robert Bres­son, 1951)
2. Win­ter Light (Ing­mar Bergman, 1963)
3. Nazarin (Luis Buñuel, 1959)
4. Wild Straw­ber­ries (Ing­mar Bergman, 1957)
5. City Lights (Char­lie Chap­lin, 1931)
6. Uget­su Mono­gatari (Ken­ji Mizoguchi, 1953)
7. Sev­en Samu­rai (Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, 1954)
8. Per­sona (Ing­mar Bergman, 1966)
9. Mouchette (Robert Bres­son, 1967)
10. Woman of the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshi­ga­hara, 1964)

Among respect­ed direc­tors’ great­est-films lists, Tarkovsky’s must rank as, while cer­tain­ly one of the most con­sid­ered, also one of the least diverse. “With the excep­tion of City Lights,” Kozlov notes, “it does not con­tain a sin­gle silent film or any from the 30s or 40s. The rea­son for this is sim­ply that Tarkovsky saw the cin­e­ma’s first 50 years as a pre­lude to what he con­sid­ered to be real film-mak­ing.” And the lack of Sovi­et films “is per­haps indica­tive of the fact that he saw real film-mak­ing as some­thing that went on else­where.” Over­all, we have here “not only a list of Tarkovsky’s favorite films, but equal­ly one of his favorite direc­tors,” espe­cial­ly Ing­mar Bergman, who places no few­er than three times. The esteem went both ways; you may remem­ber how Bergman once described Tarkovsky as “the great­est of them all.” Still, as cin­e­mat­ic mutu­al appre­ci­a­tion soci­eties go, I sup­pose you could­n’t ask for two more qual­i­fied mem­bers.

If you can’t make it to the New Bev­er­ly Cin­e­ma, you can watch many of Tarkovsky’s major films (and ear­ly stu­dent films) online here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman Eval­u­ates His Fel­low Film­mak­ers — The “Affect­ed” Godard, “Infan­tile” Hitch­cock & Sub­lime Tarkovsky

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

50 Free Noir Films: An Easy Way to Sample a Great Cinematic Tradition

in Film | August 9th, 2014

What is Film Noir? Ask that ques­tion to the Film Noir Foun­da­tion and this is what they’ll tell you:

Film noir is one of Hollywood’s only organ­ic artis­tic move­ments. Begin­ning in the ear­ly 1940s, numer­ous screen­plays inspired by hard­boiled Amer­i­can crime fic­tion were brought to the screen, pri­mar­i­ly by Euro­pean émi­gré direc­tors who shared a cer­tain sto­ry­telling sen­si­bil­i­ty: high­ly styl­ized, overt­ly the­atri­cal, with imagery often drawn from an ear­li­er era of Ger­man “expres­sion­ist” cin­e­ma. Fritz Lang, Robert Siod­mak, Bil­ly Wilder, and Otto Pre­minger, among oth­ers, were among this Hol­ly­wood van­guard.

Dur­ing and imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing World War II, movie audi­ences respond­ed to this fresh, vivid, adult-ori­ent­ed type of film — as did many writ­ers, direc­tors, cam­era­men and actors eager to bring a more mature world-view to Hol­ly­wood prod­uct. Large­ly fueled by the finan­cial and artis­tic suc­cess of Bil­ly Wilder’s adap­ta­tion of James M. Cain’s novel­la Dou­ble Indemnity(1944), the stu­dios began crank­ing out crime thrillers and mur­der dra­mas with a par­tic­u­lar­ly dark and ven­omous view of exis­tence.

In 1946 a Paris ret­ro­spec­tive of Amer­i­can films embar­goed dur­ing the war clear­ly revealed this trend toward vis­i­bly dark­er, more cyn­i­cal crime melo­dra­mas. It was not­ed by sev­er­al Gal­lic crit­ics who chris­tened this new type of Hol­ly­wood prod­uct “film noir,” or black film, in lit­er­al trans­la­tion.

Few, if any of the artists in Hol­ly­wood who made these films called them “noir” at the time. But the vivid co-min­gling of lost inno­cence, doomed roman­ti­cism, hard-edged cyn­i­cism, des­per­ate desire, and shad­owy sex­u­al­i­ty that was unleashed in those imme­di­ate post-war years proved huge­ly influ­en­tial, both among indus­try peers in the orig­i­nal era, and to future gen­er­a­tion of sto­ry­tellers, both lit­er­ary and cin­e­mat­ic.

If you want to get anoth­er angle on the ques­tion, you can always take into con­sid­er­a­tion Roger Ebert’s 10 Essen­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Noir Films. But our sug­ges­tion, espe­cial­ly on a long Sun­day after­noon, is to spend some time watch­ing the clas­sic movies gath­ered in our col­lec­tion of 50 Free Noir Films. The col­lec­tion fea­tures pub­lic domain films by John Hus­ton, Fritz Lang, Orson Welles and oth­er cel­e­brat­ed direc­tors. Here’s a quick sam­ple of what’s in the archive:

• Beat the Dev­il – Free – Direct­ed by John Hus­ton and star­ring Humphrey Bog­a­rt, the film is some­thing of a com­ic and dra­mat­ic spoof of the film noir tra­di­tion. (1953)
• D.O.A. — Free — Rudolph Maté’s clas­sic noir film. Called “one of the most accom­plished, inno­v­a­tive, and down­right twist­ed entrants to the film noir genre.” (1950)
  Five Min­utes to Live — Free — Mem­o­rable bank heist movie stars John­ny Cash, Vic Tay­back, Ron Howard, and coun­try music great, Mer­le Travis. (1961)
• Quick­sand - Free — Peter Lorre and Mick­ey Rooney star in a sto­ry about a garage mechanic’s descent into crime. (1950)
• Scar­let Street — Free — Direct­ed by Fritz Lang with Edward G. Robin­son. A film noir great. (1945)
• The Hitch-Hik­er - Free  — The first noir film made by a woman noir direc­tor, Ida Lupino. (1953)
• The Stranger - Free — Direct­ed by Orson Welles with Edward G. Robin­son. One of Welles’s major com­mer­cial suc­cess­es. (1946)

We recent­ly added anoth­er 15 films to the col­lec­tion of free noir films. So even if you’ve perused the list in the past, there’s now some­thing new to enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Noir Films That Will Stand the Test of Time: A List by “Noir­chael­o­gist” Eddie Muller

100 Great­est Posters of Film Noir

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

The Religions of Bob Dylan: From Delivering Evangelical Sermons to Singing Hava Nagila With Harry Dean Stanton

in Music, Religion | August 8th, 2014

My first reac­tion upon learn­ing about Bob Dylan’s brief con­ver­sion to Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty may have been some­thing like “What in the hell?” It wasn’t a reli­gious Dylan that sur­prised me; it was Dylan embrac­ing a faith that can often seem dogged­ly lit­er­al and, well, just a lit­tle inflex­i­ble. What with his love of ambi­gu­i­ty, of occult sym­bol­ism and sym­bol­ist poet­ry, and his res­olute con­tempt for con­ven­tion, Dylan has always struck me as more of an ancient Gnos­tic than a mod­ern Bible thumper. While Dylan’s immer­sion in the Chris­t­ian world may have been brief, it was deep, and it was confusing—enough so that Andy Greene in Rolling Stone com­ments that his pros­e­ly­tiz­ing from the stage “took audi­ence provo­ca­tion to the next lev­el.”

In his gospel shows of 1979/80, Dylan pre­sent­ed “a night of music devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to selec­tions from his new gospel records, often paus­ing for long, ram­bling ser­mons about Christ’s immi­nent return and the wicked­ness of man.” Hear one of those ser­mons at the top, a sev­en-minute the­o­log­i­cal dis­qui­si­tion, before Dylan and band launch into a pow­er­ful per­for­mance of “Sol­id Rock.” Just above, in anoth­er ser­mon from 1979, Dylan holds forth on the “spir­it of the Antichrist” before an unsym­pa­thet­ic crowd in Tempe, Ari­zona. That same year, he gave an inter­view to Bruce Heiman of KMGX Radio in Tuc­son on the sub­ject of his con­ver­sion (below).

In a cer­tain way, a Dylan obsessed with divine judg­ment and the book of Rev­e­la­tion jibes with his pur­suit of the arcane and the mys­ti­cal, with his con­sis­tent­ly apoc­a­lyp­tic vision, prophet­ic mum­blings, and ten­den­cy to mor­al­ize. But the preach­ing is just…. well, kin­da weird. I mean, not even Dylan’s friend, the deeply devout John­ny Cash, used his musi­cal plat­form to harangue audi­ences about the Bible. Was it a stunt or a gen­uine, if per­haps overzeal­ous, expres­sion of deeply held beliefs? That ques­tion could be asked of almost every move Dylan has ever made. This brief peri­od of very pub­lic reli­gios­i­ty may seem anom­alous, but Dylan’s inter­est in reli­gion is not. Google his name and any faith term, and you’ll see sug­ges­tions for “Dylan and Islam,” “Dylan and Bud­dhism,” “Dylan and Catholi­cism,” and, of course, “Dylan and Judaism,” the reli­gion of his birth. Some con­tend that Dylan still keeps faith with Jesus, and that it doesn’t mutu­al­ly exclude his Jew­ish­ness.

And yet, how Dylan’s Chris­t­ian preach­ing could line up with his lat­er com­mit­ment to Chabad—an Ortho­dox Hasidic move­ment that isn’t exact­ly warm to the idea of the Chris­t­ian mes­si­ah, to put it mildly—is beyond my ken. But log­i­cal con­sis­ten­cy does not rank high­ly on any list of virtues I’m famil­iar with. Dylan seemed to be recon­nect­ing with Judaism when he explic­it­ly expressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with Israel in 1983 in his Zion­ist anthem “Neigh­bor­hood Bul­ly” from Infi­dels, in oth­er respects, a whol­ly sec­u­lar record.

Three years lat­er, Dylan appeared on the Chabad telethon (above), accom­pa­ny­ing his son-in-law Peter Him­mel­man on har­mon­i­ca in a ren­di­tion of “Hava Nag­i­la,” along with, of all peo­ple, Har­ry Dean Stan­ton (whose chill­ing turn as polyg­a­mous Mor­mon sect leader in HBO’s Big Love you may well recall). By this time, at least accord­ing to Jew­ish Jour­nal, “Chabad rab­bis had helped Dylan return to Judaism after the musi­cian embraced Chris­tian­i­ty for a time.” The mid-90s saw Dylan wor­ship­ping with Brook­lyn Lubav­itch­ers, and in 2007, he was sight­ed in Atlanta at Yom Kip­pur ser­vices at the Chabad-Lubav­itch of Geor­gia, say­ing the “bless­ings in Hebrew with­out stum­bling, like a pro.”

So is Bob Dylan a fire­breath­ing Chris­t­ian or an Ortho­dox Jew? Or, some­how… both? Only Dylan knows, and frankly, only Dylan needs to. His beliefs are his busi­ness, but his pub­lic expres­sions of faith have giv­en his fans much to puz­zle over, read­ing the lyri­cal tea leaves for evi­dence of a sol­id rock cen­ter amidst the shift­ing sands of Dylanol­o­gy. Let ‘em sift. Some peo­ple obsess over Dylan’s reli­gious com­mit­ments, oth­ers over his “secret” wife and daugh­ter, his cor­po­rate sell­outs, or his some­times inscrutable per­son­al pol­i­tics. It’s all part of the busi­ness of fame. What I find fas­ci­nat­ing about the many lay­ers of Bob Dylan is not how much they tell me about the man, who has the right to change his mind, or not, as often as he likes, but how much they reveal about his strange lyri­cal themes. After all, Dylan’s seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry alle­giances and ambiva­lent iden­ti­ties as an artist may in in fact make him all the more the arche­typ­al Amer­i­can song­writer he’s always said to be.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Dylanol­o­gy, or How to Under­stand Bob Dylan by Dig­ging Through His Garbage

The Times They Are a‑Changin’: 1964 Broad­cast Gives a Rare Glimpse of the Ear­ly Bob Dylan

Ani­mat­ed Video: John­ny Cash Explains Why Music Became a Reli­gious Call­ing

John­ny Cash Reads the Entire New Tes­ta­ment

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

Is It Always Right to Be Right?: Orson Welles Narrates a 1970 Oscar-Winning Animation That Still Resonates Today

in Film | August 7th, 2014

Is it pos­si­ble for a short film made dur­ing the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion to per­fect­ly describe America’s cur­rent, com­plete­ly screwed up polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion? Sure, Lee Mishkin’s Oscar-win­ning ani­mat­ed short Is It Always Right to Be Right? (1970) might date itself through oblique ref­er­ences to hip­pies, the Viet­nam war and the Civ­il Rights move­ment, not to men­tion the movie’s groovy ani­ma­tion style, but the mes­sage of the movie feels sur­pris­ing­ly rel­e­vant today. You can watch the movie above.

The short, which is nar­rat­ed by none oth­er than Orson Welles, describes a land where every­one believed them­selves to be right, and where inde­ci­sive­ness and com­plex­i­ty were con­sid­ered utter­ly weak. “When dif­fer­ences arose between the peo­ple of this land,” intones Welles at one point, “they looked not for truth but for con­fir­ma­tion for what they already believed.”

Wow, that sounds just like cable news. As the divi­sions grew and deep­ened, the land even­tu­al­ly ground to a halt. “Every­one was right, of course. And they knew it. And were proud of it. And the gap grew wider until the day came when all activ­i­ty stopped. Each group stood in its soli­tary right­ness, glar­ing with proud eyes at those too blind to see their truth, deter­mined to main­tain their posi­tion at all costs. This is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of being right.” Wow, that sounds like Con­gress.

Then some­one tried to tem­per this stark black-and-white world by say­ing things like “I might be wrong,” which starts a cas­cade of intro­spec­tion and tol­er­ance. Ah, the 70s – that inno­cent time before the 24-hour news cycle. A time before net­work execs real­ized that blovi­at­ing morons preach­ing the right­ness of their own posi­tion just plain makes good TV.

A year lat­er, you might be inter­est­ed to know, Orson Welles nar­rat­ed anoth­er ani­mat­ed para­ble. Watch Free­dom Riv­er here.

Is It Always Right to Be Right? will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More as well as our col­lec­tion of Free Oscar-Win­ning Films.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

Two Legends: Weird Al Yankovic “Interviews” James Brown (1986)

in Comedy, Music | August 5th, 2014

Last week, America’s reign­ing bard of sil­ly par­o­dy songs, “Weird Al” Yankovic scored his first num­ber one album, Manda­to­ry Fun. His vast­ly improved take on Robin Thicke’s catchy, if deeply creepy, ear­worm Blurred Lines alone might just be worth the price of the album. This week­end saw the release of the James Brown biopic Get On Up, star­ring Chad­wick Bose­man, Octavia Spencer and Dan Aykroyd. So we thought you all might be inter­est­ed in watch­ing Weird Al’s inter­view of the God­fa­ther of Soul in 1986. You can watch it above.

Ok, so that inter­view didn’t actu­al­ly hap­pen. It was cob­bled togeth­er to make it look like Weird Al was pep­per­ing the music leg­end with bizarre and inane ques­tions. Exam­ple: “What was it like the very first time you sat in a buck­et full of warm oat­meal?” or “What can you do with a duck that you can’t do with an ele­phant?”

Back in the ‘80s and ear­ly ‘90s when MTV played videos and not end­less real­i­ty TV shows about the drunk and the vapid, Weird Al reg­u­lar­ly host­ed Al-TV, a par­o­dy of the music chan­nel. Boast­ing the tagline “putting the ‘vid’ in video and the ‘odd’ in audio,” Al-TV fea­tured skits, fake news reports and, of course, Weird Al’s trade­mark music video spoofs. It also fea­tured dada-esque “inter­views,” like the one with Brown. Below we have some more to check out, like this one where Weird Al ridicules that most dull and pompous of pop stars, Sting.

Weird Al’s inter­view with pop genius Prince is real­ly odd, and not just because of Weird Al’s dopey ques­tions — “What do you do when some­one on the street gives you a piece of cheese?” Per­haps it’s that know­ing smirk on Prince’s face.  Or maybe it’s because the inter­view hap­pens while sur­round­ed by his well-coiffed entourage.

And final­ly, Weird Al doesn’t have to do much with Avril Lav­i­gne. One sus­pects that the orig­i­nal inter­view would be pret­ty fun­ny even with­out the jokes. At one point, Yankovic asks, “Can you ram­ble inco­her­ent­ly for a while about some­thing that nobody cares about?”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

“Weird Al” Yankovic Releas­es “Word Crimes,” a Gram­mar Nerd Par­o­dy of “Blurred Lines”

Every Appear­ance James Brown Ever Made On Soul Train. So Nice, So Nice!

James Brown Blows Away the Rolling Stones in 18 Elec­tric Min­utes (1964)

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new pic­ture of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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

in Music, Television | August 5th, 2014

Have you heard of the Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to Long-Haired Men? If not, you can’t say you know all of David Bowie’s groups. Fifty years ago, in his very first tele­vi­sion inter­view, Bowie appeared in the capac­i­ty of its spokesman, as well as that of “Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al League for the Preser­va­tion of Ani­mal Fil­a­ment.” “I think we’re all fair­ly tol­er­ant,” says the 17-year-old then known as David (or even Dav­ey) Jones, “but for the last two years we’ve had com­ments like ‘Dar­ling!’ and ‘Can I car­ry your hand­bag?’ thrown at us, and I think it just has to stop now.” Cliff Michel­more, host of the BBC pro­gram Tonight where this all went down in Novem­ber 1964, asks if such behav­ior sur­pris­es him, because, “after all, you’ve got real­ly rather long hair, haven’t you?” “We have, yes,” replies the pro­to-Bowie Bowie. “I think we all like long hair, and we don’t see why oth­er peo­ple should per­se­cute us because of this.”

The “we” to which he refers com­pris­es all the equal­ly mop-topped young dudes flank­ing him. Togeth­er, they would lat­er appear on anoth­er BBC pro­gram, Gad­zooks! It’s All Hap­pen­ing, as the group — this time musi­cal — the Man­ish Boys, per­form­ing their big num­ber, a cov­er of Bob­by Bland­’s “I Pity the Fool.” But accord­ing to the David Bowie FAQ, pro­duc­er Bar­ry Lang­ford had, for that appear­ance, pre­vi­ous­ly “insist­ed that David cut his 17” long hair,” result­ing in the brief for­ma­tion of the Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to Long-Haired Men and, con­se­quent­ly, “numer­ous news­pa­per reports… of course it was all a scam for some free pub­lic­i­ty.” What­ev­er his style — and he’s had a few — Bowie has clear­ly always known how to work the ever-reengi­neered pub­lic­i­ty machine. Some­times he’s done it by going with the flow, but only par­tial­ly, as we see here, where he and the Man­ish Boys sport rough­ly nine-inch hair rather than cuts to the harsh ear­ly-1960s stan­dard. Bowie, nev­er one of rock­’s ded­i­cat­ed long­hairs, can’t have found this too ter­ri­bly oppres­sive in real­i­ty, although when he returned to the BBC 35 years lat­er for a chat with the more stri­dent Jere­my Pax­man, he did so with a look that might have done the old Soci­ety proud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

David Bowie Talks and Sings on The Dick Cavett Show (1974)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

Farmer Serenades Cows by Playing Lorde’s “Royals” on the Trombone

in Music | August 5th, 2014

Farm­ers like Derek Klin­gen­berg know that you can enchant cows with music. Above, watch him start play­ing Lorde’s “Roy­als” on the trom­bone and the cows come a run­nin’.

If you’ve been an OC read­er long enough, you won’t be sur­prised by this scene. Ear­li­er this year, we fea­tured A Playlist of Music Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven to Increase Cows’ Milk Pro­duc­tion — a playlist that includes tunes by REM, Aretha Franklin, Simon & Gar­funkel, and Lou Reed. And, before that, we’ve shown you cows groov­ing to some New Orleans-style jazz. Music isn’t just “the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of mankind,” as Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfel­low once said. It belongs clear­ly to our bovine friends too…

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sir Patrick Stew­art Demon­strates How Cows Moo in Dif­fer­ent Eng­lish Accents

Jazz for Cows

A Playlist of Music Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven to Increase Cows’ Milk Pro­duc­tion: REM, Lou Reed & More

A Drone’s Eye View of Los Angeles, New York, London, Bangkok & Mexico City

in Technology, Travel | August 2nd, 2014

Unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles, more col­lo­qui­al­ly known as drones, have drawn bad press in recent years: as the intru­sive tools of the com­ing sur­veil­lance state, as deliv­er­ers of death from above in a host of war zones, as the pur­chase-deliv­er­ing har­bin­gers of world dom­i­na­tion by Amazon.com. But as with any tech­nol­o­gy, you can also use drones for the good, or at least for the inter­est­ing. A num­ber of urban pho­tog­ra­phers have attract­ed a great deal of atten­tion in the past few months doing just that, buy­ing or build­ing cam­era-equipped drones of their own, tak­ing to the skies above their cities, and cap­tur­ing views of them we’d nev­er see oth­er­wise. I live in Los Ange­les and like to think I explore its ever-more-revi­tal­ized down­town (from which I type this post) on a reg­u­lar basis, but near­ly every shot Ian Wood got in the ear­ly morn­ing with his drone in the video above shows off an aes­thet­ic ele­ment of the neigh­bor­hood I had­n’t noticed before.

Above, Randy Scott Slavin pro­vides us an equal­ly dream­like drone’s eye view of Amer­i­ca’s oth­er metrop­o­lis, New York City, and below that you can also get a sweep­ing view of Lon­don, its archi­tec­tur­al icons on full dis­play, from sure-hand­ed drone pilot/cameraman Evan Skuthor­pe.

Then we have a flight around the mon­u­ments of Mex­i­co City, in my expe­ri­ence an end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing place from any alti­tude and at any angle, by A&H Aer­i­al Pro­duc­tions.

Those of you who know Bangkok might feel star­tled to get the high­ly unusu­al view of it, near­ly free of peo­ple pro­vid­ed by Coconuts TV, who took a cam­era drone out on a day when pro­test­ers shut down sev­en of the city’s most vital inter­sec­tions. (It reminds me of a few favorite moments by that most cel­e­brat­ed Thai “auteur of lan­guor,” Apichat­pong Weerasethakul.) But you may have noticed that all the videos here focus on depop­u­lat­ed places, due most like­ly to the tricky host of applic­a­ble laws to do with pri­va­cy and aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy. So if you decide to film a drone fly­through of your own city, per­haps have a chat with your lawyer first.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Lets You Fly Through 17th Cen­tu­ry Lon­don

Lon­don Mashed Up: Footage of the City from 1924 Lay­ered Onto Footage from 2013

What Makes Paris Look Like Paris? A Cre­ative Use of Google Street View

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

Brian Eno’s Take on the Gaza Conflict Appears on David Byrne’s Web Site

in Current Affairs, Music | August 1st, 2014

On his web site, for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man David Byrne writes:

I received this email last Fri­day morn­ing from my friend, Bri­an Eno. I shared it with my office and we all felt a great respon­si­bil­i­ty to pub­lish Bri­an’s heavy, wor­thy note. In response, Bri­an’s friend, Peter Schwartz, replied with an eye-open­ing his­tor­i­cal expla­na­tion of how we got here. What’s clear is that no one has the moral high ground.

First comes Eno’s clear­ly heart­felt con­dem­na­tion of civil­ian deaths in Gaza (par­tic­u­lar­ly the death of chil­dren) and Amer­i­ca’s appar­ent indif­fer­ence to what’s hap­pen­ing there:

Today I saw a pic­ture of a weep­ing Pales­tin­ian man hold­ing a plas­tic car­ri­er bag of meat. It was his son. He’d been shred­ded (the hos­pi­tal’s word) by an Israeli mis­sile attack — appar­ent­ly using their fab new weapon, flechette bombs. You prob­a­bly know what those are — hun­dreds of small steel darts packed around explo­sive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Kha­laf al-Nawas­ra. He was 4 years old.

I sud­den­ly found myself think­ing that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than any­thing has for a long time.

Then I read that the UN had said that Israel might be guilty of war crimes in Gaza, and they want­ed to launch a com­mis­sion into that. Amer­i­ca won’t sign up to it.

What is going on in Amer­i­ca? I know from my own expe­ri­ence how slant­ed your news is, and how lit­tle you get to hear about the oth­er side of this sto­ry. But — for Christ’s sake! — it’s not that hard to find out. Why does Amer­i­ca con­tin­ue its blind sup­port of this one-sided exer­cise in eth­nic cleans­ing? WHY?

What fol­lows is part of futur­ist Peter Schwartz’s response, which, rich in his­tor­i­cal detail, splits the blame some­where down the mid­dle. Echo­ing Byrne’s sense that the two sides have lost their moral posi­tions, Schwartz notes:

Even though I have no sup­port for the Israeli posi­tion I find the oppo­si­tion to Israel ques­tion­able in its fail­ure to be sim­i­lar­ly out­raged by a vast num­ber of oth­er moral hor­rors in the recent past and cur­rent­ly active. Just to name a few; Cam­bo­dia, Tibet, Sudan, Soma­lia, Nicaragua, Mex­i­co, Argenti­na, Liberia, Cen­tral African Repub­lic, Ugan­da, North Korea, Bosnia, Koso­vo, Venezuela, Syr­ia, Egypt, Libya, Zim­bab­we and espe­cial­ly right now Nige­ria. The Arab Spring, which has become a dark win­ter for most Arabs and the large scale slaugh­ter now under­way along the bor­ders of Iraq and Syr­ia are good exam­ples of what they do to them­selves. And our nations, the US, the Brits, the Dutch, the Rus­sians and the French have all played their parts in these oth­er moral out­rages. The grue­some body count and social destruc­tion left behind dwarfs any­thing that the Israelis have done. The only dif­fer­ence with the Israeli’s is their claim to a moral high ground, which they long ago left behind in the refugee camps of Lebanon. They are now just a nation, like any oth­er, try­ing to sur­vive in a hos­tile sea of hate.

We should be clear, that giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty, the Arabs would dri­ve the Jews into the sea and that was true from day one. There was no way back from war once a reli­gious state was declared. So Israel, once com­mit­ted to a nation state in that loca­tion and grant­ed that right by oth­er nations have had no choice but to fight. In my view there­fore, nei­ther side has any shred of moral stand­ing left, nor have the nations that sup­port­ed both sides…

I don’t think there is any hon­or to go around here. Israel has lost its way and com­mits hor­rors in the inter­est of their own sur­vival. And the Arabs and Per­sians per­pet­u­ate a con­flict rid­den neigh­bor­hood with almost no excep­tions, fight­ing against each oth­er and with hate of Israel the only thing that they share.

To read the com­plete exchange, head over to Byrne’s site and read Gaza and the Loss of Civ­i­liza­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Lis­ten to “Bri­an Eno Day,” a 12-Hour Radio Show Spent With Eno & His Music (Record­ed in 1988)

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies”

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve