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See the Well-Preserved Wreckage of Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found in Antarctica

in History | March 10th, 2022

110 years after its first and last voy­age, we remem­ber the RMS Titan­ic and its tout­ed “unsink­a­bil­i­ty” as one of the resound­ing ironies of mar­itime his­to­ry. But 1912 also saw the launch of anoth­er new­ly built yet ill-fat­ed ship whose name proved all too apt: Endurance, as it was rechris­tened by Sir Ernest Shack­le­ton when he pur­chased it to use on his Impe­r­i­al Trans-Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion of 1914. In Jan­u­ary of the fol­low­ing year, Endurance got stuck in the ice of the Wed­dell Sea off Antarc­ti­ca, and over the fol­low­ing ten months that ice slow­ly crushed and ulti­mate­ly sank the ship. But her whole crew sur­vived, thanks to Shack­le­ton’s lead­ing them more than 800 miles over the open ocean to safe­ty.

Shack­le­ton and his men have been cel­e­brat­ed for their endurance; as for Endurance her­self, it has spent more than a cen­tu­ry unseen at the bot­tom of the ocean — unseen, that is, until now. “A team of adven­tur­ers, marine archae­ol­o­gists and tech­ni­cians locat­ed the wreck at the bot­tom of the Wed­dell Sea, east of the Antarc­tic Penin­su­la, using under­sea drones,” writes the New York Times’ Hen­ry Foun­tain. “Bat­tling sea ice and freez­ing tem­per­a­tures, the team had been search­ing for more than two weeks in a 150-square-mile area around where the ship went down in 1915.”

Time turns out to have been kind to Shack­le­ton’s ship: “Endurance’s rel­a­tive­ly pris­tine appear­ance was not unex­pect­ed, giv­en the cold water and the lack of wood-eat­ing marine organ­isms in the Wed­dell Sea that have rav­aged ship­wrecks else­where.” You can glimpse Endurance in her watery grave in the Marine Tech­nol­o­gy TV video at the top of the post. But you’ll also see a lot more of anoth­er impres­sive ship: Agul­has II, the South African ice­break­er used by Endurance22, as the $10 mil­lion research expe­di­tion was called. What­ev­er the chal­lenges posed by final­ly track­ing down Endurance, their brunt was­n’t borne by that mighty ves­sel.

“Aside from a few tech­ni­cal glitch­es involv­ing the two sub­mersibles, and part of a day spent ice­bound when oper­a­tions were sus­pend­ed, the search pro­ceed­ed rel­a­tive­ly smooth­ly,” reports Foun­tain. The nature of this expe­di­tion, espe­cial­ly in its use of sub­mersibles to observe the wreck­age with­out dis­turb­ing it, may bring back to mind (for those of us of a cer­tain age) the 1992 doc­u­men­tary Titan­i­ca, which aston­ished us with the first up-close, IMAX-sized views of the sunken Titan­ic. Con­sid­er­ing the advance­ments in explorato­ry and pho­to­graph­ic tech­nol­o­gy in the three decades since — and the con­di­tion of Endurance itself — the film that even­tu­al­ly results from Endurance22 should aston­ish us all over again.

For any­one inter­est­ed in Shack­le­ton’s remark­able adven­ture, we rec­om­mend the book The Endurance: Shack­le­ton’s Leg­endary Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear Ernest Shack­le­ton Speak About His Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion in a Rare 1909 Record­ing

Google Street View Opens Up a Look at Shackleton’s Antarc­tic

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Ship­wreck Proves Herodotus, the “Father of His­to­ry,” Cor­rect 2500 Years Lat­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Brian Eno Creates a List of 20 Books That Could Rebuild Civilization

in Books | March 10th, 2022

Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Artist and music pro­duc­er Bri­an Eno wrote one of my very favorite books: A Year with Swollen Appen­dices, which takes the form of his per­son­al diary of the year 1995 with essay­is­tic chap­ters (the “swollen appen­dices”) on top­ics like “edge cul­ture,” gen­er­a­tive music, new ways of , pre­ten­sion, CD-ROMs (a rel­e­vant top­ic back then), and pay­ment struc­tures for record­ing artists (a rel­e­vant top­ic again today). It also includes a fair bit of Eno’s cor­re­spon­dence with Stew­art Brand, once edi­tor of the Whole Earth Cat­a­log and now pres­i­dent of the Long Now Foun­da­tion, “a coun­ter­point to today’s accel­er­at­ing cul­ture” meant to “help make long-term think­ing more com­mon” and “cre­ative­ly fos­ter respon­si­bil­i­ty in the frame­work of the next 10,000 years.”

It so hap­pens that Eno now sits on the Long Now Foundation’s board and has had a hand in some of its projects. Nat­u­ral­ly, he con­tributed sug­gest­ed read­ing mate­r­i­al to the foun­da­tion’s Man­u­al of Civ­i­liza­tion, a col­lec­tion of books human­i­ty could use to rebuild civ­i­liza­tion, should it need rebuild­ing. Eno’s full list, which spans his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, phi­los­o­phy, soci­ol­o­gy, archi­tec­ture, design, nature, and lit­er­a­ture, runs as fol­lows:

If you’d like to know more books that have shaped Eno’s think­ing, do pick up a copy of A Year with Swollen Appen­dices. Like all the best diarists, Eno makes plen­ty of ref­er­ences to his day-to-day read­ing mate­r­i­al, and at the very end — beyond the last swollen appen­dix — he includes a bib­li­og­ra­phy (below), on which you’ll find more from Christo­pher Alexan­der, a reap­pear­ance of Rorty’s Con­tin­gency, Irony and Sol­i­dar­i­ty, and even Stew­ard Brand’s own How Build­ings Learn (on a tele­vi­sion ver­sion of which the two would col­lab­o­rate). You can find other writ­ers and thinker­s’s con­tri­bu­tions to the Man­u­al of Civ­i­liza­tion here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

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

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

What Books Could Be Used to Rebuild Civ­i­liza­tion?: Lists by Bri­an Eno, Stew­art Brand, Kevin Kel­ly & Oth­er For­ward-Think­ing Minds

What Books Should Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Read?: Tell Us Your Picks; We’ll Tell You Ours

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

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

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The Failed Logistics of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

in Current Affairs | March 9th, 2022

If there’s a small sil­ver lin­ing in Putin’s assault on Ukraine, it’s that we’ve dis­cov­ered the medi­oc­rity of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary. Rus­sia expect­ed a short and deci­sive war. Two weeks lat­er, the inva­sion grinds on.

Already, Rus­sia has lost 4,000 sol­diers (the US lost 2,400 dur­ing its 20-year cam­paign in Afghanistan), while Ukraine still retains con­trol of its major cities. Above, Wen­dover Pro­duc­tions breaks down a major fac­tor behind Rus­si­a’s stum­ble–the fail­ure of its logis­tics.

For more on this ques­tion, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to this inter­view with Retired Lt. Gen­er­al Mark Hertling, the for­mer com­mand­ing gen­er­al of U.S. Army Europe and 7th Army.  Draw­ing on his own mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence, he elab­o­rates on the major gaps in Rus­si­a’s strate­gic plan­ning.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine Teach-Out: A Free Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan

West Point Expert Gives Ukraini­ans Advice on Con­duct­ing Effec­tive Urban War­fare Against Russ­ian Troops

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer

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The First Work of Science Fiction: Read Lucian’s 2nd-Century Space Travelogue A True Story

in History, Literature, Sci Fi | March 9th, 2022

Late in life, Kings­ley Amis declared that he would hence­forth read only nov­els open­ing with the sen­tence “A shot rang out.” On one lev­el, this would have sound­ed bizarre com­ing from one of Britain’s most promi­nent men of let­ters. But on anoth­er it aligned with his long-demon­strat­ed appre­ci­a­tion of genre fic­tion, includ­ing not just sto­ries of crime but also of high tech­nol­o­gy and space explo­ration. His life­long inter­est in the lat­ter inspired the Chris­t­ian Gauss Lec­tures he deliv­ered at Prince­ton in 1958, pub­lished soon there­after as New Maps of Hell: A Sur­vey of Sci­ence Fic­tion, a book that sees him trace the his­to­ry of the genre well back beyond his own boy­hood — about eigh­teen cen­turies beyond it.

“His­to­ries of sci­ence fic­tion, as opposed to ‘imag­i­na­tive lit­er­a­ture,’ usu­al­ly begin, not with Pla­to or The Birds of Aristo­phanes or the Odyssey, but with a work of the late Greek prose romancer Lucian of Samosa­ta,” Amis writes. He refers to what schol­ars now know as A True Sto­ry (Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα), a novel­la-length fic­tion of the sec­ond cen­tu­ry that has every­thing from space trav­el to inter­plan­e­tary war to tech­nol­o­gy so advanced — as no less a sci-fi lumi­nary than Arthur C. Clarke would put it much lat­er — as to be indis­tin­guish­able from mag­ic. At its core a work of fan­tas­ti­cal satire, A True Sto­ry “delib­er­ate­ly piles extrav­a­gance upon extrav­a­gance for com­ic effect” in a rather un-sci­ence-fic­tion-like man­ner.

“Leav­ing aside the ques­tion whether there was enough sci­ence around in the sec­ond cen­tu­ry to make sci­ence fic­tion fea­si­ble,” Amis writes, “I will mere­ly remark that the spright­li­ness and sophis­ti­ca­tion of the True His­to­ry” — as he knew the work — “make it read like a joke at the expense of near­ly all ear­ly-mod­ern sci­ence fic­tion, that writ­ten between, say, 1910 and 1940,” which he him­self would have grown up read­ing.

In the video by at the top of the post, film­mak­er Gre­go­ry Austin McConnell sum­ma­rizes Lucian’s entire trav­el­ogue, not neglect­ing to men­tion the riv­er of wine, the tree-shaped women, the cities on the moon, the army of the sun, the bat­tle­field-spin­ning space spi­ders, the dogs who ride on winged acorns, the float­ing sen­tient lamps, and the 187 and ½ mile-long whale.

This clear­ly isn’t what we’d now call “hard” sci­ence fic­tion. So how, exact­ly, to label it? Such argu­ments erupt over every major work of genre fic­tion, even from antiq­ui­ty. A True Sto­ry con­tains ele­ments of what would become com­e­dy sci-fi, mil­i­tary sci-fi, and even the fan­ta­sy-and-sci-fi-hybridiz­ing “space opera” most pop­u­lar­ly exem­pli­fied by Star Wars and its many sequels. Cat­e­go­riza­tion quib­bles aside, what mat­ters about any work in the broad­er tra­di­tion of “spec­u­la­tive fic­tion” is whether it fires up the read­er’s imag­i­na­tion, and Lucian’s work has done it for not just ancients but mod­erns like the 19th-cen­tu­ry artists William Strang and Aubrey Beard­s­ley, whose illus­tra­tions from 1894 edi­tions of A True Sto­ry appear above. Now that “sci­ence fic­tion rules the cin­e­mat­ic land­scape,” as McConnell puts it, who will adapt it for us post­mod­erns?

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Astronomer Johannes Kepler Wrote the First Work of Sci­ence Fic­tion, The Dream (1609)

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

Every Pos­si­ble Kind of Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ry: An Exhaus­tive List Cre­at­ed by Pio­neer­ing 1920s Sci­Fi Writer Clare Winger Har­ris (1931)

Isaac Asi­mov Recalls the Gold­en Age of Sci­ence Fic­tion (1937–1950)

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics Avail­able on the Web

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Odessa Opera House, in 1942 and Today

in Current Affairs, History | March 7th, 2022

via @KyivPost

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When Rod Serling Turned TV Pitchman: See His Post-Twilight Zone Ads for Ford, Mazda, Gulf Oil & Smokey Bear

in Television | March 7th, 2022

The Twi­light Zone ran from 1959 to 1964, this con­clud­ing in a dif­fer­ent cul­ture than the one in which it had pre­miered. CBS broad­cast the series’ first episode to an Amer­i­ca that had nei­ther heard of the Bea­t­les nor elect­ed John F. Kennedy to the pres­i­den­cy; its final episode went out to an Amer­i­ca that had buried JFK and launched into a youth-ori­ent­ed cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion just months before. But Rod Ser­ling, The Twi­light Zone’s cre­ator and host, man­aged to retain a degree of the rec­og­niz­abil­i­ty and author­i­ty he’d enjoyed in the era we call the “long 1950s” well into the sharply con­trast­ing one we call “the 60s.”

At the end of the 1950s, Amer­i­can net­work tele­vi­sion offered a steady, bland diet of sit­coms, West­erns, and cop shows. The Twi­light Zone appeared as some­thing new, an anthol­o­gy series not so genre-bound — or rather, per­mit­ted to switch genre every episode — because Ser­ling set its lim­its at those of the human imag­i­na­tion.

Ghost sto­ries, post-apoc­a­lyp­tic sce­nar­ios, tales of alien inva­sion, super­pow­er fan­tasies both com­ic and trag­ic: all of these nar­ra­tive forms and more fell with­in the show’s purview. No mat­ter how brazen­ly unre­al­is­tic their premis­es, most of these sto­ries had some­thing to say about con­tem­po­rary soci­ety, and all were teth­ered to real­i­ty by the pres­ence of Ser­ling him­self.

Even if you’ve some­how nev­er seen an episode of The Twi­light Zone, you’ll have a ready men­tal image of Ser­ling him­self, or at least of the dark-suit­ed, cig­a­rette-pinch­ing per­sona he took on in the open­ing of most broad­casts. His dis­tinc­tive man­ner of speech, still oft-imi­tat­ed but sel­dom quite nailed, has become a short­hand for a cer­tain stripe of steady mid­cen­tu­ry tele­vi­su­al author­i­ty in the midst of sur­re­al or fright­en­ing cir­cum­stances. As this became a rare and thus in-demand qual­i­ty in post-Twi­light Zone Amer­i­ca, no few cor­po­ra­tions as well as gov­ern­ment agen­cies must have seen in Ser­ling a desir­able spokesman indeed.

Ser­ling, “tele­vi­sion’s last angry man,” was noto­ri­ous for writ­ing scripts from his social and civic con­science. This made him an ide­al human face to accom­pa­ny the ursine one of Smokey Bear in the U.S. For­est Ser­vice’s “Only You Can Pre­vent For­est Fires” pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment of 1968. Its Ser­ling-nar­rat­ed intro­duc­tion of Ed Mor­gan and his fam­i­ly as they motor through the woods, plays for all the world like the open­ing of a clas­sic Twi­light Zone episode, albeit in col­or. “They’ve dri­ven this road a dozen times before, and noth­ing ever hap­pened,” he says, “but today’s dif­fer­ent: today, Ed will become a killer, and here’s his weapon”: a lit cig­a­rette tossed unthink­ing­ly out the win­dow. Such a dire warn­ing may sound a bit rich com­ing from a man who not only smoked onscreen in so many of his appear­ances, but per­son­al­ly endorsed Chester­field Kings on air.

Yet irony was even more inte­gral to The Twi­light Zone than, say, space trav­el, a theme with which many of its episodes dealt. It was pre­sum­ably Ser­ling’s result­ing sci-fi cred­i­bil­i­ty that brought him the offer, just months after the actu­al Moon land­ing, of a spot for We Came in Peace, “a per­ma­nent 75-page book with full-col­or illus­tra­tions” about the his­to­ry of “man’s quest in space,” avail­able for one dol­lar at all par­tic­i­pat­ing Gulf Oil gas sta­tions. In the fol­low­ing decade he would also adver­tise the cars you’d fill up at one, pro­mot­ing fea­tures like Ford LTD’s qui­et ride and the new Maz­das’ rotary engines. All these mod­els would also have come with ash­trays, of course, and a respon­si­ble mid­cen­tu­ry man like Ser­ling would have made sure to use them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Twi­light Zone’s Pilot Episode, Pitched by Rod Ser­ling Him­self (1959)

Rod Ser­ling: Where Do Ideas Come From? (1972)

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

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch a Very Nervous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talking Heads Performing Live in NYC (1976)

in History, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 7th, 2022

“This is a per­son who is pro­found­ly uncom­fort­able address­ing an audi­ence and yet puts him­self in that posi­tion,” David Byrne told Stu­dio 360’s Kurt Ander­son in 2019, as they watched some of the above footage of his 23-year-old self fronting a live Talk­ing Heads’ per­for­mance back in 1976.

Every­thing was pret­ty new back in that Bicen­ten­ni­al year.

Talk­ing Heads had formed the year before, when Byrne and drum­mer Chris Frantz, who’d been band­mates at the Rhode Island Col­lege of Design, moved to New York City with Frantz’s girl­friend, bassist Tina Wey­mouth.

The venue host­ing this live per­for­mance, New York City’s leg­endary exper­i­men­tal art space, The Kitchen, was slight­ly less wet behind the ears, hav­ing opened its doors in 1971. (Some 30 years lat­er, elder states­man Byrne was the guest of hon­or at its annu­al spring gala.)

How­ev­er you define it — New Wave, no wave, post-punk art pop — the band’s sound was also fresh, though Byrne sug­gests, in the inter­view with Ander­son, there was noth­ing new about his youth­ful cock­i­ness:

…like a lot of bands, artists, every­thing else, any peri­od real­ly, you tend to think that, um, the per­va­sive stuff around you is crap and you and your friends are…we’re doing the real stuff. 

And opti­misti­cal­ly, one might think, since we’re doing the real stuff and it has real soul and pas­sion, and it’s of its moment, it rep­re­sents its moment, and so immod­est­ly, you think, “Of course! Things are just going to fall into your lap because you’re doing some­thing that has some truth to it. Uh…that cer­tain­ly doesn’t always hap­pen.

It hap­pened com­par­a­tive­ly quick­ly for Talk­ing Heads.

Sev­er­al of the songs they per­formed as a trio that March night at the Kitchen made it onto Talk­ing Heads: 77, the debut stu­dio album record­ed bare­ly a year lat­er, by which time a fourth mem­ber, Jer­ry Har­ri­son, had joined on key­boards and gui­tar.

Of par­tic­u­lar note above is Psy­cho Killer, which earned the band both noto­ri­ety, owing to the coin­ci­den­tal tim­ing of 1976 and 1977’s Son of Sam mur­ders, and their first Bill­board Hot 100 spot.

“This song was writ­ten a long time ago,” the young Byrne stut­ters into the micro­phone at the Kitchen, then apol­o­gizes for fid­dling with his clothes and equip­ment.

(“It’s all good!” Frantz calls out encour­ag­ing­ly from behind his drum kit.)

Accord­ing to the lin­er notes of Once in a Life­time: The Best of Talk­ing Heads, Byrne began work on the song in col­lege:

When I start­ed writ­ing this (I got help lat­er), I imag­ined Alice Coop­er doing a Randy New­man-type bal­lad. Both the Jok­er and Han­ni­bal Lecter were much more fas­ci­nat­ing than the good guys. Every­body sort of roots for the bad guys in movies.

Fans may note a dis­par­i­ty in the lyrics between this per­for­mance and record­ed ver­sions of the song. Here, the sec­ond verse goes:

Lis­ten to me, now I’ve passed the test

I think I’m cute, I think I’m the best

Skirt tight, don’t like that style

Don’t crit­i­cize what I know is worth­while

Psy­cho Killer stayed on the shelf for David Byrne’s Amer­i­can Utopia, the Broad­way show recent­ly filmed by Spike Lee. But it gave a far more pol­ished Byrne an excel­lent open­er for Talk­ing Heads’ 1984 con­cert film, Stop Mak­ing Sense.

The uncom­fort­able young front­man dressed like a “pro­le­tari­at every­man,” who the Kitchen’s press release described as “a cross between Ralph Nad­er, Lou Reed, and Tony Perkins.” And he has since man­aged to acquire some impres­sive per­for­mance chops over the course of a still flour­ish­ing career.

This is your chance to catch him at that awk­ward age when, as Byrne told Kirk Ander­son, he per­formed “because he had to”:

There was this means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that was being a per­former and writ­ing songs and singing them (that) was a way of, kind of being present to oth­er peo­ple — not just girls, but oth­er peo­ple in gen­er­al.

Setlist for The Kitchen, March 13, 1976:

00:00 — Introduction/soundcheck

02:13 — The Girls Want To Be With the Girls (Fea­tured on More Songs About Build­ings and Food in 1978)

06:05 — Psy­cho Killer (Fea­tured on Talk­ing Heads: 77 in 1977, with dif­fer­ent lyrics)

The lyrics of the 2nd verse of Psy­cho Killer is dif­fer­ent from the record­ed ver­sion!

10:55 — I Feel It In My Heart (Fea­tured on the deluxe ver­sion of Talk­ing Heads: 77, with dif­fer­ent lyrics)

15:28 — I Wish You Would­n’t Say That (Fea­tured on the deluxe ver­sion of Talk­ing Heads: 77)

18:15 — Infor­ma­tion about the record­ing

19:00 — Stay Hun­gry (Fea­tured on More Songs About Build­ings and Food)

24:35 — I Want To Live (Fea­tured on com­pi­la­tions such as Sand in the Vase­line, 1992 and Bonus Rar­i­ties & Out­takes, 2006)

29:48 — Ten­ta­tive Deci­sions (Fea­tured on Talk­ing Heads: 77)

32:55 — No Com­pas­sion (assumed, video ends before song starts)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Talk­ing Heads Per­form The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Togeth­er)

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play a Vin­tage Con­cert in Syra­cuse (1978)

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Russian Invasion of Ukraine Teach-Out: A Free Course from the University of Michigan

in Current Affairs, History, Online Courses | March 6th, 2022

From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan comes a free short course on the Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine. Here’s how they set the con­text for the course, which you can find on the Cours­era plat­form:

“The armed con­flict in Ukraine first start­ed in the begin­ning of 2014, when Rus­sia invad­ed and annexed the Ukrain­ian region of Crimea. Over the past eight years, there has been ongo­ing con­flict between Ukraine and Rus­sia, with reg­u­lar shelling and skir­mish­es occur­ring along Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian bor­ders in the east­ern part of the coun­try. On Feb­ru­ary 24, 2022, Rus­sia launched a full-scale mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine, plung­ing the entire coun­try into war and send­ing shock­waves across the world. With casu­al­ties mount­ing and over one mil­lion Ukraini­ans flee­ing the coun­try, the need for dia­logue and de-esca­la­tion have nev­er been high­er. In this Teach-Out, you will learn from a diverse group of guest experts about the his­to­ry and ori­gins of war in Ukraine, its imme­di­ate and long-term impacts, and what you can do to sup­port peo­ple in this grow­ing human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. Specif­i­cal­ly this Teach-Out will address the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

- How did we get here? Why did Rus­sia invade Ukraine?
— What his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al con­texts do we need to know about in order to under­stand this con­flict?
— How is cyber and infor­ma­tion war­fare impact­ing the con­flict in Ukraine?
— What can be done to stop this war?
— How can we sup­port Ukrain­ian refugees and dis­placed peo­ples?”

Sign up for the course here.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent 

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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Ukrainians Playing Violin in Bunkers as Russians Bomb Them from the Sky

in Current Affairs, Music | March 6th, 2022

Vladimir Putin can bomb Ukraine. But he can’t destroy the human spir­it.…

If you would like to sup­port Ukraini­ans in des­per­ate need, vis­it this page to find aid orga­ni­za­tions doing good work on the ground.

For any Russ­ian cit­i­zens vis­it­ing our site, you can see the atroc­i­ties being com­mit­ted by your leader here, here, here, here, here and here. Also find advice on get­ting around Russ­ian cen­sor­ship of media here.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent

Pianist Plays “What a Won­der­ful World” for Ukrain­ian Refugees at Lviv Sta­tion

Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine Teach-Out: A Free Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

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Pianist Plays “What a Wonderful World” for Ukrainian Refugees at Lviv Station

in Life | March 5th, 2022

Reuters jour­nal­ist Andrew Mar­shall post­ed this on Twit­ter: “Out­side Lviv sta­tion, which is throng­ing with exhaust­ed refugees flee­ing war in east­ern Ukraine, an accom­plished pianist is play­ing “What a Won­der­ful World.” It’s haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful.” Indeed.

If you would like to sup­port Ukraini­ans in des­per­ate need, vis­it this page to find aid orga­ni­za­tions doing good work on the ground.

For any Russ­ian cit­i­zens vis­it­ing our site, you can see the atroc­i­ties being com­mit­ted by your leader here, here, here, here, here and here. Also find advice on get­ting around Russ­ian cen­sor­ship of media here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

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