David Chase Talks Sopranos for 90 Minutes on the Talking Sopranos Podcast

in Television | December 23rd, 2020

Dur­ing the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic, the Talk­ing Sopra­nos pod­cast (pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed on OC here) got under­way. Host­ed by Michael Impe­ri­oli (Christo­pher Molti­san­ti) and Steve Schirri­pa (Bob­by Bacala), the pod­cast revis­its every episode of HBO’s ground­break­ing TV series. It starts nat­u­ral­ly with the 1999 pilot and then moves for­ward sequen­tial­ly. And each install­ment fea­tures a guest (usu­al­ly an actor, writer, or direc­tor who con­tributed to the show), fol­lowed by a scene-by-scene break­down of a com­plete Sopra­nos episode. (They cov­ered the cel­e­brat­ed “Pine Bar­rens” episode a few weeks back.) Past guests have includ­ed Edie Fal­co, Aida Tur­tur­ro, Steve Busce­mi, Lor­raine Brac­co and more.

Now almost halfway through the entire series, Impe­ri­oli and Schirri­pa spent 90 min­utes this week with Sopra­nos’ cre­ator David Chase. In a rare inter­view (watch above), Chase talks about his cre­ative ambi­tions for the show, the real peo­ple (friends and acquain­tances) he mod­eled char­ac­ters on, his some­times fric­tion-filled rela­tion­ship with James Gan­dolfi­ni, and the upcom­ing Sopra­nos film.

You can lis­ten to Talk­ing Sopra­nos on Apple, Spo­ti­fy and Google, or watch all episodes on YouTube. And if you’d like to sup­ple­ment all of this with more detail, get a copy of Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepin­wal­l’s book The Sopra­nos Ses­sions. It’s high­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

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

Why James Gandolfini’s Tony Sopra­no Is “the Great­est Act­ing Achieve­ment Ever Com­mit­ted to the Screen”: A Video Essay

How David Chase Breathed Life into the The Sopra­nos

David Chase Reveals the Philo­soph­i­cal Mean­ing of The Sopra­nos’ Final Scene

Rewatch Every Episode of The Sopra­nos with the Talk­ing Sopra­nos Pod­cast, Host­ed by Michael Impe­ri­oli & Steve Schirri­pa

Carl Sagan on the Importance of Choosing Wisely What You Read (Even If You Read a Book a Week)

in Books | December 23rd, 2020

More than a few of us have a read­ing goal for 2021: a book a week, say. Some of us may have had the idea plant­ed in our heads long ago by Carl Sagan, in his capac­i­ty as cre­ator and host of the PBS series Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age. “If I were to read a book a week for my entire adult life­time,” he says in the clip above, “I would have read maybe a few thou­sand books. No more.” This is part of a longer mono­logue set in a library, a back­ground that pro­vides Sagan an ide­al visu­al ref­er­ence for how many vol­umes that is. Even seen as a por­tion of just the shelf space he stands by, it does­n’t look like a ter­ri­bly impres­sive amount. Indeed, it makes up “only tenth of a per­cent or so of the total num­ber of books in the library.”

The trick, Sagan adds, “is to know which books to read.” He him­self got start­ed address­ing this ques­tion rather ear­ly, hav­ing drawn up an ambi­tious read­ing list pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture while still an under­grad­u­ate at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go.

Sagan includ­ed (see the list here) every­thing from the Bible and Pla­to’s Repub­lic to André Gide’s The Immoral­ist and Aldous Hux­ley’s Young Archimedes to Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cir­cuit Fun­da­men­tals and Ther­mo­dy­nam­ics: An Advanced Treat­ment — those last being course read­ings, but impres­sive ones nev­er­the­less. Though Sagan lived an abbre­vi­at­ed life, dying at the age of 62, we can rest assured that he nev­er­the­less got his few thou­sand books in. Can we do the same?

To gear up for your read­ing year to come, con­sid­er watch­ing this short doc­u­men­tary on the world’s most beau­ti­ful book­stores, which rec­om­mends dai­ly read­ing habits that add up to sur­pris­ing­ly many books over a life­time. But if you choose your books with­out dis­cern­ment, as Sagan implies, it does­n’t mat­ter how many you read. Before draw­ing up your own read­ing list, have a look at the ones oth­er seri­ous read­ers, writ­ers, and thinkers have used before: Charles Dar­win, for instance, or the many names in our per­son­al read­ing-list roundup includ­ing Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Jorge Luis Borges, Pat­ti Smith, Bill Gates, and David Bowie. Mark Twain also com­posed a read­ing list for kids and adults alike, but what­ev­er we take from it, we should enter the new year with one of his famous apho­risms in mind: “The man who does not read good books has no advan­tage over the man who can’t read them.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan’s Ambi­tious Col­lege Read­ing List: Pla­to, Shake­speare, Gide, and Plen­ty of Phi­los­o­phy, Math & Physics (1954)

What Did Charles Dar­win Read? See His Hand­writ­ten Read­ing List & Read Books from His Library Online

How to Read Many More Books in a Year: Watch a Short Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing Some of the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Book­stores

7 Tips for Read­ing More Books in a Year

100 Books to Read in a Life­time

29 Lists of Rec­om­mend­ed Books Cre­at­ed by Well-Known Authors, Artists & Thinkers: Jorge Luis Borges, Pat­ti Smith, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, David Bowie & More

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Octavia Butler’s Four Rules for Predicting the Future

in Sci Fi | December 23rd, 2020

Image by Niko­las Couk­ouma, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you, like me, often turn to sci­ence fic­tion to get more clar­i­ty about the present, past, and future, then you know you’re in good com­pa­ny with mul­ti­ple-award-win­ning sci-fi author Octavia But­ler. The nov­el­ist cast her gaze over it all, look­ing into the dark cor­ners of Amer­i­can life and human behav­ior and draw­ing out sto­ries that feel both shock­ing­ly new and famil­iar and true.

Some­times Butler’s truths are hard to hear, espe­cial­ly when we’re liv­ing in the midst of a time she fore­saw with such seem­ing accu­ra­cy thir­ty years ago in her Para­ble nov­els, two books meant to be the first parts of a tril­o­gy about America’s greed, cru­el­ty, and racism swal­low­ing up its good inten­tions and inflat­ed self-image.

Para­ble of the Sow­er and Para­ble of the Tal­ents are, as But­ler described them, “nov­els that take place in a near future of increas­ing drug addic­tion and illit­er­a­cy, marked by the pop­u­lar­i­ty of pris­ons and the unpop­u­lar­i­ty of pub­lic schools, the vast and grow­ing gap between the rich and every­one else, and the whole nasty fam­i­ly of prob­lems brought on by glob­al warm­ing.”

These prob­lems include the return of debt slav­ery, a par­tic­u­lar­ly nasty strain of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, and a vague but dev­as­tat­ing envi­ron­men­tal col­lapse from which there is no return. But these are also nov­els about hope: about sur­vival and adap­ta­tion and empa­thy. But­ler may have invent­ed the plots of her post-apoc­a­lyp­tic future, but “I didn’t make up the prob­lems,” she once told a stu­dent.

Sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers aren’t clair­voy­ant, they’re just bet­ter at mak­ing obser­va­tions and spec­u­la­tions. “All I did was look around at the prob­lems we’re neglect­ing now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged dis­as­ters,” said But­ler. A per­spec­tive that doesn’t also include the whole of human his­to­ry is bound to miss the mark, she sug­gest­ed:

Writ­ing nov­els about the future doesn’t give me any spe­cial abil­i­ty to fore­tell the future. But it does encour­age me to use our past and present behav­iors as guides to the kind of world we seem to be cre­at­ing. The past, for exam­ple, is filled with repeat­ing cycles of strength and weak­ness, wis­dom and stu­pid­i­ty, empire and ash­es. To study his­to­ry is to study human­i­ty. And to try to fore­tell the future with­out study­ing his­to­ry is like try­ing to learn to read with­out both­er­ing to learn the alpha­bet.

But­ler goes on to dis­cuss her method for pre­dict­ing the future—so to speak—which any­one can learn to do with enough study and insight (that’s the hard part). Thom Dunn at Boing Boing has help­ful­ly bro­ken down her essay’s main points into four con­cise rules:

• Learn from the past
• Respect the law of con­se­quences
• Be aware of your per­spec­tive
• Count on the sur­pris­es

You can read the full essay here and get to work on your own fore­cast­ing abil­i­ties. But in order to ful­ly under­stand Butler’s project, it is essen­tial nev­er to despair. “The one thing that I and my main char­ac­ters nev­er do when con­tem­plat­ing the future is give up hope,” she writes. In answer to her student’s anguished ques­tion, if things are going to get so bad “what’s the answer?” But­ler sage­ly replied, “there isn’t one…. There’s no mag­ic bul­let. Instead there are thou­sands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Behold Octavia Butler’s Moti­va­tion­al Notes to Self

Why Should We Read Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Writer Octavia But­ler? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Octavia Butler’s 1998 Dystopi­an Nov­el Fea­tures a Fascis­tic Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date Who Promis­es to “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again”

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

Tune Into Tree.fm: An Online Radio Station That Streams the Soothing Sounds of Forests from Around the World

in Nature | December 23rd, 2020

Image by Snežana Tri­funović, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Walk into a for­est. Stand per­fect­ly still. Close your eyes. What do you hear? The sounds of birds, the rustling leaves, yes, yes…. But what’s that? And that? The for­est is full of sounds you can’t iden­ti­fy! Curi­ous sounds, far-away sounds, sooth­ing sounds, sounds that are not the churn­ing anx­ious wheels inside your head when you try to relax….

Expe­ri­enc­ing our­selves around trees has sev­er­al demon­stra­ble ben­e­fits, as the sci­ence of for­est bathing has taught us. Many of these have to do with visu­al, olfac­to­ry, and tac­tile plea­sures. But we must not neglect the nat­ur­al acoustic sys­tem all around us: an immer­sive expe­ri­ence in full 360-degree sound. Trees’ “vibra­to­ry ener­gies reveal humanity’s many con­nec­tions with forests,” writes David George Haskell at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can.

Forests “are full of song.”

That’s all very well for peo­ple who can go out­side. But if you’re locked down in a major city, say, or the office, or an ill-advised hol­i­day gath­er­ing, and you feel cor­ti­sol lev­els ris­ing, we’ve got you cov­ered. Back in Sep­tem­ber, we fea­tured Sounds of the For­est, a crowd­sourced audio archive gath­er­ing sounds from forests all over the world. Now, these clips are stream­ing at Tree.fm, an online radio sta­tion for tree songs in stereo. 

Streams rill, frogs hoot, birds caw and squawk in cho­rus. And then there are the trees, each species pos­sessed of its own voice, Haskell writes:

Gusts of wind soni­fy plant diver­si­ty. Oak’s voice is coarse-grained, throaty; maple’s is sandy and light. These dif­fer­ences have their ori­gins in plant evo­lu­tion and adap­ta­tion. Drought-resis­tant oak leaves are thick­er, tougher than the water-hun­gry maple. The dif­fer­ent sounds of trees on a dry moun­tain ridge and in a moist forest­ed hol­low speak to the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of the ecol­o­gy of each place. Pon­derosa pine sings sweet­ly in the winds of Cal­i­for­nia, its long nee­dles were, John Muir wrote, “finest music” and a “free, wing-like hum”. But in Col­orado, pines have evolved short­er, stiffer nee­dles to cope with heavy loads of snow and ice. There, the trees wail as their wiry nee­dles har­row the wind.

Tree.fm “is a tool that gives you instant access to the sounds of the world’s forests,” Beth Skwarec­ki writes at Life­hack­er. Many of those sounds, like the forests that pro­duced them, are endan­gered, not only from the usu­al sus­pects but also the noise pol­lu­tion of high­ways and hous­ing devel­op­ments. Lis­ten to for­est songs on repeat or hit “lis­ten to a ran­dom for­est” and be “trans­port­ed to Mada­gas­car to lis­ten to some lemurs, or to Ghana to hear some peace­ful­ly rush­ing water, or to Rus­sia, where a bird I’ve nev­er heard of puts on a vocal per­for­mance.” This is good med­i­cine. Dis­cov­er the for­est songs that best soothe your ner­vous sys­tem or delight ears at Tree.fm.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Sounds of the For­est: A Free Audio Archive Gath­ers the Sounds of Forests from All Over the World

Free: Down­load the Sub­lime Sights & Sounds of Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park

How to Find Silence in a Noisy World

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

What Has the Internet Done to Comedy? A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#74)

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | December 23rd, 2020

Does remov­ing gate­keep­ers mean a more dis­trib­uted com­ic land­scape, or does it inevitably end with a small num­ber of comics dom­i­nat­ing the world? The Inter­net means that peo­ple can and do judge comics based on very short clips, but also makes it easy to fol­low the activ­i­ties of some­one you dis­cov­er that you like.

Tiffany comes not from stand-up but from music the­ater, and is active in cre­at­ing char­ac­ter-based com­e­dy and nov­el­ty songs for Insta­gram, YouTube, etc. She joins your hosts Eri­ca Spyres, Mark Lin­sen­may­er, and Bri­an Hirt to explore the types of short-form humor and view­ing habits that grow out of video cre­at­ed for Tik­Tok, Snapchat, and oth­er plat­forms. What’s the cre­ator’s rela­tion to the audi­ence? Social media blurs the line between con­struct­ed bits and extem­po­rized com­men­tary. It’s often react­ing to cur­rent events, yet stays post­ed long after. “Going viral” is not typ­i­cal­ly the result of mere organ­ic shar­ing or chance, and some comics (and their con­sul­tants) have real­ly stud­ied the medi­um to find out what appeals and how to get the word out.

We touch on Car­men Lynch, Sarah Coop­er, Eva Vic­tor, Bowen Yang, Coin­ci­d­ance, Miran­da Sings, Lock­Pick­ingLawyer, Jim­my Sloni­na, AskChick­ie, and more.

Watch Tiffany’s Frag­ile White Sad­ness. And her ode to Dis­ney Plus. Our Long Novem­ber has passed, thank good­ness.

Tiffany also rec­om­mends Jen Tul­lock, Josh Ruben, Jor­dan First­man, Megan Stal­ter, Cole Esco­la, Craw­ford Mill­ham Hor­ton, Ben­i­to Skin­ner, Inap­pro­pri­ate Pat­ti, Advent Car­olen­dar, and Marc Rebil­let.

Read: “These Come­di­ans Are Using Tik­Tok to Cre­ate Some of the Inter­net’s Fun­ni­est (And Wok­est) Con­tent)” by Kat Cur­tis.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

Robert Fripp & Toyah Willcox Sing the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the UK” While Dressed as Santa and Elf

in Music | December 22nd, 2020

Yes, 2020 sucked. But not com­plete­ly, entire­ly and thor­ough­ly. Enjoy this brief sun­ny moment, cour­tesy of Robert Fripp and Toy­ah Will­cox.

If you vis­it their Sun­day Lunch playlist, you can watch them have fun with oth­er clas­sics by Nir­vana, Bowie, Alice Coop­er, The Kinks and more. Enjoy.

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:

Robert Fripp & King Crim­son Per­form a Stir­ring Cov­er of “Heroes,” Short­ly after David Bowie’s Death (2016)

Robert Fripp Releas­es Free Ambi­ent Music to Get You Through the Lock­down: Enjoy “Music for Qui­et Moments”

Derek Jarman’s Jubilee: “It’s the Best Film about Punk” (1978)

Bill Gates Picks 5 Good Books for a Lousy Year

in Books | December 22nd, 2020

2020 has been a ter­ri­ble year. But that has­n’t stopped Bill Gates (as is his cus­tom) from choos­ing, he says, “five books that I enjoyed—some because they helped me go deep­er on a tough issue, oth­ers because they offered a wel­come change of pace.”

Below, you can read, in his own words, the selec­tions he pub­lished here.

Range: Why Gen­er­al­ists Tri­umph in a Spe­cial­ized World, by David Epstein. I start­ed fol­low­ing Epstein’s work after watch­ing his fan­tas­tic 2014 TED talk on sports per­for­mance. In this fas­ci­nat­ing book, he argues that although the world seems to demand more and more specialization—in your career, for example—what we actu­al­ly need is more peo­ple “who start broad and embrace diverse expe­ri­ences and per­spec­tives while they progress.” His exam­ples run from Roger Fed­er­er to Charles Dar­win to Cold War-era experts on Sovi­et affairs. I think his ideas even help explain some of Microsoft’s suc­cess, because we hired peo­ple who had real breadth with­in their field and across domains. If you’re a gen­er­al­ist who has ever felt over­shad­owed by your spe­cial­ist col­leagues, this book is for you. More on the book here.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incar­cer­a­tion in the Age of Col­or­blind­ness, by Michelle Alexan­der. Like many white peo­ple, I’ve tried to deep­en my under­stand­ing of sys­temic racism in recent months. Alexander’s book offers an eye-open­ing look into how the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem unfair­ly tar­gets com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, and espe­cial­ly Black com­mu­ni­ties. It’s espe­cial­ly good at explain­ing the his­to­ry and the num­bers behind mass incar­cer­a­tion. I was famil­iar with some of the data, but Alexan­der real­ly helps put it in con­text. I fin­ished the book more con­vinced than ever that we need a more just approach to sen­tenc­ing and more invest­ment in com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. More on the book here.

The Splen­did and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Fam­i­ly, and Defi­ance Dur­ing the Blitz, by Erik Lar­son. Some­times his­to­ry books end up feel­ing more rel­e­vant than their authors could have imag­ined. That’s the case with this bril­liant account of the years 1940 and 1941, when Eng­lish cit­i­zens spent almost every night hud­dled in base­ments and Tube sta­tions as Ger­many tried to bomb them into sub­mis­sion. The fear and anx­i­ety they felt—while much more severe than what we’re expe­ri­enc­ing with COVID-19—sounded famil­iar. Lar­son gives you a vivid sense of what life was like for aver­age cit­i­zens dur­ing this awful peri­od, and he does a great job pro­fil­ing some of the British lead­ers who saw them through the cri­sis, includ­ing Win­ston Churchill and his close advis­ers. Its scope is too nar­row to be the only book you ever read on World War II, but it’s a great addi­tion to the lit­er­a­ture focused on that trag­ic peri­od. More on the book here.

The Spy and the Trai­tor: The Great­est Espi­onage Sto­ry of the Cold War, by Ben Mac­in­tyre. This non­fic­tion account focus­es on Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB offi­cer who became a dou­ble agent for the British, and Aldrich Ames, the Amer­i­can turn­coat who like­ly betrayed him. Macintyre’s retelling of their sto­ries comes not only from West­ern sources (includ­ing Gordievsky him­self) but also from the Russ­ian per­spec­tive. It’s every bit as excit­ing as my favorite spy nov­els. More on the book here.

Breath from Salt: A Dead­ly Genet­ic Dis­ease, a New Era in Sci­ence, and the Patients and Fam­i­lies Who Changed Med­i­cine, by Bijal P. Trive­di. This book is tru­ly uplift­ing. It doc­u­ments a sto­ry of remark­able sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tion and how it has improved the lives of almost all cys­tic fibro­sis patients and their fam­i­lies. This sto­ry is espe­cial­ly mean­ing­ful to me because I know fam­i­lies who’ve ben­e­fit­ed from the new med­i­cines described in this book. I sus­pect we’ll see many more books like this in the com­ing years, as bio­med­ical mir­a­cles emerge from labs at an ever-greater pace. More on the book 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:

Bill Gates Describes His Biggest Fear: “I Rate the Chance of a Wide­spread Epi­dem­ic Far Worse Than Ebo­la at Well Over 50 Per­cent” (2015)

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

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends 5 Thought-Pro­vok­ing Books to Read This Sum­mer

How Bill Gates Reads Books

Bill Gates Names His New Favorite Book of All Time

Peter Jackson Gives Us an Enticing Glimpse of His Upcoming Beatles Documentary The Beatles: Get Back

in Film, Music | December 22nd, 2020

The leg­endary acri­mo­ny of the Bea­t­les’ break-up comes through in Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 film Let it Be, which doc­u­ments the record­ing of their last stu­dio album and their famous rooftop send­off con­cert, joined by key­boardist Bil­ly Pre­ston. Things got so tense that George Har­ri­son left the band dur­ing the ses­sions. He lat­er called them “the low of all time.” Lennon went fur­ther: “hell… the most mis­er­able ses­sions on earth.”

Though some of the worst moments of those ses­sions were cut in edit­ing, there’s no doubt Lind­say-Hogg built the film around stu­dio dra­ma instead of “the monot­o­nies, the lack­lus­ter worka­day yawns, of four peo­ple who know each oth­er too well,” wrote Jonathan Cot and David Dal­ton in a 1970 Rolling Stone review. “We only get a few moments because with 300 hours of footage, only the high­lights, the more dra­mat­ic scenes, and the fun­nier dia­logue are shown.”

In the film, the band ends their last per­for­mance togeth­er with “Get Back,” then Lennon famous­ly jokes, “I hope we’ve passed the audi­tion.” Let it Be, Cott and Dal­ton revealed, was orig­i­nal­ly titled Get Back, the name Peter Jackson—yes that Peter Jackson—has cho­sen for his upcom­ing Bea­t­les film, which will final­ly see the light next year, after the COVID delays that have slowed down every pro­duc­tion.

Build­ing on the archival and restora­tion skills he refined dur­ing the mak­ing of They Shall Not Grow Old, Jack­son and his team have combed through those hun­dreds of hours of film, cut­ting togeth­er 56 hours of “nev­er-before-seen footage,” notes Bren­na Ehrlich at Rolling Stone. “The film promis­es to be ‘the ulti­mate ‘fly on the wall’ expe­ri­ence that Bea­t­les fans have long dreamt about,’” as Jack­son says. “We get to sit in the stu­dio watch­ing these four friends make great music togeth­er.”

The film will also “present a much sun­nier vision of the Bea­t­les’ breakup” and has been made with the full per­mis­sion of sur­viv­ing mem­bers Paul McCart­ney and Ringo Starr as well as Yoko Ono and George Harrison’s wife Olivia. As Starr put it, “There were hours and hours of us just laugh­ing and play­ing music, not at all like the ver­sion that came out. There was a lot of joy and I think Peter will show that. I think this ver­sion will be a lot more peace and lov­ing, like we real­ly were.”

As if to prove the point, McCart­ney, who just dropped his lat­est album, McCart­ney III, tweet­ed out the five-minute clip above yes­ter­day, in which Jack­son intro­duces what he calls a “mon­tage” from the film’s edit­ing process so far. The vivid life­like­ness of the images is a result of Jackson’s dig­i­tal pro­cess­ing, and it does not seem intru­sive. What stands out most of all is the joy the band clear­ly still took in each other’s com­pa­ny, “just laugh­ing and play­ing music,” as Ringo remem­bered. Get Back is slat­ed for release in the­aters on August, 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

How Peter Jack­son Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Doc­u­men­tary, They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

When the Bea­t­les Refused to Play Before Seg­re­gat­ed Audi­ences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

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

Why David Sedaris Hates “The Santaland Diaries,” the NPR Piece that Made Him Famous

in Comedy, Literature | December 22nd, 2020

This past fall David Sedaris pub­lished his first full-fledged anthol­o­gy, The Best of Me. It includes “Six to Eight Black Men,” his sto­ry about bewil­der­ing encoun­ters with Euro­pean Christ­mas folk­tales, but not “The San­ta­land Diaries,” which launched him straight into pop­u­lar cul­ture when he read it aloud on Nation­al Pub­lic Radio’s Morn­ing Edi­tion in 1992. True to its title, that piece is drawn from entries in his diary (the rig­or­ous keep­ing of which is the core of his writ­ing process) made while employed as one of San­ta’s elves at Macy’s Her­ald Square in New York. Not only was the sub­ject sea­son­al­ly appro­pri­ate, Sedaris cap­tured the vari­eties of seething resent­ment felt at one time or anoth­er — not least around Christ­mas — by cus­tomer-ser­vice work­ers in Amer­i­ca.

Accord­ing to a Macy’s exec­u­tive who worked at Her­ald Square at the time, Sedaris made an “out­stand­ing elf.” (So the New Repub­lic’s Alex Heard dis­cov­ered when attempt­ing to fact-check Sedaris’ work.) Whether or not he has fond mem­o­ries of his time in “green vel­vet knick­ers, a for­est-green vel­vet smock and a perky lit­tle hat dec­o­rat­ed with span­gles,” he holds “The San­ta­land Diaries” itself in no regard what­so­ev­er. “I’m grate­ful that I wrote some­thing that peo­ple enjoyed, but because it was my choice what went into this book, I was so hap­py to exclude it,” he says in an inter­view with WBUR about The Best of Me. “I want­ed its feel­ings to be hurt.”

Over the past 28 years he has seized numer­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties to dis­par­age the piece that made him  famous.“I have no idea why that went over the way that it did,” Sedaris once admit­ted to Pub­lish­er’s Week­ly. “There are about two ear­ly things I’ve writ­ten that I could go back and read again, and that’s not one of them.” And by the time of that first Morn­ing Edi­tion broad­cast, he had already been keep­ing his diary every day for fif­teen years. “When you first start writ­ing, you’re going to suck,” he says in the Atlantic video just below. In his first years writ­ing, he says, “I was sit­ting at the Inter­na­tion­al House of Pan­cakes in Raleigh, North Car­oli­na with a beret screwed to my head,” and the result was “the writ­ing you would expect from that per­son.”

Since then Sedaris’ dress has become more eccen­tric, but his writ­ing has improved immea­sur­ably. “I want to be bet­ter at what I do,” said Sedaris in a recent inter­view with the Col­orado Springs Inde­pen­dent. “It’s just some­thing that I per­son­al­ly strive for. Which is sil­ly, because most peo­ple can’t even rec­og­nize that. Peo­ple will say, ‘Oh, I loved that San­ta­land thing.’ And that thing is so clunki­ly writ­ten. I mean, it’s just hor­ri­bly writ­ten, and peo­ple can’t even see it.” Much of the audi­ence may be “lis­ten­ing to the sto­ry, but they’re not pay­ing atten­tion to how it’s con­struct­ed, or they’re not pay­ing atten­tion to the words that you used. They’re not hear­ing the craft of it.” But if you lis­ten to “The San­ta­land Diaries” today, you may well hear what Ira Glass did when he and Sedaris orig­i­nal­ly record­ed it.

As a young free­lance radio pro­duc­er who had yet to cre­ate This Amer­i­can Life, Glass first saw the thor­ough­ly non-famous Sedaris when he read from his diary onstage at a Chica­go club. Glass knew instinc­tive­ly that Sedaris’ dis­tinc­tive voice as both writer and read­er would play well on the radio, as would his even more dis­tinc­tive sense of humor. But it was­n’t until a few years lat­er, when he called on Sedaris to record a hol­i­day-themed seg­ment for Morn­ing Edi­tion, that Glass under­stood just what kind of tal­ent he’d dis­cov­ered. “I remem­ber we got to the part where you sing like Bil­lie Hol­i­day,” Glass told Sedaris in an inter­view mark­ing the 25th anniver­sary of “The San­ta­land Diaries.” “I was a pret­ty expe­ri­enced radio pro­duc­er at that point, and I was like, ‘This is a good one.’ ”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Sedaris: A Sam­pling of His Inim­itable Humor

David Sedaris Breaks Down His Writ­ing Process: Keep a Diary, Car­ry a Note­book, Read Out Loud, Aban­don Hope

David Sedaris Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Jazz Tracks: Stream Them Online

Why David Sedaris Hates America’s Favorite Word, “Awe­some”

David Sedaris Spends 3–8 Hours Per Day Pick­ing Up Trash in the UK; Tes­ti­fies on the Lit­ter Prob­lem

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The UN’s World Happiness Report Ranks “Socialist Friendly” Countries like Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland & Sweden as Among the Happiest in the World

in Current Affairs, Economics, Politics | December 22nd, 2020

One of the most per­ni­cious, “dan­ger­ous, anti-human and soul-crush­ing” myths in the busi­ness world, writes Liz Ryan at Forbes, is the “idi­ot­ic nos­trum” that has also crept into gov­ern­ment and char­i­ta­ble work: “If you can’t mea­sure it, you can’t man­age it.” The received wis­dom is some­times phrased more cyn­i­cal­ly as “if you can’t mea­sure it, it didn’t hap­pen,” or more pos­i­tive­ly as “if you can’t mea­sure it, you can’t improve it.”

But “the impor­tant stuff can’t be mea­sured,” says Ryan. Don’t we all want to believe that? “Can’t Buy Me Love” and so forth. Maybe it’s not that sim­ple, either. Take hap­pi­ness, for exam­ple. We might say we dis­agree about its rel­a­tive impor­tance, but we all go about the busi­ness of try­ing to buy hap­pi­ness any­way. In our hearts of hearts, it’s a more or less an unques­tion­able good. So why does it seem so scarce and seem to cost so much?  Maybe the prob­lem is not that hap­pi­ness can’t be mea­sured but that it can’t be com­mod­i­fied.

Bud­dhist economies like Bhutan, for exam­ple, run on a GHI (Gross Nation­al Hap­pi­ness) index instead of GDP, and pose the ques­tion of whether the issue of nation­al hap­pi­ness is one of pri­or­i­ties. In oth­er words, “you get what you mea­sure.” In March, Lau­ra Beg­ley Bloom cit­ed the 20 hap­pi­est coun­tries in the world at Forbes, using the UN’s 2020 World Hap­pi­ness Report, “a land­mark sur­vey of the state of glob­al hap­pi­ness,” as the report’s web­site describes it, “that ranks 156 coun­tries by how hap­py their cit­i­zens per­ceive them­selves to be.”

Hap­pi­ness is mea­sured across urban and rur­al envi­ron­ments and accord­ing to envi­ron­men­tal qual­i­ty and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment met­rics. The report uses six rubrics to assess happiness—levels of GDP, life expectan­cy, gen­eros­i­ty, social sup­port, free­dom and cor­rup­tion, and income. Their assess­ment relied on self-report­ing, to give “a direct voice to the pop­u­la­tion as opposed the more top-down approach of decid­ing ex-ante what ought to mat­ter.”  The last chap­ter attempts to account for the so-called “Nordic Excep­tion,” or the puz­zling fact that “Nordic coun­tries are con­stant­ly among the hap­pi­est in the world.”

Maybe this fact is only puz­zling if you begin with the assump­tion that wealthy cap­i­tal­ist economies pro­mote hap­pi­ness. But the top ten hap­pi­est coun­tries are wealthy “social­ist friend­ly” mixed economies, as Bill Maher jokes in the clip at the top, say­ing that in the U.S. “the right has a hard time under­stand­ing we don’t want long lines for bread social­ism, we want that you don’t have to win the lot­to to afford brain surgery social­ism.” This is com­e­dy, not tren­chant geo-polit­i­cal analy­sis, but it alludes to anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant fact.

Most of the world’s unhap­pi­est coun­tries and cities are for­mer­ly col­o­nized places whose economies, infra­struc­tures, and sup­ply chains have been desta­bi­lized by sanc­tions (which cause long bread lines), bombed out of exis­tence by wealth­i­er coun­tries, and destroyed by cli­mate cat­a­stro­phes. The report does not ful­ly explore the mean­ing of this data, focus­ing, under­stand­ably, on what makes pop­u­la­tions hap­py. But an under­ly­ing theme is the sug­ges­tion that hap­pi­ness is some­thing we achieve in real, mea­sur­able eco­nom­ic rela­tion with each oth­er, not sole­ly in the pur­suit of indi­vid­u­al­ist ideals.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

How Much Mon­ey Do You Need to Be Hap­py? A New Study Gives Us Some Exact Fig­ures

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

Albert Camus Explains Why Hap­pi­ness Is Like Com­mit­ting a Crime—”You Should Nev­er Admit to it” (1959)

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