88 Philosophy Podcasts to Help You Answer the Big Questions in Life

in Philosophy, Podcasts | December 1st, 2020

The big ques­tions of phi­los­o­phy, sim­mer­ing since antiq­ui­ty, still press upon us as they did the Athe­ni­ans of old (and all ancient peo­ple who have phi­los­o­phized): what oblig­a­tions do we real­ly owe to fam­i­ly, friends, or strangers? Do we live as free agents or beings con­trolled by fate or the gods (or genes or a com­put­er sim­u­la­tion)? What is a good life? How do we cre­ate soci­eties that max­i­mize free­dom and hap­pi­ness (or what­ev­er ulti­mate val­ues we hold dear)? What is lan­guage, what is art, and where did they come from?

These ques­tions may not be answered with a brute appeal to facts, though with­out sci­ence we are grop­ing in the dark. Reli­gion takes big ques­tions seri­ous­ly but tells con­verts to take its super­nat­ur­al answers on faith. “Between the­ol­o­gy and sci­ence there is a No Man’s Land,” writes Bertrand Rus­sell, “exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man’s Land is phi­los­o­phy.” Phi­los­o­phy reach­es beyond cer­tain­ty, to “spec­u­la­tions on mat­ters as to which def­i­nite knowl­edge has, so far, been unascer­tain­able.” And yet, like sci­ence, “it appeals to human rea­son rather than author­i­ty.”

The con­cerns of phi­los­o­phy have nar­rowed since Russell’s time, not to men­tion the time of Socrates, put to death for lead­ing the youth astray. But pro­fes­sors of phi­los­o­phy still raise the ire of the pub­lic, accused of seduc­ing stu­dents from the safe spaces of sacred dog­ma and sec­u­lar util­i­ty. “To study phi­los­o­phy,” wrote Cicero, “is noth­ing but to pre­pare one­self to die.” It is a poet­ic turn of phrase, and yes, we must con­front mor­tal­i­ty, but phi­los­o­phy also asks us to con­front the lim­its of human knowl­edge and pow­er in the face of the unknown. Dan­ger­ous indeed.

Should you decide to embark on this jour­ney your­self, you will meet with no small num­ber of fel­low trav­el­ers along the way. Bring some ear­phones, you can hear them in the trove of 88 phi­los­o­phy pod­casts com­piled on the phi­los­o­phy web­site Dai­ly Nous. “How many phi­los­o­phy pod­casts are there?” asks Dai­ly Nous, who brings us this list. “Over 80, and they take a vari­ety of forms.” See 15 below, with descrip­tions, see the rest at Dai­ly Nous, and enjoy your sojourn into “no man’s land.”

• 5 Ques­tions (inter­views about philoso­phers them­selves w/ Kier­an Setiya)
• Embrace the Void (con­ver­sa­tions w/ Aaron Rabi­nowitz)
• Get­ting Ethics to Work (inter­views and dis­cus­sion w/ Andy Culli­son and Kate Berry
• Hi-Phi Nation (edit­ed nar­ra­tives w/ Bar­ry Lam)
• The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy with­out any Gaps (mix of mono­logues and inter­views w/ Peter Adam­son)
• New Books in Phi­los­o­phy (inter­views w/ Car­rie Fig­dor, Alexus McLeod, Mar­shall Poe, & Robert Talisse)
• Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life (“read­ing group” dis­cus­sions w/ Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Seth Paskin, Wes Alwan, & Dylan Casey)
• Phi­los­o­phy Bites (short inter­views w/ David Edmonds & Nigel War­bur­ton)
• Phi­los­o­phy Talk (con­ver­sa­tions w/ Stan­ford Fac­ul­ty incl. John Per­ry, for­mer­ly Ken Tay­lor, Ray Brig­gs, Debra Satz, Josh Landy, et al.)
• Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast (inter­views w/ Tobias Buck­le)
• Philoso­phers On Med­i­cine (inter­views w/ Jonathan Fuller)
• Reduc­tio (edit­ed nar­ra­tives w/ Andrew Lavin)
• SCI PHI (inter­views w/ Nick Zau­tra)
• Unmute (inter­views w/ Myisha Cher­ry)
• Very Bad Wiz­ards (con­ver­sa­tions w/ Tam­ler Som­mers & David Pizarro)

See the full list here. And explore our col­lec­tion of 200 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Learn Phi­los­o­phy with a Wealth of Free Cours­es, Pod­casts and YouTube Videos

Oxford’s Free Intro­duc­tion to Phi­los­o­phy: Stream 41 Lec­tures

Dis­cov­er the Cre­ative, New Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast Hi-Phi Nation: The First Sto­ry-Dri­ven Show About Phi­los­o­phy

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

Watch Digital Dancers Electrify the Streets of Istanbul

in Animation, Dance, Technology, Travel | November 30th, 2020

Are you open to the idea of oth­er­world­ly beings mov­ing amongst us, benign but unseen?

Direc­tor Gökalp Gönen seems to be in the above video for jazz inno­va­tor Ilhan Ersahin’s “Hur­ri-Mitan­ni” (Good News).

Things kick off in a decid­ed­ly low key manner—a young woman sets off for a night­time stroll through the streets of Istan­bul, her face delib­er­ate­ly obscured by a snug­ly tied black and white cloth.

Turn­ing a cor­ner, she pass­es an anony­mous fig­ure, wrapped head to toe in sim­i­lar stripes.

Does this unex­pect­ed sight elic­it any dis­cernible reac­tion?

Our guess is no, but we can’t say for sure, as the cam­era los­es inter­est in the young woman, opt­ing to linger with the svelte and exu­ber­ant mum­my, who’s danc­ing like no one is watch­ing.

Else­where, oth­er increas­ing­ly col­or­ful beings per­form vari­a­tions on the mum­my’s box step, alone or in groups.

As their out­fits become more fan­ci­ful, Gönen employs CGI and 3D ani­ma­tion to unhitch them from the laws of physics and famil­iar bound­aries of human anato­my.

They pixel­late, sprout extra legs, project rays rem­i­nis­cent of string art, appear more veg­etable than ani­mal.…

Some grow to Godzil­la-like pro­por­tions, shed­ding lit­tle humanoid forms and bound­ing across the Bosporus.

A small spiky ver­sion ignores the paws of a curi­ous kit­ten.

These fan­tas­ti­cal, face­less beings are invis­i­ble to passer­by. Only one, per­form­ing on an out­door stage, seems eager for inter­ac­tion. None of them seen to mean any harm.

They just wan­na boo­gie…

…or do they?

The director’s state­ment is not eas­i­ly parsed in trans­la­tion:

A group of anony­mous wan­der­ing the streets. Every­where is very crowd­ed but iden­ti­ties are very few. Try­ing to be some­one is as dif­fi­cult as writ­ing your name on the waves left by this fast-mov­ing giant ship. Every­one is every­one and every­one is nobody any­more. This silence could only exist through glow­ing screens, even if it found itself nooks. On those loud screens, they remind­ed who actu­al­ly had the pow­er by enter­ing the places that were said to be inac­ces­si­ble. But they did­n’t even care about this pow­er. The areas where we had pas­sion­ate con­ver­sa­tions about it for days were a “now like this” place for us, but they looked like this to say “no, it was actu­al­ly like that” but they did not speak much. They had the charm of a cat. When they said, “Look, it was like this,” they became part of every­thing that made it “like this” and became unno­tice­able like paving stones. They just want­ed to have a lit­tle fun, to be able to live a few years with­out wor­ry. In five min­utes, fif­teen sec­onds at most, they exist­ed and left.

A few crea­tures who got left on the cut­ting room floor can be seen danc­ing on Gönen’s Insta­gram pro­file.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Rare Grooves on Vinyl from Around the World: Hear Curat­ed Playlists of Ara­bic, Brazil­ian, Bol­ly­wood, Sovi­et & Turk­ish Music

The Dance The­atre of Harlem Dances Through the Streets of NYC: A Sight to Behold

Istan­bul Cap­tured in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Top­ka­ki Palace’s Impe­r­i­al Gate & More

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

An Animated Stan Lee Explains Why the F‑Word Is “the Most Useful Word in the English Language” (NSFW)

in Comics/Cartoons, Film | November 30th, 2020

FYI. The lan­guage in this video is not safe for work. And, now, on with the show.

In the last cou­ple years of his life, Stan Lee was ill, his health fail­ing, but he stayed engaged and remained his old wise­crack­ing self. His hand­picked suc­ces­sor for edi­tor-in-chief at Mar­vel, Roy Thomas, tells the sto­ry of the last time he saw Lee and showed him his then-new biog­ra­phy of the comics leg­end, The Stan Lee Sto­ry. They talked about the Spi­der-Man com­ic strip they’d writ­ten togeth­er for two decades until a cou­ple years back. Oth­er famil­iar sub­jects came and went. Lee “was ready to go” and seemed at peace, Thomas says.

“But he was still talk­ing about doing more cameos. As long as he had the ener­gy for it and didn’t have to trav­el, Stan was always up to do some more cameos.” Lee’s cameos con­tin­ue after his death in 2018, as is the way now with deceased icons. He has made three live-action appear­ances posthu­mous­ly, in footage shot before his death, one posthu­mous appear­ance in an ani­mat­ed super­hero film, and anoth­er in a Spi­der-Man video game. Soon, these vignettes may be all pop­u­lar audi­ences know of him.

Who knows how much footage–or will­ing­ness to cre­ate CGI Stan Lees—Disney has in store for future Mar­vel films. But a memo­r­i­al in script­ed one-lin­ers seems to miss out on a whole lot of Stan Lee. The man could be count­ed on to make the set on time. (Accord­ing to Jason Mewes, Lee had din­ner with his wife every sin­gle night with­out fail at 6:00 pm sharp.) But he could also be unpre­dictable in some very delight­ful ways.

Thomas tells a sto­ry, for exam­ple, of vis­it­ing Lee in the 80s in a Cal­i­for­nia house with mar­ble floors. “At one point he excused him­self, and he came back on roller skates…. I’d nev­er seen any­one roller-skat­ing on a mar­ble floor.” The short film above ani­mates anoth­er of these unscript­ed moments, when Lee lit­er­al­ly went off-script to deliv­er an extem­po­ra­ne­ous mono­logue on the f‑word. Of course, “I don’t say it, ‘cause I don’t say dirty words,” he begins, before let­ting it rip in an argu­ment for the f‑word as “the most use­ful word in the Eng­lish lan­guage.”

Lee’s off-the-cuff George Car­lin rou­tine rolls right into his rea­son for being in the record­ing booth: get­ting a take of his sig­na­ture excla­ma­tion, “Excelsior!”—the word the cre­ator or co-cre­ator of Spi­der-Man, Thor, Iron Man, Ant Man, Black Wid­ow, Black Pan­ther (and most the rest of the Mar­vel Uni­verse) reserved for empha­sis in his heart­felt, whole­some let­ters to fans over the decades. After he says his catch­phrase, James Whit­brook writes at io9, he goes “right back into hav­ing a laugh with every­one around him. It’s a love­ly, if pro­fane, remem­brance of an icon,” and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, not the kind of thing like­ly to make it in future cameo appear­ances.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Stan Lee (RIP) Gets an Exu­ber­ant Fan Let­ter from 15-Year-Old George R.R. Mar­tin, 1963

R.I.P. Stan Lee: Take His Free Online Course “The Rise of Super­heroes and Their Impact On Pop Cul­ture”

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

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

The Great Courses Offers Every Course for $40 Until Midnight Tonight

in Deals | November 27th, 2020

Here’s a hol­i­day sea­son deal worth men­tion­ing. The Great Cours­es (for­mer­ly The Teach­ing Com­pa­ny) is offer­ing every course for $40 in dig­i­tal for­mat (or $60 in DVD for­mat). The deal lasts through mid­night on Black Fri­day.

If you’re not famil­iar with it, the Great Cours­es pro­vides a very nice ser­vice. They trav­el across the U.S., record­ing great pro­fes­sors lec­tur­ing on great top­ics that will appeal to any life­long learn­er. They then make the cours­es avail­able to cus­tomers in dif­fer­ent for­mats (DVD, CD, Video & Audio Down­loads, etc.). The cours­es are very pol­ished and com­plete, and they can be quite rea­son­ably priced, espe­cial­ly when they’re on sale, as they are today. Click here to explore the offer.

Sep­a­rate­ly, it’s also worth men­tion­ing that the Great Cours­es Plus–which makes cours­es avail­able in stream­ing for­mat as part of a month­ly sub­scrip­tion service–is run­ning a Black Fri­day deal where you can get a free tri­al for the ser­vice, plus 20% of pop­u­lar plans.

Note: The Great Cours­es is a part­ner with Open Cul­ture. So if you pur­chase a course, it ben­e­fits not just you and Great Cours­es. It ben­e­fits Open Cul­ture too. So con­sid­er it win-win-win.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mas­ter­class Is Run­ning a “Buy One, Give One Free” Deal (Until Novem­ber 30)

With 9,036 Pieces, the Roman Colosseum Is the Largest Lego Set Ever

in Architecture | November 27th, 2020

“For a nor­mal per­son back in the day,” says LEGO designer/architect Rok Kobe about the Colos­se­um in Rome, “You had nev­er seen a build­ing that was over a sto­ry high. And to be con­front­ed with such an amaz­ing piece of engi­neer­ing that’s almost 200-meters wide and 50 meters tall, it was unprece­dent­ed.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, any LEGO fan might feel this awe while greet­ing this month’s debut of the LEGO Colos­se­um. At 9036 pieces it has bro­ken the record as the biggest LEGO set in exis­tence, beat­ing out the Star Wars’ Mil­len­ni­um Fal­con (7,541 pieces) and the Taj Mahal (5,923 pieces). Every few years LEGO steps up its game, which might pos­si­bly end with a neigh­bor­hood-devour­ing repli­ca of the Great Wall of Chi­na. But we’re get­ting ahead of our­selves.

The Colos­se­um’s facade has been faith­ful­ly recre­at­ed on all three lev­els, with the Doric columns at the bot­tom, the Ion­ic columns in the mid­dle, and the Corinthi­an columns on top. And it also adds the con­tem­po­rary part of the are­na that has been rebuilt to show the orig­i­nal lev­el of the are­na in Roman times.

The orig­i­nal Colos­se­um was built over eight years between year 72 AD and 80 AD and between two emper­ors, Ves­pasian and Titus. And though we know it as a sand­stone-col­ored struc­ture these days, arche­ol­o­gists have deter­mined it was also col­ored red, black, and azure. The LEGO ver­sion may not be so dra­mat­ic, but it does con­tain a bit more col­or than the real-life mod­el.

Rok Kobe knows of what he speaks and mod­els. Grow­ing up in Ljubl­jana, capi­tol of Slove­nia, he would play on the Roman ruins in the city cen­ter, espe­cial­ly the Roman Wall. “The five year old would be proud of the adult that got to design this LEGO set,” he says.

At $798, this is not a friv­o­lous pur­chase. But it will bring an adult hours of fun and keep them occu­pied.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty to Cre­ate a Lego Pro­fes­sor­ship

The LEGO Tur­ing Machine Gives a Quick Primer on How Your Com­put­er Works

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Toni Morrison’s 1,200 Volume Personal Library is Going on Sale: Get a Glimpse of the Books on Her Tribeca Condo Shelves

in Books, Literature | November 27th, 2020

Images by Brown Har­ris Stevens

I will tell you how I began to be a writer.

I was a read­er.

—Toni Mor­ri­son

Those of us who might have grown up har­bor­ing lit­er­ary ambi­tions may have been hum­bled and inspired when we first read Toni Mor­ri­son. She proves over and again, in nov­els, essays, and oth­er­wise, the courage and ded­i­ca­tion that seri­ous writ­ing requires. She has also shown us the courage it takes to be a seri­ous read­er. “Delv­ing into lit­er­a­ture is not escape,” she said in a 2002 inter­view. It is “always a provoca­tive engage­ment with the con­tem­po­rary, the mod­ern world. The issues of the soci­ety we live in.”

In her sem­i­nal text on read­ing, Play­ing in the Dark: White­ness and the Lit­er­ary Imag­i­na­tion, Mor­ri­son showed us how to read as she does. “As a read­er (before becom­ing a writer),” she wrote, “I read as I had been taught to do. But books revealed them­selves rather dif­fer­ent­ly to me as a writer,” in the space of imag­i­na­tive empa­thy. “I have to place enor­mous trust in my abil­i­ty to imag­ine oth­ers and my will­ing­ness to project con­scious­ly into the dan­ger zones such oth­ers may rep­re­sent for me.”

Crit­i­cal read­ers risk vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, open them­selves to shock and sur­prise: “I want to draw a map… to open as much space for dis­cov­ery… with­out the man­date for con­quest.” This atti­tude makes crit­i­cism an act of “delight, not dis­ap­point­ment,” Mor­ri­son wrote, despite the dif­fer­ent, and unequal, posi­tions we come from as read­ers. “It’s that being open,” she said in 2009, “not scratch­ing for it, not dig­ging for it, not con­struct­ing some­thing but being open to the sit­u­a­tion and trust­ing that what you don’t know will be avail­able to you.”

Want to learn to read like that? You can. And you can also, if you have the cash, own and read the books in Morrison’s per­son­al library, the books she thumbed over and read in that same spir­it of crit­i­cal empa­thy. The over 1,200 books col­lect­ed at her Tribeca con­do can be pur­chased in their entire­ty for a price nego­ti­at­ed with her fam­i­ly. In the pho­tos here from real­tor Brown Har­ris Stevens, who cur­rent­ly list her five mil­lion dol­lar, 3 bed­room apart­ment in a sep­a­rate sale, cer­tain titles leap out from the spines:

Biogra­phies of Paul Robe­son and Charles Dick­ens, Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, Eric J. Sundquist’s To Wake the Nations, Angela Davis’ An Auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Cor­nel West’s Democ­ra­cy Mat­ters. (Her library seems to be envi­ably alpha­bet­ized, some­thing I’ve meant to get around to for a cou­ple decades now….)

Michelle Sin­clair Col­man at Galerie lists sev­er­al more titles in the library, includ­ing The Orig­i­nal Illus­trat­ed Sher­lock Holmes, “books about and by the Oba­mas and the Clin­tons, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hugh­es, Zora Neale Hurston, Gayl Jones, Hen­ry Dumas, James Bald­win, and Mark Twain.” On her night­stand, undis­turbed, sit Robert A. Caro’s biog­ra­phy of Lyn­don John­son, David Maraniss’s Barack Oba­ma: The Sto­ry, and Stephen King’s Revival.

Some oth­er points of inter­est:

• She owned a beau­ti­ful gold illus­trat­ed copy of Song of Solomon with the book­mark on Chap­ter Four.
• She dis­played mul­ti­ple-framed Dewey Dec­i­mal cat­a­log library cards of her nov­els.
• She edit­ed as she read.

And…

• She had a few nev­er-returned library books. The most inter­est­ing was a copy of her own book, The Bluest Eye, from the Burn­a­by Pub­lic Library with copi­ous notes, under­lines, cross-outs on every sin­gle page.

Were these her own notes, under­lines, and cross-outs? It isn’t clear, but should you pur­chase the library, which can­not be pieced out but only owned as a whole, you can find out for your­self. We hope this his­toric col­lec­tion will one day end up in a library, maybe dig­i­tized for every­one to see. But for now, those of us who can’t afford the pur­chase price can be con­tent with this rare glimpse into Morrison’s sanc­tu­ary, where she did so much writ­ing, think­ing, and maybe most impor­tant­ly for her, so much read­ing. Images on this page come from Brown Har­ris Stevens.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Toni Mor­ri­son Decon­structs White Suprema­cy in Amer­i­ca

Toni Mor­ris­son: For­get Writ­ing About What You Know; Write About What You Don’t Know

Toni Mor­ri­son Dis­pens­es Sound Writ­ing Advice: Tips You Can Apply to Your Own Work

Hear Toni Mor­ri­son (RIP) Present Her Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech on the Rad­i­cal Pow­er of Lan­guage (1993)

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

A Free 700-Page Chess Manual Explains 1,000 Chess Tactics in Straightforward English

in Games | November 27th, 2020

Image by Michael Mag­gs, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

FYI: In 2011, Ward Farnsworth pub­lished a two-vol­ume col­lec­tion called Preda­tor at The Chess­board: A Field Guide To Chess Tac­tics (Vol­ume 1 — Vol­ume 2) where he explains count­less chess tac­tics in plain Eng­lish. In this 700-page col­lec­tion, “there are 20 chap­ters, about 200 top­ics with­in them, and over 1,000 [chess] posi­tions dis­cussed.” Now for the even bet­ter part: Farnsworth has also made these vol­umes avail­able free online. Just vis­it chesstactics.org and scroll down the page. There you will find the con­tent that’s oth­er­wise avail­able in Farnsworth’s books. With this free resource, you can start mak­ing your­self a bet­ter chess play­er when­ev­er you have the urge, or espe­cial­ly as you watch The Queen’s Gam­bit on Net­flix.

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:

Clay­ma­tion Film Recre­ates His­toric Chess Match Immor­tal­ized in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Gar­ry Kas­parov Now Teach­ing an Online Course on Chess

A Human Chess Match Gets Played in Leningrad, 1924

Man Ray Designs a Supreme­ly Ele­gant, Geo­met­ric Chess Set in 1920 (and It’s Now Re-Issued for the Rest of Us)

Play Chess Against the Ghost of Mar­cel Duchamp: A Free Online Chess Game

A Beau­ti­ful Short Doc­u­men­tary Takes You Inside New York City’s Last Great Chess Store

A Brief His­to­ry of Chess: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the 1,500-Year-Old Game

Masterclass Is Running a “Buy One, Give One Free” Deal (Until November 30)

in Deals | November 27th, 2020

FYI: Mas­ter­class is run­ning a Buy One, Share One Free until Novem­ber 30.

Here’s the gist: If you buy an All-Access pass to their 90+ cours­es, you will receive anoth­er All-Access Pass to give to some­one else at no addi­tion­al charge. An All-Access pass costs $180 (or $15 per month), and lasts one year. For that fee, you–and a fam­i­ly mem­ber or friend–can watch cours­es cre­at­ed by Annie Lei­bovitz, Neil Gaiman, Mal­colm Glad­well, Wern­er Her­zog, Mar­tin Scors­ese, David Mamet, Jane Goodall, Mar­garet Atwood, Helen Mir­ren, Her­bie Han­cock, Alice Waters, Bil­ly Collins and so many more. If you’re think­ing this sounds like a pret­ty good way to get through quar­an­tine, we’d have to agree. The deal is avail­able now.

Note: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Famed New Orleans Music Producer Mark Bingham Discusses His Songs and Collaborations: A Nakedly Examined Music Conversation (#136)

in Music, Podcasts | November 27th, 2020

You’re most like­ly to know Mark’s work from the string intro­duc­tion to REM’s “Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple,” but he’s been a sta­ple of the New Orleans record­ing scene since he moved there in 1982, pro­duc­ing groups like Flat Duo Jets, Glenn Bran­ca, John Scofield, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful, and the Rebirth Brass Band. He and his stu­dio were also fea­tured on the HBO show Treme. He had a whole life­time of musi­cal devel­op­ment before then, though, first get­ting signed as a teenag­er in Los Ange­les and record­ing a sin­gle as a solo artist. He then left to study music in Indi­ana where he was one of two gui­tarists and sev­er­al singers for the very adven­tur­ous, the­atri­cal Scream­ing Gyp­sy Ban­dits, who released their one album, In the Eye, in 1973. Fol­low­ing the times, he eschewed pro­gres­sive rock for a more min­i­mal­ist but still very arty style in New York City with a band called Social Climbers. He’s released two albums since then under his own name in between pro­duc­tion work: A jazz-rock inflect­ed singer-song­writer album called I Passed for Human in 1989, and then a more root­sy endeav­or called Psalms Of Vengeance in 2009. He is due for a sig­nif­i­cant archive release with­in the next year with some­thing like ten albums of addi­tion­al com­po­si­tions.

In this episode of Naked­ly Exam­ined Music, we pick four of his songs to play in full and dis­cuss. After a short intro­duc­tion over the song “Flies R All Around Me” by Scream­ing Gyp­sy Ban­dits from Back to Dog­head (1970, but not released until 2009), the first full dis­cus­sion cov­ers “Pissoffgod.com” (fea­tured in the video link in this post) from Psalms of Vengeance (2009). We then turn to “Ash Wednes­day and Lent” by Ed Sanders (music by Mark Bing­ham) from Ed’s album Poems for New Orleans (2007). We then look back to “That’s Why” by Social Climbers from their self-titled album (1981). We con­clude with “Blood Moon,” a group impro­vi­sa­tion by Michot’s Melody Mak­ers from Cos­mic Cajuns from Sat­urn (2020). This is a band that plays most­ly tra­di­tion­al cajun music that Mark was pro­duc­ing and has now for two albums joined as their gui­tarist.

Want more? Lis­ten to “Flies” in full. Hear the whole Social Climbers album (1981). Mark’s first solo album fea­tured this Coltrane clas­sic. Lis­ten to Mark back­ing Aaron Neville and John­ny Adams on a Hal Will­ner album of Kurt Weil tunes. Expe­ri­ence one of the tunes he wrote for Allen Gins­berg to read poet­ry over. Watch him live with Michot’s Melody Mak­ers.

Naked­ly Exam­ined Music is a pod­cast host­ed by Mark Lin­sen­may­er, who also hosts The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast. He releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.

The Story Behind “Alice’s Restaurant,” Arlo Guthrie’s Song That’s Now a Thanksgiving Tradition

in Music | November 26th, 2020

Around the coun­try today, along with a food-coma induc­ing serv­ing of turkey, ham, stuff­ing and all the trim­mings, a great many of you will be fol­low­ing anoth­er tra­di­tion: lis­ten­ing to Arlo Guthrie’s 1968 song “Alice’s Restau­rant.” Accord­ing to one YouTu­ber, when her kids were young, she’d “sit them down togeth­er and play this/torture them with it from begin­ning to end.” The replies sug­gest she’s not alone. Some­where a child has now grown up and is pass­ing the song down to a younger gen­er­a­tion.

“Alice’s Restau­rant” is about Thanks­giv­ing in the same way that it’s about a restau­rant owned by Alice–very lit­tle. Instead, it’s a long shag­gy but true tale about Guthrie and his friend Rick Rob­bins help­ing their friends out after a Thanks­giv­ing din­ner that “couldn’t be beat”. With trash fill­ing up the gut­ted for­mer small-town Mass­a­chu­setts church where Alice and her hus­band were liv­ing, the two fill up their VW van with the refuse and ille­gal­ly dump it in the back woods. Guthrie gets arrest­ed, tak­en to court, and fined for lit­ter­ing, only to have his new crim­i­nal record lat­er dis­qual­i­fy him for the draft.

That’s the des­ti­na­tion, but it’s the jour­ney that makes the song, an 18-plus minute “talk­ing blues” that Guthrie would have learned from his dad, folk leg­end Woody Guthrie. Woody in turn learned it from a 1920s coun­try and Blues musi­cian called Chris Bouch­illon, who talked his way through songs because his singing voice wasn’t all that good. And the sim­ple pick­ing style Guthrie traces from Mis­sis­sip­pi John Hurt to Pete Seeger and Ram­blin’ Jack Elliot all the way back to the moth­er­land: “In its infan­cy, that’s an African style approach to a six-string gui­tar and I have always loved it,” he told Rolling Stone.

Guthrie start­ed writ­ing the song, titling it “Alice’s Restau­rant Mas­sacree,” an eso­teric word mean­ing a series of absurd events. He work­shopped it in cof­fee hous­es and live venues, adding to it, tak­ing bits out that weren’t work­ing, play­ing with the time, from 18 min­utes all the way up to 35. In Feb­ru­ary of 1967 Guthrie was invit­ed to play live on New York City’s WBAI-FM. The record­ing became a hit, and helped the non-prof­it sta­tion fund-raise, broad­cast­ing the song when a total dol­lar amount was hit. When the song got too much air­play, they also fund-raised to stop play­ing the song.

Then came the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val, where the day­time crowd of 3,500 loved it so much that Guthrie returned for the evening set to play it to 9,500, joined on stage with a who’s‑who of folk leg­ends includ­ing Pete Seeger and Oscar Brand. This was a big deal for an 18-year-old musi­cian. The album came in Octo­ber of that year, where the song took up a whole side. A movie adap­ta­tion appeared two years lat­er, with the actu­al peo­ple from the song–including police chief William Oban­hein (Offi­cer Obie in the song) and the blind Judge James Hannon–playing them­selves in the movie.

The song might not have its stay­ing pow­er if it wasn’t for its themes of resist­ing author­i­ty and bureau­cra­cy, pos­si­bly even more than the anti-war mes­sage at its end.

“I’ve remained dis­trust­ful of author­i­ty for my entire life,” Guthrie told Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine, “I believe it’s one of the great strengths of a democ­ra­cy, that we take seri­ous­ly our role as the ulti­mate author­i­ties by our inter­est and our votes. Younger peo­ple have always had a rebel­lious streak. It goes with the ter­ri­to­ry of grow­ing up.”

Guthrie retired from tour­ing, and had retired the song even ear­li­er than that. But it lives on every Thanks­giv­ing in many house­holds. As he told Rolling Stone, that’s a fine lega­cy:

“Hey if they’re gonna play one song of yours on the radio one day a year, it might as well be the longest one you wrote!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Two Leg­ends, Lead Bel­ly & Woody Guthrie, Per­form­ing on the Same Radio Show (1940)

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His Sar­cas­tic “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer” in a 1988 Film By Gus Van Sant

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.