Watch the Twin Peaks Visual Soundtrack Released Only in Japan: A New Way to Experience David Lynch’s Classic Show

in Music, Television | April 29th, 2019

Crit­ics describe David Lynch’s most mem­o­rable imagery as not just deeply trou­bling but deeply Amer­i­can. Despite that — or maybe because of it — his films have found enthu­si­as­tic audi­ences all over the world. But does Lynch com­mand quite as fer­vent a fan base in any coun­try as he does in Japan? Unlike­ly though the cul­tur­al match of cre­ator and view­er may seem, Lynch’s work tends to make big splash­es in the Land of the Ris­ing Sun, and Twin Peaks, the ground­break­ing­ly strange tele­vi­sion dra­ma Lynch co-cre­at­ed with Mark Frost, made an espe­cial­ly big one. Stand­ing as evi­dence is the Twin Peaks mate­r­i­al made for the Japan­ese and no one else: the Lynch-direct­ed Twin Peaks Geor­gia Cof­fee com­mer­cials, for instance, or the Twin Peaks Visu­al Sound­track on Laserdisc.

“What must the thir­ty-five mil­lion peo­ple who tuned in to the pilot episode of Twin Peaks in April 1990 have thought when they first wit­nessed the show’s open­ing cred­its?” writes musi­cian Claire Nina Norel­li in her book on Twin Peaks’ sound­track. “This haunt­ing music, cou­pled with images of rur­al ter­rain and indus­tri­al­iza­tion, must have belied audi­ences’ expec­ta­tions.”

That holds as true for audi­ences out­side Amer­i­ca as inside it: Norel­li, who first saw the show in her “small, iso­lat­ed home­town” of Perth, Aus­tralia, writes that “what real­ly cap­tured my atten­tion dur­ing what would be the first of many for­ays into the world of Twin Peaks was its sound­track, com­posed by Ange­lo Badala­men­ti.”

The Twin Peaks Visu­al Sound­track, which you can watch on Youtube, takes Badala­men­ti’s sound­track (which Norel­li cred­its with “strength­en­ing the visu­al lan­guage” of the show, no mean feat giv­en the innate strength of Lynch’s visions) and accom­pa­nies it with footage of the small town of Twin Peaks and its envi­rons — or rather, footage of the loca­tions around Wash­ing­ton state that Lynch and com­pa­ny used to craft the small town of Twin Peaks and its envi­rons. Matt Humphrey of the Twin Peaks Pod­cast high­lights the track “Lau­ra Palmer’s Theme,” whose video “explores the train grave­yard where they filmed the exte­ri­ors of Lau­ra’s death loca­tion. Now, in the series, the inte­ri­ors of the train were built on sets. In this video you can see the actu­al inte­ri­or of the old trains. It’s pret­ty cool/gross.”

“From what I can tell,” Humphrey writes, “these Visu­al Sound­track videos were tak­en in maybe 1992 by a Japan­ese film crew.” In some shots, he adds, “you can see the towns­folk star­ing.” Oth­er shots bear traces of Twin Peaks’ pop­u­lar­i­ty: “The Dou­ble R din­er is already sport­ing the ‘Twin Peaks Cher­ry Pie’ sign, so I think it’s after the series’ run. How­ev­er the town of North Bend is still in full Twin Peaks pro­mo­tion­al mode as you can see some gift shops in the videos sell­ing all sorts of mem­o­ra­bil­ia.” But Twin Peaks fans will espe­cial­ly enjoy the open­ing of the Visu­al Sound­track, a CGI fly-through of the epony­mous town com­plete with the afore­men­tioned din­er (cof­fee and cher­ry pie not includ­ed in the ren­der­ing), the Twin Peaks Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment, and a log­ging truck. See­ing how it all com­pares to Lynch’s hand-drawn map from when he first pitched the show to ABC will be left as an exer­cise for the true fan.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Exper­i­men­tal Post-Punk Band Xiu Xiu Plays the Music from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

Japan­ese Movie Posters of 10 David Lynch Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

Hear Vladimir Nabokov’s “My Russian Education” Read by Orhan Pamuk

in | April 28th, 2019

Image by Rahul Narain, via Wikipedia

Below Orhan Pamuk reads Vladimir Nabokov’s “My Russ­ian Edu­ca­tion” and dis­cuss­es it with The New York­er’s fic­tion edi­tor, Deb­o­rah Treis­man. The sto­ry orig­i­nal­ly appeared in a 1948 edi­tion of The New York­er.

Pamuk received the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture in 2006. Hear him also read “Ibn Hakkan Al-Bokhari, Dead in his Labyrinth” by Jorge Luis Borges here.

This read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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!

How to Take 70+ MasterClass Courses For Less Than a Cup of Good Coffee

in Online Courses | April 28th, 2019

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

Mas­ter­class has devel­oped a cat­a­log of online cours­es taught by “the world’s great­est minds.” As it stands, they have 85 cours­es cov­er­ing film­mak­ing, cre­ative writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, song­writ­ing and more, taught by fig­ures like David Lynch, Annie Lei­bovitz, Mal­colm Glad­well, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman, David Mamet and oth­ers. You can sign up for an indi­vid­ual course for $90. (Each course is list­ed below.) Or if you pur­chase an All Access Pass, you can take every course in the cat­a­log over a 12-month peri­od. The All Access Pass runs $180–which trans­lates to about $2.00 per course. Not bad, but if you want some­thing com­plete­ly free, see our col­lec­tion: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Act­ing

Helen Mir­ren Teach­es Act­ing

Samuel L. Jack­son Teach­es Act­ing

Natal­ie Port­man Teach­es Act­ing

Filmmaking/Directing

David Lynch Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Film

Spike Lee Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Wern­er Her­zog Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Mar­tin Scors­ese Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Ken Burns Teach­es Doc­u­men­tary Film­mak­ing

Jodie Fos­ter Teach­es Film­mak­ing

Ron Howard Teach­es Direct­ing

Mira Nair Teach­es Inde­pen­dent Film­mak­ing

Hans Zim­mer Teach­es Film Scor­ing

Dan­ny Elf­man Teach­es Music for Film

Pho­tog­ra­phy

Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy

Jim­my Chin Teach­es Adven­ture Pho­tog­ra­phy

Sci­ence

Neil deGrasse Tyson Teach­es Sci­en­tif­ic Think­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Writ­ing: Fic­tion, Poet­ry, TV, Plays & More

Mal­colm Glad­well Teach­es Writ­ing

Mar­garet Atwood Teach­es Cre­ative Writ­ing

Neil Gaiman Teach­es The Art of Sto­ry­telling

David Mamet Teach­es Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing

Bil­ly Collins Teach­es Read­ing and Writ­ing Poet­ry

Dan Brown Teach­es Writ­ing Thrillers

Dominique Ansel Teach­es French Pas­try Fun­da­men­tals

David Bal­dac­ci Teach­es Mys­tery and Thriller Writ­ing

James Pat­ter­son Teach­es Writ­ing

Shon­da Rhimes Teach­es Writ­ing For Tele­vi­sion

Aaron Sork­in’s Mas­ter­Class

R.L. Stine Teach­es Writ­ing for Young Audi­ences

Joyce Car­ol Oates on  the Short Sto­ry

David Sedaris on Sto­ry­telling and Humor

Music and Song­writ­ing

Car­los San­tana Teach­es The Art and Soul of Gui­tar

Her­bie Han­cock Teach­es Jazz

Tom Morel­lo Teach­es Elec­tric Gui­tar

Itzhak Perl­man Teach­es Vio­lin

Armin van Buuren Teach­es Dance Music

Christi­na Aguil­era Teach­es Singing

deadmau5 Teach­es Elec­tron­ic Music Pro­duc­tion

Tim­ba­land Teach­es Pro­duc­ing and Beat­mak­ing

Ush­er Teach­es the Art of Per­for­mance

Hans Zim­mer Teach­es Film Scor­ing

Dan­ny Elf­man Teach­es Music for Film

Com­e­dy

Steve Mar­tin Teach­es Com­e­dy

Judd Apa­tow Teach­es Com­e­dy

Cook­ing

Wolf­gang Puck Teach­es Cook­ing

Gor­don Ram­say Teach­es Cook­ing

Gor­don Ram­say Teach­es Cook­ing II: Restau­rant Recipes at Home

Alice Waters Teach­es Home Cook­ing

Gabriela Cama­ra Teach­es Mex­i­can Cook­ing

Dominique Ansel Teach­es French Pas­try Fun­da­men­tals

Thomas Keller Teach­es Cook­ing Tech­niques

James Suck­ling Teach­es Wine Appre­ci­a­tion

Mas­si­mo Bot­tura Teach­es Mod­ern Ital­ian Cook­ing

Aaron Franklin Teach­es Texas-Style BBQ

Lyn­nette Mar­rero & Ryan Chetiyawar­dana Teach Mixol­o­gy

Fash­ion

Marc Jacobs Teach­es Fash­ion Design

Diane Von Fursten­burg Teach­es Fash­ion

Anna Win­tour Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Lead­er­ship

Bob­bi Brown Teach­es Make­up and Beau­ty

Archi­tec­ture and Design

Kel­ly Wearstler Teach­es Inte­ri­or Design

Frank Gehry Teach­es Design and Archi­tec­ture

Games

Gar­ry Kas­parov Teach­es Chess

Daniel Negre­anu Teach­es Pok­er

Phil Ivey Teach­es Pok­er Strat­e­gy

Will Wright Teach­es Game Design and The­o­ry

Sports

Stephen Cur­ry Teach­es Bas­ket­ball

Ser­e­na Williams Teach­es Ten­nis

Simone Biles Teach­es Gym­nas­tics Fun­da­men­tals

Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics

Bob Iger Teach­es Busi­ness Strat­e­gy & Lead­er­ship

Jeff Good­by & Rich Sil­ver­stein Teach Adver­tis­ing and Cre­ativ­i­ty

Sara Blake­ly Teach­es Self-Made Entre­pre­neur­ship

Paul Krug­man Teach­es Eco­nom­ics and Soci­ety

Howard Schultz Lead­ing a Val­ues-Based Busi­ness

Chris Voss Teach­es the Art of Nego­ti­a­tion

Lead­er­ship

Bob Iger Teach­es Busi­ness Strat­e­gy & Lead­er­ship

Doris Kearns Good­win Teach­es US Pres­i­den­tial His­to­ry and Lead­er­ship

Anna Win­tour Teach­es Cre­ativ­i­ty and Lead­er­ship

Sundry

Jane Goodall Teach­es Con­ser­va­tion

David Axel­rod & Karl Rove Teach Cam­paign Strat­e­gy

Chris Had­field Teach­es Space Explo­ration

Misty Copeland Teach­es Bal­let Tech­nique and Artistry

RuPaul Teach­es Self-Expres­sion and Authen­tic­i­ty

This page will be updat­ed as more cours­es get added to the Mas­ter­Class cat­a­log.

Hear Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” Read by Actor James Naughton

in | April 27th, 2019

Ray­mond Carver’s “Cathe­dral” is the title sto­ry from his third short sto­ry col­lec­tion, Cathe­dral (1983). It tells the sto­ry “about blind­ness and learn­ing to enter the very dif­fer­ent world of anoth­er.” You can hear actor James Naughton read the sto­ry above.

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!

Hear “Shakespeare’s Memory” by Jorge Luis Borges

in | April 27th, 2019

In this record­ing above and below, hear Hisham Matar read “Shake­speare’s Mem­o­ry,” by Jorge Luis Borges. The sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in The New York­er in 1998. It has since been pub­lished in the col­lec­tion, The Book of Sand and Shake­speare’s Mem­o­ry. Find this read­ing list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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!

Hear Salman Rushdie Read Donald Barthelme’s “Concerning the Bodyguard”

in | April 26th, 2019

From The New York­er: “Salman Rushdie reads Don­ald Barthelme’s ‘Con­cern­ing the Body­guard,’ and dis­cuss­es it with The New York­er’s fic­tion edi­tor, Deb­o­rah Treis­man. ‘Con­cern­ing the Body­guard’ was pub­lished in the Octo­ber 16, 1978, issue of The New York­er, and was col­lect­ed in Forty Sto­ries. Salman Rushdie’s most recent book is Luka and the Fire of Life.”

You can stream Rushdie read­ing Barthelme both above and below.

You can find this read­ing indexed in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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!

Why Do Sad People Like to Listen to Sad Music? Psychologists Answer the Question in Two Studies

in Music, Psychology | April 26th, 2019

I find it sur­pris­ing that psy­chol­o­gists have only just begun to study the rea­sons that sad peo­ple love sad songs. There’s an entire genre named after sad­ness, and the blues inspired near­ly all mod­ern music in one way or anoth­er. Clas­si­cal music is filled with dirges, ele­gies, laments, requiems, and “count­less tear-jerk­ers.” Lis­ten to the music of any ancient soci­ety and you will like­ly find the same. Humans, it seems, have some innate need to hear sad songs.

Maybe this isn’t too sur­pris­ing. We aren’t the only species to expe­ri­ence grief, but we are the only one to have devised lan­guage, and ways to make it sing to us. We tell sto­ries of loss through music, just as through every oth­er art. This expla­na­tion hard­ly sat­is­fies sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty, how­ev­er. Psy­chol­o­gists want to know, specif­i­cal­ly, why we do this. Or—more specifically—why sad peo­ple do this.

Maybe not every­one enjoys the maudlin jan­gle of The Smiths dur­ing a breakup, or wants to lis­ten to Leonard Cohen after a loss. But enough peo­ple do that scenes of sad char­ac­ters lis­ten­ing to sad songs (or being sad while sad songs play) are some of the most mem­o­rable, and mem­o­rably par­o­died, in movie his­to­ry. Researchers Anne­mieke Van den Tol and Jane Edwards at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lim­er­ick want­ed to under­stand the phe­nom­e­non in a 2013 study, so they sought out par­tic­i­pants online.

The researchers opt­ed for a lim­it­ed qual­i­ta­tive approach to get the ball rolling. “This issue has hard­ly been inves­ti­gat­ed before,” writes Chris­t­ian Jar­rett at The British Psy­cho­log­i­cal Society’s Research Digest. Their sam­ple con­sist­ed of a self-select­ing group of adults, age 18 to 66. Thir­ty-five of them were men and 30 women. Most of the respon­dents were Irish, though some were also from the Nether­lands, the U.S., Ger­many, and Spain.

Each of the study par­tic­i­pants was asked to describe a spe­cif­ic time in their lives when “they’d had a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence and then chose to lis­ten to a sad piece of music.” Their descrip­tions were then ana­lyzed for recur­ring themes. Among the most com­mon were nos­tal­gia, a desire for con­nec­tion, and a sense of “com­mon human­i­ty.” The par­tic­i­pants also cit­ed aes­thet­ic appre­ci­a­tion and a “re-expe­ri­enc­ing of their affect” in which the sad song helped them express their feel­ings and find relief.

A more recent study pub­lished in Emo­tion con­cen­trat­ed its focus. Rather than sur­vey­ing peo­ple who had had sad times in their lives—a cat­e­go­ry that includes pret­ty much everyone—researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da sur­veyed peo­ple with major depres­sion. Their sam­ple size is hard­ly any larg­er, and the par­tic­i­pants are more homoge­nous: 76 female under­grad­u­ates, half of whom had a diag­no­sis of major depres­sive dis­or­der and half of whom did not.

The study repli­cat­ed meth­ods used in a 2015 study to find out whether peo­ple with depres­sion tend­ed to choose sad music over “hap­py and neu­tral music,” writes Jar­rett. That turned out to be the case, the researchers found. The rea­son sur­prised them. Against “the provoca­tive idea” argued in oth­er research “that depressed peo­ple are seek­ing to per­pet­u­ate their low mood,” the study instead found that those “who favored sad music said that they did so because it was relax­ing, calm­ing or sooth­ing.”

In some ways, the answers aren’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from those of peo­ple who are not clin­i­cal­ly depressed but still expe­ri­ence peri­ods of deep sad­ness. Sad songs give mean­ing to our pain and let us know we aren’t the only ones feel­ing it. But we know this. Every­one has at least one or two sad songs that soothe them, and some of us have whole playlists of them. The Paste mag­a­zine staff put togeth­er an excel­lent list of songs that helped them “hurt so good.” It’s got some of the finest writ­ers and singers of sad songs on it: Tam­my Wynette, Elliot Smith, Tom Waits, Pat­ty Grif­fin, Prince, by way of Sinead O’Connor. If one of your sad songs isn’t on here, you’ll prob­a­bly find a few new ones to add.

I’d sug­gest for inclu­sion, to start, The Cure’s “The Same Deep Water as You,” Etta James’ “I Rather Go Blind,” Bon­nie ‘Prince’ Billie’s “I See a Dark­ness,” Radiohead’s “How to Dis­ap­pear Com­plete­ly,” and The Smith’s “That Joke Isn’t Fun­ny Any­more.” Tell us, what would you add—and why would you want to do a thing like lis­ten to sad music when you’re already mis­er­able? Tell us your rea­sons, and your songs, below.

via Research Digest

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Most Depress­ing Radio­head Songs Accord­ing to Data Sci­ence: Hear the Songs That Ranked High­est in a Researcher’s “Gloom Index”

Nick Cave Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Songs–His Favorite “Hid­ing Songs”

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Pulled Him­self Out of a Deep, Last­ing Funk: He Took Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice & Lis­tened to the Music of John Prine

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

Steven Pinker & Rebecca Goldstein Debate the Value of Reason in an Animated Socratic Dialogue

in Animation, Philosophy | April 26th, 2019

Aca­d­e­m­ic pow­er cou­ple Steven Pinker and Rebec­ca New­berg­er Gold­stein prob­a­bly need no intro­duc­tion to Open Cul­ture read­ers, but if so, their lengthy and impres­sive CVs are only a search and click away. The Har­vard cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gist and nov­el­ist and philoso­pher, respec­tive­ly, are sec­u­lar human­ist heroes of a sort—public intel­lec­tu­als who have ded­i­cat­ed their lives to defend­ing sci­ence and clas­si­cal log­ic and rea­son­ing. So, what do two such peo­ple talk about when they go out to din­ner?

The TED-Ed video above depicts a date night sce­nario, with dia­logue record­ed live at TED in 2012 and edit­ed into an “ani­mat­ed Socrat­ic dia­logue.” The first scene begins with a defen­sive Gold­stein hold­ing forth on the decline of rea­son in polit­i­cal dis­course and pop­u­lar cul­ture. “Peo­ple who think too well are often accused of elit­ism,” says Gold­stein, while she and Pinker’s ani­mat­ed avatars stroll under a Star Trek bill­board fea­tur­ing Spock giv­ing the Vul­can salute, just one of many clever details insert­ed by ani­ma­tion stu­dio Cog­ni­tive.

Pinker nar­rows the debate to a dilemma—a Spock­ean dilem­ma, if you will—between the head and heart. “Per­haps rea­son is over­rat­ed,” he ven­tures (artic­u­lat­ing a posi­tion he may not actu­al­ly hold): “Many pun­dits have argued that a good heart and stead­fast moral clar­i­ty are supe­ri­or to the tri­an­gu­la­tions of over-edu­cat­ed pol­i­cy wonks.” The cow­boy with a six-shoot­er and a heart of gold depict­ed in the ani­ma­tion bests the stereo­typ­i­cal eggheads in every Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion.

The “best and bright­est” of the eggheads, after all, says Pinker, “dragged us into the quag­mire in Viet­nam.” Oth­er quag­mires advo­cat­ed by oth­er pol­i­cy wonks might come to mind (as might the unrea­son­ing cow­boys who made the big deci­sions.) Rea­son, says Pinker, gave us envi­ron­men­tal despo­li­a­tion and weapons of mass destruc­tion. He sets up a dichoto­my between “char­ac­ter & con­science” on the one side and “cold-heart­ed cal­cu­la­tion” on the oth­er. “My fel­low psy­chol­o­gists have shown that we are led by our bod­ies and our emo­tions and use our puny pow­ers of rea­son mere­ly to ratio­nal­ize our gut feel­ings after the fact.”

Gold­stein coun­ters, “how could a rea­soned argu­ment entail the inef­fec­tive­ness of rea­soned argu­ments?” (Visu­al learn­ers may remem­ber the image of a per­son blithe­ly saw­ing off the branch on which they sit.) “By the very act of try­ing to rea­son us into your posi­tion, you’re con­ced­ing reason’s poten­cy.” One might object that stat­ing a sci­en­tif­ic theory—such as the the­o­ry that sen­sa­tion and emo­tion come before reasoning—is not the same as mak­ing an Aris­totelian argu­ment.

But this is a 15-minute debate, not a philo­soph­i­cal trea­tise. There will, by nature of the forum and the edit­ing process, be eli­sions and some slip­pery uses of ter­mi­nol­o­gy. Still, when Gold­stein dis­miss­es the cri­tique of “logo­cen­trism” as an alle­ga­tion of “the crime of let­ting log­ic dom­i­nate our think­ing,” some philoso­phers may grind their teeth. The prob­lem of logo­cen­trism is not “too much log­ic” but the under­ly­ing influ­ence of Pla­ton­ic ide­al­ism and the so-called “meta­physics of pres­ence” on West­ern think­ing.

With­out the cri­tique of logo­cen­trism, argues philoso­pher Peter Grat­ton, “there is no 20th-cen­tu­ry con­ti­nen­tal phi­los­o­phy.” Hand­wav­ing away an entire body of thought seems rather hasty. Out­side of spe­cif­ic con­texts, ide­al­ized abstrac­tions like “rea­son” and “progress” may mean lit­tle to noth­ing at all in the messy real­i­ty of human affairs. This is the prob­lem Pinker alludes to in ask­ing whether rea­son can have moral ends if it is main­ly a tool we use to sat­is­fy short-term bio­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al needs and desires.

By the time the check arrives, Pinker has been per­suad­ed by Goldstein’s argu­ment that in the course of time, maybe a long time, rea­son is the key dri­ver of moral progress, pro­vid­ed that cer­tain con­di­tions are met: that rea­son­ers care about their well-being and that they belong to a com­mu­ni­ty of oth­er rea­son­ers who hold each oth­er account­able and pro­duce bet­ter out­comes than indi­vid­u­als can alone. Drop your assump­tions, watch their stim­u­lat­ing ani­mat­ed din­ner and see if, by the final course, you are per­suad­ed too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Pinker: “Dear Human­ists, Sci­ence is Not Your Ene­my”

What is the Good Life? Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Niet­zsche, & Kant’s Ideas in 4 Ani­mat­ed Videos

How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions on Ethics Nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er

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

Steve Jobs Shares a Secret for Success: Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

in Apple, Business, Entrepreneurship, Life | April 26th, 2019

In 1994—the year Apple co-founder Steve Jobs filmed an inter­view with The Sil­i­con Val­ley His­tor­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion in which he encour­aged peo­ple to go for what they want by enlist­ing oth­ers’ assistance—there was no social media, no Kick­starter, no GoFundMe, no Patre­on…  email was just becom­ing a thing.

Back then, ask­ing for help meant engag­ing in a face-to-face or voice-to-voice real time inter­ac­tion, some­thing many peo­ple find intim­i­dat­ing.

Not so young Jobs, an elec­tron­ics nut who relat­ed more eas­i­ly to the adult engi­neers in his Sil­i­con Val­ley neigh­bor­hood than to kids his own age.

As he recounts above, his desire to build a fre­quen­cy counter spurred him to cold call Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett-Packard), to see if he’d give him some of the nec­es­sary parts.

(In light of the recent col­lege admis­sions scan­dal, let us rec­og­nize the 12-year-old Jobs not only had the gump­tion to make that call, he also appears to have had no parental assis­tance look­ing up Hewlett’s num­ber in the Palo Alto White Pages.)

Hewlett agreed to the young go-getter’s request for parts. Jobs’ chutz­pah also earned him a sum­mer job on a Hewlett Packard assem­bly line, putting screws into fre­quen­cy coun­ters. (“I was in heav­en,” Jobs said of this entry lev­el posi­tion.)

Per­haps the biggest les­son for those in need of help is to ask bold­ly.

Ask like it’s 1994.

No, ask like it’s 1968, and you’re a self-starter like Steve Jobs hell­bent on procur­ing those spe­cial­ty parts to build your fre­quen­cy counter.

(Let’s fur­ther pre­tend that lying around wait­ing for Mom to order you a DIY fre­quen­cy counter kit on Ama­zon is not an option…)

Need an extra push?

Psy­chol­o­gist Adam Grant’s best­selling Give and Take makes an effec­tive case for human inter­ac­tion as the path­way to suc­cess, whether you’re the kid plac­ing the call, or the big wig with the pow­er to grant the wish.

Social psy­chol­o­gist Hei­di Grant’s book, Rein­force­ments: How to Get Peo­ple to Help You, explains how to ask with­out snivel­ing, self-aggran­diz­ing, or putting the per­son on the receiv­ing end in an awk­ward posi­tion.

And that shy vio­let Aman­da Fuck­ing Palmer, author of The Art of Ask­ing and no stranger to the punk rock barter econ­o­my, details how her “nin­ja mas­ter-lev­el fan con­nec­tion” has result­ed in her every request being met—from hous­ing and meals to prac­tice pianos and a neti pot hand deliv­ered by an Aus­tralian nurse.

Just don’t for­get to say “please” and, even­tu­al­ly, “thank you.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Jobs on Life: “Stay Hun­gry, Stay Fool­ish”

A Young Steve Jobs Teach­es a Class at MIT (1992)

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this May for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Trivial Pursuit: The Shakespeare Edition Has Just Been Released: Answer 600 Questions Based on the Life & Works of William Shakespeare

in History, Literature, Theatre | April 26th, 2019

“The stan­dard thing to say is that each age makes a Shake­speare in its own image,” wrote The New York­er’s Adam Gop­nik on the the Bard’s 440th birth­day. But over the cen­turies, the bio­graph­i­cal and crit­i­cal por­tray­al of the play­wright of Ham­let, Romeo and Juli­et, Oth­el­lo, and King Lear has remained remark­ably con­sis­tent: “He was a genius at com­e­dy, a free-flow­ing nat­ur­al who would do any­thing for a joke or a pun, and whom life and abil­i­ty bent toward tragedy.” He evolved “a match­less all-sid­ed­ness and neg­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty, which could probe two ideas at once and nev­er quite come down on the ‘side’ of either: he was a man in whom a tem­pera­men­tal timid­i­ty and cau­tion blos­somed artis­ti­cal­ly into the near­est thing we have to uni­ver­sal­i­ty.”

But today, on Shake­speare’s 455th birth­day, we might still won­der how uni­ver­sal his work real­ly is. As luck would have it, the Shake­speare Birth­day Trust has just come up with a kind of test of that propo­si­tion: an all-Shake­speare edi­tion of the pop­u­lar board game Triv­ial Pur­suit.

“Devised by the Shake­speare Birth­place Trust, the inde­pen­dent and self-sus­tain­ing char­i­ty that cares for the world’s great­est Shake­speare her­itage sites in his home town of Strat­ford-upon-Avon, in part­ner­ship with games com­pa­ny, Win­ning Moves,” Triv­ial Pur­suit: The Shake­speare Edi­tion (which you can buy on the Shake­speare Birth­day Trust’s online shop) offers “600 ques­tions across six cat­e­gories — Come­dies, His­to­ries, Tragedies, Char­ac­ters, Biog­ra­phy and Lega­cy,” all “care­ful­ly craft­ed by Shake­speare schol­ars Dr Nick Wal­ton and Dr Anj­na Chouhan.”

One might assume that Shake­speare buffs and schol­ars will dom­i­nate this game. No doubt they will, but per­haps not as often as expect­ed, since its ques­tions give any­one with gen­er­al cul­tur­al aware­ness a fight­ing chance: “As well as ques­tions about Shakespeare’s life and works, there are oth­ers that link him to pop­u­lar cul­ture such as the Har­ry Pot­ter film series, TV shows Dr. Who and Upstart Crow, as well as actors Sir Patrick Stew­art, Sir Lau­rence Olivi­er, and Keanu Reeves, and the Bard’s less­er known influ­ence on the likes of Elvis Pres­ley and even the clas­sic car­toon Pop­eye.” As Wal­ton puts it, “there are all sorts of paths to Shake­speare,” not least because of his work’s still-unchal­lenged place as the most drawn-upon texts, delib­er­ate­ly or inad­ver­tent­ly, in the whole of the Eng­lish lan­guage. As for Shake­speare him­self, he remains “the reign­ing poet of the lan­guage,” in Gop­nik’s words, as well as “the ordi­nary poet of our com­pa­ny” — and now we have a game to play to keep him in our com­pa­ny.

Pick up your copy of the game here.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 55 Hours of Shakespeare’s Plays: The Tragedies, Come­dies & His­to­ries Per­formed by Vanes­sa Red­grave, Sir John Giel­gud, Ralph Fiennes & Many More

30 Days of Shake­speare: One Read­ing of the Bard Per Day, by The New York Pub­lic Library, on the 400th Anniver­sary of His Death

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.