Hear Neil Gaiman Read Aloud 15 of His Own Works, and Works by 6 Other Great Writers: From The Graveyard Book & Coraline, to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven & Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

in Literature | February 14th, 2019

Neil Gaiman is a sto­ry­teller. That title encom­pass­es quite a few pur­suits, most of which seem­ing­ly involve writ­ing — writ­ing nov­els, writ­ing radio dra­mas, writ­ing com­ic books — but he also occa­sion­al­ly tells sto­ries the old-fash­ioned way: speak­ing aloud, and to an audi­ence of rapt lis­ten­ers. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, such sto­ry­telling hap­pened in a cir­cle around the camp­fire, but as a sto­ry­teller of the 21st cen­tu­ry — albeit a mas­ter of time­less tech­niques who uses those tech­niques to deal with time­less themes — Gaiman can tell sto­ries to the entire world. Today we’ve gath­ered all of Gaiman’s stream­able read­ings, both video and audio, in one place.

Near­ly every type of text at which he has tried his hand appears in this col­lec­tion, from nov­els (The Grave­yard Book) to novel­las (Cora­line) to poet­ry (“Instruc­tions,” above) to man­i­festos (“Mak­ing Good Art”). Suit­able as his voice and deliv­ery are to his own work, Gaiman’s live sto­ry­telling tal­ent also extends to the works of oth­ers, as you’ll find out if you lis­ten to the selec­tions on the sec­ond list below.

The mate­r­i­al varies wide­ly, from non­sense or near-non­sense poet­ry like Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham and Lewis Car­rol­l’s “Jab­ber­wocky” to the work of his friend Ursu­la K. Le Guin to a clas­sic like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” whose Goth­ic atmos­phere will no doubt appeal to Gaiman’s fans.

And Gaiman cer­tain­ly has his fair share of fans. If you already count your­self in that group, you’ll need lit­tle con­vinc­ing to do a binge-lis­ten of his read­ings here. But if you aren’t yet famil­iar with Gaiman’s work in all its var­i­ous forms, you might con­sid­er using these pieces of video and audio as an entry­way into his nar­ra­tive world, with its emo­tion­al chiaroscuro, it mod­ern-day mythol­o­gy, and its unflag­ging sense of humor. There’s plen­ty of Neil Gaiman out there to read, of course, but with his style of sto­ry­telling, some­times he must sim­ply be heard — if not around an actu­al camp­fire, then on that largest camp­fire ever cre­at­ed, the inter­net. These texts will be added to our list, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 Sto­ries & Nov­els by Neil Gaiman Online: Free Texts & Read­ings by Neil Him­self

Neil Gaiman Reads His Man­i­festo on Mak­ing Art: Fea­tures the 10 Things He Wish He Knew As a Young Artist

Where Do Great Ideas Come From? Neil Gaiman Explains

Neil Gaiman Teach­es the Art of Sto­ry­telling in His New Online Course

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

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.

Women’s Hidden Contributions to Modern Genetics Get Revealed by New Study: No Longer Will They Be Buried in the Footnotes

in Gender, Science | February 14th, 2019

It’s too easy, when our his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge is lim­it­ed, to mis­take effects for caus­es, to fall for just-so sto­ries that nat­u­ral­ize and per­pet­u­ate inequal­i­ty. Many of us may have only recent­ly learned, for exam­ple, that the moon land­ing would not have been pos­si­ble with­out math­e­mati­cian Kather­ine John­son and her Hid­den Fig­ures col­leagues, or that the Hub­ble tele­scope would not have been pos­si­ble with­out astronomer Nan­cy G. Roman (now immor­tal­ized in LEGO). Pri­or to this knowl­edge, we might have been led to believe that women had lit­tle to do with humankind’s first leaps into out­er space, to the sur­face of the moon, and beyond.

Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ri­an of sci­ence Mar­garet Rossiter has called this phe­nom­e­non “the Matil­da effect,” after an 1893 essay by suf­frag­ist Matil­da Joslyn Gage. Rossiter spent years try­ing to counter the dom­i­nant nar­ra­tives that leave out women in sci­ence with a mul­ti-vol­ume schol­ar­ly his­to­ry. Counter-nar­ra­tives like hers now appear reg­u­lar­ly online. And pop­u­lar media like the book, then film, Hid­den Fig­ures have inspired oth­er aca­d­e­mics to drill into the his­to­ry of their fields, find the women who have been ignored, and try to under­stand the how and why.

When Brown University’s Emil­ia Huer­ta-Sánchez and San Fran­cis­co State University’s Rori Rohlfs saw Hid­den Fig­ures, they decid­ed to research their spe­cial­iza­tion, the­o­ret­i­cal pop­u­la­tion genet­ics. It may not be as glam­orous as space trav­el, and their research may not become a Hol­ly­wood film or LEGO set, but the results they unearthed are rev­e­la­to­ry and impor­tant. Dur­ing the 1970s, for exam­ple, “a piv­otal time for the field of pop­u­la­tion genet­ics,” notes Ed Yong at The Atlantic, the two researchers and their team of under­grad­u­ates found that “women account­ed for 59 per­cent of acknowl­edged pro­gram­mers, but just 7 per­cent of actu­al authors.”

Those women were sci­en­tists doing “cru­cial work,” writes Yong. One pro­gram­mer, Mar­garet Wu, cre­at­ed a sta­tis­ti­cal tool still reg­u­lar­ly used to cal­cu­late opti­mal genet­ic diver­si­ty. Her mod­el appeared in a 1975 paper and is now known as the Wat­ter­son esti­ma­tor, after the “one and only” named author, G.A. Wat­ter­son. “The paper has been cit­ed 3,400 times.” Today, “if a sci­en­tist did all the pro­gram­ming for a study, she would expect to be list­ed as an author.” But the prac­tice only began to change in the 1980s, when “pro­gram­ming began chang­ing from a ‘pink col­lar’ job, done large­ly by low-paid women, to the male-dom­i­nat­ed pro­fes­sion it remains today.”

The mar­gin­al­iza­tion of female pro­gram­mers dur­ing some of the field’s most pro­duc­tive years—their rel­e­ga­tion to lit­er­al foot­notes in history—has cre­at­ed the impres­sion, as Huer­ta- Sánchez, Rohlfs, and their co-authors write, that “this research was con­duct­ed by a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of inde­pen­dent indi­vid­ual sci­en­tists near­ly all of whom were men.” See a sum­ma­ry of the authors’ find­ings in the video above. To obtain their results, they combed through every issue of the jour­nal The­o­ret­i­cal Pop­u­la­tion Biol­o­gy—near­ly 900 papers—then pulled out “every name in the acknowl­edg­ments, worked out whether they did any pro­gram­ming, and deduced their gen­ders where pos­si­ble.”

The study, pub­lished in the lat­est issue of Genet­ics does not com­pre­hen­sive­ly sur­vey the entire field, nor does it defin­i­tive­ly show that every pro­gram­mer who con­tributed to a paper did so sub­stan­tive­ly enough to war­rant author­ship. But it does not need to do these things. The dis­par­i­ties between named authors and mar­gin­al­ly acknowl­edged sci­en­tif­ic labor­ers in a major jour­nal in the field calls for an expla­na­tion beyond selec­tion bias or chance. The expla­na­tion of sys­temic bias not only has the ben­e­fit of being well-sup­port­ed by a huge aggre­gate of data across the sci­ences, but it also presents us with a sit­u­a­tion that can be changed when the prob­lems are wide­ly seen and acknowl­edged.

The study’s results “dis­pel the mis­con­cep­tion that women weren’t par­tic­i­pat­ing in sci­ence,” the researchers point out in their video, and they sug­gest that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of women in genet­ics weren’t giv­en the cred­it they deserved. Huer­ta- Sánchez and Rohlfs walk their talk. The under­grad­u­ate researchers who worked on “Illu­mi­nat­ing Wom­en’s Hid­den Con­tri­bu­tion to His­tor­i­cal The­o­ret­i­cal Pop­u­la­tion Genet­ics” are all named as authors in the paper, so that their con­tri­bu­tions to writ­ing a new his­to­ry of their field can be rec­og­nized.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Matil­da Effect”: How Pio­neer­ing Women Sci­en­tists Have Been Denied Recog­ni­tion and Writ­ten Out of Sci­ence His­to­ry

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Women Philoso­phers: A New Web Site Presents the Con­tri­bu­tions of Women Philoso­phers, from Ancient to Mod­ern

Hen­ri­et­ta Lacks Gets Immor­tal­ized in a Por­trait: It’s Now on Dis­play at the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery

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

Hear Siouxsie Sioux’s Powerful Isolated Vocals on “The Killing Jar,” “Hong Kong Garden,” “Cities In Dust” & “Kiss Them for Me”

in Music | February 13th, 2019

Like hun­dreds of oth­er teenagers in late sev­en­ties Eng­land, Susan Bal­lion, bet­ter known as Siouxsie Sioux, embraced the any­one-can-do-it-ness of punk after see­ing the Sex Pis­tols. In 1976, already a tastemak­er in the scene, she threw a band togeth­er with Sid Vicious on drums, and with no prac­tice, or even any songs, they got onstage, and impro­vised a 20-minute ren­di­tion of “The Lord’s Prayer.” There launched the career of a post-punk, dark pop leg­end, span­ning that first anar­chic gig, the infa­mous Bill Grundy TV appear­ance, some of the most influ­en­tial British rock of the late-70s and 80s, and major tours and hits through­out the last three decades.

Despite the awards, star col­lab­o­ra­tions, and mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional influ­ence, Siouxsie’s strik­ing musi­cal tal­ent has often been giv­en short shrift in the U.S. press. For exam­ple, a 1992 Los Ange­les Times con­cert write-up after the release of her biggest U.S. hit, “Kiss Them for Me,” cast her as “the leader of a cult of weird chicks,” writes Liz Ohnane­sian at Noisey, “in a review that spent five para­graphs on her looks and a whop­ping two on the music.” Maybe, “at that point, the band was used to that.” But it’s a seri­ous over­sight.

“Much has been writ­ten about the vocal range of artists like Fred­die Mer­cury,” Dan­ger­ous Minds points out, “but not so much on the equal­ly bril­liant Siouxsie Sioux.” If the com­par­i­son seems stretched, con­sid­er anoth­er one: Kate Bush.

Though very dif­fer­ent artists, both released debut albums in 1978 and became style icons who are as influ­en­tial for their look as for their vocal prowess. Siouxsie, whose voice “devel­oped from spiky, punky vocals to rich, pow­er­ful, and glo­ri­ous tex­tured tones… can hit the high notes and bring an unnerv­ing warmth and men­ace to her low­er range.”

With Siouxsie and the Ban­shees, The Crea­tures, and in her solo work, she has giv­en cool, icy voice to goth­ic sen­ti­ments and images, con­vey­ing ache and fear and bru­tal beau­ty. In the videos here, lis­ten to Siouxsie’s iso­lat­ed vocals from 1988’s “The Killing Jar” (hear the orig­i­nal right above), an excel­lent exam­ple of “just how good she is.” Above, also hear her vocal track from “Hong Kong Gar­den,” her 1978 debut sin­gle, and “arguably the most impor­tant of the ear­ly post-punk hits,” writes Robert Webb at The Inde­pen­dent.

Lis­ten to her sing 1985’s “Cities in Dust,” about the destruc­tion of Pom­peii, and below, hear “Kiss Them for Me,” a cryp­tic trib­ute to actress Jayne Mans­field and a song that made a new gen­er­a­tion of Siouxsie and the Ban­shees fans when it came out in 1991. Siouxsie has attract­ed a new­ly devot­ed fan­base every decade since the 70s for her style, song­writ­ing, and her voice, an instru­ment that deserves greater atten­tion.

“These days,” she said in a 2007 inter­view, the lega­cy of punk has “almost been reduced to a fash­ion state­ment. I think there’s been a false sense of empow­er­ment for women” in music. “Almost as if there’s that ever-present pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with body form and image… not about express­ing any style or intent.” Young artists look­ing for gen­uine inspi­ra­tion will always find the real thing in Siouxsie’s impres­sive body of work.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Siouxsie and the Banshee’s Raw & Com­plete­ly Impro­vised First Show, with Sid Vicious on Drums (1976)

The Sex Pis­tols Make a Scan­dalous Appear­ance on the Bill Grundy Show & Intro­duce Punk Rock to the Star­tled Mass­es (1976)

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

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

“Odyssey of the Ear”: A Beautiful Animation Shows How Sounds Travel Into Our Ears and Become Thoughts in Our Brain

in Harvard, K-12, Neuroscience | February 13th, 2019

As all school­child­ren know, we hear with our ears. And as all school­child­ren also prob­a­bly know, we hear with our brains — or if they don’t know it, at least they must sus­pect it, giv­en the way sounds around us seem to turn with­out effort into thoughts in our heads. But how? It’s the inter­face between ear and brain where things get more com­pli­cat­ed, but “Odyssey of the Ear,” the six-minute video above, makes it much clear­er just how sound gets through our ears and into our brains. Suit­able for view­ers of near­ly any age, it com­bines sil­hou­ette ani­ma­tion (of the kind pio­neered by Lotte Reiniger) with live action, pro­jec­tion, and even dance.

Accord­ing to the video, which was orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced as part of Har­vardX’s Fun­da­men­tals of Neu­ro­science course, the process works some­thing like this. Our out­er ear col­lects sounds from our envi­ron­ment when things vibrate in the phys­i­cal world, pro­duc­ing vari­a­tions in air pres­sure, or “sound waves” that pass through the air.

The sound waves enter the ear and pass down through the audi­to­ry canal, at the end of which they hit the ear drum. The ear drum trans­fers the vibra­tions of the sound waves to a “series of lit­tle bones,” three of them, called the ossi­cles, or “ham­mer, anvil, and stir­rup.” These trans­mit the sounds to the flu­id-filled inner ear through a mem­brane called the “oval win­dow.”

Inside the inner ear is the snail-shaped organ known as the cochlea, and inside the cochlea is the organ of cor­ti, and inside the organ of cor­ti are “thou­sands of audi­to­ry hair cells,” actu­al­ly recep­tor neu­rons called stere­ocil­ia, that “con­vert the motion ener­gy of sound waves into elec­tri­cal sig­nals that are com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the audi­to­ry nerve.” From there, “the sig­nal goes into struc­tures deep­er in the brain, until at last it reach­es the audi­to­ry cor­tex, where we con­scious­ly expe­ri­ence sound.” That con­scious expe­ri­ence of sound may make it feel as if we imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize and con­sid­er all the nois­es, voic­es, or music we hear, but as “Odyssey of the Ear” reveals, sound waves have to make quite an epic jour­ney before they reach our brains at all. At that point the waves them­selves may have dis­si­pat­ed, but they live on in our con­scious­ness. In oth­er words, “the brain has tak­en what was out­side and made it inside.”

via The Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Eve­lyn Glen­nie (a Musi­cian Who Hap­pens to Be Deaf) Shows How We Can Lis­ten to Music with Our Entire Bod­ies

How Did Beethoven Com­pose His 9th Sym­pho­ny After He Went Com­plete­ly Deaf?

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

The British Library’s “Sounds” Archive Presents 80,000 Free Audio Record­ings: World & Clas­si­cal Music, Inter­views, Nature Sounds & More

Feel Strange­ly Nos­tal­gic as You Hear Clas­sic Songs Reworked to Sound as If They’re Play­ing in an Emp­ty Shop­ping Mall: David Bowie, Toto, Ah-ha & More

The Vin­cent Van Gogh Action Fig­ure, Com­plete with Detach­able Ear

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.

An Animated Reconstruction of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Virtually-Recreated Streets

in History | February 13th, 2019

There are numer­ous ancient sto­ries illus­trat­ing the gar­gan­tu­an ego of the Emper­or Nero. Some of these may rise to the lev­el of his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion. Nero did not, for exam­ple, fid­dle while Rome burned. For one thing, the fid­dle did not exist. For anoth­er, as the his­to­ri­an Tac­i­tus records, although the emper­or was miles away at his vil­la in Antium when the fires began, it’s said he returned to Rome and led relief efforts, pay­ing for many of them out of his own pock­et and hous­ing the new­ly home­less in his gar­den.

But the sto­ry may have been rewrit­ten to bur­nish Nero’s rep­u­ta­tion. After the mass­es blamed him for start­ing the fire, he turned around and blamed the city’s Chris­tians, Tac­i­tus reports, stag­ing elab­o­rate spec­ta­cles of tor­ture, burn­ing, and dis­mem­ber­ment. Sue­to­nius does record him as giv­ing some sort of musi­cal per­for­mance dur­ing the fires of 64 A.D., a rumor that had appar­ent­ly tak­en hold among the peo­ple. What­ev­er part he played, and what­ev­er truth there is to charges that he mur­dered the son of Claudius, one of his wives, and even his own moth­er, Nero clear­ly felt a press­ing need to leave a dif­fer­ent impres­sion of himself—as a tow­er­ing, bronze god-like fig­ure near­ly 100 feet high.

In the same year as the fires, he com­mis­sioned a colos­sal stat­ue of him­self as the sun god, inspired by the Colos­sus of Rhodes. The mas­sive Nero held a rud­der perched atop a globe, sug­gest­ing that his rule steered the course of the whole world. Nero killed him­self before the stat­ue was com­plet­ed, but Pliny the Elder writes of see­ing its cre­ation in the stu­dio of the sculp­tor, Zen­odor­us. It arose tow­er­ing above his palace, the Domus Aurea, in 72 A.D., and in 127, Hadri­an moved it near the Amphithe­atrum Flav­i­um, which sub­se­quent­ly became known in the statue’s hon­or as the Colos­se­um. It took up to 24 ele­phants to do the job, or so it’s said.

For the next few hun­dred years, until at least the sack of Rome by Alar­ic in 410 and a sub­se­quent series of earth­quakes, res­i­dents and vis­i­tors to the city walked beneath the loom­ing Nero/Helios/Apollo stat­ue, just fifty feet shy of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty. It was depict­ed on medal­lions and gems. Now the stat­ue is com­plete­ly van­ished, with noth­ing but a rem­nant of its pedestal remain­ing. But you can see it recon­struct­ed, along with 27 oth­er ancient Roman mon­u­ments, tem­ples, baths, mau­soleums, amphithe­aters, are­nas, etc.—many of them as grandiose and sto­ried as the Colossus—in the thir­ty-minute video above.

No, it’s not like strolling the streets of ancient Rome. The block­i­ly-ren­dered CGI recre­ations appear over con­tem­po­rary video of the city, full of con­tem­po­rary traf­fic and con­tem­po­rary fash­ions. As in every his­tor­i­cal recre­ation of antiq­ui­ty, for which the sources are few and con­tra­dic­to­ry, we have to use our imag­i­na­tions. The exer­cise is infi­nite­ly rich­er the more you learn about the van­ished or ruined struc­tures that once dom­i­nat­ed the city. See the full list of ancient build­ings and sculp­tures below.

0:10 Pala­tine Hill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatin…)

3:25 The Forum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_F…)

5:22 Basil­i­ca of Max­en­tius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilic…)

7:18 Tem­ple of Ves­ta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

7:26 House of the Vestals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_o…)

7:48 Tem­ple of Cas­tor and Pol­lux (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

8:03 Tem­ple of Cae­sar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

8:13 Basil­i­ca Aemil­ia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilic…)

8:40 Basil­i­ca Julia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilic…)

9:17 Tem­ple of Sat­urn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

10:56 Curia Julia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curia_J…)

12:18 Forum of Augus­tus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_o…)

13:05 Forum of Ner­va (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_o…)

13:47 Tra­jan’s Forum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan%…)

14:54 Forum of Cae­sar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_o…)

15:29 Colos­se­um (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum)

17:42 Tem­ple of Venus and Roma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_…)

18:59 Colos­sus of Nero and Meta Sudans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossu… -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Su…)

19:28 Baths of Cara­calla (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baths_o…)

26:39 Pan­theon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheo…)

28:13 Sta­di­um of Domit­ian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium…)

29:23 Mau­soleum of Augus­tus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausole…)

29:39 Cir­cus Max­imus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_…)

30:25 Sacred area (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largo_d…)

31:21 The­atre of Pom­pey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre…)

31:56 The­atre of Mar­cel­lus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre…)

32:05 Tiber Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiber_I…)

32:32 Mau­soleum of Hadri­an (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_…)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take Ani­mat­ed Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tours of Ancient Rome at Its Archi­tec­tur­al Peak (Cir­ca 320 AD)

An Inter­ac­tive Map Shows Just How Many Roads Actu­al­ly Lead to Rome

All the Roman Roads of Italy, Visu­al­ized as a Mod­ern Sub­way Map

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

How Talking Heads and Brian Eno Wrote “Once in a Lifetime”: Cutting Edge, Strange & Utterly Brilliant

in Music | February 12th, 2019

Few albums of the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s have held up as well as those by Talk­ing Heads, but what to call the music record­ed on them? Rock? Pop? New Wave? In the dif­fi­cul­ty to pin it down lies its endur­ing appeal, and that dif­fi­cul­ty did­n’t come about by acci­dent: impa­tient with musi­cal cat­e­go­riza­tions and expec­ta­tions, front­man David Byrne and the rest of the band kept push­ing them­selves into new ter­ri­to­ries even after they’d begun to find suc­cess. When they set out to cre­ate their fourth album, 1980’s Remain in Light, “they were look­ing to change the way they made songs.” Instead of leav­ing the writ­ing to Byrne, “the band want­ed a more demo­c­ra­t­ic process. And so they tried some­thing they nev­er had before.”

So says the Poly­phon­ic video above on how the band wrote “Once in a Life­time,” sure­ly the most beloved song on Remain in Light and quite pos­si­bly the most beloved in Talk­ing Heads’ entire cat­a­log. “Inspired by Afrobeat leg­end Fela Kuti, the instru­men­tal­ists in the band record­ed a num­ber of jams,” such as the proto-“Once in a Life­time” out­take “Right Start” (which itself fol­lowed on “I Zim­bra” from Talk­ing Heads’ pre­vi­ous album, Fear of Music).

When bassist Tina Wey­mouth came up with a strik­ing bass line, the band “took that lick and extrap­o­lat­ed it, slow­ly build­ing a piece around it. After weeks of jam­ming, David Byrne and pro­duc­er Bri­an Eno came in to the stu­dio to start adding arrange­ments and lyrics to the music pieces.”

Eno count­ed the rhythm of the song dif­fer­ent­ly than every­one else did, result­ing in a dis­tinc­tive lay­er­ing of dif­fer­ent grooves all at once. On top of this came the lyrics, which Byrne devel­oped as he “sat down and lis­tened to tel­e­van­ge­list ser­mons, pulling phras­es from them and craft­ing them into lyrics.” Put togeth­er, “the song cre­ates a trance­like state, cap­tur­ing the man­ic monot­o­ny of mid­dle-class exis­tence” with both its cap­ti­vat­ing­ly repet­i­tive music (played by the band mem­bers act­ing as “human sam­plers”) and its words, as Byrne him­self inter­prets them, “about the uncon­scious, about how we oper­ate half-awake on autopi­lot.”

Like so many hits of the 1980s, “Once in a Life­time” launched into the zeit­geist from the plat­form of MTV — a net­work that did­n’t even exist when the song came out. “Made on a shoe­string bud­get, the video for ‘Once in a Life­time’ is one of the most mem­o­rable of its time.” Co-direct­ed by Toni Basil (of “Mick­ey” fame), it “played with blue­screen tech­nol­o­gy, com­pos­ing mul­ti­ple David Byrnes on top of a white back­ground or images of reli­gious cer­e­mo­ny.” Byrne and Basil “pored over film of preach­ers, peo­ple in trances, reli­gious sects, and much, much more. Some of these were put in the back­ground, but more impor­tant­ly, they were used as the basis for Byrne’s danc­ing.” When the con­tent-hun­gry MTV launched six months after “Once in a Life­time” came out, the video went right into heavy rota­tion. 37 years lat­er, we can look back at both it and the song as “the walk­ing embod­i­ment of all that the Talk­ing Heads were: it’s cut­ting-edge, it’s strange, and it’s utter­ly bril­liant.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks of the Talk­ing Heads’ “Once In A Life­time” Turn David Byrne into a Wild-Eyed Holy Preach­er

The Genius of Tina Wey­mouth: Break­ing Down the Style of Talk­ing Heads and Tom Tom Club’s Basslines

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Talk­ing Heads Record­ings (1975)

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

Talk­ing Heads Fea­tured on The South Bank Show in 1979: How the Ground­break­ing New Wave Band Made Nor­mal­i­ty Strange Again

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.

Michel Foucault Offers a Clear, Compelling Introduction to His Philosophical Project (1966)

in Philosophy | February 12th, 2019

The­o­rist Michel Fou­cault first “rose to promi­nence,” notes Aeon, “as exis­ten­tial­ism fell out of favor among French intel­lec­tu­als.” His first major work, The Order of Things: An Archae­ol­o­gy of the Human Sci­ences, pro­posed a new method­ol­o­gy based on the “dis­ap­pear­ance of Man” as a meta­phys­i­cal cat­e­go­ry. The ahis­tor­i­cal assump­tions that had plagued phi­los­o­phy made us too com­fort­able, he thought, with his­tor­i­cal sys­tems that impris­oned us. “I would like to con­sid­er our own cul­ture,” he says in the 1966 inter­view with Pierre Dumayet above, “to be some­thing as for­eign to us.”

The kind of estrange­ment Fou­cault induced in his eth­nolo­gies, genealo­gies, and his­to­ries of West­ern moder­ni­ty opened a space for cri­tiques of knowl­edge itself as a “for­eign phe­nom­e­non,” he says. Mad­ness and Civ­i­liza­tion, The Birth of the Clin­ic, The Order of Things, and Dis­ci­pline and Pun­ish exam­ine systems—the asy­lum, the med­ical pro­fes­sion, the sci­ences, and prisons—and allow us to see how ide­olo­gies are pro­duced by instru­men­tal uses of lan­guage and tech­nol­o­gy.

Fou­cault shift­ed his focus in the last peri­od of his career, after a 1975 LSD trip and sub­se­quent expe­ri­ences in Berke­ley changed his out­look. Yet he con­tin­ued, in his mon­u­men­tal, unfin­ished, mul­ti-vol­ume His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty to demon­strate how modes of philo­soph­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic dis­course gave rise to cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na we take for grant­ed as nat­ur­al states. Fou­cault was a crit­ic of the way the psy­chi­a­try and med­i­cine pathol­o­gized human behav­ior and cre­at­ed sys­tems of exclu­sion and cor­rec­tion. In his final work, he exam­ined the clas­si­cal his­to­ry of eth­i­cal dis­ci­pline and self-improve­ment.

We might rec­og­nize the rem­nants of this his­to­ry in our con­tem­po­rary cul­ture when he writes, in The His­to­ry of Sex­u­al­i­ty, Vol­ume 3, that “improve­ment, the per­fec­tion of the soul that one seeks in phi­los­o­phy…. Increas­ing­ly assumes a med­ical col­oration.” Fou­cault described the ways in which plea­sure and desire were high­ly cir­cum­scribed by util­i­tar­i­an sys­tems of con­trol and self-con­trol. It’s hard to say how much of this ear­ly inter­view the lat­er Fou­cault would have endorsed, but it’s yet anoth­er exam­ple of how lucid and per­cep­tive he was as a thinker, despite an unde­served rep­u­ta­tion for dif­fi­cul­ty and obscu­ri­ty.

He admits, how­ev­er, the inher­ent dif­fi­cul­ty of his project: the self-reflec­tive cri­tique of a mod­ern Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­al, through the very cat­e­gories of thought that make up the Euro­pean intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tion. But “after all,” he says, “how can we know our­selves if not with our own knowl­edge?” The endeav­or requires a “com­plete twist­ing of our rea­son on itself.” Few thinkers have been able to make such moves with as much clar­i­ty and schol­ar­ly rig­or as Fou­cault.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Michel Fou­cault Tripped on Acid in Death Val­ley and Called It “The Great­est Expe­ri­ence of My Life” (1975)

Hear Hours of Lec­tures by Michel Fou­cault: Record­ed in Eng­lish & French Between 1961 and 1983

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self (UC Berke­ley, 1980–1983)

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Michel Fou­cault, “Philoso­pher of Pow­er”

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

Why Should We Read Flannery O’Connor? An Animated Video Makes the Case

in Literature | February 12th, 2019

Every time a sto­ry of mine appears in a Fresh­man anthol­o­gy, I have a vision of it, with its lit­tle organs laid open, like a frog in a bot­tle. –Flan­nery O’Connor, “A Rea­son­able Use of the Unrea­son­able”

Why did Flan­nery O’Connor write? To con­vert us? The devout Catholic was not immune to a cer­tain apolo­getic impulse, or a sense of her own pur­pose as a ves­sel for divine truth. Or did she, like Greek trage­di­ans, write to inspire pity and ter­ror? “I don’t have any pre­ten­sions,” she once demurred, “to being an Aeschy­lus or Sopho­cles and pro­vid­ing you in this sto­ry with a cathar­tic expe­ri­ence.” In any case, what drove her may be a less inter­est­ing ques­tion than what should dri­ve us to read her.

O’Connor wrote, as most great writ­ers do, because she was com­pelled to write. What we gain as read­ers is the deeply unset­tling, but also deeply plea­sur­able expe­ri­ence of rec­og­niz­ing our own flawed human­i­ty in her vio­lent, manip­u­la­tive char­ac­ters, none of whom, some­how, are ever beyond redemp­tion. O’Connor’s autho­r­i­al voice does not judge or con­demn but expos­es to light the flaws that even, or espe­cial­ly, her most respectable char­ac­ters would rather hide from them­selves and oth­ers.

By use of what she called “a rea­son­able use of the unrea­son­able” she shows mur­der, con­tempt, and decep­tion as shock­ing­ly ordi­nary states of affairs, bely­ing the polite fic­tions of civil­i­ty and social nice­ness. Per­haps no set­ting could bet­ter illu­mi­nate the con­trasts than the pious­ly vio­lent seg­re­gat­ed mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can South. O’Connor’s “mas­tery of the grotesque,” notes the TED-Ed video above by Iseult Gille­spie, “and her explo­rations of the insu­lar­i­ty and super­sti­tions of the South led her to be clas­si­fied as a ‘South­ern Goth­ic’ writer.”

The label may fit super­fi­cial­ly, but “her work pushed beyond the pure­ly ridicu­lous and fright­en­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics asso­ci­at­ed with the genre to reveal the vari­ety and nuance of human char­ac­ter.” O’Connor her­self sug­gest­ed that what set her apart were “the assump­tions… of the cen­tral Chris­t­ian mys­ter­ies.” Though we need not read her work this way, she grants, there is “none oth­er by which it could have been writ­ten.” We might say that her com­mit­ted belief in the idea of uni­ver­sal human deprav­i­ty gave her unique insight into the mean­ing­less­ness of class and race dis­tinc­tions. Few writ­ers have tak­en the idea as seri­ous­ly, or approached it with more wicked play­ful­ness.

Why did she write? One rea­son is she “took plea­sure in chal­leng­ing her read­ers,” as the video explains. But it was plea­sure that she chiefly desired to share. We can vivi­sect her sto­ries, carve them up and seal them in jars labeled with pol­i­tics and the­olo­gies. Yet “prop­er­ly, you ana­lyze to enjoy,” she wrote. “It’s equal­ly true that to ana­lyze with any dis­crim­i­na­tion, you have to have enjoyed already, and I think that the best rea­son to hear a sto­ry read is that it should stim­u­late that pri­ma­ry enjoy­ment.” Lovers of O’Connor know the answer to the ques­tion of why we should read her. Because they take as much plea­sure in read­ing her sto­ries as she did in writ­ing them.

Dis­cov­er this enjoy­ment on your own. Hear Studs Terkel read her sto­ry “Rev­e­la­tion,” hear Estelle Par­sons read “Every­thing that Ris­es Must Con­verge,” and hear O’Con­nor her­self read that 1959 clas­sic of her South­ern grotesque style, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a Rare Record­ing of Flan­nery O’Connor Read­ing “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1959)

Flan­nery O’Connor Ren­ders Her Ver­dict on Ayn Rand’s Fic­tion: It’s As “Low As You Can Get”

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

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

Dieter Rams Lists the 10 Timeless Principles of Good Design–Backed by Music by Brian Eno

in Design | February 11th, 2019

Near­ly all of us have heard the dic­tum “Less, but bet­ter,” and near­ly all of us have used Braun prod­ucts. But how many of us know that both of those owe their con­sid­er­able pop­u­lar­i­ty to the same man? After study­ing archi­tec­ture, inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion, and car­pen­try, the Ger­man indus­tri­al design­er Dieter Rams spent 40 years at Braun, most of them as the com­pa­ny’s chief design offi­cer. There he cre­at­ed such hits as the 606 uni­ver­sal shelv­ing sys­tem, the SK61 record play­er, and the ET66 cal­cu­la­tor. That last pro­vid­ed the mod­el for the cal­cu­la­tor appli­ca­tion inter­face in Apple’s iOS 3, among oth­er homages Apple has paid to Rams.

Rams, in turn, has been com­pli­men­ta­ry to Apple, call­ing it one of the few com­pa­nies in exis­tence that designs prod­ucts accord­ing to his prin­ci­ples. Any­one can sense the affin­i­ty between the most endur­ing Apple prod­ucts and Rams-designed Braun prod­ucts, but what are those prin­ci­ples?

You can hear them laid out by the man him­self him­self in the trail­er above for Rams, last year’s doc­u­men­tary by Gary Hus­twit, he of Hel­veti­ca (the doc­u­men­tary about the font) and Objec­ti­fied (the doc­u­men­tary about indus­tri­al design that fea­tured Rams as an inter­vie­wee). The list is as fol­lows:

1. Good design is inno­v­a­tive. “Design always comes about in con­nec­tion with inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy. How can design be good if the tech­nol­o­gy is not on the same lev­el?”
2. Good design makes a prod­uct use­ful. “Good design opti­mizes use­ful­ness and ignores any­thing that does­n’t serve the pur­pose or works against it.”
3. Good design is aes­thet­ic. “Objects you use dai­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly shape your sur­round­ings and your sense of well-being. Only some­thing that is well-made can be beau­ti­ful.”
4. Good design makes a prod­uct under­stand­able. “It makes it easy to under­stand the struc­ture of the prod­uct. Even more, it can make the prod­uct ‘talk.’ Ide­al­ly, it explains itself best.”
5. Good design is unob­tru­sive. “Prod­ucts that serve a pur­pose have the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a tool. Their design should be neu­tral and leave room for the user’s self-expres­sion.”
6. Good design is hon­est. “Hon­est means not try­ing to make a prod­uct look more inno­v­a­tive, pow­er­ful, or valu­able than it real­ly is.”
7. Good design is long-last­ing. “In con­trast to fash­ion­able design, it lasts many years even in our cur­rent throw­away soci­ety.”
8. Good design is thor­ough down to the last detail. “Noth­ing should be arbi­trary or left to chance. Thor­ough­ness and pre­ci­sion are expres­sions of respect for the user.”
9. Good design is envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly. “Design makes an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to pre­serv­ing the envi­ron­ment. It con­serves resources and min­i­mizes phys­i­cal and visu­al pol­lu­tion.”
10. Good design is as lit­tle design as pos­si­ble. “Back to sim­plic­i­ty. Back to puri­ty. Less, but bet­ter.”

The trail­er illus­trates each of these prin­ci­ples with one of Rams’ designs, devel­oped at Braun or else­where: the T 1000 CD radio, the MPZ 21 cit­rus juicer, the 740 stool, the 620 chair. Though designed forty, fifty, even six­ty years ago, these gad­gets and pieces of fur­ni­ture have stood the test of time. Some have even made a return to the mar­ket in recent years of our both aes­thet­i­cal­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious age. You can watch Rams on Vimeo on Demand, and if you do, you’ll not only get to enjoy its Bri­an Eno-com­posed score, you’ll learn much more about how Rams designed his most beloved prod­ucts — and about where he still sees ways to improve them. That holds true even for his design prin­ci­ples them­selves: “I always empha­sized that they weren’t meant to last for­ev­er,” he says. “They should be updat­ed.”

via Uncrate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

Pao­la Antonel­li on Design as the Inter­face Between Progress and Human­i­ty

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Make Some­thing Beau­ti­ful and Don’t Wor­ry About the Mon­ey

Sketch­es of Artists by the Late New Media Design­er Hill­man Cur­tis

Abstract: Netflix’s New Doc­u­men­tary Series About “the Art of Design” Pre­mieres Today

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.

Neil Gaiman Reads His Manifesto on Making Art: Features the 10 Things He Wish He Knew As a Young Artist

in Art, Books, Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | February 11th, 2019

I think you’re absolute­ly allowed sev­er­al min­utes, pos­si­bly even half a day to feel very, very sor­ry for your­self indeed. And then just start mak­ing art. — Neil Gaiman

It’s a bit ear­ly in the year for com­mence­ment speech­es, but for­tu­nate­ly for life­long learn­ers who rely on a steady drip of inspi­ra­tion and encour­age­ment, author Neil Gaiman excels at putting old wine in new bot­tles.

He repur­posed his keynote address to Philadel­phi­a’s Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts’ Class of 2012 for Art Mat­ters: Because Your Imag­i­na­tion Can Change the World, a slim vol­ume with hand let­ter­ing and illus­tra­tions by Chris Rid­dell.

The above video cap­tures the fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tors appear­ing togeth­er last fall at the East Lon­don cul­tur­al cen­ter Evo­lu­tion­ary Arts Hack­ney in a fundrais­er for Eng­lish PEN, the found­ing branch of the world­wide lit­er­ary defense asso­ci­a­tion. While Gaiman reads aloud in his affa­ble, ever-engag­ing style, Rid­dell uses a brush pen to bang out 4 3/4 line draw­ings, riff­ing on Gaiman’s metaphors.

While the art-mak­ing “rules” Gaiman enu­mer­ates here­in have been extrap­o­lat­ed and wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed (includ­ing, nev­er fear, below), it’s worth hav­ing a look at why this event called for a live illus­tra­tor.

Leav­ing aside the fact that each tick­et pur­chas­er got a copy of Art Mat­ters, auto­graphed by both men, and a large signed print was auc­tioned off on behalf of Eng­lish PEN, Gaiman holds illus­tra­tions in high regard.

His work includes pic­ture books, graph­ic nov­els, and light­ly illus­trat­ed nov­els for teens and young adults, and as a mature read­er, he, too, delights in visu­als, sin­gling out Frank C. Papé’s draw­ings for the decid­ed­ly “adult” 1920s fan­ta­sy nov­els of James Branch Cabell. (1929’s Some­thing about Eve fea­tured a bux­om female char­ac­ter angri­ly fry­ing up her hus­band’s man­hood for din­ner and an erot­ic entry­way that would have thrilled Dr. Seuss.)

In an inter­view with Water­stones book­sellers upon the pub­li­ca­tion of Nev­er­where,  anoth­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with Rid­dell, Gaiman mused:

…a good illus­tra­tor, for me, is like going to see a play. You are going to get some­thing brought to life for you by a spe­cif­ic cast in a spe­cif­ic place. That way of illus­trat­ing will nev­er hap­pen again. You know, some­body else could illus­trate it—there are hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent Alice in Won­der­lands.

Which we could cer­tain­ly take to mean that if Riddell’s style doesn’t grab you the way it grabs Gaiman (and the juries for sev­er­al pres­ti­gious awards) per­haps you should tear your eyes away from the screen and illus­trate what you hear in the speech.

Do you need to know how to draw as well as he does? The rules, below, sug­gest not. We’d love to take a peek inside your sketch­book after.

1. Embrace the fact that you’re young. Accept that you don’t know what you’re doing. And don’t lis­ten to any­one who says there are rules and lim­its.

2. If you know your call­ing, go there. Stay on track. Keep mov­ing towards it, even if the process takes time and requires sac­ri­fice.

3. Learn to accept fail­ure. Know that things will go wrong. Then, when things go right, you’ll prob­a­bly feel like a fraud. It’s nor­mal.

4. Make mis­takes, glo­ri­ous and fan­tas­tic ones. It means that you’re out there doing and try­ing things.

5. When life gets hard, as it inevitably will, make good art. Just make good art.

6. Make your own art, mean­ing the art that reflects your indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and per­son­al vision.

7. You get free­lance work if your work is good, if you’re easy to get along with, and if you’re on dead­line. Actu­al­ly you don’t need all three. Just two.

8. Enjoy the ride. Don’t fret it all away. (That one comes com­pli­ments of Stephen King.)

9. Be wise and accom­plish things in your career. If you have prob­lems get­ting start­ed, pre­tend you’re some­one who is wise, who can get things done. It will help you along.

10. Leave the world more inter­est­ing than it was before.

Read a com­plete tran­script of the speech here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman Teach­es the Art of Sto­ry­telling in His New Online Course

Hear Neil Gaiman Read a Beau­ti­ful, Pro­found Poem by Ursu­la K. Le Guin to His Cousin on Her 100th Birth­day

18 Sto­ries & Nov­els by Neil Gaiman Online: Free Texts & Read­ings by Neil Him­self

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City tonight as host of The­ater of the Apes’ month­ly  book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.