Criterion Announces New Streaming Service To Replace FilmStruck: Become a Charter Subscriber Today

in Film | November 16th, 2018

Late last month, Turn­er and Warn­er Bros. Dig­i­tal Net­works announced–much to the cha­grin of cinephiles–that it planned to close Film­struck, a stream­ing ser­vice that spe­cial­ized in art­house and clas­sic films. Fans and celebrities–from Christo­pher Nolan to Guiller­mo del Toro–quickly got behind a peti­tion to save the stream­ing ser­vice. And today their wish came true, more or less.

The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion and Warn­er­Me­dia just issued a press release, declar­ing that “the Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel will launch as a free-stand­ing stream­ing ser­vice” in the spring of 2019. This will effec­tive­ly allow the Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel to “pick up where Film­Struck left off, with the­mat­ic pro­gram­ming, reg­u­lar film­mak­er spot­lights, and actor ret­ro­spec­tives, fea­tur­ing major clas­sics and hard-to-find dis­cov­er­ies from Hol­ly­wood and around the world, com­plete with spe­cial fea­tures like com­men­taries, behind-the-scenes footage and orig­i­nal doc­u­men­taries.”

If you want to demon­strate your appre­ci­a­tion and sup­port, you can become a Char­ter Sub­scriber and gain the fol­low­ing ben­e­fits:

• A 30-day free tri­al.
• A reduced sub­scrip­tion fee for as long as you keep your sub­scrip­tion active. The reg­u­lar fee will be $10.99 a month or $100 a year, but as a Char­ter Sub­scriber you’ll pay $9.99 a month or $89.99 a year.
• Concierge cus­tomer ser­vice from the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, includ­ing a cus­tomer ID and a spe­cial e‑mail address.
• A hol­i­day gift-cer­tifi­cate present, for use on the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion web­site.
• A Char­ter Sub­scriber mem­ber­ship card.
• The sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing you’re keep­ing the best of film alive and avail­able.

Hope this helps you have a great week­end.

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:

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Names His 21 Favorite Art Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

The Art of Restor­ing Clas­sic Films: Cri­te­ri­on Shows You How It Refreshed Two Hitch­cock Movies

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

A Japanese Illustrated History of America (1861): Features George Washington Punching Tigers, John Adams Slaying Snakes & Other Fantastic Scenes

in Art, Books, History | November 16th, 2018

“George Wash­ing­ton (with bow and arrow) pic­tured along­side the God­dess of Amer­i­ca”

Though I’m Amer­i­can myself, I always learn the most about Amer­i­ca when I look out­side it. When I want to hear my home­land described or see it reflect­ed, I seek out the per­spec­tive of any­one oth­er than my fel­low Amer­i­cans. Giv­en that I live in Korea, such per­spec­tives aren’t hard to come by, and every day here I learn some­thing new — real or imag­ined — about the Unit­ed States. But Japan, the next coun­try over to the east, has a longer and arguably rich­er tra­di­tion of Amer­i­ca-describ­ing. And judg­ing by Osanae­to­ki Bankokubanashi (童絵解万国噺), an 1861 book by writer Kana­ga­ki Robun and artist Uta­gawa Yoshi­to­ra, it cer­tain­ly has a more fan­tas­ti­cal one. “Here is George Wash­ing­ton (with bow and arrow) pic­tured along­side the God­dess of Amer­i­ca,” writes his­to­ri­an of Japan Nick Kapur in a Twit­ter thread fea­tur­ing selec­tions from the book.

“George Wash­ing­ton defend­ing his wife ‘Car­ol’ from a British offi­cial”

His­to­ry does record Wash­ing­ton hav­ing prac­ticed archery in his youth, among oth­er pop­u­lar sports of the day, and the image of the God­dess of Amer­i­ca does look like a faint­ly Japan­ese ver­sion of Colum­bia, the his­tor­i­cal female per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Unit­ed States.

The next image Kaur posts shows Christo­pher Colum­bus report­ing his dis­cov­ery of Amer­i­ca to Queen Isabel­la of Spain. “So far, kin­da nor­mal,” but then comes a bit of artis­tic license: a scene from the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion in which we see “George Wash­ing­ton defend­ing his wife ‘Car­ol’ from a British offi­cial named ‘Asura’ (same char­ac­ters as the Bud­dhist deity).” Oth­er illus­trat­ed events from ear­ly Amer­i­can his­to­ry include “Wash­ing­ton’s “sec­ond-in-com­mand” John Adams bat­tling an enor­mous snake,” “the incred­i­bly jacked Ben­jamin Franklin fir­ing a can­non that he holds in his bare hands, while John Adams directs him where to fire,” and “George Wash­ing­ton straight-up punch­ing a tiger.”

“George Wash­ing­ton straight-up punch­ing a tiger”

The found­ing of the Unit­ed States, as Kana­ga­ki and Uta­gawa saw it, seems to have required the defeat of many a fear­some beast, includ­ing a giant snake that eats Adams’ moth­er and against which Adams must then team up with an eagle to slay. What truth we can find here may be metaphor­i­cal in nature: even in the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, the world still saw Amer­i­ca as a vast, wild con­ti­nent just wait­ing to enrich those brave and strong enough to sub­due it. Glob­al inter­est in the still-new repub­lic also ran par­tic­u­lar­ly high at that time, as evi­denced by the pop­u­lar­i­ty of pub­li­ca­tions like Alex­is de Toc­queville’s Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca (which still offers an insight­ful out­sider’s per­spec­tive on Amer­i­ca), first pub­lished in 1835 and 1840.

“Togeth­er, John Adams and the eagle kill the enor­mous snake that ate his Mom. The pow­er of team­work!!!”

Japan, long a closed coun­try, had also begun to take a keen inter­est in the out­side world: Amer­i­can Com­modore Matthew Per­ry and his war­ships, filled with tech­nol­o­gy then unimag­in­able to the Japan­ese, had arrived in 1853 with an intent to open Japan’s ports to trade. In 1868 the Mei­ji Restora­tion would con­sol­i­date impe­r­i­al rule in the coun­try and open it to the world, but Osanae­to­ki Bankokubanashi, which you can read in its entire­ty in dig­i­tized form at Wase­da Unver­si­ty’s web site, came out sev­en years before that. At that time, the likes of Kana­ga­ki and Uta­gawa, rely­ing on sec­ond-hand sources, could still thrill their coun­try­men — none of whom had any more direct expe­ri­ence of Amer­i­ca than they did — with tales of the grotesque crea­tures, vile oppres­sors, hero­ic rebels, and guid­ing god­dess­es to be found just on the oth­er side of the Pacif­ic Ocean.

For more images, see Nick Kapur’s twit­ter stream here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

A Won­der­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed 1925 Japan­ese Edi­tion of Aesop’s Fables by Leg­endary Children’s Book Illus­tra­tor Takeo Takei

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs from 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan: 110 Images Cap­ture the Wan­ing Days of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Soci­ety

Vin­tage 1930s Japan­ese Posters Artis­ti­cal­ly Mar­ket the Won­ders of Trav­el

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.

Pachelbel’s Chicken: Your Favorite Classical Pieces Played Masterfully on a Rubber Chicken

in Comedy, K-12, Music | November 16th, 2018

Music lovers brac­ing against the annu­al onslaught of the Singing Dogs’ “Jin­gle Bells” may find their sav­age beasts soothed some­what by Eddy Chen’s per­for­mance of Pachelbel’s Canon, above.

Nev­er mind that the instru­ment on which he plays four dif­fer­ent tracks is a rub­ber chick­en… or more accu­rate­ly, as per Ama­zon, a Scream­ing Yel­low Rub­ber Chick­en Non Tox­ic Bite-resis­tant Squeaky Toy.

It retains its relax­ing musi­cal­i­ty. Chen, one half of Aus­tralian duo TwoSetVi­o­lin, plays that bird like the dis­ci­plined, clas­si­cal­ly-trained pro he is.

Clas­si­cal chick­en cov­ers became a sur­prise hit for Chen and his part­ner, Brett Yang, vet­er­ans of the Syd­ney and Queens­land Sym­pho­ny Orches­tras, whose vir­tu­al­ly sold out world tour was the first of its kind to be entire­ly financed by Kick­starter dona­tions.

The duo describes its mis­sion as “uphold­ing the integri­ty of clas­si­cal music” while mak­ing it “rel­e­vant to the mod­ern gen­er­a­tion through fun, humour and sim­plic­i­ty,” not­ing, in a joint inter­view with Violinist.com:

There are peo­ple out there who are ready to love clas­si­cal music, and we have to active­ly find them. It is the way clas­si­cal music has been pre­sent­ed so far that makes it so aus­tere. We were lucky that we learned the instru­ment for 20 years; if we were not musi­cians, it would be very hard to get into.

Every­one has the poten­tial to like it, but some­times musi­cians alien­ate and scare poten­tial lis­ten­ers with our pride.

Back when clas­si­cal music was new, it was not ‘clas­si­cal’; it was just music.

Today our (clas­si­cal music audi­ence) is very small, but there are many great musi­cians

 Grant­ed, the stan­dards for clas­si­cal music are there for a good rea­son: peo­ple want the best art, and that is a stan­dard we should uphold. At the same time, some­times we see peo­ple break­ing down and freak­ing out because of those stan­dards. It is sad to think of all that lost poten­tial and love for music. We feel we are los­ing audi­ences; we are los­ing peo­ple who used to love music.

The chick­en def­i­nite­ly appeals to young lis­ten­ers, though sure­ly there’s no age lim­it for enjoy­ing its take on Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No.1…

Or Johann Strauss’ “The Blue Danube” Waltz, where­in Yang squeezes a chick­en in each fist whilst Chen mans the vio­lin…

Or the open­ing trum­pet solo of Gus­tav Mahler ‘s Sym­pho­ny No. 5…

Or Beethoven’s “Für Elise,” a favorite first clas­si­cal piece for pianists and chick­en play­ers alike…

Oth­ers on TwoSetViolin’s clas­si­cal chick­en playlist include Handel’s “Hal­lelu­jah” cho­rus and the “Waltz of the Flow­ers” from Tchaikovsky’s Nut­crack­er Suite.

Catch up with TwoSetVi­o­lin on the final leg of their Amer­i­can tour and sub­scribe to their YouTube chan­nel for their insights into the clas­si­cal musi­cian’s life and the impor­tance of prac­tice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the World’s Old­est Vio­lin in Action: Mar­co Rizzi Per­forms Schumann’s Sonata No. 2 on a 1566 Amati Vio­lin

Behold the “3Dvarius,” the World’s First 3‑D Print­ed Vio­lin

New Order’s “Blue Mon­day” Played with Obso­lete 1930s Instru­ments

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC this Decem­ber for the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the next month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Bertrand Russell Authority and the Individual (1948)

in | November 15th, 2018

Back in 1948, Britain was mak­ing anoth­er dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion, mov­ing from the trau­ma of World War II to the chill of the Cold War. Hop­ing to give radio lis­ten­ers some clar­i­ty on con­tem­po­rary affairs, the BBC began air­ing an annu­al series of lec­tures — the Rei­th Lec­tures — that fea­tured lead­ing thinkers of the day. 60 years lat­er, the tra­di­tion con­tin­ues, and dur­ing this long stretch, some leg­endary fig­ures have graced the BBC’s air­waves: Michael Sandel, Edward Said, John Sear­le, John Ken­neth Gal­braith, George Ken­nan, and Robert Oppen­heimer, just to name a few. (And, yes, the list unfor­tu­nate­ly skews heav­i­ly male.)

Late last month, the BBC put the com­plete audio archive online, which gives you access to 240 lec­tures in total. Where’s the best place to start? How about at the begin­ning, with the inau­gur­al lec­tures pre­sent­ed by philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell in 1948. His lec­ture series, Author­i­ty and the Indi­vid­ual, delved into an age old ques­tion in polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy — the indi­vid­ual and his/her rela­tion­ship with com­mu­ni­ties and states. The head of the BBC lat­er groused that Rus­sell spoke “too quick­ly and had a bad voice.” But the real com­plaints came from the Sovi­ets, who inter­pret­ed Rus­sel­l’s lec­tures as an attack on Com­mu­nism. You can find the lec­tures here, stream them above, or read the tran­script here.

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

Marxism by Raymond Geuss: A Free Course

in | November 15th, 2018

This course taught by Ray­mond Geuss was orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty in 2013. All 8 lec­tures can be streamed above, or on YouTube here. “Marx­ism” has been added to our col­lec­tion of 170 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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!

Later Heidegger by Hubert Dreyfus: A Free Course

in | November 15th, 2018

This course taught by Hubert Drey­fus was orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at UC Berke­ley. All 26 lec­tures can be streamed above, or on YouTube here. “Lat­er Hei­deg­ger” has been added to our col­lec­tion of 170 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es.

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!

Hubert Dreyfus on Merleau Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception: A Free Course

in | November 15th, 2018

This course taught by Hubert Drey­fus was orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at UC Berke­ley. All 31 lec­tures can be streamed above, or on YouTube here. “Mer­leau Pon­ty’s Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy of Per­cep­tion” has been added to our col­lec­tion of 170 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es.

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!

Leonard Cohen’s Last Work, The Flame Gets Published: Discover His Final Poems, Drawings, Lyrics & More

in Books, Music | November 15th, 2018

It’s a per­verse irony or an apt metaphor: Leonard Cohen is best known for a song that took him five years to write, and that went almost unheard on its debut, in part because the head of Columbia’s music divi­sion, Wal­ter Yet­nikoff, refused to release Cohen’s 1985 album Var­i­ous Posi­tions in the U.S. “Leonard, we know you’re great,” said Yet­nikoff, “We just don’t know if you’re any good.” It might have been Cohen’s sum­ma­tion of life itself.

It wasn’t until Jeff Buckley’s elec­tric gospel cov­er in 1994 (itself a take on John Cale’s ver­sion) that “Hal­lelu­jah” became the mas­sive hit it is, hav­ing now been cov­ered by over 300 artists. Cana­di­an mag­a­zine Maclean’s has called the song “pop music’s clos­est thing to a sacred text.” One can imag­ine Cohen look­ing deep into the eyes of those who think that “Hal­lelu­jah” is a hymn of praise and say­ing, “you don’t real­ly care for music, do ya?”

With the trap­pings and imagery of gospel, and a sleazy synth-dri­ven groove, it tells a sto­ry of being tied to a chair and over­pow­ered, kept at an emo­tion­al dis­tance, learn­ing how to “shoot some­body who out­drew ya.” Love, sings Cohen sings in his lounge-lizard voice, “is not a vic­to­ry march… It’s not some­body who’s seen the light.” If you’re look­ing to Leonard Cohen for redemp­tion, best look else­where.

Used in film and tele­vi­sion for moments of epiphany, tri­umph, grief, and relief, “Hal­lelu­jah,” like all of Cohen’s work, makes pro­fane and prophet­ic utter­ances in which beau­ty and ugli­ness always coex­ist, in a painful arrange­ment no one gets clear of. Cohen will not let us choose between dark­ness and light. We must take both.

In the last years of his life, he brought his trag­ic vision to a remark­able cli­max in his final, 2016 album, You Want it Dark­er. Last month, the final act in his mag­is­te­r­i­al career pre­miered in the form of The Flame. The book is “a col­lec­tion of poems, lyrics, draw­ings, and pages from his note­books,” writes The Paris Review, who quote from Cohen’s son Adam’s for­ward: “This vol­ume con­tains my father’s final efforts as a poet…. It was what he was stay­ing alive to do, his sole breath­ing pur­pose at the end.”

Cohen did not leave words of hope behind. One of his last poems issues forth an enig­mat­ic and ter­ri­fy­ing prophe­cy, ham­mer­ing away at the con­ceits of human pow­er.

What is com­ing

ten mil­lion peo­ple

in the street can­not stop

What is com­ing

the Amer­i­can Armed Forces

can­not con­trol

the Pres­i­dent

of the Unit­ed States

            and his coun­selors

can­not con­ceive

ini­ti­ate

com­mand

            or direct

every­thing

you do

or refrain from doing

will bring us

to the same place

the place we don’t know

 

your anger against the war

your hor­ror of death

your calm strate­gies

your bold plans

to rearrange

            the mid­dle east

to over­throw the dol­lar

to estab­lish

            the 4th Reich

to live for­ev­er

to silence the Jews

to order the cos­mos

to tidy up your life

to improve reli­gion

they count for noth­ing

 

you have no under­stand­ing

of the con­se­quences

of what you do

oh and one more thing

you aren’t going to like

what comes after

          Amer­i­ca

But The Flame is not all jere­mi­ad. In some ways it’s a turn from the grim, orac­u­lar voice of “You Want it Dark­er” and to a more inti­mate, at times quo­tid­i­an and con­fes­sion­al, Cohen. “All sides of the man are present” in this book of poems and sketch­es writes Scott Tim­berg at The Guardian. “Was he, in the end, a musi­cian or a poet? A grave philoso­pher or a grim sort of come­di­an? A cos­mopoli­tan lady’s man or a pro­found, ascetic seek­er? Jew or Bud­dhist? Hedo­nist or her­mit?” Yes.

Cohen’s work, his son says, “was a man­date from God.” The writ­ing of his final poems “was all pri­vate.” “My father was very inter­est­ed in pre­serv­ing the mag­ic of his process. And more­over, not demys­ti­fy­ing it. Speak­ing of any of this is a trans­gres­sion.”

How­ev­er else we inter­pret Leonard Cohen’s theo-myth­ic-philo­soph­i­cal incan­ta­tions, he made a few things clear. What he meant by “God” was deep­er and dark­er than what most peo­ple do. And to triv­i­al­ize the mys­ter­ies of life and love and death and song, to pre­tend we under­stand them, he sug­gests, is a grave and trag­ic, but per­haps inevitable, mis­take. “You want it dark­er,” he sang at the end. “We kill the flame.”

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mal­colm Glad­well on Why Genius Takes Time: A Look at the Mak­ing of Elvis Costello’s “Depor­tee” & Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Hal­lelu­jah!: You Can Stream Every Leonard Cohen Album in a 22-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist (1967–2016)

Say Good­bye to Leonard Cohen Through Some of His Best-Loved Songs: “Hal­lelu­jah,” “Suzanne” and 235 Oth­er Tracks

Young Leonard Cohen Reads His Poet­ry in 1966 (Before His Days as a Musi­cian Began)

How Leonard Cohen Wrote a Love Song

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

NASA Digitizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the Historic Apollo 11 Mission: Stream Them Free Online

in Archives, History | November 15th, 2018

When we think of the Apol­lo mis­sions, we tend to think of images, espe­cial­ly those broad­cast on tele­vi­sion dur­ing the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing in 1969. And if we think of the sounds of Apol­lo, what comes more quick­ly to mind — indeed, what sound in human his­to­ry could come more quick­ly to mind — than Neil Arm­strong’s “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” line spo­ken on that same mis­sion? But that’s just one small piece of the total amount of audio record­ings made dur­ing the Apol­lo pro­gram, which ran from the mid-1960s to the ear­ly 1970s. Now, with near­ly 20,000 hours of them dig­i­tized, they’ve begun to be made avail­able for lis­ten­ing and down­load­ing at the Inter­net Archive.

“After the Apol­lo mis­sions end­ed, most of the audio tapes even­tu­al­ly made their way to the Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion build­ing in Col­lege Park, Mary­land,” writes Astron­o­my’s Cather­ine Mey­ers. But even after get­ting all the record­ings in one place (eas­i­er said than done giv­en the vast size of the archives in which they resided), a much larg­er chal­lenge loomed.

“The exist­ing tapes could be played only on a machine called a Sound­Scriber, a big beige and green con­trap­tion com­plete with vac­u­um tubes. NASA had two machines, but the first was can­ni­bal­ized for parts to make the sec­ond one run.”

Refur­bish­ing the very last Sound­Scriber to play these 30-track tapes required the help of a retired tech­ni­cian, and then the research team need­ed to “play all 30 tracks at once to min­i­mize the time required to dig­i­tize them, as well as to avoid dam­ag­ing the almost 50-year-old tapes by play­ing them over and over.” What with the 50th anniver­sary of the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing approach­ing next sum­mer — and with First Man, Damien Chazelle’s biopic of Neil Arm­strong cur­rent­ly in the­aters — NASA has cleared that mis­sion’s audio record­ings for pub­lic release.

You can lis­ten to the Apol­lo 11 tapes direct­ly at the Inter­net Archive, or you can make your way through them at Explore Apol­lo, a site designed by stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Dal­las that high­lights the most his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant of the thou­sands of hours of audio record­ed dur­ing Apol­lo 11: not just Arm­strong’s first step, but the launch from Kennedy Space Cen­ter, the lunar land­ing itself, and the astro­nauts’ walk on the moon’s sur­face. But space explo­ration is about much more than astro­nauts, as you’ll soon find out if you spend much time at the Inter­net Archive’s col­lec­tion of Apol­lo 11 record­ings, on which appear not just Neil Arm­strong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, but the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of oth­er NASA per­son­nel who made the moon land­ing pos­si­ble. We may nev­er have heard their names before, but now we can final­ly hear their voic­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Orig­i­nal TV Cov­er­age of the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing: Record­ed on July 20, 1969

Hear the Declas­si­fied, Eerie “Space Music” Heard Dur­ing the Apol­lo 10 Mis­sion (1969)

8,400 Stun­ning High-Res Pho­tos From the Apol­lo Moon Mis­sions Are Now Online

NASA Puts 400+ His­toric Exper­i­men­tal Flight Videos on YouTube

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

NASA Releas­es a Mas­sive Online Archive: 140,000 Pho­tos, Videos & Audio Files Free to Search and Down­load

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.

David Lynch Releases a Disturbing, New Short Film: Watch “Ant Head” Online

in Film | November 15th, 2018

David Lynch has just released a new short film, and it’s not very long on plot. Pre­miered at the Fes­ti­val of Dis­rup­tion ear­li­er this year, “Ant Head” runs 13 min­utes and features–writes IndieWire–“one shot that depicts a block of cheese in the shape of a head being over­tak­en by an army of crawl­ing ants.” And it’s all set to music by Thought Gang, Lynch’s exper­i­men­tal col­lab­o­ra­tion with com­pos­er Ange­lo Badala­men­ti. You can pick up a copy of their brand new album, epony­mous­ly called Thought Gang, here.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch All of the Com­mer­cials That David Lynch Has Direct­ed: A Big 30-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called “Rab­bits”: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays