Hear 230 Episodes of Escape: Classic Radio Dramas of Stories by Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, H.G. Wells & More (1947–1954)

in Radio, Sci Fi | June 29th, 2016

“Wor­ried about the price of but­ter and eggs? Fed up with the hous­ing short­age? Want to get away from it all? CBS offers you Escape!” These words open Octo­ber 1st, 1947’s broad­cast adap­ta­tion of “The Most Dan­ger­ous Game,” Richard Con­nel­l’s safari cul­ture-sat­i­riz­ing short thriller about a New York big-game hunter en route to Rio who falls off his yacht, swims to shore, and soon finds him­self evad­ing an eccen­tric Cos­sack aris­to­crat who hunts human beings for sport on his own pri­vate island. Not exact­ly the sort of mate­r­i­al that takes all one’s cares away, but Escape, it seems, had its own def­i­n­i­tion of escapism.

Orig­i­nal­ly air­ing on CBS radio between 1947 and 1954 — time that, with­out a reg­u­lar spon­sor, it spent in eigh­teen dif­fer­ent time slots — the pro­gram’s 230 episodes took mate­r­i­al from all over the lit­er­ary land­scape: Ray Brad­bury’s “Mars Is Heav­en,” Daphne du Mau­ri­er’s “The Birds,” H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine” (among sev­er­al oth­er of his tales), F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s “A Dia­mond as Big as the Ritz,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost Spe­cial,” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Ush­er.” You can lis­ten to almost all its broad­casts, which mix then-new writ­ers in with the estab­lished or already can­on­ized ones, at the Inter­net Archive. (Stream all the episodes right above or find them here.) “Escape brings togeth­er every­thing that was good about old-time radio dra­ma rolled into one,” say the notes there, call­ing each episode “a micro dra­ma care­ful­ly planned to cap­ture the lis­ten­er’s atten­tion for thir­ty min­utes.”

“Many of the sto­ries were lat­er reused by more high pro­file shows such as Sus­pense, but on the whole the Escape ver­sions were of equal qual­i­ty and some­times more dra­mat­i­cal­ly focused and atmos­pher­ic. When Radio Life wrote ‘These sto­ries all pos­sess many times the real­i­ty that most radio writ­ing con­veys,’ it hit the nail on the head.” At the time, the show’s cre­ators must have con­stant­ly wor­ried that all their spon­sor­ship trou­bles and time-slot changes would keep the show from last­ing, but even lis­ten­ers now, more than six­ty years after the Gold­en Age of radio and with our own con­cerns about egg prices and hous­ing short­ages, can find in it a qual­i­ty of escapism still unmatched by most pop­u­lar cul­ture.

Find oth­er vin­tage radio dra­mas in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 90+ Episodes of Sus­pense, the Icon­ic Gold­en Age Radio Show Launched by Alfred Hitch­cock

Hear 22-Year-Old Orson Welles Star in The Shad­ow, the Icon­ic 1930s Super Crime­fight­er Radio Show

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

X Minus One: More Clas­sic 1950s Sci-Fi Radio from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

Hear Ray Bradbury’s Beloved Sci-Fi Sto­ries as Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear Young Bob Dylan, Before Releasing His First Album, Tell Amazing Tales About Growing Up in a Carnival

in Music | June 28th, 2016

Back in 2012, we fea­tured a young Bob Dylan talk­ing and play­ing on The Studs Terkel radio show in 1963. Open Cul­ture’s Mike Springer pref­aced the inter­view with these words, “Dylan had just fin­ished record­ing the songs for his sec­ond album, The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan, when he trav­eled from New York to Chica­go to play a gig at a lit­tle place part­ly owned by his man­ag­er, Albert Gross­man, called The Bear Club. The next day he went to the WFMT stu­dios for the hour-long appear­ance on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram. Most sources give the date of the inter­view as April 26, 1963, though Dylan schol­ar Michael Krogs­gaard has giv­en it as May 3.” In talk­ing with Studs, Dylan told some tall tales (schol­ars say) about his youth, ones that would have made Huck­le­ber­ry Finn proud. And that ten­den­cy to cre­ate an alter­na­tive biog­ra­phy is on dis­play again in an even ear­li­er inter­view, dat­ing back to March 11, 1962.

Ani­mat­ed by Blank on Blank above, the (excerpt­ed) inter­view lets us hear Dylan, only 20 years old, before the release of his epony­mous debut album, and before achiev­ing any kind of fame. Young Dylan tells Cyn­thia Good­ing, host of the “Folksinger’s Choice” radio pro­gram in NYC, about the six years he spent with the car­ni­val.

I was with the car­ni­val off and on for about six years… I was clean-up boy, I used to be on the main line, on the fer­ris wheel, uh, do just run rides. I used to do all kinds of stuff like that… And I did­n’t go to school a bunch of years and I skipped this and I skipped that.

Lat­er he con­tin­ued:

I wrote a song once. I’m try­ing to find, a real good song I wrote. An’ it’s about this lady I knew in the car­ni­val. An’ er, they had a side show, I only, I was, this was, Thomas show, Roy B Thomas shows, and there was, they had a freak show in it, you know, and all the midgets and all that kind of stuff. An’ there was one lady in there real­ly bad shape. Like her skin had been all burned when she was a lit­tle baby, you know, and it did­n’t grow right, and so she was like a freak. An’ all these peo­ple would pay mon­ey, you know, to come and see and … er … that real­ly sort of got to me, you know. They’d come and see, and I mean, she was very, she did­n’t real­ly look like nor­mal, she had this fun­ny kind of skin and they passed her of as the ele­phant lady. And, er, like she was just burned com­plete­ly since she was a lit­tle baby, er.

You can hear a near­ly com­plete audio record­ing of the inter­view (55 min­utes) below, and read a tran­script of the full inter­view on Expect­ing Rain.

Over on Spo­ti­fy, you can hear the 11 songs that Dylan played for Good­ing that day.

They include sev­er­al that Dylan wrote, along with some old folk and blues songs:

1. “(I Heard That) Lone­some Whis­tle” (Hank Williams/Jimmie Davis)
2. “Fix­in’ to Die” (Buk­ka White)
3. “Smoke­stack Ligh­n­ing” (Howl­in’ Wolf)
4. “Hard Trav­elin’ ” (Woody Guthrie)
5. “The Death of Emmett Till”  (Bob Dylan)
6. “Stand­ing on the High­way” (Bob Dylan)
7. “Roll on John” (Rufus Crisp)
8. “Stealin’ ” (tra­di­tion­al)
9. “It Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad” (tra­di­tion­al)
10. “Baby, Please Don’t Go” (Big Joe Williams)
11. “Hard Times in New York Town” (Bob Dylan)

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:

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist PoemThe Waste Land

Bob Dylan & The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987: Hear 74 Tracks

Hear Anaïs Nin Read From Her Celebrated Diary: A 60-Minute Vintage Recording (1966)

in Books, Letters | June 28th, 2016

Image by George Leite, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

At one time, writer Anaïs Nin’s rep­u­ta­tion large­ly rest­ed on her pas­sion­ate, long-term love affair with nov­el­ist Hen­ry Miller, whom she also finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed while he wrote his best-known nov­els and became, writes Sady Doyle, a “dar­ling of the avant-garde.” Nin her­self was a mar­gin­al­ized, “unfash­ion­able” writer, whose “frank por­tray­als of ille­gal abor­tions, extra­mar­i­tal affairs and incest” brought such crit­i­cal oppro­bri­um down on her that “by 1954, Nin believed the entire pub­lish­ing indus­try saw her as a joke.” She had good rea­son to think so.

Miller’s noto­ri­ous­ly cen­sored books won him cult lit­er­ary sta­tus, and inspired the Beats, Nor­man Mail­er, Philip Roth, and many more hedo­nis­tic male writ­ers seek­ing to turn their lives into art. Nin’s equal­ly explic­it work was met, she lament­ed, “with indif­fer­ence, with insults.” Crit­ics either ignored her nov­els, sev­er­al of them self-pub­lished, or dis­missed them as vul­gar, art­less, and worse. One head­line, Doyle notes, called Nin “a mon­ster of self-cen­tered­ness whose artis­tic pre­ten­tions now seem grotesque.”

All of that changed when Nin pub­lished the first vol­ume of her diary in 1966. There­after, she achieved glob­al fame as a fem­i­nist icon, and the next ten years saw the pub­li­ca­tion of an addi­tion­al six vol­umes of her jour­nals, then sev­er­al more excerpts after her death in 1977. Most notably, Hen­ry and June appeared in 1986 (sub­se­quent­ly made into a film by Philip Kauf­man), a book which—in con­junc­tion with the pub­li­ca­tion of her and Miller’s let­ters the fol­low­ing year—fur­ther added to the mythol­o­gy of the two pas­sion­ate­ly erot­ic writ­ers.

Nin had kept her diaries reli­gious­ly since age 11, and has become known as “modernity’s most pro­lif­ic and per­cep­tive diarist,” writes Maria Popo­va, a dis­tinc­tion that has led to a tremen­dous resur­gence in pop cul­ture pop­u­lar­i­ty in our time, when well-craft­ed self-rev­e­la­tion is de rigeur for artists, activists, online per­son­al­i­ties, and aspi­rants of all kinds. Hen­ry Miller is now “a mar­gin­al­ized and large­ly for­got­ten Amer­i­can writer” (or so claims his biog­ra­ph­er Arthur Hoyle), and Nin has become a “patron saint of social media,” writes Doyle, a “pro­to-Lena-Dun­ham.” Pithy quo­ta­tions from her diaries—properly cred­it­ed or not—constantly cir­cu­late on Tum­blr, Face­book, and Twit­ter.

A new gen­er­a­tion just dis­cov­er­ing Anaïs Nin can access her work in any num­ber of ways—from hip, meme-heavy Tum­blr accounts like Fuck Yeah Anais Nin to more for­mal online venues like the Anais Nin Blog, which aggre­gates biogra­phies, pod­casts, schol­ar­ship, bib­li­ogra­phies, con­tro­ver­sies, and any­thing else one might want to know about the author. Anaïs Nin fans can also hear the author her­self read from her famous diary in the audio here. At the top of the post, hear Nin’s read­ing, record­ed in ’66, the year of the first volume’s pub­li­ca­tion. The com­plete record­ing runs about 60 min­utes.

After the acclaim of Nin’s diaries, and the celebri­ty she enjoyed in her last decade, her rep­u­ta­tion once again suf­fered, posthu­mous­ly, as biog­ra­phers and crit­ics sav­aged her life and work in moral­is­tic tor­rents of what would today be called “slut-sham­ing.” But Nin is now once again right­ly revered as a writer ful­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the art, no mat­ter the recep­tion or the audi­ence. The aston­ish­ing stream of words that flowed from her, record­ing every detail of her expe­ri­ences, “seems noth­ing less than phe­nom­e­nal,” wrote Noel Young of Nin’s non­stop let­ter writ­ing. When it came to the detailed, insight­ful, and acute­ly philo­soph­i­cal record­ing of her life, “the act of writ­ing may have even sur­passed the act of liv­ing.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975)

Hen­ry Miller Makes a List of “The 100 Books That Influ­enced Me Most”

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

Colorful Animation Visualizes 200 Years of Immigration to the U.S. (1820-Present)

in History | June 28th, 2016

Many of us, whether born there, resid­ing there, or just inter­est­ed in the place, describe the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca as “a nation of immi­grants.” What exact­ly that phrase means has in recent times become the sub­ject of heat­ed pub­lic debate. As this year’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates strain to appeal to vot­ers with a wide vari­ety of views on the ques­tion of what role immi­gra­tion should play in Amer­i­ca’s future (to say noth­ing of what’s going on in Britain right now), it might help to look at what role immi­gra­tion has played in its past, and a new ani­mat­ed info­graph­ic of who has immi­grat­ed from where since 1820 gives the clear­est pos­si­ble look at the whole pic­ture.

“Through most of the 1800s, immi­gra­tion came pre­dom­i­nant­ly from West­ern Europe (Ire­land, Ger­many, the U.K.),” writes the data visu­al­iza­tion’s cre­ator Max Gal­ka at Metro­cosm. “Toward the end of the cen­tu­ry, coun­tries fur­ther east in Europe (Italy, Rus­sia, Hun­gary) took over as the largest source of migra­tion. Begin­ning in the ear­ly 1900’s, most immi­grants arrived from the Amer­i­c­as (Cana­da, Mex­i­co). And the last few decades have seen a rise in migra­tion from Asia.”

Each col­ored dot fly­ing toward the U.S. rep­re­sents a part of that coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion, and the bright­ness of a coun­try’s col­or on the map cor­re­sponds to its total migra­tion to the U.S. at that par­tic­u­lar time. Gal­ka pro­vides oth­er charts that show immi­gra­tion flows by coun­try of ori­gin over time, which makes immi­gra­tion look high­er than ever, and then the same data as a per­cent­age of the total pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States, which makes it look almost low­er than ever. (And as an Amer­i­can who moved to Korea last year, I can’t help but ask whether we should now give as much thought to emi­gra­tion out of the U.S. as we have to immi­gra­tion into it.)

To real­ly feel the advan­tages and com­pli­ca­tions of the nation of immi­grants first-hand, you’ll want to spend time in a major Amer­i­can city, those always vibrant, often trou­bled places that peo­ple like The Wire cre­ator David Simon have ded­i­cat­ed them­selves to observ­ing. “You look at what New Orleans is capa­ble of, as a prod­uct of the Amer­i­can melt­ing pot, and it’s glo­ri­ous,” he once said. “It’s in the fric­tion and in the dynam­ic between the var­i­ous groups that inhab­it a city that cre­ativ­i­ty real­ly hap­pens. What makes cities work is a lev­el of tol­er­ance and human endeav­or and wit that is absolute­ly required on the part of all peo­ple. Whether or not we suc­ceed as an urban peo­ple is the only ques­tion worth ask­ing.” And in Amer­i­ca, an urban peo­ple has always been a diverse peo­ple.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Audio: Albert Ein­stein Explains “Why I Am an Amer­i­can” on Day He Pass­es Cit­i­zen­ship Test (1940)

Noam Chom­sky on Whether the Rise of Trump Resem­bles the Rise of Fas­cism in 1930s Ger­many

Brex­it 101: The UK’s Stun­ning Vote Explained in 4 Min­utes

The Syr­i­an Con­flict & The Euro­pean Refugee Cri­sis Explained in an Ani­mat­ed Primer

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Photographer Bill Cunningham (RIP) on Living La Vie Boheme Above Carnegie Hall

in Design, Life, Media, Photography | June 27th, 2016

New York City lost some of its charm this week­end, with the news that Bill Cun­ning­ham, the Times’ beloved, on-the-street fash­ion pho­tog­ra­ph­er, had passed away at the age of 87.

Much has been made over the fact that he was des­ig­nat­ed a liv­ing land­mark by the New York Land­marks Con­ser­van­cy. It’s an hon­or he earned, hit­ting the streets dai­ly in his usu­al mufti of khakis, sneak­ers, and bleu de tra­vail cot­ton jack­et to hunt his quar­ry by bicy­cle, but one could nev­er accuse him of court­ing it.

His employ­er fre­quent­ly sent him to cov­er the elite, but he had no inter­est in join­ing their ranks, despite his own grow­ing celebri­ty. His “Evening Hours” col­umn doc­u­ment­ed the dressed up doings on the “par­ty cir­cuit.” (This liv­ing New York land­mark nev­er shook his Boston accent, one of the chief delights of his week­ly video series for the Times.) A recent install­ment sug­gests that shoot­ing the likes of actress Nicole Kid­man and Vogue Edi­tor-in-Chief Anna Win­tour dur­ing tony pri­vate func­tions at MoMA and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art (“aht”) was far less excit­ing than encoun­ter­ing col­or­ful­ly clad Himalayan dancers and a children’s craft table at an entire­ly free Sun­day after­noon street fair spon­sored by the Rubin Muse­um of Art.

Play­wright Win­ter Miller shared this anec­dote the morn­ing Cunningham’s death was announced:

…he did­n’t give a fk about who was famous or not. I once met Bill Mur­ray in the lob­by of the old New York Times build­ing. He’d shown up to see if he could track down a pho­to of him and his then-wife that Bill had shot. I brought one Bill to the oth­er, but Bill (Cun­ning­ham) was out on the streets with his blue jack­et, white bike and cam­era. When he returned, I explained how I’d come to take Bill Mur­ray under my wing to help him track down this pho­to. Bill had no idea who Bill Mur­ray was and not unkind­ly told me (that) none of his pho­tos were dig­i­tal, so it would involve him per­son­al­ly dig­ging through old files and he did­n’t have time. I admired that he knew his pri­or­i­ties and nev­er strayed from his task. I had been eager to get Bill Mur­ray the thing he’d want­ed and would have combed though vast files myself… but I nev­er looked. Bill Cun­ning­ham’s files were impen­e­tra­ble to an out­sider.

One likes to think that Mur­ray, who’s known for using his fame as his tick­et to hang with ordi­nary mor­tals, would find much to love about that.

In fact, Mur­ray strikes me as the per­fect can­di­date to play Cun­ning­ham in a biopic cov­er­ing the six decades spent liv­ing and work­ing in a stu­dio over Carnegie Hall. As far as I know, Bill Cun­ning­ham New York, a fea­ture length doc­u­men­tary, is the only time his sto­ry has been cap­tured on the sil­ver screen. How can it be that no one has thought to make a movie cen­tered on the lost bohemi­an peri­od Cun­ning­ham recalls so fond­ly in the slideshow above? It sounds like an Amer­i­can spin on the Lost Generation—sneaking down to the unlocked stage for pho­tog­ra­ph­er Edit­ta Sher­man’s impromp­tu ama­teur per­for­mances of The Dying Swan, an elder­ly cir­cus per­former and her dog roam­ing the halls on a uni­cy­cle, some­one always in a state of undress…

Per­haps Murray’s fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor, Wes Ander­son, could be enlist­ed to set these wheels in motion. The col­or­ful cast of char­ac­ters seem tai­lor-made for this direc­tor, already a fash­ion world favorite.

The hats alone!

Pri­or to acquir­ing an Olym­pus Pen D half-frame cam­era from a friend in 1966, Cun­ning­ham worked as a milliner. Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe used to crack her­self up, try­ing them on in between class­es at the Actor’s Stu­dio. The wife of a Carnegie Hall neigh­bor and Cunningham’s boss, fash­ion pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ray Solowin­s­ki, served as his mod­el. After he was estab­lished as a fash­ion expert in his own right, Cun­ning­ham admit­ted that his designs were “a lit­tle too exot­ic – you know, for nor­mal peo­ple”.

I think they’re won­der­ful, and hope­ful­ly, Bill Mur­ray, Wes Ander­son and you will agree. See below. I think they’re won­der­ful, and hope­ful­ly, Bill Mur­ray, Wes Ander­son and you will agree. Hats off to the inim­itable Bill Cun­ning­ham, as much a fix­ture of New York as Carnegie Hall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice for Aspir­ing Pho­tog­ra­phers: Skip the Fan­cy Equip­ment & Just Shoot

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Jazz Pho­tog­ra­phy and The Film He Almost Made About Jazz Under Nazi Rule

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

Free: Hear 24 Hours of Noam Chomsky’s Lectures & Talks on the Powers That Subvert Our Democracies

in Politics | June 27th, 2016

Noam Chom­sky is opti­mistic. Yes, the world seems to teeter on the brink of… well, name your dystopi­an sce­nario, but Noam Chom­sky is opti­mistic. The same Chom­sky who, for decades, has sought to show the myr­i­ad ways our most revered insti­tu­tions are large­ly sham oper­a­tions behind which pow­er­ful elites con­duct secret wars, pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, and con­cert­ed efforts to defraud the peo­ple and dis­able demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es… well, he tells us, in a recent inter­view with James Resnick, that we too “can be very opti­mistic. Things like this have hap­pened before and they’ve been over­come.”

By “things like this,” the renowned lin­guist and anar­chist polit­i­cal philoso­pher specif­i­cal­ly means astound­ing lev­els of wealth inequal­i­ty and the ascen­den­cy, once again, of far-right extrem­ism in Europe and the U.S., a phe­nom­e­non he first observed in the years pri­or to World War II. Chom­sky began his career of social and polit­i­cal cri­tique in 1938 at the age of 10, “writ­ing arti­cles for the school news­pa­per on the rise of fas­cism in Europe and the threats to the world as I saw them.”

He went on to com­plete­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ize the field of lin­guis­tics, an achieve­ment that, stun­ning­ly, can seem sec­ondary to his polit­i­cal writ­ing and activism, giv­en the sheer num­ber of his books, essays, inter­views, and speech­es crit­i­cal of state pow­er, war, and media manip­u­la­tion over the past sev­er­al decades. (Some of his books you can read free online here.) I sup­pose if Chom­sky weren’t some­thing of an opti­mist, he would have giv­en up a long time ago. He tells Resnik what keeps him going:

The things I con­sid­er inspir­ing is see­ing peo­ple strug­gling: poor suf­fer­ing peo­ple, with lim­it­ed resources, strug­gling to real­ly achieve any­thing. Some of them are very inspir­ing. For exam­ple, a remote very poor vil­lage in south­ern Colom­bia orga­niz­ing to try to pre­vent a Cana­di­an gold-min­ing oper­a­tion from destroy­ing their water sup­ply and the envi­ron­ment; mean­while, fend­ing off para-mil­i­tary and mil­i­tary vio­lence and so on. That kind of thing which you see all over the world is very inspir­ing.

Are you inspired? Maybe it depends on how many of these grass­roots strug­gles you’ve wit­nessed. The world­wide, ground-lev­el resis­tance Chom­sky describes—and refers to again and again in his polit­i­cal work—is large­ly hid­den from us, by a mass media that sees no dol­lar val­ue in it, or per­haps obscures it for more sin­is­ter rea­sons. As Chom­sky has argued since the sixties—most com­pre­hen­sive­ly in his 1988 Man­u­fac­tur­ing Con­sent with Edward S. Herman—the cam­paigns of war and eco­nom­ic depre­da­tion con­duct­ed by the West against minori­ties, indige­nous peo­ple, and small nations around the world most­ly occur with the con­sent of West­ern peo­ple: a con­sent man­u­fac­tured by a mas­sive pro­pa­gan­da oper­a­tion called the Free Press.

His posi­tion should not sound espe­cial­ly con­tro­ver­sial to any­one who has paid the least bit of atten­tion in the last few years. The seem­ing col­lu­sion of respect­ed news orga­ni­za­tions like The Wash­ing­ton Post and The New York Times in the push for the sec­ond Iraq War led to well over a decade of post-hoc intro­spec­tion by jour­nal­ists. Recent months have seen those same organs—for per­haps more bald­ly prof­it-seek­ing motives—provide a cou­ple of bil­lion dol­lars-worth of free PR for Don­ald Trump, a can­di­date who has on mul­ti­ple occa­sions threat­ened to retal­i­ate against the press for any crit­i­cism, and who recent­ly revoked the Post’s cre­den­tials to cov­er his events. (A recent Har­vard study con­clud­ed that dur­ing this pro­tract­ed, ugly pri­ma­ry sea­son, “the press became [Trump’s] depend­able if unwit­ting ally.”)

As in these exam­ples, the role of the British press in spread­ing fear and mis­in­for­ma­tion pri­or to this month’s Brex­it vote has become its own sig­nif­i­cant sto­ry. We con­stant­ly see the press turn­ing in ago­nized cir­cles, try­ing to come to grips with its com­plic­i­ty in push­ing var­i­ous agen­das. Whether or not main­stream media orga­ni­za­tions take direct orders from gov­ern­ment bod­ies or eco­nom­ic elites, they accede to the inter­ests of the pow­er­ful all the same, and they wield enor­mous influ­ence over a vot­ing pub­lic who depend upon them for infor­ma­tion. The sit­u­a­tion presents a seri­ous prob­lem for the health of a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy, which itself depends upon an informed and edu­cat­ed elec­torate.

But as Chom­sky has often argued—drawing as always on pri­ma­ry sources and direct­ly quot­ing the West’s most influ­en­tial polit­i­cal philoso­phers, pol­i­cy archi­tects, and busi­ness leaders—elites since the 17th and 18th cen­turies have inten­tion­al­ly thwart­ed the abil­i­ty of the pub­lic to make informed deci­sions, and have shut the pop­u­lace out of the most impor­tant deci­sion-mak­ing process­es. As he wrote in his 1999 cri­tique of Neolib­er­al­ism, Prof­it Over Peo­ple, “the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion must be exclud­ed entire­ly from the eco­nom­ic are­na, where what hap­pens in the soci­ety is large­ly deter­mined. Here the pub­lic is to have no role, accord­ing to pre­vail­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic the­o­ry.”

Chom­sky fol­lows this line of rea­son­ing in his talk “When Elites Fail,” at the top of the post, deliv­ered as the keynote address for the Eco­con­ver­gence Con­fer­ence in Port­land, Ore­gon in 2009. You can also hear this talk, along with 19 oth­ers, in the Spo­ti­fy playlist just above—a total of 24 hours of Chom­skyan social, polit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic analy­sis, deliv­ered by the man him­self in his calm, mea­sured, under­stat­ed way. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.) Chom­sky address­es “The Tyran­ny of Cor­po­ra­tions,” the “U.S. Media as Pro­pa­gan­da Sys­tem,” “Pol­i­tics and Lan­guage,” “Iraq: The For­ev­er War,” and more—levying crit­i­cisms against the sys­tems of pow­er, whether Repub­li­can, Demo­c­ra­t­ic, or inter­na­tion­al, that dogged­ly seek to increase their domains and, in the approv­ing words of James Madi­son, to “pro­tect the minor­i­ty of the opu­lent against the major­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky on Whether the Rise of Trump Resem­bles the Rise of Fas­cism in 1930s Ger­many

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

Read 9 Free Books By Noam Chom­sky Online

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

And Now for Some Culinary Weirdness: Christopher Walken Shows You How to Cook Chicken & Pears

in Comedy, Film, Food & Drink | June 27th, 2016

I don’t need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own. 

- Christo­pher Walken

Five years ago, actor Christo­pher Walken casu­al­ly shared a sim­ple recipe for roast chick­en with pears, above. The light­ing was ama­teur, his imple­ments fair­ly util­i­tar­i­an, and, much to my grat­i­fi­ca­tion, he could­n’t keep his cat off the counter, either.

His impro­vised pat­ter was as non­cha­lant as his han­dling of his ingre­di­ents. Unde­terred, legions of fans still found plen­ty of Walken-esque quotes with which to spice up the video’s com­ments sec­tion.

Chalk it up to the dozens of soft spo­ken, seri­ous­ly unhinged char­ac­ters on which this actor’s rep­u­ta­tion rests. It’s painful­ly easy to imag­ine a rival gang mem­ber or law enforce­ment offi­cial lashed to a chair just off cam­era, squirm­ing in ter­ror as Walken paus­es to appre­ci­ate the “lit­tle cook­ies” the caramelized pears leave behind on the bot­tom of his pan.

What­ev­er he’s plan­ning to do to this imag­i­nary unfor­tu­nate, one hopes it won’t involve flaps of skin and a ver­ti­cal poul­try roast­er.

As to the recipe, it’s as deli­cious as it is innocu­ous. Try it!

If you’re feel­ing less than adven­tur­ous, you can decrease the creep fac­tor by repli­cat­ing the shoot with a grand­fa­ther­ly gent of your choos­ing pri­or to serv­ing. (Any­one who’s not Christo­pher Walken will do.)

If you’re look­ing for fur­ther serv­ing sug­ges­tions, the com­e­dy chan­nel Fun­ny or Die revis­it­ed the dish in 2012, pair­ing it with sal­ad, seafood melange, red wine, Law & Order: Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit star Richard Belz­er, and two heav­i­ly made up assis­tants who appear to be on loan from Robert Palmer’s “Addict­ed to Love” video.

Things get cook­ing with a vis­it to the Byzan­tine Stew Leonard’s super­mar­ket, and end with a cell phone pic of Walken’s nose. There’s a live man­dolin ser­e­nade and the kitchen seems vast­ly more expen­sive, but I found myself miss­ing the homey sense of fore­bod­ing cre­at­ed by the orig­i­nal.

Still, one can nev­er go wrong with poul­try and pears.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Walken Reads The Three Lit­tle Pigs, The Raven, and a Lit­tle Lady Gaga

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price & Christo­pher Lee

How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Wis­dom of Michael Pol­lan

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

What Does “Kafkaesque” Really Mean? A Short Animated Video Explains

in Literature | June 24th, 2016

We derive adjec­tives from great writ­ers’ names meant to encap­su­late entire philoso­phies or modes of expres­sion. We have the Home­r­ic, the Shake­speare­an, the Joycean, etc. Two such adjec­tives that seem to apply most to our con­tem­po­rary con­di­tion sad­ly express much dark­er, more cramped visions than these: “Orwellian” and “Kafkaesque.” These adjec­tives also—suggests writer Noah Tavlin—name two of the most mis­un­der­stood of autho­r­i­al visions. In a TED­Ed video last year, Tavlin attempt­ed to clear up con­fu­sion about the “Orwellian,” a term that’s tossed around by pun­dits like a polit­i­cal Fris­bee.

Tavlin returns in the video above to explain the mean­ing of “Kafkaesque,” a less-abused descrip­tor but one we still may not ful­ly appre­ci­ate. He begins with a brief sum­ma­ry of Kafka’s nov­el The Tri­al, in which “K, the pro­tag­o­nist, is arrest­ed out of nowhere and made to go through a bewil­der­ing process where nei­ther the cause of his arrest nor the nature of the judi­cial pro­ceed­ings are made clear to him.” The sce­nario is “con­sid­ered so char­ac­ter­is­tic of Kafka’s work” that schol­ars use the term “Kafkaesque” to describe it. Kafkaesque has become evoca­tive of all “unnec­es­sar­i­ly com­pli­cat­ed and frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ences, like being forced to nav­i­gate labyrinths of bureau­cra­cy.”

But the word is much rich­er than such casu­al usage as describ­ing a trip to the DMV.

Tavlin ref­er­ences Kafka’s short sto­ry “Posei­den,” in which the god of the sea can nei­ther explore nor enjoy his realm because he is buried under moun­tains of paper­work. In truth, he is “a pris­on­er of his own ego,” unwill­ing to del­e­gate because he sees his under­lings as unwor­thy of the task. This sto­ry, Tavlin argues, “con­tains all of the ele­ments that make for a tru­ly Kafkaesque sce­nario.”

It’s not the absur­di­ty of bureau­cra­cy alone, but the irony of the character’s cir­cu­lar rea­son­ing in reac­tion to it, that is emblem­at­ic of Kafka’s writ­ing. His tragi­com­ic sto­ries act as a form of mythol­o­gy for the mod­ern indus­tri­al age, employ­ing dream log­ic to explore the rela­tion­ships between sys­tems of arbi­trary pow­er and the indi­vid­u­als caught up in them.

Tavlin refers to The Meta­mor­pho­sis and “A Hunger Artist” as fur­ther exam­ples of how Kafka’s char­ac­ters over­com­pli­cate their own lives through their fanat­i­cal, sin­gu­lar devo­tion to absurd con­di­tions.

But as Tavlin admits lat­er in the video, the bewil­der­ing mech­a­nisms of pow­er in sto­ries such as The Tri­al also “point to some­thing much more sinister”—the idea that arcane bureau­cra­cies become self-per­pet­u­at­ing and oper­ate inde­pen­dent­ly of the peo­ple sup­pos­ed­ly in pow­er, who are them­selves reduced to func­tionar­ies of mys­te­ri­ous, unac­count­able forces. Tavlin quotes Han­nah Arendt, who stud­ied the total­i­tar­i­an night­mares Kaf­ka pre­scient­ly fore­saw, and wrote of “tyran­ny with­out a tyrant.” More recent­ly, philoso­pher Manuel De Lan­da has the­o­rized increas­ing­ly com­plex, imper­son­al sys­tems oper­at­ing with lit­tle need for human inter­ven­tion. His War in the Age of Intel­li­gent Machines, for exam­ple, imag­ines mod­ern war­fare as the evolv­ing oper­a­tions of more-or-less self-orga­niz­ing weapons sys­tems. The­o­rists fre­quent­ly observe that the speed of tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment now pro­ceeds at such a dizzy­ing­ly expo­nen­tial rate that it will soon sur­pass our abil­i­ty to con­trol or under­stand it at all. Per­haps, as Tesla’s Elon Musk sug­gests, we our­selves are no more than oper­a­tions in a com­plex sys­tem, sim­u­lat­ed beings inside a com­put­er pro­gram.

But sce­nar­ios like De Landa’s and Musk’s are also not the Kafkaesque, for these the­o­rists of mod­ern tech­noc­ra­cy lack a key fea­ture of Kafka’s vision—his dark, tragi­com­ic, absur­dist sense of humor, which per­me­ates even his bleak­est visions. On the one hand, Tavlin says, we “rely on increas­ing­ly con­vo­lut­ed sys­tems of admin­is­tra­tion” and find our­selves judged and ruled over “by peo­ple we can’t see accord­ing to rules we don’t know”—a sit­u­a­tion bound to pro­voke pro­found anx­i­ety and psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress. On the oth­er hand, Kafka’s atten­tion to the absurd, “reflects our short­com­ings back at our­selves,” remind­ing us that “the world we live in is one we cre­at­ed.” I’m not so sure, as Tavlin con­cludes, that Kaf­ka believed we have the “pow­er to change for the bet­ter” the over­com­pli­cat­ed sys­tems we bare­ly under­stand. Kafka’s com­ic vision, I think, ulti­mate­ly par­takes in what Miguel de Una­muno called “the trag­ic sense of life.” But he does not ful­ly deny his char­ac­ters all free­dom of choice, even if they fre­quent­ly have no idea what it is they’re choos­ing between or why.

Note: You can down­load essen­tial works by Franz Kaf­ka as free audio­books if you sign up for a 30-Day Free Tri­al with Audi­ble. You get two free audio­books with each tri­al. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What “Orwellian” Real­ly Means: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son About the Use & Abuse of the Term

Franz Kaf­ka: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to His Lit­er­ary Genius

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Four Franz Kaf­ka Ani­ma­tions: Enjoy Cre­ative Ani­mat­ed Shorts from Poland, Japan, Rus­sia & Cana­da

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

A Wonderful Archive of Historic Transit Maps: Expressive Art Meets Precise Graphic Design

in Maps | June 24th, 2016

Any­one who loves cities almost cer­tain­ly loves tran­sit maps: for well over a cen­tu­ry, they’ve not only played an essen­tial role in the nav­i­ga­tion of urban spaces but devel­oped into their very own dis­tinc­tive form at the inter­sec­tion of util­i­ty and aes­thet­ics. The finest exam­ples simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pos­sess the clar­i­ty and infor­ma­tion-rich­ness of the best graph­ic design and hold out promis­es of excite­ment and moder­ni­ty that require a true artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty to prop­er­ly express. None of this is lost on Cameron Booth, the Aus­tralian graph­ic design­er liv­ing in Port­land, Ore­gon who runs the site Tran­sit Maps.

“A well designed tran­sit map con­veys a lot of infor­ma­tion in a very small space,” writes Booth on the site’s About page. “In an instant, we learn how to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’, sim­ply by fol­low­ing some coloured lines. The very best maps become sym­bols of their city, admired and loved by all.” None have become quite so sym­bol­ic as the map of the Lon­don Under­ground, the old­est sub­way sys­tem in the world, and Tran­sit Maps’ posts filed under the Lon­don Under­ground tag, such as the 1929 cut­away dia­gram of its Pic­cadil­ly Cir­cus sta­tion by Ital­ian archi­tect and urban design­er Ren­zo Picas­so just above pro­vide plen­ty of good read­ing — and even bet­ter view­ing — for its many enthu­si­asts.

Among Amer­i­can cities, no sub­way sys­tem has a more respect­ed map than Wash­ing­ton, DC’s, the work of graph­ic design­er Lance Wyman, for whom it has remained a work in progress: he over­saw a redesign just five years ago, almost forty years after the sys­tem went into ser­vice and his orig­i­nal map made its debut. Here we have one of Wyman’s orig­i­nal work­ing sketch­es for the map straight from his note­book. “Inter­est­ing­ly, it looks like Wyman was exper­i­ment­ing with tex­tur­al treat­ments for the route lines at this time,” adds Booth, “an idea I’m ever so glad he aban­doned, because it would have looked so busy and hideous.”

Hav­ing seen many more tran­sit maps than most, and even hav­ing designed some of his own (includ­ing a rework­ing of the DC Metro map), Booth does­n’t hes­i­tate to point out both the virtues and the flaws of the ones he posts. He even grades them on a star rat­ing sys­tem (with, of course, cir­cu­lar Lon­don Under­ground logos sub­sti­tut­ing for actu­al stars), col­lect­ing the very best under the five-star tag. One such pas­sage with fly­ing col­ors, the 1950s York­shire coast train map at the top of the post, has Booth exclaim­ing that “they don’t make ‘em like this any more. The 1908 bird’s-eye view of Chica­go, source of the leg­end above, scores its own five stars by “minute atten­tion to detail,” down to the inclu­sion of “smoke curls from fac­to­ry chim­neys” and “almost every tree in the city’s parks.”

Few cities have attract­ed as much atten­tion from map­mak­ers as New York, pos­si­bly due to all its won­ders — or at least those are what IBM graph­ic design­er Nils Hansell empha­sizes in his mid-1950s map “Won­ders of New York” which, despite not look­ing far past Man­hat­tan, does include tran­sit and much else besides: Booth men­tions its depic­tion of “300-odd num­bered points of inter­est” as well as “the last ves­tiges of New York’s once-exten­sive ele­vat­ed rail­way lines.” You need quite a high-def­i­n­i­tion scan to real­ly appre­ci­ate all this, and Booth found one in the David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

Scroll through the pages and pages of Tran­sit Maps’ his­tor­i­cal tag, and you’ll find a wealth of fas­ci­nat­ing show­pieces of the tran­sit map­per’s art, not just from the Lon­dons and New Yorks of the world, but also from times and places like Berlin in 1931, Madi­son, Wis­con­sin in 1975, and Booth’s own old home­town of Syd­ney in 1950 and new home­town of Port­land in 1978. The archive even includes tran­sit maps from unusu­al places, such as a delight­ful one print­ed on the back of a Japan­ese match­box in the 1920s, and maps for tran­sit sys­tems nev­er com­plet­ed, such as the one for the Bagh­dad Metro from the ear­ly 1980s just above. Iraq’s cap­i­tal may still await a full-ser­vice sub­way sys­tem — and much else besides — but at least its map earns top marks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

Vin­tage Video: A New York City Sub­way Train Trav­els From 14th St. to 42nd Street (1905)

Vladimir Nabokov Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn Map of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Brexit 101: The UK’s Stunning Vote Explained in 4 Minutes

in Current Affairs, Politics | June 23rd, 2016

The Brex­it votes have been count­ed. The Brits have decid­ed to leave the Euro­pean Union. And the finan­cial mar­kets are tak­ing it hard. Right now, futures on the Lon­don stock exchange are down 8%. The pound is down 9.8 per­cent, more than dou­ble its pre­vi­ous record decline of 4.1 per­cent. We’re liv­ing in inter­est­ing times.

No doubt, some of you are sud­den­ly won­der­ing, what exact­ly is Brex­it? And what’s at stake? Up top, you can watch a four-minute primer cre­at­ed by The Wall Street Jour­nal. Bloomberg has its own two-minute ver­sion here (or view below). The Toron­to Star breaks down Brex­it in 13 points. And The Guardian went so far as to cre­ate a guide just for Amer­i­cans. (For any­one who wants to dis­sect the pro­pa­gan­da for leav­ing Brex­it, you can watch the fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary film, Brex­it: The Movie, released last month.) Please feel free to add oth­er primers in the com­ments below.

For Amer­i­cans read­ing this, I’d point out that Brex­it and Trump share some impor­tant things in com­mon: they’re both about putting up walls, plac­ing blame on immi­grants and minori­ties; exploit­ing the resent­ments of the eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged; dis­miss­ing experts and estab­lish­ment fig­ures; and risk­ing upend­ing a frag­ile world order. How Eng­land looks on June 24th is per­haps a small pre­view of how Amer­i­ca might look on Novem­ber 9th. Only there will be tril­lions more at stake.

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!