The First Photo-Illustrated Book, Anna Atkins’ Austerely Beautiful Photographs of British Algae (1843)

in Biology, Books, Photography, Science | January 8th, 2016

Some of our favorite, and most pop­u­lar, posts at Open Cul­ture focus on book illus­tra­tion. From fine art to graph­ic design, from the sub­lime to the ridicu­lous to the pure­ly tech­ni­cal, the art used to visu­al­ize beloved works of lit­er­a­ture and sci­en­tif­ic texts cap­ti­vates us. Per­haps that’s in part because we encounter illus­tra­tion so rarely these days, what with the tri­umph of pho­tog­ra­phy and, now, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal images, which are so easy to cre­ate and repro­duce that too few give suf­fi­cient con­sid­er­a­tion to aes­thet­ic essen­tials. Graph­ic nov­els and comics aside, the care­ful­ly hand-illus­trat­ed book or peri­od­i­cal has become some­thing of a nov­el­ty.

But when we reach back to the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, it was pho­tog­ra­phy that was nov­el and graph­ic art the norm. So what was the sub­ject of the first book to use pho­to­graph­ic illus­tra­tion? Mon­u­ments? Land­scapes? Celebri­ties? No: algae.

Eng­lish botanist Anna Atkins—who is not only cred­it­ed as the first per­son to make a book illus­trat­ed with pho­tographs, but as the first woman to make a photograph—created her hand­made Pho­tographs of British Algae: Cyan­otype Impres­sions in 1843. And though the sub­ject may be less than thrilling, the images them­selves are aus­tere­ly beau­ti­ful.

The sub­ti­tle of the book refers to the process Atkins used to make the images, a tech­nique devel­oped by Sir John Her­schel. “Ear­ly pho­tog­ra­phers,” writes Phil Edwards at Vox, “couldn’t eas­i­ly devel­op their pic­tures.” The tech­niques avail­able proved expen­sive, dan­ger­ous, and unsta­ble. “Her­schel came up with a solu­tion,” Edwards tells us, “using an iron pig­ment called ‘Pruss­ian Blue,’ he laid objects of pho­to­graph­ic neg­a­tives onto chem­i­cal­ly treat­ed paper, exposed them to sun­light for around 15 min­utes, and then washed the paper. The remain­ing image revealed pale blue objects on a dark blue back­ground.” The process, Jonathan Gibbs informs us at The Inde­pen­dent, “had pre­vi­ous­ly been used to repro­duce archi­tec­tur­al draw­ings and designs,” and is, in fact, the ori­gin of the word “blue­print.”

Though “a capa­ble artist,” Edwards writes, Atkins real­ized that Herschel’s cyan­otypes “were a bet­ter way to cap­ture the intri­ca­cies of plant life and avoid the tedium—and error—involved with draw­ing.” British Algae, the BBC tells us, was Atkins’ “most valu­able work” as a nat­u­ral­ist. As the daugh­ter of a sci­en­tist and Roy­al Soci­ety Fel­low, Atkins had fre­quent con­tact with the most well-respect­ed sci­en­tists of the day, includ­ing Her­shel and pho­to­graph­ic pio­neer William Hen­ry Fox Tal­bot. Her “first con­tri­bu­tion to sci­ence was her engrav­ings of shells, used to illus­trate her father’s trans­la­tion of Lamarck’s Gen­era of Shells” in 1823. After­ward, she became inter­est­ed in botany, and algae in par­tic­u­lar, and in the emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy of pho­tog­ra­phy as a means of pre­serv­ing her obser­va­tions.

Pho­tographs of British Algae was cir­cu­lat­ed pri­vate­ly, and Atkins “stopped pro­duc­ing it short­ly after her father died, though she con­tin­ued to make oth­er cyan­otype vol­umes, such as Cyan­otypes of British and For­eign Flow­er­ing Plants and Ferns in 1854. The first com­mer­cial­ly pub­lished book to use the cyan­otype tech­nique was Fox Tal­bot’s The Pen­cil of Nature in 1844. Yet, though Atkins may not have been well-known out­side her small cir­cle, nor her pub­li­ca­tion “regard­ed as a sem­i­nal work in botany,” she has received posthu­mous acclaim, includ­ing per­haps the ulti­mate mark of fame, a Google Doo­dle, in March of 2015 on her 216th birth­day. You can view and down­load in high res­o­lu­tion all of Atkins’ pio­neer­ing pho­to­graph­ic book at the New York Pub­lic Library’s exten­sive online archive — the same archive we fea­tured here yes­ter­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

See the First Known Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

Old Book Illus­tra­tions: Free Archive Lets You Down­load Beau­ti­ful Images From the Gold­en Age of Book Illus­tra­tion

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

The New York Public Library Lets You Download 180,000 Images in High Resolution: Historic Photographs, Maps, Letters & More

in Archives, History, Letters, Literature, Photography | January 7th, 2016

Most of us Open Cul­ture writ­ers and read­ers sure­ly grew up think­ing of the local pub­lic library as an end­less source of fas­ci­nat­ing things. But the New York Pub­lic Library’s col­lec­tions take that to a whole oth­er lev­el, and, so far, they’ve spent the age of the inter­net tak­ing it to a lev­el beyond that, dig­i­tiz­ing ever more of their fas­ci­nat­ing things and mak­ing them freely avail­able for all of our perusal (and even for use in our own work). Just in the past cou­ple of years, we’ve fea­tured their release of 20,000 high-res­o­lu­tion maps, 17,000 restau­rant menus, and lots of the­ater ephemera.

This week, The New York Pub­lic Library (NYPL) announced not only that their dig­i­tal col­lec­tion now con­tains over 180,000 items, but that they’ve made it pos­si­ble, “no per­mis­sion required, no hoops to jump through,” to down­load and use high-res­o­lu­tion images of all of them.

You’ll find on their site “more promi­nent down­load links and fil­ters high­light­ing restric­tion-free con­tent,” and, if you have techi­er inter­ests, “updates to the Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions API enabling bulk use and analy­sis, as well as data exports and util­i­ties post­ed to NYPL’s GitHub account.” You might also con­sid­er apply­ing for the NYPL’s Remix Res­i­den­cy pro­gram, designed to fos­ter “trans­for­ma­tive and cre­ative uses of dig­i­tal col­lec­tions and data, and the pub­lic domain assets in par­tic­u­lar.”

And what do those assets include? Endur­ing pieces of Amer­i­can doc­u­men­tary art like the Farm Secu­ri­ty Admin­is­tra­tion pho­tographs tak­en dur­ing the Great Depres­sion by Dorothea Lange, Walk­er Evans, and Gor­don Parks. Lange’s shot of the Mid­way Dairy Coop­er­a­tive near San­ta Ana, Cal­i­for­nia appears at the top of the post. Arti­facts from the cre­ative process­es of such icons of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture as Hen­ry David Thore­au, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whit­man, whose hand­writ­ten pref­ace to Spec­i­men Days you’ll find sec­ond from the top. The let­ters and oth­er papers of the Found­ing Fathers, includ­ing Thomas Jef­fer­son­’s list of books for a pri­vate library just above. And, of course, all those maps, like the 1868 Plan of New York and Brook­lyn just below.

These selec­tions make the NYPL’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion seem strong­ly Amer­i­ca-focused, and to an extent it is, but apart from host­ing a rich repos­i­to­ry of the his­to­ry, art, and let­ters of the Unit­ed States, it also con­tains such fas­ci­nat­ing inter­na­tion­al mate­ri­als as medieval Euro­pean illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts; 16th-cen­tu­ry hand­scrolls illus­trat­ing The Tale of Gen­ji, the first nov­el; and 19th-cen­tu­ry cyan­otypes of British algae by botanist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Anna Atkins, the first per­son to pub­lish a book illus­trat­ed with pho­tos. You can start your own brows­ing on the NYPL Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions front page, and if you do, you’ll soon find that some­thing else we knew about the library grow­ing up — what good places they make in which to get lost — holds even truer on the inter­net.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

100,000+ Won­der­ful Pieces of The­ater Ephemera Dig­i­tized by The New York Pub­lic Library

Food­ie Alert: New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restau­rant Menus (1851–2008)

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

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.

Bruce Lee’s Only Surviving TV Interview, 1971: Lost and Now Found

in Sports, Television | January 7th, 2016

Bruce Lee’s TV act­ing career began in 1966, when he land­ed a part in The Green Hor­net. (Watch his thrilling audi­tion here). But it took anoth­er five years before he gave his first–and, it turns out, only tele­vi­sion inter­view in Eng­lish. For 25 min­utes in Decem­ber 1971, the mar­tial arts star sat down with Pierre Berton, a Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist, in Hong Kong. And their con­ver­sa­tion cov­ered a fair amount of ground – Lee’s suc­cess star­ring in Man­darin films .… despite only speak­ing Can­tonese; his dif­fi­cul­ty devel­op­ing a career in a coun­try still hos­tile toward Chi­na; and his work train­ing oth­er Hol­ly­wood stars in the mar­tial arts.

Taped in 1971, the inter­view aired only once, then went miss­ing, and was­n’t found until 1994, when it final­ly aired again as a TV spe­cial called ”Bruce Lee: The Lost Inter­view’.’ First fea­tured on Open Cul­ture in 2011, the record­ing is now con­sid­ered his only sur­viv­ing on-cam­era inter­view and/or his only mean­ing­ful inter­view con­duct­ed in Eng­lish. A some­what restored ver­sion can be viewed on Vimeo here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Lee Audi­tions for The Green Hor­net (1964)

The Poet­ry of Bruce Lee: Dis­cov­er the Artis­tic Life of the Mar­tial Arts Icon

Watch 10-Year-Old Bruce Lee in His First Star­ring Role (1950)

The Simpsons Present Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Teachers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Literature

in Animation, Literature | January 7th, 2016

The Simp­sons have mocked or ref­er­enced lit­er­a­ture over its 27 (!!) sea­sons, usu­al­ly through a book Lisa was read­ing, or with guest appear­ances (e.g., Michael Chabon & Jonathan Franzen, Maya Angelou and Amy Tan). And it has ref­er­enced Edgar Allan Poe in both title (“The Tell-Tale Head” from the first sea­son) and in pass­ing (in “Lisa’s Rival” from 1994, the title char­ac­ter builds a dio­ra­ma based on the same Poe tale.)

But on the first ever “Tree­house of Hor­ror” from 1990–the Simp­sons’ recur­ring Hal­loween episode–they adapt­ed Poe’s “The Raven” more faith­ful­ly than any bit of lit found in any oth­er episode. The poem, read by James Earl Jones, remains intact, more or less, but with Dan Castellaneta’s Homer Simp­son pro­vid­ing the unnamed narrator’s voice. Marge makes an appear­ance as the long depart­ed Lenore, with hair so tall it needs an extra can­vas to con­tain it in por­trait. Mag­gie and Lisa are the censer-swing­ing seraphim, and Bart is the annoy­ing raven that dri­ves Homer insane.

Castel­lan­e­ta does a great job deliv­er­ing Poe’s verse with con­vic­tion and humor, while keep­ing the char­ac­ter true to both Homer and Poe. It’s a bal­anc­ing act hard­er than it sounds.

Suf­fice it to say that this for­ay into Poe was good enough for sev­er­al teach­ers guides (includ­ing this one from The New York Times) to sug­gest using the video in class. (We’d love to hear about this if you were a teacher or stu­dent who expe­ri­enced this.) And it’s the first and only time that Poe got co-writ­ing cred­it on a Simp­sons episode.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Watch The Simp­sons’ Hal­loween Par­o­dy of Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

Thomas Pyn­chon Edits His Lines on The Simp­sons: “Homer is my role mod­el and I can’t speak ill of him.”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite Introduces America to Underground Films and the Velvet Underground (1965)

in Film, Music, Television | January 6th, 2016

“Not every­one ‘digs’ under­ground movies, but those who do can ‘dig’ ’em here.” Now imag­ine those words spo­ken in the arche­typ­al so-square-it’s-cool con­sum­mate mid­cen­tu­ry news­cast­er voice — or actu­al­ly watch them enun­ci­at­ed in just that man­ner out on the steps of New York’s The Bridge, “one of sev­er­al small the­aters around the coun­try where ‘under­ground’ films are shown.” The report, which aired on CBS Evening News with Wal­ter Cronkite on Decem­ber 31st, 1965, intro­duced to main­stream Amer­i­cans such avant-garde film­mak­ers as Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, and Andy Warhol — as well as a cer­tain band called the Vel­vet Under­ground.

This six-minute seg­ment spends some time with Piero Helicz­er, film­mak­er, poet, and “once the Jack­ie Coogan of Italy.” As Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Mar­tin Schnei­der writes, “When CBS came a‑callin’ to do its sto­ry, Helicz­er was shoot­ing a 12-minute short called Dirt, fea­tur­ing the Vel­vet Under­ground, and that was the scene Helicz­er hap­pened to be shoot­ing that day. (For some rea­son none of the fel­lows in the band are wear­ing a shirt.)” Schnei­der also quotes Vel­vet Under­ground found­ing mem­ber Ster­ling Mor­ri­son, who cred­its play­ing in Helicz­er’s “hap­pen­ings” with show­ing him the pos­si­bil­i­ties of exper­i­men­tal music: “The path ahead became sud­den­ly clear — I could work on music that was dif­fer­ent from ordi­nary rock & roll since Piero had giv­en us a con­text to per­form.”

I can only imag­ine how the view­ers of fifty years and one week ago must have react­ed to hear­ing these cut­ting-edge film­mak­ers dis­cussing “the nar­ra­tive aspect and the poet­ic aspect” of cin­e­ma, let alone see­ing clips of their works them­selves, right down to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive twen­ty sec­onds of Andy Warhol’s Sleep. It even includes a clip from Brakhage’s Two: Creeley/McClure which must have made more than a few of them won­der if their set had sud­den­ly gone on the blink. But even the most staid of CBS’s audi­ence must have come away with a nov­el idea or two worth think­ing about, such as Brakhage’s stat­ed aim of mak­ing movies “for view­ing in a liv­ing room, rather than in a the­ater.” That, per­haps, they could dig.

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!

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

New Wave Music–DEVO, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello–Gets Intro­duced to Amer­i­ca by ABC’s TV Show, 20/20 (1979)

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.

Brazil Gives Out Books That Double as Subway Tickets, Promoting Literacy & Mass Transit at Once

in Books, Design, Life, Travel | January 6th, 2016

One of the things I miss about liv­ing in a city with a sub­way sys­tem is the myr­i­ad thought­ful design ele­ments that go into man­ag­ing a per­pet­u­al flow of tourists and com­muters. New York’s sub­way map presents us with an icon­ic tan­gle of inter­lock­ing trib­u­taries resem­bling dia­grams of a cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tem. The NYC system’s inge­nious­ly sim­ple graph­ic pre­sen­ta­tion of let­tered and num­bered trains, encir­cled in their cor­re­spond­ing col­ors, can be read by most any­one with a rudi­men­ta­ry grasp on the Eng­lish alphabet—from a new lan­guage learn­er to a small child. The Wash­ing­ton, DC sub­way sys­tem, though a much more pro­sa­ic affair over­all, whisks rid­ers through impres­sive­ly cav­ernous, cat­a­comb-like sta­tions, with bru­tal­ist tile and con­crete hon­ey­combs that seem to go on for­ev­er. The squig­gly lines of its col­or-cod­ed map like­wise promise ease of use and leg­i­bil­i­ty.

And then there are the hours of read­ing time grant­ed by a sub­way com­mute, a leisure I’ve relin­quished now that I rely on car and bike. So you can imag­ine my envi­ous delight in learn­ing about Brazil’s Tick­et Books, which are exact­ly what they sound like—books that work as sub­way tick­ets, designed with the min­i­mal­ist care that major tran­sit sys­tems do so well. And what’s more, they’re free: “To cel­e­brate World Book Day last April 23rd,” writes “future-for­ward online resource” PSFK, “[Brazil­lian pub­lish­er] L&PM gave away 10,000 books for free at sub­way sta­tions across São Paulo. Each book came with ten free trips.” Rid­ers could then recharge them and use the books again or pass them on to oth­ers to encour­age more read­ing, an impor­tant pub­lic ser­vice giv­en that Brazil­ians only read two books per year on aver­age.

With sub­way map-inspired cov­ers designed by firm Agên­cia Africa, the books include The Great Gats­by, The Art of War, Ham­let, Mur­der Alley by Agatha Christie, Hun­dred Love Son­nets by Pablo Neru­da, and more (includ­ing com­ic col­lec­tions from Charles Schulz and Garfield’s Jim Davis). Watch an explain­er video at the top of the post and see some love­ly images of the book cov­ers above. The cam­paign won three tro­phies at the Cannes Lions Fes­ti­val in the cat­e­gories “Pro­mo,” “Out­door,” and “Design,” and has proved so pop­u­lar that pub­lish­er L&PM has expand­ed the project to oth­er Brazil­ian cities, giv­ing me yet more rea­son to vis­it Brazil. And if Tick­et Books makes its way to a sub­way-enabled city near me, I may con­sid­er mov­ing.

via PSFK

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Com­muters Can Down­load Free eBooks of Russ­ian Clas­sics While Rid­ing the Moscow Metro

55 Cov­ers of Vin­tage Phi­los­o­phy, Psy­chol­o­gy & Sci­ence Books Come to Life in a Short Ani­ma­tion

Artist Ani­mates Famous Book Cov­ers in an Ele­gant, Under­stat­ed Way

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

An Artful, Animated Tribute to The Wire, Created by a Fan of the Critically-Acclaimed TV Series

in Animation, Television | January 6th, 2016

From direc­tor, design­er, and ani­ma­tor Elliot Lim comes an ani­mat­ed trib­ute to his “favorite show of all time,” HBO’s The Wire – a sen­ti­ment that he shares with Pres. Oba­ma, count­less crit­ics, and many casu­al TV view­ers. As much as the episodes them­selves, fans fond­ly remem­ber The Wire’s open­ing cred­its, which func­tioned, Andrew Dig­nan once wrote, as short films that “dis­till each sea­son’s themes, goals, and motifs.” The open­ing cred­its are what get the ani­mat­ed treat­ment in Lim’s video. Whether his video dis­tills a par­tic­u­lar set of themes, goals and motifs, I’m not yet sure. I’ll need to watch it a few more times and report back soon.

For more on The Wire and the Art of the Cred­it Sequence watch this 2012 video essay.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma Chats with David Simon About Drugs, The Wire & Omar

The Wire as Great Vic­to­ri­an Nov­el

Charles Min­gus’ Instruc­tions For Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat, Read by The Wire’s Reg E. Cathey

Michio Kaku & Noam Chomsky School Moon Landing and 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists

in Current Affairs, History, Psychology | January 5th, 2016

Who real­ly killed John F. Kennedy? Did Amer­i­ca real­ly land on the moon? What real­ly brought down the Twin Tow­ers? Few mod­ern phe­nom­e­na pos­sess the sheer fas­ci­na­tion quo­tient of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. If you believe in them, you’ll of course dig into them obses­sive­ly, and if you don’t believe in them, you sure­ly feel a great curios­i­ty about why oth­er peo­ple do. Sci­ence writer and Skep­tic mag­a­zine Edi­tor in Chief Michael Sher­mer falls, need­less to say, into the sec­ond group; so far into it that exam­in­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and those who sub­scribe to them has become one of his best-known pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits since at least 1997, the year of his straight­for­ward­ly titled book Why Peo­ple Believe Weird Things.

On the 50th anniver­sary of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, Sher­mer wrote an arti­cle in the Los Ange­les Times about the rea­sons that event has drawn so many avid con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists over the past half-decade. First: their cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance result­ing from the two seem­ing­ly incom­pat­i­ble ideas, that of JFK “as one of the most pow­er­ful peo­ple on Earth” and JFK “killed by Lee Har­vey Oswald, a lone los­er, a nobody.” Sec­ond: their par­tic­i­pa­tion in a mono­log­i­cal belief sys­tem, “a uni­tary, closed-off world­view in which beliefs come togeth­er in a mutu­al­ly sup­port­ive net­work.” Third: their con­fir­ma­tion bias, or “the ten­den­cy to look for and find con­firm­ing evi­dence for what you already believe” — the umbrel­la man, the grassy knoll — “and to ignore dis­con­firm­ing evi­dence.”

These fac­tors all come into play with the oth­er major Amer­i­can con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as well. In the pod­cast clip at the top of the post, you can hear physi­cist Michio Kaku try­ing to set straight a moon land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist. They argue that man has nev­er set foot on the moon, but that the gov­ern­ment instead hood­winked us into believ­ing it with an elab­o­rate audio­vi­su­al pro­duc­tion (direct­ed, some the­o­rists insist, by none oth­er than Stan­ley Kubrick, who sup­pos­ed­ly “con­fessed” in fake inter­view footage that recent­ly made the inter­net rounds). Should you require fur­ther argu­ment to the con­trary, have a look at S.G. Collins’ Moon Hoax Not just above.

No high­er-pro­file set of con­spir­a­cy-the­o­ry move­ment has come out of recent his­to­ry than the 9/11 Truthers, who may dif­fer on the details, but who all gath­er under the umbrel­la of believ­ing that the events of that day hap­pened not because of the actions of a con­spir­a­cy of for­eign ter­ror­ists, but because of a con­spir­a­cy with­in the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment itself. In the Q&A footage above (orig­i­nal­ly uploaded, in fact, by a believ­er), one such the­o­rist stands up and asks lin­guist and activist Noam Chom­sky to join in on the move­ment, point­ing to a cov­er-up of the man­ner in which 7 World Trade Cen­ter col­lapsed — a big “smok­ing gun” of the larg­er con­spir­a­cy, in their eyes.

This prompts Chom­sky to offer an expla­na­tion of how sci­en­tists and engi­neers actu­al­ly go look­ing for the truth. Have they elim­i­nat­ed entire­ly their cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance, mono­log­i­cal belief sys­tems, and con­fir­ma­tion bias­es? No human could ever do that per­fect­ly — indeed, to be human is to be sub­ject to all these dis­tort­ing con­di­tions and more — but the larg­er enter­prise of sci­ence, at its best, frees us lit­tle by lit­tle from those very shack­les. What a shame to vol­un­tar­i­ly clap one­self back into them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michio Kaku Schools a Moon Land­ing-Con­spir­a­cy Believ­er on His Sci­ence Fan­tas­tic Pod­cast

Stan­ley Kubrick Faked the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing in 1969, Or So the Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Goes

Noam Chom­sky Schools 9/11 Truther; Explains the Sci­ence of Mak­ing Cred­i­ble Claims

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.

An Animated Neil deGrasse Tyson Gives an Eloquent Defense of Science in 272 Words, the Same Length as The Gettysburg Address

in Education, Science | January 5th, 2016

Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the most promi­nent pub­lic defend­er of sci­ence edu­ca­tion and fund­ing, fre­quent­ly comes in for some good-natured rib­bing for his genial pedantry, ascen­sion to Carl Sagan’s unof­fi­cial spokesman­ship, and down­grad­ing of the beloved Plu­to from plan­et sta­tus. But he takes it all in stride. As anoth­er sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor, Phil Plate the “Bad Astronomer,” has writ­ten, “The man is bril­liant, charm­ing, a pil­lar of sci­ence edu­ca­tion, and a glut­ton for pun­ish­ment. But I think he secret­ly rev­els in it.” If you fol­low Tyson’s Twit­ter account and watch him engage with cranks, or if you’ve seen him in any of the hun­dreds of pub­lic debates and pan­els he attends, it seems he more than rev­els in it; he’s total­ly in his ele­ment, so to speak, pub­licly mod­el­ing the mix of con­fi­dence, humil­i­ty, and curios­i­ty that dri­ves sci­ence for­ward.

In the video above, Tyson dares to try and fill the shoes of anoth­er great communicator—and no, I don’t mean Ronald Rea­gan, but the pres­i­dent whose most famous speech Charles Sum­n­er called “a mon­u­men­tal act.” And though Abra­ham Lin­coln was not near­ly as com­fort­able in front of an audi­ence as Tyson is, Lin­col­n’s Get­tys­burg Address set the bar for how to get a point across with the max­i­mum amount of elo­quence and min­i­mum of redun­dan­cy and ram­bling. Can Tyson deliv­er the goods like Lin­coln did with only 272 words to work with? Is the attempt to “reply” to the “Get­tys­burg Address” an act of hubris or the ulti­mate trib­ute? Decide for your­self as you lis­ten to Tyson’s April, 2015 accep­tance speech at the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ence for the Pub­lic Wel­fare Medal, the Acad­e­my’s “most pres­ti­gious award.”

Tyson’s speech has been enhanced with a dra­mat­ic ani­ma­tion and sound effects for a tech­no­log­i­cal impact Lin­coln nev­er could have achieved, though by most accounts he did­n’t need it. Not a solemn occa­sion like Get­tys­burg, the awards cer­e­mo­ny nonethe­less called for at least a lit­tle pomp, as well as some his­to­ry. Tyson points out that “dur­ing the bloody year of his Get­tys­burg Address, Pres­i­dent Lin­coln char­tered the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.” For more of that sto­ry, see the short video above, where you’ll learn, among oth­er things, that Lin­coln was the first and only Amer­i­can pres­i­dent to hold a patent on a sci­en­tif­ic inven­tion.

via Bill Gates

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Pon­ders the Big Ques­tion “Does the Uni­verse Have a Pur­pose” in a Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Free: Down­load Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Short Course, The Inex­plic­a­ble Uni­verse, in Audio or Video For­mat

Neil deGrasse Tyson Puts Bill Gates’ Wealth into Fun­ny Per­spec­tive

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

Aretha Franklin Takes Over for an Ailing Luciano Pavarotti & Sings Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” at the Grammys (1998)

in Music, Opera, Television | January 4th, 2016

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: When the star is unable to per­form, a tal­ent­ed under­dog is plucked from the cho­rus and thrown into the spot­light with just min­utes to pre­pare.

It’s a crowd pleas­ing plot, one that occa­sion­al­ly plays out in real life, as it did at the 1998 Gram­my Awards, above.

The twist was that the under­dog role went to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, pinch-hit­ting for her friend, oper­at­ic super­star, Luciano Pavarot­ti, benched by a sore throat at the zero hour.

Giv­en the nature of the event, the Radio City Music Hall audi­ence prob­a­bly wouldn’t have mind­ed had the planned pro­gram­ming been scrapped in favor of “Respect,” “Nat­ur­al Woman,” or any num­ber of tunes Franklin can crush with­out bat­ting an eye­lash.

Instead, she stuck with “Nes­sun Dor­ma,” the famous final act open­er from Gia­co­mo Puccini’s Tur­nadot. Nev­er mind that it was Pavarotti’s sig­na­ture aria, that the man had pop­u­lar­ized it to such a degree that your aver­age foot­ball hooli­gan could iden­ti­fy his voice from a record­ing. Over a bil­lion view­ers tuned in to catch it on 1994’s Three Tenors spe­cial on TV, then rushed out to buy the sub­se­quent live album, a rare crossover hit.

Franklin wasn’t total­ly green in the Puc­ci­ni depart­ment. As mas­ter of cer­e­monies Sting informed the crowd, she’d per­formed the song two nights ear­li­er at a fundrais­er for Musi­Cares. Still, a fair amount of chutz­pah was nec­es­sary.

Nat­u­ral­ly, a hand­ful of opera purists refused to fall under the spell, even when Franklin hit that cel­e­brat­ed high B, but they seem to com­prise a minor­i­ty.

Pavarot­ti, whom Sting pre­sent­ed with a liv­ing Leg­end Gram­my imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing Franklin’s per­for­mance, died in 2007.

As for that oth­er Gram­my leg­end, Franklin reprised “Nes­sun Dor­ma” for Pope Fran­cis in Philadel­phia last fall, again putting her per­son­al stamp on it by switch­ing from Ital­ian to Eng­lish mid­way through.

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:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

Duel­ing Divas: Aretha Franklin and Dionne War­wick Sing Two Clas­sic Ver­sions of ‘I Say a Lit­tle Prayer’

The Queen of Soul Con­quers Europe: Aretha Franklin in Ams­ter­dam, 1968

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