Hear Tom Lehrer Sing the Names of 102 Chemical Elements to the Tune of Gilbert & Sullivan

in Math, Music | December 29th, 2015

Tom Lehrer earned a BA and MA in math­e­mat­ics from Har­vard dur­ing the late 1940s, then taught math cours­es at MIT, Har­vard, Welles­ley, and UC-San­ta Cruz. Math was his voca­tion. But, all along, Lehrer nur­tured an inter­est in music. And, by the mid 1950s, he became best known for his satir­i­cal songs that touched on some­times polit­i­cal, some­times aca­d­e­m­ic themes.

Today we’re pre­sent­ing one of his clas­sics: “The Ele­ments.” Record­ed in 1959, the song fea­tures Lehrer recit­ing the names of the 102 chem­i­cal ele­ments known at the time (we now have 115), and it’s all sung to the tune of Major-Gen­er­al’s Song from The Pirates of Pen­zance by Gilbert and Sul­li­van. You can hear a stu­dio ver­sion below, and watch a nice live ver­sion taped in Copen­hagen, Den­mark, in Sep­tem­ber 1967.

Decades lat­er, this clas­sic piece of “Tom­fool­ery” stays with us, pop­ping up here and there in pop­u­lar cul­ture. For exam­ple, Daniel Rad­cliffe (of Har­ry Pot­ter fame) per­formed Lehrer’s song on the BBC’s Gra­ham Nor­ton Show in 2010. Enjoy.

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:

Free Online Math Cours­es

The Math in Good Will Hunt­ing is Easy: How Do You Like Them Apples?

Math­e­mat­ics in Movies: Har­vard Prof Curates 150+ Scenes

Cal­cu­lus Life­saver: A Free Online Course from Prince­ton

Music from Star Wars, Kubrick, Scorsese & Tim Burton Films Played by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra: Stream Full Albums

in Film, Music | December 29th, 2015

Movies and music go way back — back, even, to the era of silent films, when music, pro­vid­ed by any per­for­mance out­fit, from a full orches­tra to a hum­ble upright piano play­er, con­sti­tut­ed the only accom­pa­ny­ing sound of any kind. Often, kids who begin choos­ing music for them­selves (at least this held for the kids of my gen­er­a­tion) start with movie sound­tracks, since they’ll usu­al­ly have done at least a lit­tle film­go­ing before they come to life as con­sumers of record­ed sound. And mod­ern sound­tracks, so often com­posed in whole or in part of orches­tral pieces, also offer a non-intim­i­dat­ing entrée into the wide world of clas­si­cal music.

Movies and the City of Prague Orches­tra also go way back. Found­ed in the 1940s as the Film Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, in-house orches­tra of Bar­ran­dov Film Stu­dios, it even­tu­al­ly went its own way as the Czech Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, and it has worked, post-Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion, under the name we know it by today. We know that name because of the sheer amount of music the City of Prague Orches­tra plays, doing 250 record­ing ses­sions every year for not just clas­si­cal albums but a vari­ety of oth­er media as well, includ­ing tele­vi­sion shows, video games, ring­tones, and espe­cial­ly movies. Today we’ve round­ed up a vari­ety of albums on Spo­ti­fy (whose free soft­ware you can down­load here) that col­lect the City of Prague Orches­tra’s work with movie music, which spans scores they first laid down them­selves to their inter­pre­ta­tions of clas­sic favorites.

First, in cel­e­bra­tion of the recent con­tin­u­a­tion of the Star Wars saga with its new sev­enth film, the City of Prague Orches­tra plays the music from the first six. But if you pre­fer a dif­fer­ent sort of space odyssey, have a lis­ten to the playlist just above fea­tur­ing, the music from the films of Stan­ley Kubrick, who said that he did­n’t need to com­mis­sion new music for his pic­tures, since he could hard­ly do bet­ter than sim­ply using the finest clas­si­cal pieces already in exis­tence — which, as any­one who’s seen 2001 knows, he could use suit­ably indeed. Below, you can hear the Orches­tra take on selec­tions from the work of Tim Bur­ton and Mar­tin Scors­ese, auteurs well known for their visu­al inven­tive­ness.

If you enjoy all of those, much more awaits your ears on Spo­ti­fy from the City of Prague Orches­tra’s cin­e­mat­ic cat­a­logue, includ­ing playlists of music from the films of Steven Spiel­berg, whose big Hol­ly­wood visions depend on their scores for a good deal of their impact; of music from pic­tures star­ring icon­ic actors like John Wayne, Paul New­man, and John­ny Depp; of the pieces that have giv­en the James Bond series their sig­na­ture (some­times so-uncool-it’s-cool) cool; and even of orches­tral work from a swath of Ital­ian film, includ­ing movies like La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and of course, Cin­e­ma Par­adiso. If we find the cin­e­ma a par­adise, after all, that owes as much to the music we’ve heard there as the visions we’ve seen there.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

A Playlist of 172 Songs from Wes Ander­son Sound­tracks: From Bot­tle Rock­et to The Grand Budapest Hotel

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

Hear 2.5‑Hours of Great Jazz Songs Fea­tured in Woody Allen Films: Sid­ney Bechet in Mid­night in Paris, Louis Arm­strong in Star­dust Mem­o­ries & More

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

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.

How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Creativity

in Creativity, Health, Neuroscience, Psychology | December 29th, 2015

Cre­ative Com­mons image, “Sleep,” by Masha Kras­no­va-Shabae­va

You decide you need some med­ical advice, so you take to the inter­net. Whoops! There’s your first mis­take. Now you are bom­bard­ed with con­tra­dic­to­ry opin­ions from ques­tion­able sources and you begin to devel­op symp­toms you nev­er knew exist­ed. It’s all down­hill from there. So I’ll say this upfront: I have no med­ical qual­i­fi­ca­tions autho­riz­ing me to dis­pense infor­ma­tion about sleep dis­or­ders. The only advice I’d ven­ture, should you have such a prob­lem, is to go see a doc­tor. It might help, or not. I can cer­tain­ly sym­pa­thize. I am a chron­ic insom­ni­ac.

The down­side to this con­di­tion is obvi­ous. I nev­er get enough sleep. When­ev­er I con­sult the inter­net about this, I learn that it’s prob­a­bly very dire and that I may lose my mind or die young(ish). The upside—which I learned to mas­ter after years of try­ing and fail­ing to sleep like nor­mal people—is that the nights are qui­et and peace­ful, and thus a fer­tile time cre­ative­ly.

Med­ical issues aside, what do we know about sleep, insom­nia, and cre­ativ­i­ty? Let us wade into the fray, with the pro­vi­so that we will like­ly reach few con­clu­sions and may have to fall back on our own expe­ri­ence to guide us. In sur­vey­ing this sub­ject, I was pleased to have my expe­ri­ence val­i­dat­ed by an arti­cle in Fast Com­pa­ny. Well, not pleased, exact­ly, as the author, Jane Porter, cites a study in Sci­ence that links a lack of sleep to Alzheimer’s and the accu­mu­la­tion of “poten­tial­ly neu­ro­tox­ic waste prod­ucts.”

And yet, in praise of sleep­less­ness, Porter also rec­om­mends turn­ing insom­nia into a “pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tool,” nam­ing famous insom­ni­acs like Mar­garet Thatch­er, Bill Clin­ton, Charles Dick­ens, Mar­cel Proust, and Madon­na (not all of whom I’d like to emu­late). She then quotes psy­chol­o­gist Tomas Chamor­ro-Pre­muz­ic of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, who made the dubi­ous-sound­ing claim in Psy­chol­o­gy Today that “insom­nia is to excep­tion­al achieve­ment what men­tal ill­ness is to cre­ativ­i­ty.” Every­thing about this anal­o­gy sounds sus­pect to me.

But there are more sub­stan­tive views on the mat­ter. Anoth­er study, pub­lished in Cre­ativ­i­ty Research Jour­nal, sug­gests insom­nia may be a symp­tom of “notable cre­ative poten­tial,” though the authors only go as far as say­ing the two phe­nom­e­non are “asso­ci­at­ed.” The arrow of causal­i­ty may point in either direc­tion. Per­haps the most prag­mat­ic view on the sub­ject comes from Michael Perlis, psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, who says, “What is insom­nia, but the gift of more time?”

Den­nis Dra­belle at The Wash­ing­ton Post, also an insom­ni­ac, refers to a recent study (as of 2007) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Can­ter­bury that sug­gests “insom­nia and orig­i­nal­i­ty may go hand in hand.” He also points out that the notion of sleep­less­ness as pro­duc­tive, though “coun­ter­in­tu­itive,” has plen­ty of prece­dent. Dra­belle men­tions many more famous cas­es, from W.C. Fields to Theodore Roo­sevelt to Franz Kaf­ka. The list could go on and on.

Actor and musi­cian Matt Berry tells The Guardian how, after years of toss­ing and turn­ing, he final­ly har­nessed his sleep­less hours to write and record an album, Music for Insom­ni­acs. “I knew that this was dead time,” says Berry, “and I could be doing some­thing instead of sit­ting wor­ry­ing about not being asleep.” Anoth­er musi­cian, Dave Bay­ley of band Glass Ani­mals, “owes his career in music to insom­nia,” The Guardian writes, then notes a phe­nom­e­non sleep researchers call—with some skep­ti­cism—“cre­ative insom­nia.” Oth­er musi­cians like Chris Mar­tin, Moby, Tricky, and King Krule have all suf­fered the con­di­tion and turned it to good account.

The Guardian also notes that each of these poor souls has found “sleep­less nights inspir­ing as well as tor­ment­ing.” Insom­nia is not, in fact a gift or tal­ent, but a painful con­di­tion that Porter and Dra­belle both acknowl­edge can be asso­ci­at­ed with depres­sion, addic­tion, and oth­er seri­ous med­ical con­di­tions. One might make good use of the time—but per­haps only for a time. A site called Sleep­dex—-which offers “resources for bet­ter sleep”—puts it this way:

Occa­sion­al insom­nia appears to help some peo­ple pro­duce new art and work, but is a detri­ment to oth­ers. It is per­haps true that more peo­ple find it a detri­ment than find it use­ful. Long-term insom­nia and the accom­pa­ny­ing sleep debt are almost sure­ly neg­a­tive for cre­ativ­i­ty.

This brings us to the sub­ject of sleep—good, rest­ful sleep—and its rela­tion­ship to cre­ativ­i­ty. Sleep­dex cites sev­er­al research stud­ies from Swiss and Ital­ian uni­ver­si­ties, UC San Diego, and UC Davis. The gen­er­al con­clu­sion is that REM sleep—that peri­od dur­ing which dreams “are the most nar­ra­tive­ly coher­ent of any dur­ing the night”—is also an impor­tant stim­u­lus for cre­ativ­i­ty. There are the numer­ous anec­dotes from artists like Sal­vador Dali, Paul McCart­ney, and count­less oth­ers about famous works of art tak­ing shape in dream states (Kei­th Richards says he heard the riff from “Sat­is­fac­tion” in a dream).

And there are the exper­i­men­tal data, pur­port­ed­ly con­firm­ing that REM sleep enhances “cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing.” Euro­pean sci­en­tists have found that peo­ple were more like­ly to have cre­ative insights after a long peri­od of rest­ful sleep, when the right brain gets a boost. Like­wise, Tom Stafford at the BBC describes the “post-sleep, dream­like men­tal state—known as sleep iner­tia or the hypnopom­pic state” that infus­es our “wak­ing, direct­ed thoughts with a dust­ing of dream­world mag­ic.” It isn’t that insom­ni­acs don’t expe­ri­ence this, of course, but we have less of it, as peri­ods of REM sleep can be short­er and often inter­rupt­ed by the need to scram­ble out of bed and get to work or get the kids to school not long after hit­ting the pil­low.

Stafford points us toward a UC Berke­ley study (appar­ent­ly the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia has some sort of monop­oly on sleep research) “that helps illus­trate the pow­er of sleep to fos­ter unusu­al con­nec­tions, or ‘remote asso­ciates’ as psy­chol­o­gists call them.” Like near­ly all of the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture on sleep, this study express­es lit­tle doubt about the impor­tance of sleep to mem­o­ry func­tion and prob­lem solv­ing. Big Think col­lects sev­er­al more stud­ies that con­firm the find­ings.

On the whole, when it comes to the links between sleep—or sleeplessness—and cre­ativ­i­ty, the data and the sto­ries point in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. This is hard­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en the slip­per­i­ness of that thing we call “cre­ativ­i­ty.” Like “love” it’s an abstract qual­i­ty every­one wants and no one knows how to make in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. If it’s extra time you’re after—and very qui­et time at that—I can’t rec­om­mend insom­nia enough, though I wouldn’t rec­om­mend it at all as a vol­un­tary exer­cise. If it’s the spe­cial cre­ative insights only avail­able in dream states, well, you’d best get lots of sleep. If you can, that is. Cre­ative insomniacs—like those wan­der­ing in the con­fines of a dream world—know all too well they don’t have much choice in the mat­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

The Psy­chol­o­gy of Messi­ness & Cre­ativ­i­ty: Research Shows How a Messy Desk and Cre­ative Work Go Hand in Hand

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

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

The British Museum Is Now Open To Everyone: Take a Virtual Tour and See 4,737 Artifacts, Including the Rosetta Stone

in Art | December 28th, 2015

“I met a girl at the British Muse­um once,” a fel­low said to me at a par­ty last week­end. “Her name was Roset­ta. Roset­ta Stone.” A groan­er indeed, but also a reminder of how far we’ve come: where­as you once real­ly would have had to go all the way to the British Muse­um (in Lon­don) to run into good old Roset­ta, now you can get acquaint­ed with her, and 4,633 of the oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing arti­facts of human civ­i­liza­tion held there, with­out even step­ping away from your com­put­er.

The British Muse­um charges noth­ing for admis­sion, of course, but now the inter­net has freed it in the geo­graph­i­cal sense as well.

“The British Muse­um recent­ly unveiled the results of its part­ner­ship with the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute (GCI),” writes Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s Kristin Rom­ney, “the world’s largest Google Street View of an inte­ri­or space, cov­er­ing nine floors and 85 per­ma­nent gal­leries of the muse­um.” Have a vir­tu­al walk­through, and you’ll pass dis­plays of about 80,000 notable objects; the high­lights Rom­ney names include the Lewis Chess­men and cat mum­mies, the Elgin Mar­bles, and even archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures of the muse­um itself such as the “the yawn­ing expanse of the museum’s Great Court, the largest pub­lic square in Europe, with ear­ly morn­ing light fil­ter­ing through the 3,312 glass roof panes.”

After you’ve enjoyed this Street View stroll, you’ll sure­ly want to exam­ine some of these items in greater depth. You can do just that at the vir­tu­al exhibits of the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute’s British Muse­um col­lec­tion, where you’ll find high-res­o­lu­tion images of and back­ground infor­ma­tion on 4,737 arti­facts, the Roset­ta Stone includ­ed. Or you can take a close look at a seg­ment of the Elgin Mar­bles, a scene from the Parthenon show­ing “the sacred robe or pep­los of Athena that was escort­ed to the Acrop­o­lis by the pro­ces­sion of the Great Pana­thenaic Fes­ti­val, held in Athens every four years.” Not old enough for you? Then behold the Roy­al Game of Ur, an ear­ly board game of sorts dis­cov­ered in the Roy­al Ceme­tery of the Mesopotami­an city-state of Ur. And even fur­ther illu­mi­na­tion of the ancient world awaits you beyond that, all thanks to this most mod­ern sort of project. You can enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the World (and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty) in 100 Objects

Vis­it The Muse­um of Online Muse­ums (MoOM): A Mega Col­lec­tion of 220 Online Exhi­bi­tions

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

Whit­ney Muse­um Puts Online 21,000 Works of Amer­i­can Art, By 3,000 Artists

Google Gives You a 360° View of the Per­form­ing Arts, From the Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny to the Paris Opera Bal­let

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.

Alan Watts Introduces America to Meditation & Eastern Philosophy: Watch the 1960 TV Show, Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life

in Life, Philosophy, Television | December 25th, 2015

Alan Watts moved from his native Lon­don to New York in 1938, then even­tu­al­ly head­ed west, to San Fran­cis­co in the ear­ly 1950s. On the left coast, he start­ed teach­ing at the Acad­e­my of Asian Stud­ies, wrote his best­seller Way of Zen, and began deliv­er­ing a long-run­ning series of talks about east­ern phi­los­o­phy on KPFA radio in Berke­ley. Dur­ing these years, Watts became one of the fore­most pop­u­lar­iz­ers of Zen Bud­dhism, Hin­duism, and Tao­ism, which made him some­thing of a celebri­ty, espe­cial­ly when the 60s coun­ter­cul­ture move­ment kicked into gear.

Now, 40 years and change after his death, you can find no short­age of vin­tage Watts’ media online (includ­ing this archive of stream­ing lec­tures). And today we’re fea­tur­ing an episode from a TV series called East­ern Wis­dom and Mod­ern Life, which aired in San Fran­cis­co cir­ca 1960. “The Silent Mind” runs 28 min­utes, and it offered Amer­i­can view­ers an intro­duc­tion to the phi­los­o­phy and prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion, some­thing still con­sid­ered exot­ic at the time. His­to­ry in the mak­ing. You’re watch­ing it hap­pen right here. Find more med­i­ta­tion and Alan Watts resources below.

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:

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

The Zen Teach­ings of Alan Watts: A Free Audio Archive of His Enlight­en­ing Lec­tures

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Med­i­ta­tion 101: A Short, Ani­mat­ed Beginner’s Guide

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

Blue Christmas: A Criterion Video Essay

in Film, Life | December 25th, 2015

Where have all the Fezzi­wigs gone? Those fes­tive souls whose joy­ful­ly uncom­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship to Christ­mas inspires gen­eros­i­ty and the high­est of spir­its?

You won’t find them in Blue Christ­mas, film writer Michael Koresky’s super­cut of the bleak­est hol­i­day moments in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion and beyond.

The fac­tors lead­ing to the sea­son­al malaise doc­u­ment­ed above are far less easy to iden­ti­fy than the sin­gu­lar com­plaint of the famous song Koresky bor­rows for the title of his video essay.

A sim­ple reunion would have fixed Elvis’s Christ­mas blues.

Not so the char­ac­ters played by Cather­ine Deneuve, Angel­i­ca Hus­ton, and oth­er love­ly, aging actress­es gaz­ing mourn­ful­ly in this mash up. Large fam­i­lies, sump­tu­ous tables, and lav­ish­ly dec­o­rat­ed homes are no match for their sea­son­al depres­sion.

Per­haps they should try vol­un­teer­ing in a soup kitchen.

Or get­ting away from it all in the French Cana­di­an asbestos min­ing town that pro­vides the set­ting for Claude Jutra’s Mon oncle Antoine. (Noth­ing like a child-sized cof­fin and some real­is­ti­cal­ly grimy, non-fake snow to make you count your bless­ings!)

A com­plete list of the films select­ed by Koresky for this mis­ery-loves-com­pa­ny com­pi­la­tion is below.  (Kudos to pro­duc­er Casey Moore for his mas­ter­ful edit­ing.)

Grem­lins

Fan­ny and Alexan­der 

Met­ro­pol­i­tan

Mon oncle Antoine

My Night at Maud’s 

A Christ­mas Tale

Black Nar­cis­sus

A Christ­mas Car­ol (1971)

A Christ­mas Car­ol (1984)

The Curse of the Cat Peo­ple

Scrooge (1935)

Scrooge (1951)

The Dead

Dead of Night

Black Christ­mas

Eyes Wide Shut

Meet Me in St. Louis

It’s a Won­der­ful Life

All That Heav­en Allows

The Long Day Clos­es

Blast of Silence

For those who would not have mas­ter­pieces of cin­e­ma rain­ing upon their Christ­mas parade, the Matinee’s antic Christ­mas Movie Super­cut is above. Are we sur­prised that Grem­lins made both lists?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman’s Dark Christ­mas Poem Ani­mat­ed

The Junky’s Christ­mas: William S. Burrough’s Dark Clay­ma­tion Christ­mas Film Pro­duced by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (1993)

Sal­vador Dalí’s Avant-Garde Christ­mas Cards

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. I Can Haz Eggnog with That is her Christ­mas present to all Spo­ti­fy lis­ten­ers’ ears. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Fill Your New Kindle, iPad, iPhone, eReader with Free eBooks, Audio Books, Online Courses & More

in Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, Film, Online Courses | December 25th, 2015

San­ta left a new Kin­dle, iPad, Kin­dle Fire or oth­er media play­er under your tree. He did his job. Now we’ll do ours. We’ll tell you how to fill those devices with free intel­li­gent media — great books, movies, cours­es, and all of the rest. And if you did­n’t get a new gad­get, fear not. You can access all of these mate­ri­als right on a com­put­er. Here we go:

Free eBooks: You have always want­ed to read the great works. And now is your chance. When you dive into our Free eBooks col­lec­tion you will find 800 great works by some clas­sic writ­ers (Dick­ens, Dos­to­evsky, Austen, Shake­speare and Tol­stoy) and con­tem­po­rary writ­ers (Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asi­mov, and Kurt Von­negut). The col­lec­tion also gives you access to the 51-vol­ume Har­vard Clas­sics.

If you’re an iPad/iPhone user, the down­load process is super easy. Just click the “iPad/iPhone” links and you’re good to go. Kin­dle and Nook users will gen­er­al­ly want to click the “Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats links” to down­load ebook files, but we’d sug­gest watch­ing these instruc­tion­al videos (Kin­dle – Nook) before­hand.

Free Audio Books: What bet­ter way to spend your free time than lis­ten­ing to some of the great­est books ever writ­ten? This page con­tains a vast num­ber of free audio books — 700 works in total — includ­ing texts by Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and more recent writ­ers — Ita­lo Calvi­no, Vladimir Nabokov, Ray­mond Carv­er, etc. You can down­load these clas­sic books straight to your gad­gets, then lis­ten as you go.

[Note: If you’re look­ing for a con­tem­po­rary book, you can down­load one free audio book from Audible.com. Find details on Audi­ble’s no-strings-attached deal here.]

Free Online Cours­es: This list brings togeth­er over 1150 free online cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, UC Berke­ley, Oxford and beyond.

These full-fledged cours­es range across all dis­ci­plines — his­to­ry, physics, phi­los­o­phy, psy­chol­o­gy, busi­ness, and beyond. Most all of these cours­es are avail­able in audio, and rough­ly 75% are avail­able in video. You can’t receive cred­its or cer­tifi­cates for these cours­es (click here for cours­es that do offer cer­tifi­cates). But the amount of per­son­al enrich­ment you will derive is immea­sur­able.

Free Movies: With a click of a mouse, or a tap of your touch screen, you will have access to 725 great movies. The col­lec­tion hosts many clas­sics, west­erns, indies, doc­u­men­taries, silent films and film noir favorites. It fea­tures work by some of our great direc­tors (Alfred Hitch­cock, Orson Welles, Andrei Tarkovsky and more) and per­for­mances by cin­e­ma leg­ends: John Wayne, Jack Nichol­son, Audrey Hep­burn, Char­lie Chap­lin, and beyond. On this one page, you will find thou­sands of hours of cin­e­ma bliss.

Free Lan­guage Lessons: Per­haps learn­ing a new lan­guage is high on your list of New Year’s res­o­lu­tions. Well, here is a great way to do it. Take your pick of 46 lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Eng­lish, Russ­ian, Dutch, even Finnish, Yid­dish and Esperan­to. These lessons are all free and ready to down­load.

Free Text­books: And one last item for the life­long learn­ers among you. We have scoured the web and pulled togeth­er a list of 200 Free Text­books. It’s a great resource par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re look­ing to learn math, com­put­er sci­ence or physics on your own. There might be a dia­mond in the rough here for you.

Thank San­ta, maybe thank us, and enjoy that new device.…

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!

Watch HD Versions of The Beatles’ Pioneering Music Videos: “Hey Jude,” “Penny Lane,” “Revolution” & More

in Music | December 24th, 2015

We think of the eight­ies and ear­ly nineties as the age of music video, as pre­dict­ed by the Bug­gles all the way back in ‘79. There’s pre­cious lit­tle rea­son to argue with the cul­tur­al pre­science of their “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the very first video MTV aired. After the rise of the music chan­nel, almost no one could push a sin­gle with­out a video in the rota­tion on cable. Even now, though MTV may have ced­ed the whole music video thing to the inter­net a long time ago, the prin­ci­ple remains.

Yet well over a decade before MTV debuted, pio­neer­ing musi­cians took to music video (or film) with the same nat­ur­al affin­i­ty as Michael Jack­son, Phil Collins, Prince, or Van Halen did dur­ing the network’s hey­day. Over a decade before the Buggles—a pun on The Beatles—there was, well… The Bea­t­les, bona fide music video stars, with hip pro­mos like that for “Pen­ny Lane,” above, which would have fit right in on MTV. (“Is that Oasis?” “No, it’s The Bea­t­les, man!”)

Shot in 1968 in East Lon­don, an estate in Kent, and Liv­er­pool (home of the real Pen­ny Lane), the video achieved its mod­ern look by chance, since direc­tor Peter Gold­mann had to find cre­ative ways to get around a Musi­cians’ Union ban on mim­ing for the cam­era. Before the ban, filmed musi­cal per­for­mances typ­i­cal­ly fea­tured bands lip-sync­ing to a back­ing track, as you can see in the pro­mo video for “Hel­lo, Good­bye” above, which debuted on the Ed Sul­li­van show in Novem­ber, 1967. This one was direct­ed by Sir Paul him­self, though he did not enjoy the expe­ri­ence, as he lat­er recount­ed. “It was some­thing I’d always been inter­est­ed in,” McCart­ney said, “until I actu­al­ly tried it.”

That Musi­cians’ Union mim­ing ban was still in place when the band went into the Abbey Road stu­dios in 1968 to record the video for “Hey Jude,” above. Direc­tor Michael Lind­say-Hogg got around it by invit­ing an audi­ence of 300 peo­ple into the stu­dio for the finale, mak­ing it seem like a live per­for­mance, though every­thing was pre­re­cord­ed but Paul’s vocals. The sin­gle had already gone on sale a week pri­or to film­ing, but the pro­mo film was the first intro­duc­tion many fans had to the song, first on David Frost’s The Frost Report, then on The Smoth­ers Broth­ers’ Com­e­dy Hour in the U.S. a month lat­er. In the first minute of the video, the band goofs around with some fake jazz (prov­ing that their gui­tars were, in fact, plugged in).

Though the “Hey Jude” film was shot in col­or, no orig­i­nal view­ers would have seen it that way. As Dan­ger­ous Minds points out, we get to view this video “in far, far bet­ter qual­i­ty than you’d ever have been able to see it dur­ing those orig­i­nal tele­vi­sion broad­casts, back when most peo­ple in Britain and Amer­i­ca would have been watch­ing it on low res­o­lu­tion B&W TV sets.” Com­pare, for exam­ple, the short clip from a broad­cast at the time above with the pris­tine “Hey Jude” video we have now. All of these Bea­t­les videos have been restored and dig­i­tal­ly enhanced in HD, and you can see these and more at The Bea­t­les Vevo chan­nel on Youtube. These come from the re-release of sin­gles col­lec­tion 1 on Blu-ray, which includes sev­er­al dozen more videos in addi­tion to 27 of the band’s #1 sin­gles.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing is the 1967 pro­mo for “A Day in the Life,” above, edit­ed from film­ing of the orig­i­nal ses­sions. As The Bea­t­les Youtube chan­nel informs us, “this was no ordi­nary record­ing ses­sion. The clas­si­cal musi­cians, who had been asked to wear evening dress, took it upon them­selves to wear fake noses, fun­ny hats and gen­er­al­ly enter into the spir­it of the occa­sion.” The ses­sions were “filmed between 8pm and 1am with guests includ­ing Mick Jag­ger and Kei­th Richards,” both of whom you’ll see appear in the fray of musi­cians, along with many shots of Paul McCart­ney con­duct­ing the orches­tra.

Did The Bea­t­les invent the music video? That’s a debate for the forums. But they were sure­ly one of the first, if not the first, to use them as a pri­ma­ry pro­mo­tion­al tool—along with their films and mer­chan­dis­ing. As far back as 1965, the band released pro­mo films for their sin­gles, like that for “We Can Work it Out,” above, one of three dif­fer­ent videos the band shot for this song. In fact, it’s not anachro­nism to refer to this ear­ly exam­ple of the form as a “music video” since it was actu­al­ly shot on two-inch black and white video­tape. The for­mat had not come into wide enough use at the time, so it was dis­trib­uted on 16mm film.

Mak­ing music videos—on video—is just one of the many ways The Bea­t­les have antic­i­pat­ed, or pre­cip­i­tat­ed, the future of music. One of the ways they’ve lagged behind, or per­haps wise­ly held out, is in releas­ing their music to stream­ing and on-demand ser­vices like Spo­ti­fy, Google Play, or Apple Music.  That’s changed as of today, when 13 albums and four com­pi­la­tions become avail­able to stream on nine sub­scrip­tion ser­vices. No telling what Lennon and Har­ri­son would have thought, but Paul McCart­ney described the music’s dig­i­tal recep­tion as “fan­tas­tic” when the band first made a deal with iTunes in 2010. The remain­ing band mem­bers have released no state­ment this time around but a short pro­mo video and a jol­ly hol­i­day greet­ing: “Hap­py Crim­ble, with love from us to you.”

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig Filmed in Jan­u­ary 1969

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

Down­load The Bea­t­les’ Yel­low Sub­ma­rine as a Free, Inter­ac­tive eBook

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

Brian Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Download His 2015 John Peel Lecture

in Art, Creativity, Music | December 24th, 2015

Image by BBC Radio 6

“Sym­phonies, per­fume, sports cars, graf­fi­ti, needle­point, mon­u­ments, tat­toos, slang, Ming vas­es, doo­dles, poo­dles, apple strudels. Still life, Sec­ond Life, bed knobs and boob jobs” — why do we make any of these things? That ques­tion has dri­ven much of the career (and indeed life) of Bri­an Eno, the man who invent­ed ambi­ent music and has brought his dis­tinc­tive, at once intel­lec­tu­al and vis­cer­al sen­si­bil­i­ty to the work of bands like Roxy Music, U2, and Cold­play as well as the realm of visu­al art. Back in Sep­tem­ber, he laid out all the illu­mi­nat­ing and enter­tain­ing answers at which he has thus far arrived in giv­ing the BBC’s 2015 John Peel Lec­ture.

We fea­tured Eno’s wide-rang­ing talk on the nature of art and cul­ture, as well as its util­i­ty to the human race, back when the Beeb offered it stream­ing for a lim­it­ed time only. But now they’ve made it freely avail­able to down­load and lis­ten to as you please: you can down­load the MP3 at this link.

You can also fol­low along, if you like, with the PDF tran­script avail­able here, which will cer­tain­ly be of assis­tance when you go to look up all the peo­ple, ideas, works of art, and pieces of his­to­ry Eno ref­er­ences along the way, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to the “STEM” sub­jects, Baked Alas­ka, black Chanel frocks, the Rie­mann hypoth­e­sis, Lit­tle Dor­rit, Morse Peck­ham, Coro­na­tion Street, air­plane sim­u­la­tors, the dole, Lord Rei­th, John Peel him­self, Basic Income, Lin­ux, and col­lec­tive joy.

If you haven’t had enough Eno after that — and here at Open Cul­ture, we nev­er get enough Eno — have a look at and a lis­ten to clips of a con­ver­sa­tion he recent­ly had with sci­ence writer Steven John­son, all of which have an intel­lec­tu­al over­lap with the Peel Lec­ture. The first deals with music, some­thing this self-pro­fessed “non-musi­cian” has done much more than his share of think­ing about. The sec­ond has to do with punch­lines, or rather, Eno’s con­cep­tion of a piece of art, not as a thing with val­ue in and of itself, but as a kind of punch­line on the order of “I used to have a car like that.” (To hear its set­up, you’ll have to watch the video.)

In the third, John­son and Eno dis­cuss an idea at the core of the Peel Lec­ture, Eno’s famous def­i­n­i­tion of cul­ture, and lat­er art: “Every­thing you don’t have to do.” That cov­ers all the afore­men­tioned sym­phonies, per­fume, sports cars, graf­fi­ti, needle­point, mon­u­ments, tat­toos, slang, Ming vas­es, doo­dles, poo­dles, apple strudels, still life, Sec­ond Life, bed knobs and boob jobs: “All of those things are sort of unnec­es­sary in the sense that we could all sur­vive with­out doing any of them,” Eno says, “but in fact we don’t. We all engage with them.” And if you want to know why we should keep engag­ing with them, and in fact engage with them more vig­or­ous­ly than ever, Eno can tell you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 150 Tracks High­light­ing Bri­an Eno’s Career as a Musi­cian, Com­pos­er & Pro­duc­er & Stream His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies”

Revis­it the Radio Ses­sions and Record Col­lec­tion of Ground­break­ing BBC DJ John Peel

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

Lis­ten to “Bri­an Eno Day,” a 12-Hour Radio Show Spent With Eno & His Music (Record­ed in 1988)

When Bri­an Eno & Oth­er Artists Peed in Mar­cel Duchamp’s Famous Uri­nal

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

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.

13 Beatles Albums & 4 Compilations Now Free to Stream Online: Stream Away

in Music | December 24th, 2015

This morn­ing, Josh Jones high­light­ed for you the new HD ver­sions of Bea­t­les videos on Youtube, and, along the way men­tioned that, start­ing today, the Bea­t­les’ music cat­a­log — 13 albums and 4 com­pi­la­tions — would become avail­able on var­i­ous music stream­ing ser­vices, includ­ing Spo­ti­fy. The switch has been flipped on all of that, and below, you can find a Spo­ti­fy playlist of the Bea­t­les’ albums. 14 hours of Bea­t­les bliss.

You can also access the Spo­ti­fy playlist on the web here. If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy, find it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

A Playlist of 172 Songs from Wes Ander­son Sound­tracks: From Bot­tle Rock­et to The Grand Budapest Hotel

An 18-Hour Playlist of Read­ings by the Beats: Ker­ouac, Gins­berg & Even Bukows­ki Too