The Complete Ulysses: Alec Baldwin, Garrison Keillor, Bob Odenkirk & Others Read Joyce’s Opus Aloud

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | November 5th, 2014

Per­haps you’ve held off on lis­ten­ing to Re:Joyce, Frank Delaney’s line-by-line, episode-by-episode pod­cast exe­ge­sis of James Joyce’s Ulysses, because you want to lis­ten not just to a break­down of the nov­el, but to the nov­el itself. If so, then boy, have we got anoth­er ongo­ing project for you to fol­low: The Com­plete Ulysses, which has a man­date to record every word of Ulysses as “the first Amer­i­can pro­duc­tion” of the book “using most­ly Amer­i­can and Irish-Amer­i­can actors like Alec Bald­win, John Lith­gow, Jer­ry Stiller, Gar­ri­son Keil­lor, Anne Meara, Wal­lace Shawn, Bob Dishy, Anne Enright, Bob Odenkirk, Pulitzer-Prize-win­ning poet Paul Mul­doon, and Caraid O’Brien as Mol­ly Bloom.” The pro­duc­ers have planned to make avail­able record­ings of each chap­ter as soon as they fin­ish them, “on almost all cur­rent and future audio media.” You can browse the so-far com­plet­ed mate­r­i­al here.

“The project began more than 30 years ago,” says The Com­plete Ulysses’ site, “when [radio sta­tion] WBAI broad­cast a marathon read­ing of Ulysses from the Shake­speare & Co. book­store at 81st and Broad­way in New York.” Book­store own­er Lar­ry Joseph­son “took the idea of a long-form radio read­ing of Ulysses to Isa­iah Shef­fer, then Artis­tic Direc­tor of Sym­pho­ny Space.” This result­ed in Blooms­day on Broad­way, an 18-hour “live, staged read­ing of excerpts from Ulysses and oth­er Irish lit­er­a­ture and song.” Hav­ing then cre­at­ed Radio Blooms­day, a WBAI read­ing series “fea­tur­ing live and pre-record­ed read­ings from Ulysses and lots of oth­er things Irish,” Joseph­son “got the ‘insane’ idea of record­ing the entire book, which will run about 30 hours.”

Ambi­tious, yes, but then the same applies to Re:Joyce, and indeed to Ulysses itself, which you can find in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks. Joyce has long had a way of inspir­ing cre­ators to exe­cute their own “insane” ideas, and this one in par­tic­u­lar gives his own work a whole new means of expres­sion. Tun­ing into Radio Blooms­day has, for a few years now, appeared as a main­stay on var­i­ous press out­lets’ “what to do on Blooms­day” lists, but with The Com­plete Ulysses, you cer­tain­ly don’t need to wait until June 16 for a Joycean expe­ri­ence; these days, a prop­er­ly equipped iPod can turn every day into Blooms­day.

If you can’t wait for The Com­plete Ulysses to be com­plet­ed, you can always down­load a read­ing of Ulysses in its entire­ty here (in audio for­mat).

Note: The draw­ing above is none oth­er than Leopold Bloom, drawn by Joyce him­self in 1926, when his eye­sight was fail­ing. We have more on that sto­ry here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing You Need to Enjoy Read­ing James Joyce’s Ulysses on Blooms­day

James Joyce’s Ulysses: Down­load the Free Audio Book

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How to Dance Your Dissertation: See the Winning Video in the 2014 “Dance Your PhD” Contest

in Biology, Dance | November 5th, 2014

We’ve seen how mod­ern dance can explain key con­cepts in sta­tis­tics (e.g. cor­re­la­tion and sam­pling error). So why could­n’t dance also illus­trate the con­clu­sions of a plant biol­o­gy doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion?

Uma Nagen­dra, a grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia, has just won the 2014 edi­tion of the “Dance Your Ph.D.” con­test. Spon­sored by Sci­ence and High­Wire Press, the con­test asks grad stu­dents to “explain their Ph.D. research in the most jar­gon-free medi­um of all: dance.” (More cri­te­ria can be found over at the con­test’s tips & tricks page.) Accord­ing to Sci­ence mag­a­zine, Nagen­dra likes to spend “a good deal of her [free] time hang­ing upside down from a trapeze doing cir­cus aeri­als.” It’s a cre­ative out­let for her. And it offers a good way, it turns out, to visu­al­ize the con­clu­sions of her dis­ser­ta­tion explor­ing “Plant-soil feed­backs after severe tor­na­do dam­age.”

The “Dance Your Ph.D.” con­test allows each con­tes­tant to sub­mit a video with a short piece of descrip­tive text. Here is what Nagen­dra wrote:

Many of the pat­terns we see in forests around the world are caused by the rela­tion­ships that plants have with organ­isms in the soil. Some very diverse forests can only sup­port as many dif­fer­ent tree species as they do because soil-borne dis­eases pre­vent any one species from tak­ing over. But what hap­pens when a tor­na­do comes along? Do the plants and soil organ­isms main­tain this diver­si­ty-pro­mot­ing rela­tion­ship?

My PhD research focus­es on how sev­er­al dif­fer­ent species of tree seedlings in the south­ern Appalachi­an moun­tains inter­act with soil organisms—and how tor­na­does might mix things up. I study many dif­fer­ent species. As an exam­ple, we can look at white pine (Pinus strobus), and the many pathogens that attack the roots of its seedlings.

The dance begins in an undis­turbed for­est. Because trees live for so long in one place, a mature pine tree accu­mu­lates a unique group of fun­gi around its roots—including pathogens that cause dis­eases in tree seedlings (in this case, Pythi­um and Rhi­zoc­to­nia). White pine seedlings that are very close to a mature tree are more like­ly to be attacked by these pathogens—causing stunt­ed growth, or even death. The far­ther away a seedling is from a mature tree, the less like­ly it is to get infect­ed. These dis­tant seedlings are more like­ly to sur­vive to matu­ri­ty. A pat­tern emerges where the mature pine trees are spaced far apart—leaving room for seedlings of oth­er species to grow, and cre­at­ing a diverse for­est.

In the mid­dle of the dance, we wit­ness the tornado—and how it changes the for­est envi­ron­ment. The mature pine tree dies, and the for­est floor is no longer shad­ed. The soil becomes hot­ter and dri­er. With­out the liv­ing mature tree as a host, spe­cial­ist pathogens are less active, and many die. Because of this, I am pre­dict­ing that plant-soil rela­tion­ships in recent­ly tor­na­do-dam­aged areas may be much weak­er. In the last part of the dance, seedlings close to the (killed) mature tree are no longer at greater risk for dis­ease; they grow and sur­vive the same as their more dis­tant sib­lings. The chang­ing plant-soil rela­tion­ships after dis­tur­bances might be one piece in the puz­zle of how diverse ecosys­tems change over time.

via Explore

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus 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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sta­tis­tics Explained Through Mod­ern Dance: A New Way of Teach­ing a Tough Sub­ject

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”

What Are Literature, Philosophy & History For? Alain de Botton Explains with Monty Python-Style Videos

in Education, History, Literature, Philosophy | November 5th, 2014

Once upon a time, ques­tions about the use-val­ue of art were the height of philis­tin­ism. “All art is quite use­less,” wrote the aes­thete Oscar Wilde, pre­sag­ing the atti­tudes of mod­ernists to come. Explain­ing this state­ment in a let­ter to a per­plexed fan, Wilde opined that art “is not meant to instruct, or to influ­ence action in any way.” But if you ask Alain de Bot­ton, founder of “cul­tur­al enter­prise” The School of Life, art—or lit­er­a­ture specifically—does indeed have a prac­ti­cal pur­pose. Four to be pre­cise.

In a pitch that might appeal to Dale Carnegie, de Bot­ton argues that lit­er­a­ture: 1) Saves you time, 2) Makes you nicer, 3) Cures lone­li­ness, and 4) Pre­pares you for fail­ure. The for­mat of his video above—“What is Lit­er­a­ture For?”—may be for­mu­la­ic, but the argu­ment may not be so con­trary to mod­ernist dic­ta after all. Indeed, as William Car­los Williams famous­ly wrote, “men die mis­er­ably every day / for lack / of what is found” in poet­ry. How many peo­ple per­ish slow­ly over wast­ed time, mean­ness, lone­li­ness, and bro­ken dreams?

Like de Botton’s short video intro­duc­tions to philoso­phers, which we fea­tured in a pre­vi­ous post, “What is Lit­er­a­ture For?” comes to us with Mon­ty Python-like ani­ma­tion and pithy nar­ra­tion that makes quick work of a lot of com­plex ideas. Whether you find this inspir­ing or insipid will depend large­ly on how you view de Botton’s broad-brush, pop­ulist approach to the human­i­ties in gen­er­al. In any case, it’s true that peo­ple crave, and deserve, more acces­si­ble intro­duc­tions to weighty sub­jects like lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy, sub­jects that—as de Bot­ton says above in “What is Phi­los­o­phy For?”—can seem “weird, irrel­e­vant, bor­ing.…”

Here, con­tra Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s claims that all phi­los­o­phy is noth­ing more than con­fu­sion about lan­guage, de Bot­ton expounds a very clas­si­cal idea of the dis­ci­pline: “Philoso­phers are peo­ple devot­ed to wis­dom,” he says. And what is wis­dom for? Its appli­ca­tion, unsur­pris­ing­ly, is also emi­nent­ly prac­ti­cal. “Being wise,” we’re told, “means attempt­ing to live and die well.” As some­one once indoc­tri­nat­ed into the Byzan­tine cult of aca­d­e­m­ic human­i­ties, I have to say this def­i­n­i­tion seems to me espe­cial­ly reduc­tive, but it does accord per­fect­ly with The School of Life’s promise of “a vari­ety of pro­grammes and ser­vices con­cerned with how to live wise­ly and well.”

Last­ly, we have de Botton’s expla­na­tion above, “What Is His­to­ry For?” Most peo­ple, he claims, find the sub­ject “bor­ing.” Giv­en the enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty of his­tor­i­cal dra­ma, doc­u­men­tary film, nov­els, and pop­u­lar non-fic­tion, I’m not sure I fol­low him here. The prob­lem, it seems, is not so much that we don’t like his­to­ry, but that we can nev­er reach con­sen­sus on what exact­ly hap­pened and what those hap­pen­ings mean. This kind of uncer­tain­ty tends to make peo­ple very uncom­fort­able.

Unboth­ered by this prob­lem, de Bot­ton press­es on, argu­ing that his­to­ry, at its best, pro­vides us with “solu­tions to the prob­lems of the present.” It does so, he claims, by cor­rect­ing our “bias toward the present.” He cites the obses­sive jack­ham­mer­ing of 24-hour news, which shouts at us from mul­ti­ple screens at all times. I have to admit, he’s got a point. With­out a sense of his­to­ry, it’s easy to become com­plete­ly over­whelmed by the inces­sant chat­ter of the now. Per­haps more con­tro­ver­sial­ly, de Bot­ton goes on to say that his­to­ry is full of “good ideas.” Watch the video above and see if you find his exam­ples per­sua­sive.

All three of de Botton’s videos are brisk, upbeat, and very opti­mistic about our capac­i­ty to make good use of the human­i­ties to bet­ter our­selves. Per­haps some of the more skep­ti­cal among us won’t be eas­i­ly won over by his argu­ments, but they’re cer­tain­ly wor­thy of debate and offer some very pos­i­tive ways to approach the lib­er­al arts. If you are per­suad­ed, then dive into our col­lec­tions of free lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy cours­es high­light­ed in the sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Down­load 100 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es & Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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

Download the Complete Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Masterpiece

in Books, Literature | November 4th, 2014

I still remem­ber the thrill I felt when I hap­pened upon a set of the com­plete Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries at an antique store. For a mere ten dol­lars, I acquired hand­some­ly bound, suit­ably pati­na-of-age-bear­ing edi­tions of each and every one of the sleuth of 221B Bak­er Street’s adven­tures that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote. In addi­tion to this thrill, I also got a few sur­pris­es: first that all of those sto­ries com­bined — the sto­ries that made Holmes and his assis­tant Dr. John Wat­son into house­hold names of near­ly 130 years’ stand­ing — fit into two not-espe­cial­ly-large books; sec­ond, that Holmes solved his mys­ter­ies not just in 56 short sto­ries but four nov­els as well; and third, that many of those short sto­ries and nov­els dif­fered intrigu­ing­ly in tone and con­tent from my expec­ta­tions. So many mod­ern adap­ta­tions — all those tele­vi­sion series up to the BBC’s new and expen­sive-look­ing Sher­lock, the ear­ly CD-ROM com­put­er game, Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s steam­punk ani­ma­tion Sher­lock Hound, Guy Ritchie’s Robert Downey Jr.-showcasing Hol­ly­wood films — have con­vinced us we “know” Sher­lock Holmes, which makes it all the more fas­ci­nat­ing to inves­ti­gate, as it were, the orig­i­nal lit­er­a­ture.

These days, espe­cial­ly giv­en the recent rul­ing (just re-affirmed by the Supreme Court) that Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries “are no longer cov­ered by Unit­ed States copy­right law and can be freely used by cre­ators with­out pay­ing any licens­ing fee to the Conan Doyle estate,” you can down­load the com­plete Sher­lock Holmes canon in a vari­ety of ebook for­mats, from PDF to ePub to ASCII to MOBI for Kin­dle. If you pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, Lib­rivox has made avail­able three dif­fer­ent ver­sions of Sher­lock Holmes in audio­book form. How­ev­er you choose tech­no­log­i­cal­ly to expe­ri­ence the Sher­lock Holmes canon, I rec­om­mend tak­ing it on chrono­log­i­cal­ly, begin­ning with the 1887 nov­el A Study in Scar­let — less a mys­tery, to my mind, than the scary tale of a mur­der­ous Mor­mon sect — to 1927’s “The Adven­ture of Shoscombe Old Place,” Holmes’ final Conan Doyle-penned adven­ture. Some­where in the mid­dle — in 1893’s “The Final Prob­lem,” to be pre­cise — Holmes’ cre­ator tried to kill the beloved detec­tive off, but the read­ing pub­lic would have none of it. What about Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries had got them so hooked that they could suc­cess­ful­ly demand a res­ur­rec­tion? Now you, too, can find out, with­out even hav­ing to spend the ten dol­lars, let alone go to the antique store.

Bonus: Below, you can lis­ten to The New Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes, an old-time radio show that aired in the US from Octo­ber 2, 1939 to July 7, 1947.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sher­lock Holmes Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain, Declares US Judge

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Arthur Conan Doyle & The Cot­tin­g­ley Fairies: How Two Young Girls Fooled Sher­lock Holmes’ Cre­ator

Arthur Conan Doyle Fills Out the Ques­tion­naire Made Famous By Mar­cel Proust (1899)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

27 More “Essential Films for the Student of Philosophy,” As Suggested By Open Culture Readers

in Film, Philosophy | November 4th, 2014

A post of ours last week on philo­soph­i­cal films piqued the inter­est of many a film-lov­ing, philo­soph­i­cal­ly-inclined read­er, and raised an impor­tant and per­haps unan­swer­able ques­tion: just what is a “philo­soph­i­cal film”? Does such a crea­ture even exist? Read­er Albert Hoff­man sug­gest­ed that “a real­ly great movie always is a philo­soph­i­cal movie, always opens the path to impor­tant philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions.” I find that state­ment hard to dis­pute, but then find myself also agree­ing with anoth­er read­er, Assy­outi, who writes “all bad films can be resources for philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion.” Why not? What a philo­soph­i­cal film is depends, per­haps, on the def­i­n­i­tion of words like “philo­soph­i­cal,” “film,” and “is.”

In any case, the orig­i­nal­ly ref­er­enced list of 44 “essen­tial movies for the stu­dent of phi­los­o­phy,” com­piled in 2010 by Matt Whit­lock for Mubi, laid out some fair­ly spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria, name­ly that such films “(seem to be) incar­na­tions of clas­sic philo­soph­i­cal thought exper­i­ments or movies that have a major philo­soph­i­cal prob­lem as a main theme.” Yet, in addi­tion to films that fea­ture philoso­phers as char­ac­ters or par­tic­i­pants, this seems to me broad enough to cov­er an enor­mous range of movies—from Hitchock’s Ver­ti­go, a favorite of “pervert’s guide” the­o­rist Slavoj Žižek (above), and near­ly every film crit­ic every­where, to (speak­ing of bad films) Bill and Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture.

As I men­tioned in the pre­vi­ous post, the four years since Whitlock’s list have pro­duced a num­ber of movies that deserve inclu­sion, sev­er­al of which were high­light­ed in the com­ments. Addi­tion­al­ly, read­ers men­tioned sev­er­al over­looked films that cer­tain­ly meet the bar. And if we are to loosen up our definitions—and why not—the list expands even fur­ther. In that spir­it of inclu­sion, we offer an adden­dum to Whitlock’s 44, below, with the ever-nec­es­sary dis­claimer that this new list does not in any way exhaust the sub­ject. We do hope, how­ev­er, to spark fur­ther dis­cus­sion and, more impor­tant­ly, intro­duce inter­est­ing, thinky movies for read­ers to dis­cov­er. So, with­out fur­ther pre­am­ble, here are 27 more “essen­tial movies for the stu­dent of phi­los­o­phy,” in no par­tic­u­lar order, as sug­gest­ed by our always astute Open Cul­ture read­ers:

1. Mind­walk (1990)
2. Rosen­crantz & Guilden­stern Are Dead (1990)
3. My Din­ner With Andre (1981)
4. Step­pen­wolf (1974)
5. Wings of Desire (1987)
6. Cocteau’s Orphic Tril­o­gy—Blood of a Poet (1930), Orphee (1950), Tes­ta­ment of Orpheus (1959) [yes, this is three films, but we’ll count them as one for the pur­pos­es of this list]
7. Pos­si­ble Worlds (2000)
8. The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
9. The Holy Moun­tain (1973)
10. THX 1138 (1970)
11. 99 Francs (2007)
12. Un Chien Andalou (1929)
13. Enter the Void (2009)
14. Stalk­er (1979) — fea­tured ear­li­er today on OC
15. Viva La Muerte (1971)
16. I Stand Alone (1998)
17. Iris (2001)
18. World on a Wire (1973)
19. Locke (2013)
20. The Wid­ow of Saint-Pierre (2000)
21. The Tri­al (1962)
22. Life of Bri­an (1979)
23. Being There (1979)
24. Bladerun­ner (1982)
25. Out­landish: Strange For­eign Bod­ies (2009)
26. Is the Man Who Is Tall Hap­py? (2013) — see the trail­er above.
27. Thir­teen Con­ver­sa­tions About One Thing (2001)

As you sure­ly know, the list that pleas­es every­one has yet to be invent­ed, so if you don’t find your sug­ges­tions on this one, please don’t take offense. The exer­cise has been more than worth the price of the tick­et for me—I’ve added quite a few titles to my nev­erend­ing list of films I absolute­ly must see before that whole buck­et thing. No doubt even the hippest among you has found a sur­prise or two here to add to yours. And if you’re dying to add num­ber 28, 29, 30, etc. then, please, let us know in the com­ments below. Or, if you want even more sug­ges­tions, check out the titles that were men­tioned on our Face­book page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Watch The Idea, the First Ani­mat­ed Film to Deal with Big, Philo­soph­i­cal Ideas (1932)

Daniel Den­nett and Cor­nel West Decode the Phi­los­o­phy of The Matrix in 2004 Film

Two Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Alle­go­ry of the Cave: One Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, Anoth­er Made with Clay

The Drink­ing Par­ty, 1965 Film Adapts Plato’s Sym­po­sium to Mod­ern Times

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

Hear/Download Kurt Cobain’s Unearthed, Experimental Mixtape, “Montage Of Heck” (1986)

in Music | November 4th, 2014

Dan­ger­ous Minds has helped unearth Kurt Cobain’s “Mon­tage Of Heck” — a 1986 exper­i­men­tal col­lage of sounds that Cobain culled from his “wide-rang­ing col­lec­tion of LPs, manip­u­lat­ed record­ings of the radio, … Nir­vana demos,” and oth­er audio sources. Made with a four-track cas­sette recorder, the 36-minute record­ing fea­tures sounds ripped from record­ings by Simon & Gar­funkel, The Bea­t­les, Cher, James Brown, John Den­ver, The Par­tridge Fam­i­ly, George Michael and Queen. But if you think you’re going to hear an upbeat sam­pling of pop songs when you click play, you’ve got anoth­er thing com­ing.

Over at Vimeo, you can actu­al­ly down­load the audio track, and there you will find one com­ment that puts the mix­tape into some per­spec­tive. Owl Berg writes, “It’s no sur­prise that Kurt col­lab­o­rat­ed with William Bur­roughs on The “Priest” They Called Him. They were so obvi­ous­ly on the same wave­length. Here we have evi­dence of Kurt apply­ing the cut-up tech­nique which comes straight from Bur­roughs’ writ­ing and tape exper­i­ments, with results that are equal­ly fun­ny and fright­en­ing and mind-blow­ing and essen­tial to scrub­bing our minds clean of our pre­con­cep­tions about sound.” You can revis­it Bur­roughs’ and Cobain’s 1992 col­lab­o­ra­tion by vis­it­ing this post in our archive.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Priest” They Called Him: A Dark Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Kurt Cobain & William S. Bur­roughs

William S. Bur­roughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Orig­i­nal Bands

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

William S. Burrough’s Avant-Garde Movie ‘The Cut Ups’ (1966)

28 Important Philosophers List the Books That Influenced Them Most During Their College Days

in Books, Philosophy | November 3rd, 2014

The web site Demasi­a­do Aire recent­ly asked “some of the world’s most impor­tant philoso­phers which three books influ­enced them the most while under­grad­u­ate stu­dents.” And, from what we can tell, they got a good response. 28 influ­en­tial philoso­phers duti­ful­ly jot­ted their lists, and, for at least the past day, Demasi­a­do Aire has been offline, seem­ing­ly over­whelmed by traf­fic. Thanks to the Inter­net Archive’s Way­back Machine, we can recov­er these lists and pro­vide you with a few high­lights. We have added links to the texts cit­ed by the philoso­phers. The free texts have an aster­isk (*) next to them.

Charles Tay­lor (McGill Uni­ver­si­ty):

–Phénoménolo­gie de la Per­cep­tion, Mau­rice Mer­leau-Pon­ty

–The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov*, Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky

–Jalons pour une théolo­gie du Laï­cat, Yves Con­gar

Daniel Den­nett (Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty):

“That’s easy:

–Word and Object, Quine.

–The con­cept of mind*, Gilbert Ryle

–Philo­soph­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tions, Lud­wig Wittgen­stein

“I got to study with Quine and Ryle, but Wittgen­stein had died before I encoun­tered his work”.

Alexan­der Nehamas (Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty):

–Apol­o­gy of Socrates*, Pla­to

–Nico­machean Ethics*, Aris­to­tle

–Ethics*, Spin­oza

“Also, I should point out that Nietzsche’s On the Geneal­o­gy of Moral­i­ty* had a huge effect on me when I was a grad­u­ate stu­dent and had a for­ma­tive influ­ence on my philo­soph­i­cal devel­op­ment”.

David Chalmers (Aus­tralian Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty):

“I was an under­grad­u­ate stu­dent in math­e­mat­ics rather than phi­los­o­phy, but the answer is”:

–Gödel, Esch­er Bach, Dou­glas Hof­s­tadter

–The Mind’s I, Dou­glas Hof­s­tadter & Daniel Den­nett

–Rea­sons and Per­sons, Derek Parfit

You can view lists by oth­er philoso­phers, includ­ing Alain de Bot­ton, Wendy Brown, Peter Mil­li­can, and more here. The image above comes via by MjYj.

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:

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Philoso­pher Por­traits: Famous Philoso­phers Paint­ed in the Style of Influ­en­tial Artists

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Kandinsky, Klee & Other Bauhaus Artists Designed Ingenious Costumes Like You’ve Never Seen Before

in Art | November 3rd, 2014

Artists of the Bauhaus school—includ­ing founder Wal­ter Gropius, Paul Klee, Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, Piet Mon­dri­an and others—broke rad­i­cal­ly with famil­iar tra­di­tion and made min­i­mal­ist, abstract, and some­times shock­ing state­ments with their work. We know this his­to­ry, but you prob­a­bly haven’t seen these cul­tur­al fig­ures phys­i­cal­ly embody their aes­thet­ic prin­ci­ples as they do in the pho­tographs here, from cos­tume par­ties the Bauhaus school held through­out the twen­ties.

As Rachel Doyle at Curbed wrote, “if you thought Bauhaus folk were good at design­ing cof­fee tables, just have a look at their costumes—as bewitch­ing and sculp­tur­al as any oth­er stu­dent project, but with an amaz­ing flam­boy­ance not oft ascribed to the move­ment.”

The whim­si­cal cos­tume parties—to which, wrote Hun­gar­i­an archi­tect Farkas Mol­nár, artists devot­ed “the great­est expen­di­tures of energy”—represented fur­ther attempts to tran­scend “medieval con­di­tions” and inte­grate “today’s sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal advances… into gen­er­al cul­ture.” So wrote Mol­nár in a 1925 essay, “Life at the Bauhaus,” where he describes the play­ful­ly seri­ous con­di­tions at the school. These par­ties, he asserts, were supe­ri­or to “fan­cy-dress balls” orga­nized by artists in oth­er cities in that “our cos­tumes are tru­ly orig­i­nal. Every­one pre­pares his or her own. Nev­er a one that has been seen before. Inhu­man, or humanoid, but always new.” Every­one par­tic­i­pat­ed, it seems, from the newest stu­dent to, as Mol­nár calls them, “the big­wigs”:

Kandin­sky prefers to appear decked out as an anten­na, Itten as an amor­phous mon­ster, Feininger as two right tri­an­gles, Moholy-Nagy as a seg­ment tran­spierced by a cross, Gropius as Le Cor­busier, Muche as an apos­tle of Maz­daz­nan, Klee as the song of the blue tree. A rather grotesque menagerie…

Might that be Kandin­sky in the pho­to­graph at the top? Just who is this lumi­nous fig­ure? Why did Gropius dress up as Le Cor­busier, and what, exact­ly, does “the song of the blue tree” look like? We can iden­ti­fy at least one of these artists—the bald man in black at the cen­ter of the pho­to­graph below is Oskar Schlem­mer, painter, sculp­tor, design­er, and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er. Schlem­mer gave Bauhaus cos­tume design its most for­mal con­text with the Tri­adic Bal­let, a pro­duc­tion, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, that “com­bined his work in both sculp­ture and the­ater to cre­ate the inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed extrav­a­gan­za which toured from 1922 to 1929.”

The ballet’s “18 cos­tumes,” writes Curbed, “were designed by match­ing geo­met­ric forms with anal­o­gous parts of the human body: a cylin­der for the neck, a cir­cle for the heads…. These elab­o­rate cos­tumes [see pho­to of per­form­ers below]… total­ly upped the ante at the Bauhaus school’s reg­u­lar cos­tume balls.” Schlem­mer “made no secret of the fact that he con­sid­ered the styl­ized, arti­fi­cial move­ments of mar­i­onettes to be aes­thet­i­cal­ly supe­ri­or to the nat­u­ral­is­tic move­ments of real humans.” His bal­let, Dan­ger­ous Minds remarks, may be “the least ‘human’ dance per­for­mance ever con­ceived.”

It may come as no sur­prise then that the Tri­adic Bal­let influ­enced some of the hyper-styl­ized alien cos­tum­ing of David Bowie’s Zig­gy Star­dust tour. Per­haps even more than the pho­tographs of rev­el­ers from the cos­tume par­ties, the Tri­adic Bal­let, which has been peri­od­i­cal­ly revived since its 1922 debut, pre­serves the fas­ci­nat­ing inno­va­tions Bauhaus artists envi­sioned for the human form. Just below, watch a 1970 film pro­duc­tion recre­at­ing many of the orig­i­nal designs, and see more pho­tographs of Bauhaus cos­tumes at The Char­nel-House.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Avant-Garde Bauhaus Bal­let in Bril­liant Col­or, First Staged in 1922

The Home­made Hand Pup­pets of Bauhaus Artist Paul Klee

Time Trav­el Back to 1926 and Watch Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Cre­ate an Abstract Com­po­si­tion

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

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

Watch Harry Shearer’s Faithful Recreation of Nixon’s Resignation

in Comedy, History, Politics, Television | November 3rd, 2014

Antho­ny Hop­kins.

Frank Lan­gel­la.

And now, come­di­an Har­ry Shear­er.

What role do these gift­ed per­form­ers have in com­mon?

Lear?

Nope. Nixon.

Lan­gel­la and Sir Antho­ny res­ur­rect­ed the 37th pres­i­dent with­in the frame­work of care­ful­ly craft­ed screen­plays. Shearer’s approach is just as actor­ly, but his mate­r­i­al isn’t exact­ly script­ed. Instead, he and Nixon schol­ar Stan­ley Kut­ler pieced it togeth­er from unof­fi­cial ban­ter on the 3,700 hours of audio­tape Nixon secret­ly record­ed while in office, sup­ple­ment­ing with notes by those who were there.

The result is Nixon’s The One, a fly-on-the-wall web series in which vir­tu­oso impro­vis­er Shear­er sticks scrupu­lous­ly to the script, recre­at­ing every pause and awk­ward chuck­le. Com­pare Shearer’s lead up to Nixon’s tele­vised res­ig­na­tion above, to the real thing, below.

It’s uncom­fort­able, uncan­ny, dis­so­cia­tive, and strange­ly human.

The only false note is Shearer’s glar­ing­ly obvi­ous pros­thet­ic nose, though giv­en the pro­fes­sion­al, peri­od-accu­rate set, this may have been a delib­er­ate choice. Despite his insis­tence on authen­tic­i­ty, a biopic is clear­ly not what cre­ator Shear­er had in mind.

He’s been in train­ing for this project for close to half a cen­tu­ry, long before the idea itself was hatched. His first turn as Nixon came as a young, make-up free mem­ber of the L.A. com­e­dy group, the Cred­i­bil­i­ty Gap.

The next was on Sun­day Best, a 1991 mid-sea­son replace­ment on NBC. “I did a sketch I don’t think ever aired,” he told the Wall Street Jour­nal, “Nixon as a guest on an infomer­cial demon­strat­ing a mag­i­cal teeth-whiten­ing prepa­ra­tion.”

Le Show, Shearer’s extreme­ly fun­ny radio show, pro­vid­ed a forum for yet anoth­er ridicu­lous exer­cise at Tricky Dick’s expense.

The one-time polit­i­cal sci­ence major has elect­ed to play it straight with this ver­ba­tim, long form labor of love, in order let the weird, unin­ten­tion­al com­e­dy of Richard Nixon shine through. Find all the videos in the Nixon’s the One series here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Nixon’s Tips For Get­ting Pan­das to Have Sex, Caught on New­ly-Revealed Audio Tape (1972)

The Moon Dis­as­ter That Wasn’t: Nixon’s Speech In Case Apol­lo 11 Failed to Return

Nixon and Kissinger: Best of Allies and Rivals

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She embar­rassed her par­ents on a child­hood tour of the Nixon White House unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly bois­ter­ous demands to see Tricky Dick and a queasy stom­ach that  healed itself in time for a vis­it to a Lafayette Square hot dog ven­dor. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Lenny Bruce: Hear the Performances That Got Him Arrested (NSFW)

in Comedy | November 3rd, 2014

Lenny Bruce: what come­di­an today — or coun­ter­cul­tur­al pub­lic speak­er of any kind — does­n’t name him as an influ­ence? But his­to­ry has remem­bered the cut­ting-edge fun­ny­man of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s as not just an influ­en­tial fig­ure, but some­thing of a mar­tyr to that quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Amer­i­can cause of free speech. One need only read the sto­ry of Bruce’s many legal trou­bles, a suc­cinct ver­sion of which you can find at The Tri­als of Lenny Bruce Home­page, to under­stand that the author­i­ties of the mid-20th cen­tu­ry inter­pret­ed that cause quite dif­fer­ent­ly than we do now. Doug Lin­der, the author of that piece, describes Bruce’s fall from the peak of his career — a 1959 appear­ance on nation­al tele­vi­sion (intro­duced by Steve Allen as “the most shock­ing come­di­an of our time, a young man who is sky­rock­et­ing to fame”), a packed house at Carnegie Hall two years lat­er — to his ear­ly death, five years on, after the rav­ages of bank­rupt­cy, drugs, and court­rooms.

What hap­pened to this promis­ing comedic lumi­nary? All too many come­di­ans flame out due to addic­tion and finan­cial issues, but Bruce had the con­sid­er­able bur­den of run­ning afoul, again and again, of “obscen­i­ty” laws: at a San Fran­cis­co jazz club, at West Hol­ly­wood’s famous Trou­ba­dour, at Los Ange­les’ Uni­corn, in Chica­go, and so on. Bruce may have thought him­self safe in the com­par­a­tive­ly un-Puri­tan set­ting of Green­wich Vil­lage, but even there, on the fate­ful night of March 31, 1964, a CIA agent sat in the audi­ence of one of his per­for­mances and dili­gent­ly col­lect­ed evi­dence against him. An arrest, ardu­ous, high-pro­file tri­al, and con­vic­tion fol­lowed. Though New York’s high­est court would reverse this con­vic­tion in 1970, the dam­age had long since been done, and Bruce him­self had died four years ear­li­er.

You can hear the dar­ing mate­r­i­al that con­demned Bruce above, from the out-of-print album What I Was Arrest­ed For: The Per­for­mances that Got Lenny Bruce Bust­ed. (His rou­tine “To Is a Prepo­si­tion; Come Is a Verb,” which espe­cial­ly ticked off the inves­ti­ga­tors, appears just above.) Fifty years after the tri­al, would any of this “obscene, inde­cent, immoral, and impure dra­ma, play, exhi­bi­tion, or enter­tain­ment,” as the law says, “tend to the cor­rup­tion of the morals of youth and oth­ers”? As All Music Guide’s Sean Car­ruthers writes of the album, which first came out in 1969 and again in 1975, “It’s amaz­ing what just a few years can accom­plish in terms of chang­ing social val­ues — by the time this was re-released, there was­n’t real­ly a whole lot here that would get peo­ple too upset.” And so, in per­haps the most telling tes­ta­ment to the ulti­mate vic­to­ry of Lenny Bruce, that 20th-cen­tu­ry Socrates, the world has become safe for any one of us to pub­licly utter words like — well, bet­ter to hear them straight from the sage of obscen­i­ty’s mouth, right?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thank You, Mask Man: Lenny Bruce’s Lone Ranger Com­e­dy Rou­tine Becomes a NSFW Ani­mat­ed Film (1968)

Lenny Bruce Riffs and Rants on Injus­tice and Hypocrisy in One of His Final Per­for­mances (NSFW)

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

“Tele­vi­sion Taboos”: 1949 Pho­to Spread Sat­i­rizes the Moral Codes of Ear­ly Tele­vi­sion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.