Animated Video: Johnny Cash Explains Why Music Became a Religious Calling

in Animation, Music | April 9th, 2014

Blank on Blank is back with anoth­er ani­mat­ed video. This one ani­mates a long lost inter­view with the great John­ny Cash. Inter­viewed by Bar­ney Hoskyns back in 1996, Cash talked about music as a reli­gious call­ing. Play­ing music was akin to preach­ing the gospel, and he knew he’d con­tin­ue mak­ing music until his final days. Should we be sur­prised then, that sev­en years lat­er, Cash com­plet­ed more than 60 songs dur­ing the last four months of his life? He died with his boots on indeed.

Below we’ve high­light­ed for you some great John­ny Cash mate­r­i­al from our archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Episode of The John­ny Cash Show, Fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan & Joni Mitchell (1969)

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

John­ny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

Jim Carrey Sings a Pretty Damn Good Cover of The Beatles “I Am the Walrus”

in Music | April 9th, 2014

Back in 1998, the Bea­t­les pro­duc­er, George Mar­tin, pro­duced an album called In My Life. It’s prob­a­bly not an LP that ever made it into your record col­lec­tion, unless you’re a fan of mid­dling cov­ers of Bea­t­les songs. (In which case, you’ll love our old post, The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks.) But the com­pi­la­tion does fea­ture one record­ing that has­n’t quite fad­ed from view — Jim Car­rey’s take on “I Am the Wal­rus.” There’s a comedic com­po­nent to his per­for­mance. But Car­rey also demon­strates a “vocal elas­tic­i­ty” that you might not have expect­ed. If you’ve nev­er heard the Bea­t­les’ orig­i­nal record­ing (God help you), you can find it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Dif­fer­ent Accents

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Richard Dawkins’ Documentary The God Delusion Tackles Faith & Religious Violence (2006)

in Film, Politics, Religion | April 9th, 2014

The very title of Richard Dawkins’ 2006 book The God Delu­sion was intend­ed to pro­voke, and the Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist has seem­ing­ly done noth­ing but, since tak­ing his stand against reli­gions of all kinds, par­tic­u­lar­ly the big monotheisms that claim most of the world’s inhab­i­tants. Dawkins infu­ri­ates the­ists on the right with his self-assured claim that “there almost cer­tain­ly is no God” and skep­tics on the left, who charge him with sex­ism and racism. Even jour­nal­ist and jour­ney­man intel­lec­tu­al Christo­pher Hedges—no friend to author­i­tar­i­an reli­gions—accus­es Dawkins of the same kind of intol­er­ance as Chris­t­ian, Jew­ish, and Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists.

Mean­while, thou­sands of peo­ple who may or may not fol­low Dawkins’ every inflam­ma­to­ry tweet cred­it him with giv­ing them the courage and con­vic­tion to walk away from faiths they found oppres­sive. In that regard, he’s accom­plished his goal, and his Richard Dawkins Foun­da­tion con­tin­ues to advo­cate stren­u­ous­ly for “sci­en­tif­ic edu­ca­tion, crit­i­cal think­ing and evi­dence-based under­stand­ing of the nat­ur­al world in the quest to over­come reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism, super­sti­tion, intol­er­ance and human suf­fer­ing.”

If you’ve some­how missed Dawkins’ mes­sage amidst the furor over his method, you can get caught up rather quick­ly with the film above. Titled, like his book, The God Delu­sion, the film com­piles the two 45-minute episodes of a doc­u­men­tary series pro­duced for BBC 4 called Root of All Evil?, first broad­cast in 2006 as a com­pan­ion to the book. (The pro­duc­ers chose the title to cre­ate controversy—Dawkins has called the notion of any one thing being the “root of all evil” ridicu­lous.) In his intro­duc­tion to the film, Dawkins pro­pos­es to explore “a world increas­ing­ly polar­ized by reli­gion,” and to find out why faith has such a grip on the human mind.

Sur­vey­ing regions from America’s Mid­west to Israel, the film “takes a hard look at the very con­cept of faith: how it behaves like a kind of ‘brain virus,’ infect­ing gen­er­a­tions of young minds, how it per­pet­u­ates out­dat­ed and dubi­ous moral val­ues.” Why, asks Dawkins, should reli­gion “demand, and usu­al­ly receive, our society’s respect”? It’s still a ques­tion worth ask­ing, even if you don’t like Dawkins’ answers, or Dawkins him­self.

You can find The God Delu­sion in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Unbe­liev­ers, A New Film Star­ring Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, & Cor­mac McCarthy

The Ori­gins Project Brings Togeth­er Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye, Ira Fla­tow, and More on One Stage

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

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

How the CIA Turned Doctor Zhivago into a Propaganda Weapon Against the Soviet Union

in Books, History, Literature, Politics | April 9th, 2014

Human­i­ty has long pon­dered the rel­a­tive might of the pen and the sword. While one time-worn apho­rism does grant the advan­tage to the pen, most of us have enter­tained doubts: the sword, metaphor­i­cal­ly or lit­er­al­ly, seems to have won out across an awful­ly wide swath of his­to­ry. Still, the pen has scored some impres­sive vic­to­ries, some even in liv­ing mem­o­ry. Take, for exam­ple, the CIA’s recent­ly revealed use of Boris Paster­nak’s nov­el Doc­tor Zhiva­go as a pro­pa­gan­da weapon. Repressed in Paster­nak’s native Rus­sia, the book first appeared in Italy in 1957. The fol­low­ing year, the British sug­gest­ed to Amer­i­ca’s Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency that the book stood a decent chance of win­ning hearts and minds behind the Iron Cur­tain — if, of course, they could get a few copies in there. A CIA memo sent across its own Sovi­et Rus­sia Divi­sion sub­se­quent­ly pro­nounced Doc­tor Zhiva­go as pos­sessed of “great pro­pa­gan­da val­ue, not only for its intrin­sic mes­sage and thought-pro­vok­ing nature, but also for the cir­cum­stances of its pub­li­ca­tion. We have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make Sovi­et cit­i­zens won­der what is wrong with their gov­ern­ment, when a fine lit­er­ary work by the man acknowl­edged to be the great­est liv­ing Russ­ian writer is not even avail­able in his own coun­try in his own lan­guage for his own peo­ple to read.”

That eval­u­a­tion comes from one of the over 130 declas­si­fied doc­u­ments used by Peter Finn and Petra Cou­vée in their brand new his­to­ry of this act of real-life lit­er­ary espi­onage, The Zhiva­go Affair: The Krem­lin, the CIA and the Bat­tle Over a For­bid­den Book. You can read an in-depth arti­cle on some of the events involved in this oper­a­tion — the CIA’s print­ing of both hard­cov­er and minia­ture paper­back Russ­ian-lan­guage edi­tions, the not-so-clan­des­tine dis­tri­b­u­tion of copies at 1958’s Brus­sels Uni­ver­sal and Inter­na­tion­al Expo­si­tion, the CIA’s unex­pect­ed alliance with the Vat­i­can in this mis­sion, the inept prob­ing by Sovi­et “researchers” — at the Wash­ing­ton Post.

You can also watch a CBS This Morn­ing clip on the book just above. Dra­mat­ic though this “Zhiva­go Affair” sounds, it came as nei­ther the first nor last Amer­i­can use of cul­ture as a means of desta­bi­liz­ing the Sovi­et Union. We’ve even pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured two oth­ers: secret­ly-fund­ed abstract expres­sion­ist paint­ing, and Louis Arm­strong’s 1965 East Berlin and Budapest con­certs. Cold War Amer­i­ca may have had the sword, in the form of its vast nuclear arse­nal, pol­ished and ready, but clear­ly it retained a cer­tain regard for the pen — and brush, and trum­pet — as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

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.

Free: Watch the First Episode of Silicon Valley, Mike Judge’s New HBO Series

in Technology, Television | April 9th, 2014

Mike Judge’s 1998 movie Office Space struck a nerve with just about any­one who ever wound up in a thank­less low-end white col­lar job. Few movies before or since have been able to artic­u­late the pet­ty indig­ni­ties, the inani­ties and the gen­er­al soul gnaw­ing awful­ness of such gigs. Though the film is far from per­fect, its abun­dance of painful­ly fun­ny jokes along with some emi­nent­ly quotable lines — “Ummm I’m gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomor­row” — have enshrined Office Space into the canon of cult movies.

Six­teen years lat­er, Mike Judge has a new sit­com that aims its satir­i­cal sites on anoth­er white-col­lar ecosys­tem – Sil­i­con Val­ley (the home of Open Cul­ture). The series cen­ters on neb­bish pro­gram­mer Richard who unwit­ting­ly devel­ops a new rev­o­lu­tion­ary way to com­press files. Soon he finds him­self in a bid­ding war between two of the tech world’s biggest entre­pre­neurs. Like Office Space, the fun of the show is its wry, acer­bic obser­va­tions about the rar­i­fied cul­ture of the val­ley.

Just like some apps that offer them­selves for free before mak­ing you pay, the cre­ators of Sil­i­con Val­ley are offer­ing the first episode of the HBO series for free on YouTube. Check it out above. Now if only they would do the same thing for sea­son four of Game of Thrones.

Recent Posts:

The Secret His­to­ry of Sil­i­con Val­ley

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

Start Your Start­up with Free Stan­ford Cours­es and Lec­tures

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Hear Lost Recording of Pink Floyd Playing with Jazz Violinist Stéphane Grappelli on “Wish You Were Here”

in Music | April 8th, 2014

Those of you deeply into both jazz vio­lin and pro­gres­sive rock no doubt jumped right on the play but­ton above. Quite a few more will lis­ten — so expe­ri­ence has taught me — pure­ly out of inter­est in any­thing and every­thing Pink Floyd has done. But on the lev­el of music his­to­ry, the track above, a ver­sion of the cere­bral Eng­lish rock band’s Pink Floy­d’s well-known 1975 song “With You Were Here” promi­nent­ly fea­tur­ing a solo from the French “Grand­fa­ther of Jazz Vio­lin­ists” Stéphane Grap­pel­li, should fas­ci­nate just about any­one. It speaks to the par­tic­u­lar kind of high-pro­file musi­cal exper­i­men­tal­ism that thrived in that era, at least in some quar­ters — or, rather, in some stu­dios. In this case, the Grap­pel­li and the Floyd boys found them­selves record­ing in adja­cent ones. Why would the lat­ter invite the for­mer, already an elder states­man of jazz and a col­lab­o­ra­tor with the likes of Djan­go Rein­hardt, to sit in on a ses­sion? (Watch Djan­go and Grap­pel­li play togeth­er in the 1938 film, Jazz Hot here.) Well… why not? They need­ed some­thing impres­sive to fol­low Dark Side of the Moon, after all.

Still, for all the rich­ness of the result you hear here and all the fan-hours spent lis­ten­ing to Pink Floy­d’s Wish You Were Here album in the 35 years after it came out, the pub­lic nev­er got to hear Grap­pel­li’s play­ing fore­ground­ed until Immer­sion reis­sued it three years ago. This long-lost but redis­cov­ered mix of the title track marks, to the mind of Pink Floyd found­ing mem­ber Nick Mason, a marked improve­ment over the ver­sion on the orig­i­nal album. “I think that was the jew­el in that par­tic­u­lar crown,” he said to Son­ic Real­i­ty. “It was some­thing that I assumed had been lost for­ev­er. I thought we’d record­ed over it. [ … ] I can’t imag­ine why we didn’t use it at the time.” In the one they did use at the time, what remains of Grap­pel­li’s play­ing came out so inaudi­ble that the album’s cred­its did­n’t even name the vio­lin­ist. I’d like to chalk up anoth­er point for the cul­tur­al revi­sion made pos­si­ble by our tech­no­log­i­cal age, but alas, I doubt any sort of redis­cov­ery will break true Floyd acolytes of their adher­ence to the canon.

via Some­thing Else Reviews

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:

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

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.

Listen to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Play Through an Earthquake

in Music | April 8th, 2014

As they say, the show must go on.…

Writes the LA Phil­har­mon­ic on their Youtube Chan­nel:

On March 28, 2014 at 9:09pm, a 5.1 mag­ni­tude earth­quake rocked Los Ange­les. The Los Ange­les Phil­har­mon­ic was six min­utes into a per­for­mance of Rav­el’s “Daph­nis and Chloé” with guest con­duc­tor Charles Dutoit when the quake hit. A strong jolt fol­lowed by a minute of rum­bling did not unhinge the orches­tra or Mae­stro Dutoit, and the stir­ring con­cert con­tin­ued with­out a hitch.

What you’ll hear above is an actu­al record­ing. Anno­ta­tions help explain the sequence of events.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Listen to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)

in Art, Music | April 8th, 2014

John Cage was born in 1915 and died in 1992. Dur­ing that inter­ven­ing time, he changed the face of avant-garde music and art.

An ear­ly dis­ci­ple of Arnold Schoen­berg, Cage made his biggest cre­ative break­through by study­ing the I Ching, Zen Bud­dhism and the art of Mar­cel Duchamp. The com­pos­er decid­ed to let ele­ments of chance into his work. He start­ed to write pieces for a “pre­pared piano” where things like thumb­tacks, nails and forks were placed into the instrument’s strings to alter its sound in unex­pect­ed ways.

Cage’s most famous work, 4’33”, took con­cep­tu­al music about as far as it could go. A musi­cian walks out onto the stage, sits in front of a piano and does absolute­ly noth­ing for four min­utes and thir­ty sec­onds. The sounds of the audi­ence rustling, the traf­fic out­side and any oth­er ambi­ent noise that might hap­pen dur­ing that time peri­od become a part of the piece. Watch a per­for­mance here.

The folks over at Ubu.com have placed online anoth­er one of Cage’s work, Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse) (1991). Clock­ing in at over 5 hours total, the piece is some­thing of a Mount Ever­est of sound art.

Record­ed in Switzer­land a lit­tle over a year before his death, Diary fea­tures thoughts, obser­va­tions and insights along with quotes from the likes of Buck­min­ster Fuller, Hen­ry David Thore­au and Mao Zedong. You can lis­ten to Part 1 below, and click these links to lis­ten to the remain­ing parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.

Cage’s diaries appeared pre­vi­ous­ly in print as M: Writ­ings, 1967–72. On the page, the text ran­dom­ly changed both font and let­ter size. You can see what this looks like here. Cage and com­pa­ny repro­duced this effect in the audio ver­sion by chang­ing the posi­tion of the micro­phone and the record­ing vol­ume. If you lis­ten to Diary on head­phones (which I rec­om­mend), you’ll hear Cage’s silken voice first behind your left ear, then in front of you and then, dis­con­cert­ing­ly, inside your head.

Much of the time, Cage’s words will feel obscure and poet­ic. And then, as you’re lulled by the rhythm of his voice, he’ll hit you with some­thing as pro­found as a Zen koan. (“The goal is not to have a goal.”) Just sit back and let the words flow over you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Watch a Sur­pris­ing­ly Mov­ing Per­for­mance of John Cage’s 1948 “Suite for Toy Piano”

Woody Guthrie’s Fan Let­ter To John Cage and Alan Hov­haness (1947)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Human, All Too Human: 3‑Part Documentary Profiles Nietzsche, Heidegger & Sartre

in Philosophy | April 8th, 2014

Cer­tain­ly three of the most rad­i­cal thinkers of the last 150 years, Niet­zsche, Hei­deg­ger, and Sartre were also three of the most con­tro­ver­sial, and at times polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic, for their per­ceived links to total­i­tar­i­an regimes. In Nietzsche’s case, the con­nec­tion to Nazism was whol­ly spu­ri­ous, con­coct­ed after his death by his anti-Semit­ic sis­ter. Nev­er­the­less, Nietzsche’s phi­los­o­phy is far from sym­pa­thet­ic to equal­i­ty, his pol­i­tics, such as they are, high­ly unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic. The case of Hei­deg­ger is much more disturbing—a mem­ber of the Nazi par­ty, the author of Being and Time noto­ri­ous­ly held fas­cist views, made all the more clear by the recent pub­li­ca­tion of his infa­mous “black note­books.” And Sartre, author of Being and Noth­ing­ness, has long been accused of sup­port­ing Stalinism—a charge that may be over­sim­pli­fied, but is not with­out some mer­it.

Despite these trou­bling asso­ci­a­tions, all three philoso­phers are often held up as representatives—along with Søren Kierkegaard and Albert Camus—of Exis­ten­tial­ism, broad­ly a phi­los­o­phy of free­dom against oppres­sive reli­gious and polit­i­cal sys­tems that seek to define and order human life accord­ing to pre­de­ter­mined val­ues. Whether all three thinkers deserve the label (Hei­deg­ger, like Camus, flat­ly reject­ed it) is a mat­ter of some dis­pute, and yet, the BBC doc­u­men­tary series Human, All Too Human, named for Nietzsche’s 1878 col­lec­tion of apho­risms, loose­ly uses the term to tie them togeth­er, acknowl­edg­ing that it had yet to be coined in Nietzsche’s time.

The first episode, at the top, intro­duces the great 19th cen­tu­ry Ger­man athe­ist by way of inter­views with Niet­zsche schol­ars and biog­ra­phers. Episode two cov­ers Hei­deg­ger, with frank dis­cus­sions of his Nazi par­ty affil­i­a­tion and its impli­ca­tions for his thought.

The third episode focus­es on Sartre, the only thinker of the three to call him­self an exis­ten­tial­ist. Both Sartre and his part­ner Simone de Beau­voir wrote on the sub­ject, defend­ing the philo­soph­i­cal out­look in essays and inter­views.

In one of Sartre’s most famous defens­es, “Exis­ten­tial­ism and Human Emo­tion,” he emphat­i­cal­ly defines his philo­soph­i­cal stance as anti-essen­tial­ist and atheistic—unlike the Chris­t­ian Kierkegaard before him.

Athe­is­tic exis­ten­tial­ism, which I rep­re­sent, is more coher­ent. It states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom exis­tence pre­cedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any con­cept, and that this being is man, or, as Hei­deg­ger says, human real­i­ty. What is meant here by say­ing that exis­tence pre­cedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only after­wards, defines him­self. If man, as the exis­ten­tial­ist con­ceives him, is inde­fin­able, it is because at first he is noth­ing. […] Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to con­ceive it. Not only is man what he con­ceives him­self to be, but he is also only what he wills him­self to be after this thrust toward exis­tence.

Exis­ten­tial­ism has become a wide net, used to cap­ture sim­i­lar­i­ties in the work of oth­er­wise wide­ly diver­gent thinkers. How­ev­er, the use of the term his­tor­i­cal­ly belongs to the 1940s and 50s, to a move­ment as much lit­er­ary as philo­soph­i­cal, and Sartre was its great­est cham­pi­on and, some would say, the only true Exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher. Nev­er­the­less, the label cap­tures some­thing of the dar­ing and the dan­ger of rad­i­cal phi­los­o­phy that rede­fines, or out­right rejects, tra­di­tion­al norms. For all their flaws and con­tra­dic­tions, all three of the thinkers pro­filed above made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to our under­stand­ing of what it means to be human—and to be an individual—in an increas­ing­ly mech­a­nized, homog­e­nized, and dehu­man­iz­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger Talks About Lan­guage, Being, Marx & Reli­gion in Vin­tage 1960s Inter­views

Philosophy’s Pow­er Cou­ple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir, Fea­tured in 1967 TV Inter­view

100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

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

How to Survive the Coming Zombie Apocalypse: An Online Course by Michigan State

in Education, Life | April 8th, 2014

These days, the naysay­ers like to ask: “What is a col­lege edu­ca­tion good for? What does it pre­pare you to do in the world?”

Here’s one com­pelling answer for you: Sur­vive an Apoc­a­lypse.

Start­ing on May 12, Michi­gan State stu­dents can take an award-win­ning online course called Sur­viv­ing the Com­ing Zom­bie Apoc­a­lypse — Dis­as­ters, Cat­a­stro­phes, and Human Behav­ior. The course “brings togeth­er the lat­est think­ing on how and why humans behave dur­ing dis­as­ters and cat­a­stro­phes. Why do some sur­vive and oth­ers don’t? What are the impli­ca­tions for plan­ning, pre­pared­ness, and dis­as­ter man­age­ment?” Along the way, stu­dents will form sur­vival groups whose goal is to escape death, endure cat­a­stroph­ic events, and pre­serve the future of civ­i­liza­tion. Togeth­er, they will learn a valu­able les­son:  sur­vival depends not on the indi­vid­ual, but on the group. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the course is only open to MSU stu­dents and guest stu­dents for a fee. But you can watch the trail­er above for free. Be warned, the film, and espe­cial­ly the Charles Man­son-like char­ac­ter, is a lit­tle intense.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Sur­vival Guide to the Post Apoc­a­lypse

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

Duck and Cov­er, or: How I Learned to Elude the Bomb