Leonard Bernstein Demystifies the Rock Revolution for Curious (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

in Music | March 28th, 2013

Many of today’s thir­teen-year-olds sure­ly have the Bea­t­les on their iPods (or their iPhones or Androids, or what­ev­er now ranks as the cut­ting-edge ado­les­cen­t’s lis­ten­ing device of choice). Yet they would have been born in 2000, forty years after the dis­so­lu­tion of the Bea­t­les them­selves. Their par­ents would prob­a­bly have been born in the six­ties, already the height of the band’s cre­ativ­i­ty. The star­tling impli­ca­tion: these kids rock out to some of the very same songs their grand­par­ents may well have loved. As P.J. O’Rourke once wrote upon spot­ting an aged hip­pie with a walk­er and a hear­ing aid at an Iraq War protest, sic tran­sit gen­er­a­tion gap. But back in 1967, when that gap yawned so chas­mi­cal­ly wide as to ren­der any com­mu­ni­ca­tion across it seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble, the young Baby Boomers and their own Great Depres­sion, Sec­ond World War-forged par­ents used the musi­cal land­scape to draw their bat­tle lines. Who could bro­ker a peace? Enter com­pos­er, pianist, and New York Phil­har­mon­ic direc­tor Leonard Bern­stein. Born in 1918 and hailed as one of the most accom­plished and astute musi­cal minds in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, he could not only appre­ci­ate the tech­niques and inno­va­tions of the youth-dri­ven pop-rock explo­sion of the six­ties, he could get the ear of his mid­dle-aged peers and explain to them just what they were miss­ing.

The tele­vi­sion broad­cast Inside Pop: The Rock Rev­o­lu­tion gave Bern­stein a mass-com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form on which per­form this analy­sis, ask­ing aloud the ques­tions of (a) why this music so infu­ri­ates Amer­i­cans over a cer­tain age and (b) why he him­self likes it so much. Decked out in a square-friend­ly suit and tie and appear­ing on the even square-friend­lier CBS net­work, Bern­stein plays clips of songs by the Bea­t­les, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, and the Asso­ci­a­tion, break­ing down the gen­uine musi­co­log­i­cal mer­its of each: their vocal expres­sions, their unex­pect­ed key changes, their count­less son­ic lay­ers, their stripped-down melod­ic sense, and their lyrics’ adept­ness of impli­ca­tion (“one of our teenager’s strongest weapons”). Bern­stein also calls upon “Soci­ety’s Child” singer-song­writer Janis Ian and Beach Boys mas­ter­mind Bri­an Wil­son to per­form live. Quite a few crew-cut, cardi­gan-clad, mar­ti­ni-sip­ping adults must have come away from Inside Pop with a new, if grudg­ing, appre­ci­a­tion for the craft of these long-haired young­sters. But now, to address the con­cerns of the 21st cen­tu­ry’s bewil­dered grown-ups, who will go on tele­vi­sion and explain dub­step?

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed in 1973)

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Con­cert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

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

Enter Jeff Slatnick’s Wonderful World of New-Fangled and Resurrected Instruments

in Music | March 28th, 2013

Jeff Slat­nick has been the “guy in the store” over at Music Inn World Instru­ments for over 40 years, a land­mark music store in the West Vil­lage of NYC. When you step into the Music Inn, you’re step­ping into “a muse­um, rich with music his­to­ry from around the world.” You’ll encounter instru­ments from far-flung coun­tries, instru­ments that died out cen­turies ago, and new-fan­gled instru­ments designed for the hus­tle and bus­tle of today’s New York City. The short pro­file film above comes from NYork­ers, a series of shorts ded­i­cat­ed to fea­tur­ing “New York­ers that you don’t read about in head­lines…”

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Recy­cled Orches­tra: Paraguayan Youth Play Mozart with Instru­ments Clev­er­ly Made Out of Trash

The Joy of Mak­ing Artis­tic Home­made Gui­tars

New Heat Map Reveals the Creation of Our Infant Universe

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | March 28th, 2013

This map shows the old­est light in our uni­verse, as detect­ed by the Planck mis­sion. Click on the map for a larg­er image.

By now the Big Bang the­o­ry is wide­ly accept­ed sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly. The idea is that the uni­verse began to expand rapid­ly about 14 bil­lion years ago from a dense, hot state and con­tin­ues to expand to this day.

One of the most telling fin­ger­prints left behind by the Big Bang is cos­mic microwave back­ground radi­a­tion. This ther­mal radi­a­tion was thought to be left over from the Big Bang itself. It fills the uni­verse almost com­plete­ly.

A new map of cos­mic radi­a­tion ques­tions some of the core con­cepts of the Big Bang. What if, this pre­cise heat map sug­gests, the Uni­verse expe­ri­enced a long, pre-Bang phase? What if the Big Bang wasn’t the first burp of cre­ation after all?

The Euro­pean Space Agency’s Planck space­craft mea­sures between infra-red and radio waves, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to see back in time to the first light ever pro­duced.

Cos­mol­o­gists released the new images of the ear­ly uni­verse this week. What sur­pris­es them is that Planck detect­ed stronger light sig­nals on one half of the sky than the oth­er and picked up a series of anom­alies or “cold spots.” While this doesn’t chal­lenge the Big Bang the­o­ry as a whole, it does height­en the mys­tery around the universe’s birth and devel­op­ment.

The data is still com­ing in. Like the Human Genome Project, Planck stands to gen­er­ate dou­ble the amount of data it has pro­duced so far.

This full-sky map from the Planck mis­sion shows mat­ter between Earth and the edge of the observ­able uni­verse. Regions with more mass show up as lighter areas while regions with less mass are dark­er. The grayed-out areas are where light from our own galaxy was too bright, block­ing Planck­’s abil­i­ty to map the more dis­tant mat­ter. Click the map for a larg­er image.

Some oth­er sur­pris­es from the Planck space­craft data:

• The uni­verse is about 100 mil­lion years old­er and appears to be expand­ing much slow­er than pre­vi­ous­ly thought

•  There is less dark ener­gy and more mat­ter in the uni­verse than pre­vi­ous research showed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Con­tact her and learn more about her work at .

The Grateful Dead Rock the National Anthem at Candlestick Park: Opening Day, 1993

in Music | March 28th, 2013

The 2013 base­ball sea­son starts next week, and it’s a time when hope springs eter­nal — unless you root for the Cubs, the injury-laden Yan­kees, or the Pirates, Indi­ans, or var­i­ous oth­er small mar­ket teams. But let’s not get side­tracked by all of that. Today, we’re head­ing into the past, 20 years deep, and we’re think­ing about Base­ball, Apple Pie and the Grate­ful Dead. You heard me right, the Grate­ful Dead. On April 12, 1993, Jer­ry Gar­cia, Bob Weir, and Vince Wel­nick (then a key­boardist with the band) did the hon­ors on open­ing day at Can­dle­stick Park, singing the nation­al anthem before the San Fran­cis­co Giants — Flori­da Mar­lins game. If you thought the Dead could nev­er car­ry a tune, you’re in for a lit­tle sur­prise.

A few key things to remem­ber about this 1993 moment. 1) It was the first sea­son of base­ball for the new Mar­lins expan­sion team. 2) Bar­ry Bonds was still skin­ny and lean and home­red in his first at bat. And 3) it was the only time that Jer­ry sang the anthem at a ball game. Bob Weir and Phil Lesh made a return vis­it last fall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

8,976 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

NASA & Grate­ful Dead Drum­mer Mick­ey Hart Record Cos­mic Sounds of the Uni­verse on New Album

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

A Year of Grate­ful Dead Tunes Up in a Mashup

Clever Animation Brings Figure Drawings to Life

in Animation, Art | March 27th, 2013

The cre­ative team of Tom Wrig­glesworth & Matt Robin­son went to an art class at The Book Club in Lon­don, and there cre­at­ed an ani­ma­tion that breathes life into a series of fig­ure draw­ings. Every easel in the class cap­tured a nude mod­el from a dif­fer­ent angle. The film then gath­ered them all togeth­er, pro­duc­ing one won­der­ful­ly ani­mat­ed com­pos­ite fig­ure. Pret­ty neat stuff. If you’re in Lon­don, you can check out the next Life Draw­ing class on April 6.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Joyce’s Draw­ing of Leopold Bloom: The Sto­ry Behind the Sketch

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Caught in the Act of Cre­ation, 1926

Famous Lit­er­ary Char­ac­ters Visu­al­ized with Police Com­pos­ite Sketch Soft­ware

Oxford’s “The Ele­ments of Draw­ing” in our Col­lec­tion of 700 Free Online Cours­es

Rare Audio: Samuel Beckett Reads From His Novel Watt

in Books, Literature, Poetry | March 27th, 2013

Samuel Beck­ett was noto­ri­ous­ly shy around record­ing devices. He would spend hours in a stu­dio work­ing with actors, but when it came to record­ing a piece in his own voice he was elu­sive. Only a hand­ful of record­ings are known to exist. So the audio above of Beck­ett read­ing a pair of his poems is extreme­ly rare.

The record­ings were made in 1965 by Lawrence Har­vey, pro­fes­sor of com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture at Dart­mouth Col­lege, who trav­eled to Paris to meet with Beck­ett a num­ber of times from 1961 to 1965 while research­ing his 1970 book Samuel Beck­ett, Poet and Crit­ic. At one point dur­ing their dis­cus­sions, Beck­ett recit­ed sev­er­al pas­sages from his third but sec­ond-pub­lished nov­el, Watt. The book was writ­ten in Eng­lish in the 1940s, most­ly while Beck­ett was hid­ing from the Nazis in south­ern France. It’s an exper­i­men­tal nov­el (Beck­ett called it an “exer­cise”) about a seek­er named Watt who jour­neys to the house of the enig­mat­ic Mr. Knott and works for a time as his ser­vant. “Watt” and “Knott” are often inter­pret­ed as stand-ins for the ques­tion “what?” and unan­swer­able “not,” or “naught.”

The two poems recit­ed by Beck­ett are from his 37 intrigu­ing Adden­da at the end of Watt. Har­vey also record­ed Beck­ett read­ing a prose pas­sage from the book. The full four-minute tape is now in the col­lec­tion of the Bak­er Library at Dart­mouth. The short clip above is from the 1993 film Wait­ing For Beck­ett. The image qual­i­ty is poor and there are dis­tract­ing Dutch sub­ti­tles, so per­haps the best way to enjoy the read­ing is to scroll down and look instead at Beck­et­t’s words while you lis­ten to his voice. He begins with the 4th Adden­da, lat­er pub­lished as “Tail­piece” in Col­lect­ed Poems, 1930–1978:

who may tell the tale
of the old man?
weigh absence in a scale?
mete want with a span?
the sum assess
of the world’s woes?
noth­ing­ness
in words enclose?

The images in the poem are, accord­ing to schol­ars S.E. Gontars­ki and Chris Ack­er­ley in their essay “Samuel Beck­et­t’s Watt,” a rework­ing by Beck­ett of the bib­li­cal pas­sage Isa­iah 40:12, which says, “Who hath mea­sured the waters in the hol­low of his hand, and met­ed out heav­en with a span, and com­pre­hend­ed the dust of the earth in a mea­sure, and weighed the moun­tains in scales, and the hills in a bal­ance?” The next poem is the 23rd Adden­da. It tells of Wat­t’s long and fruit­less jour­ney through bar­ren lands:

Watt will not
abate one jot
but of what

of the com­ing to
of the being at
of the going from
Knot­t’s habi­tat

of the long way
of the short stay
of the going back home
the way he had come

of the emp­ty heart
of the emp­ty hands
of the dim mind way­far­ing
through bar­ren lands

of a flame with dark winds
hedged about
going out
gone out

of the emp­ty heart
of the emp­ty hands
of the dark mind stum­bling
through bar­ren lands

that is of what
Watt will not
abate one jot

If Beck­ett seems to mis­pro­nounce cer­tain con­so­nant sounds, it may have some­thing to do with a surgery he had in Novem­ber of 1964 to remove a tumor in his jaw. The surgery tem­porar­i­ly left Beck­ett with a hole in the roof of his mouth. Accord­ing to a 1998 arti­cle by Peter Swaab in The Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment, the record­ings were prob­a­bly made in March of 1965, when Beck­ett was await­ing a fol­low-up surgery to fix his palate. Still, many lis­ten­ers have been struck by the beau­ty of the record­ings. As Swaab writes:

Beck­et­t’s voice is unex­pect­ed­ly soft, and seems more suit­ed to the serene­ly com­mis­er­a­tive vein of his writ­ing than the sple­net­ic and cyn­i­cal one. He reads the poems a lot more slow­ly than the prose–with a pro­nounced chant­i­ng mel­liflu­ous­ness.… The over­all effect of these rare and fas­ci­nat­ing record­ings is of a deliv­ery like that which Beck­ett rec­om­mend­ed to the actor David War­rilow for Ohio Impromp­tu, “calm, steady, designed to soothe”–or (to bring in two of the cen­tral words in Watt) a “mur­mur” meant to “assuage.” The tape evi­dent­ly records a sort of rehearsal, and the per­fec­tion­ist Beck­ett would sure­ly not have been sat­is­fied with it, but it is good to know that his voice has not alto­geth­er dis­ap­peared.

via A Piece of Mono­logue

Spe­cial thanks to Dr. Mark Nixon, read­er in Mod­ern Lit­er­a­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing and direc­tor of the Beck­ett Inter­na­tion­al Foun­da­tion, for con­firm­ing the authen­tic­i­ty of the record­ing and point­ing us on the way to more infor­ma­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Samuel Beck­ett Speaks

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Find Works by Beck­ett in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions

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

in Film, History, Music, Photography | March 27th, 2013

Stan­ley Kubrick (look­ing like a creepy Rowan Atkin­son above) came of age as a chess-hus­tling pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the jazz-sat­u­rat­ed New York City of the 1940s. He began tak­ing pic­tures at the age of thir­teen, when his father bought him a Graflex cam­era. Dur­ing his teenage years, Kubrick flirt­ed with a career as a jazz drum­mer but aban­doned the pur­suit, instead join­ing Look Mag­a­zine as its youngest staff pho­tog­ra­ph­er right out of high school in 1945. His regard for jazz music and cul­ture did not abate, how­ev­er, as you can see from pho­tographs like Jazz Nights below.

Kubrick worked for Look until 1950 (when he left to begin mak­ing films); he cap­tured a wide vari­ety of New York scenes, but often returned to jazz clubs and show­girls, two favorite sub­jects. I’ve often won­dered why Kubrick’s home­town plays so small a role in his films. Unlike also NYC-bred Mar­tin Scors­ese, Kubrick seemed eager to get as far away as he could from the city of his youth, but the filmmaker’s love of for­ties-era jazz nev­er left him. Accord­ing to long­time assis­tant, Tony Frewin, “Stan­ley was a great swing-era jazz fan,” par­tic­u­lar­ly of Ben­ny Good­man.

“He had some reser­va­tions about mod­ern jazz. I think if he had to dis­ap­pear to a desert island, it’d be a lot of swing records he’d take, the music of his child­hood: Count Basie, Duke Elling­ton, Har­ry James.”

Frewin is quot­ed in this Atlantic piece about a film Kubrick almost made but didn’t: an explo­ration of jazz in Europe under the Third Reich. The project began when Kubrick encoun­tered a book in 1985, Swing Under the Nazis, writ­ten by anoth­er jazz enthu­si­ast, Mike Zwerin, who left music for jour­nal­ism and spent years col­lect­ing sto­ries of jazz preser­va­tion­ists in Ger­many and for­mer­ly occu­pied Europe. One of those stories—of Nazi offi­cer Diet­rich Schulz-Koehn—struck Kubrick as Strangelove-ian and noir-ish. Schulz-Koehn pub­lished an ille­gal under­ground newslet­ter report­ing back from var­i­ous jazz scenes in Europe under the pen name, “Dr. Jazz,” the title Kubrick chose for the film project. As Frewin claims:

“Stan­ley thought there was a kind of noir side to this mate­r­i­al…. Per­haps an approach like Dr. Mabuse would have suit­ed the sto­ry. Stan­ley said, ‘If only he were alive, we could have found a role for Peter Lorre.’ ”

Zwerin’s book—and pre­sum­ably Kubrick’s ideas for a fic­tion­al­ized take—traced clan­des­tine con­nec­tions between Nazi Ger­many, Paris, and the Unit­ed States, between black and Jew­ish musi­cians and Nazi music-lovers. We’ll have to imag­ine the odd angles and warped per­spec­tives Kubrick would have found in those sto­ries; his fas­ci­na­tion with Nazis led him to drop Dr. Jazz for a dif­fer­ent project, Aryan Papers, anoth­er unmade film with its own intrigu­ing back­sto­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

A Crash Course on Creativity and Other Stanford MOOCs to Launch in April: Enroll Today

in Creativity, MOOCs, Stanford | March 27th, 2013

Tina Seel­ig serves as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Stan­ford Tech­nol­o­gy Ven­tures Pro­gram, a cen­ter that teach­es stu­dents entre­pre­neur­ial skills need­ed to solve major world prob­lems. She is also the author of the 2012 book, inGe­nius: A Crash Course on Cre­ativ­i­ty, that oper­ates on the assump­tion that we’re not born being cre­ative and know­ing how to solve dif­fi­cult prob­lems. It’s some­thing that we can cul­ti­vate and learn (as John Cleese has also told us before). If you’re intrigued by this idea, and if you want to rev up your own “Inno­va­tion Engine,” you can take Seel­ig’s new course, also called A Crash Course on Cre­ativ­i­ty, start­ing on April 22. It’s one of five Stan­ford MOOCs (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) that will launch in April on the Ven­ture Lab plat­form. Oth­er cours­es now open for enroll­ment include:

• Graph Par­ti­tion­ing and Expanders — April 15
• Finance — April 22
• Tech­nol­o­gy Entre­pre­neur­ship — April 29
• Mobile Health with­out Bor­ders — April 29
• Hip­pocrates Chal­lenge — May TBD

Most Ven­ture Lab cours­es grant a “State­ment of Accom­plish­ment” signed by instruc­tors to any stu­dent who suc­cess­ful­ly com­pletes a course.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

300 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many Offer­ing Cer­tifi­cates)

John Cleese, Mon­ty Python Icon, on How to Be Cre­ative

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Flow and the Source of Hap­pi­ness

The Best of Quentin Tarantino: Celebrating the Director’s 50th Birthday with our Favorite Videos

in Film | March 27th, 2013

We recent­ly fea­tured a Van­i­ty Fair arti­cle on the mak­ing of Quentin Taran­ti­no’s  Pulp Fic­tion, mark­ing the only semi-believ­able fact that its mak­ing hap­pened 20 years ago. But can you accept that the mak­ing of Taran­ti­no him­self hap­pened 50 years ago? We think of the motor­mouthed, gram­mat­i­cal­ly uncon­cerned, pop-cul­tur­al blender of a film­mak­er as an eter­nal genius ado­les­cent, con­sum­mate­ly skilled and pas­sion­ate but nev­er well served by the rigid struc­tures of tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion and craft. His recent releas­es like Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds and Djan­go Unchained don’t even hint at a cool­ing of the fire with­in. As the man who (for bet­ter or for worse) rep­re­sents the past two decades of cre­ativ­i­ty in Amer­i­can cin­e­ma cross­es the mid­dle-age rubi­con, seem­ing­ly untrou­bled, we ask this: how does Quentin Taran­ti­no do it? To help you find the answer your­self, we’ve round­ed up all of our choic­est pieces of Taran­ti­no-relat­ed mate­r­i­al.

“Every­body, when they talk about you — you get this sense of a kid, ear­ly on, falling in love with movies,” says Char­lie Rose to Taran­ti­no in the 1994 inter­view up top. That love and then some comes through in the con­ver­sa­tion, mak­ing it one of the most com­pelling episodes in the his­to­ry of Rose’s pro­gram. By that point, Pulp Fic­tion, Taran­ti­no’s sec­ond film, had already hit the zeit­geist hard, but watch him giv­ing Jon Stew­art a pre­view of the pic­ture, and you can tell he’d already sensed its com­ing impact. You can read many more details about exact­ly how it came togeth­er in Van­i­ty Fair’s oral his­to­ry of the pro­duc­tion, and might con­sid­er sup­ple­ment­ing it with Taran­ti­no’s (and Sam Raim­i’s) advice on film­mak­ing. And as Taran­ti­no him­self admits, he fuels his projects with deep and direct inspi­ra­tion from his favorite movies, such as the twen­ty he names that have come out since his own career began. More recent­ly, he reflect­ed in depth on his life and work, prompt­ed by Howard Stern, in a 75-minute radio inter­view.

As a born sto­ry­teller, Taran­ti­no knows that every jour­ney, no mat­ter how ulti­mate­ly vic­to­ri­ous, begins some­where. Prefer­ably, it begins some­where hum­ble, which brings us to My Best Friend’s Birth­day (below), the very first movie Taran­ti­no attempt­ed to make back in 1987, five years before his “real” fea­ture debut Reser­voir Dogs. In it, the film­mak­er plays a hap­less young rock­a­bil­ly des­per­ate­ly look­ing for a way to enliv­en his bud­dy’s birth­day. Because a fire claimed all but 36 min­utes of the pic­ture, we’ll nev­er see whether he suc­ceeds. But Taran­ti­no him­self, an aggres­sive col­lec­tor of film prints who owns both a reput­ed­ly aston­ish­ing home the­ater and Los Ange­les’ respect­ed revival house the New Bev­er­ly Cin­e­ma, should have no trou­ble liv­ing it up for the big 5–0. He’s no doubt planned an ambi­tious birth­day screen­ing: I’m think­ing a quin­tu­ple-bill, all genre.

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

Listen to Supreme Court Arguments on Prop 8 and DOMA Online

in Current Affairs, Law | March 27th, 2013

This week, the Supreme Court is hear­ing argu­ments about gay rights in Amer­i­ca. And, no mat­ter how the court decides, these cas­es will enter the his­to­ry books. Will the court lead the nation in mak­ing equal­i­ty avail­able for all, as it did dur­ing the civ­il rights era? Or will the nation be forced to lead the court into moder­ni­ty dur­ing the years ahead? That we will soon find out.

Usu­al­ly the court delays the release of audio record­ings of oral argu­ments. But, acknowl­edg­ing the impor­tance of these par­tic­u­lar cas­es, SCOTUS is mak­ing this week’s argu­ments imme­di­ate­ly avail­able. You can lis­ten to the debates over Prop. 8 here or below. DOMA argu­ments will appear here. And it’s also now below.

Prop 8

DOMA

“.