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

in History, Podcasts | June 21st, 2012

While we’re catch­ing up with his­tor­i­cal pod­casts, note that BBC Radio 4’s The His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site) has wrapped up and cov­ered all 100 objects. And not, mind you, just any old objects: these objects come straight from the col­lec­tion of the British Muse­um, and thus almost cer­tain­ly reveal the sto­ry of mankind more effec­tive­ly than most. For that has con­sti­tut­ed the pro­gram’s project since its incep­tion: to tell, for just under fif­teen min­utes at a stretch, one chap­ter of human his­to­ry as the trained eye can read it in an object like an ear­ly writ­ing tablet, a Chi­nese bronze bell, or an Egypt­ian clay mod­el of cat­tle. Don’t let the seem­ing plain­ness of these arti­facts fool you; the show approach­es them with all the most advanced audio pro­duc­tion tech­niques. And after you’ve lis­tened, you’ll real­ize that, looked at from a suit­ably his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive, there’s not a plain object in this bunch.

Since A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects has fin­ished its jour­ney to the present day, the new lis­ten­er has no oblig­a­tion to begin in the ancient world and work their way for­ward. You might well pre­fer to begin at the end, as it were, and draw insights from one of our every­day objects like a cred­it card (albeit, in this broad­cast, one that con­forms to Shar­i’a law), or a slight­ly futur­is­tic object now enter­ing our every­day lives like a solar-pow­ered lamp. From there, you can delve deep­er and deep­er into our cul­ture and tech­nol­o­gy’s past: the nifty lamp gives way to the cred­it card which gives way to a David Hock­ney paint­ing, which gives way to the HMS Bea­gle’s chronome­ter to the mechan­i­cal galleon and a Kore­an roof tile until you’re back at the Mum­my of Horned­jitef. If you get back that far and still find your­self long­ing for more from host Neil Mac­Gre­gor, be aware that he’s got a new, 20-part his­tor­i­cal series going called Shake­speare’s Rest­less World. The range of source mate­r­i­al may have nar­rowed, but the depth remains.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Bill Murray’s Baseball Hall of Fame Speech (and Hideous Sports Coat)

in Comedy, Film, Random | June 21st, 2012

Charleston, South Car­oli­na is a long way from Coop­er­stown, NY. About 622 miles, to be pre­cise. And it’s in Charleston that Bill Mur­ray, the actor, was induct­ed into the South Atlantic League Hall of Fame on Tues­day. Why bestow such an hon­or on the star of Ghost­busters, Stripes, and var­i­ous Wes Ander­son films? Because, rather qui­et­ly, Mur­ray has owned parts of many minor league base­ball teams, includ­ing, these days, the Charleston River­Dogs, a class A affil­i­ate of the New York Yan­kees. So, with the Yan­kees’ Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Bri­an Cash­man in atten­dance, Mur­ray gave his Hall of Fame Induc­tion Speech, know­ing­ly sport­ing a hideous shirt and jack­et. The open­ing min­utes will speak to any­one who remem­bers, as a kid, enter­ing a base­ball sta­di­um for the first time and see­ing that vast field of green.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fact Check­ing Bill Mur­ray: A Short, Com­ic Film from Sun­dance 2008

Bill Mur­ray Intro­duces Wes Anderson’s Moon­rise King­dom (And Plays FDR In Decem­ber)

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Microsoft Rolls Out Its New Tablet in Fine Apple Style

in Apple, iPad, Technology | June 20th, 2012

This week, Microsoft rolled out its new tablet, sim­ply called Sur­face, which gives you anoth­er way to enjoy our cours­es, movies, ebooks, audio books and the rest. In many ways, Sur­face resem­bles the iPad in its look and feel. And when it came to unveil­ing the tablet, Microsoft­’s execs could­n’t think out­side the box cre­at­ed by Steve Jobs. A video made by Read­WriteWeb makes that rather painful­ly yet amus­ing­ly clear.…

Don’t for­get to fol­low us on Twit­ter, Face­book and now Google+

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Historic Barn Etchings Tell Tale of Hard-Working Children

in History | June 20th, 2012

Since Cana­di­an Con­fed­er­a­tion, it was the pol­i­cy of the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to pro­vide edu­ca­tion to Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples through a sys­tem of church-run Res­i­den­tial Schools. The idea was that by sep­a­rat­ing the chil­dren at an ear­ly age from their par­ents’ influ­ence, they might be more eas­i­ly assim­i­lat­ed into white Cana­di­an soci­ety, includ­ing the Chris­t­ian reli­gion. (A very sim­i­lar fate befell Aus­tralian Abo­rig­i­nal chil­dren after 1931.) The Methodist and Pres­by­ter­ian church­es, and the Unit­ed Church of Cana­da, explic­it­ly sup­port­ed the goals of assim­i­la­tion and Chris­tian­iza­tion.

Mount Elgin Indus­tri­al School, oper­at­ing near Lon­don, Ontario between 1851 and 1946, was one such insti­tu­tion. Apart from attend­ing school itself, the native chil­dren had to work day and night at a near­by barn. Recent­ly, schol­ars dis­cov­ered words and draw­ings all over the barn walls left behind by some of the 1,200 chil­dren forced to work there. Described as the “Dead Sea Scrolls” of this dark chap­ter in Cana­di­an his­to­ry, the words tell a mov­ing tale of chil­dren iso­lat­ed from friends and fam­i­lies, work­ing very hard under less than ide­al cir­cum­stances.

On June 20 2012, a mon­u­ment to the sur­vivors of Cana­di­an res­i­den­tial schools will be unveiled on the site of Mount Elgin Res­i­den­tial School.

Here are some his­tor­i­cal pho­tos of Mount Elgin Res­i­den­tial School.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Salvador Dalí Sketches Five Spanish Immortals: Cervantes, Don Quixote, El Cid, El Greco & Velázquez

in Art, Literature | June 20th, 2012

A few weeks back, we brought you Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy and men­tioned that we were sav­ing Dalí’s draw­ings of Don Quixote for anoth­er day. Well, that day has come.

In the ear­ly 1960s, a Swiss pub­lish­er com­mis­sioned Dalí to cre­ate a print edi­tion cel­e­brat­ing five real and imag­ined fig­ures who loom large in the Span­ish cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion. The col­lec­tion was called The Five Span­ish Immor­tals, and it fea­tured sketch­es of Cer­vantes, Europe’s first great nov­el­ist and his unfor­get­table pro­tag­o­nist, Don Quixote. The book also paid homage to the medieval hero El Cid; the mas­ter painter El Gre­co; and Diego Rodríguez de Sil­va y Velázquez — some­one The Met calls “the most admired—perhaps the greatest—European painter who ever lived.” Cer­vantes appears above, and the remain­ing quar­tet below.

Don Quixote

El Cid

El Gre­co

Velázquez

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The Karl Marx Credit Card — When You’re Short of Kapital

in Economics, Random | June 19th, 2012

Is it a tragedy? Is it a farce? In the land once called East Ger­many, in a town once called Karl-Marx-Stadt, a bank called Sparkasse Chem­nitz ran an online poll let­ting cus­tomers vote for images to place on their cred­it cards. And the hands-down win­ner was Karl Marx, an iron­ic pick giv­en that … well, you don’t need me to explain why.

In response to this selec­tion, Plan­et Mon­ey has encour­aged read­ers to post a tagline for the card on Twit­ter, using the hash­tag #marx­card. Here are a few of our favorites so far:

  • There are Some Things Mon­ey Can’t Buy. Espe­cial­ly If You Abol­ish All Pri­vate Prop­er­ty.
  • From each accord­ing to their abil­i­ty, to each accord­ing to his need. For every­thing else, there’s #Marx­card.
  • The Marx Card — Because Cred­it is the Opi­ate of the Mass­es.
  • The Karl Marx Mas­ter­Card — When You’re Short of Kap­i­tal

Got your own to sug­gest? cc: us on Twit­ter: @openculture

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Read­ing Marx’s Cap­i­tal with David Har­vey (Free Course)

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Peefeeyatko: A Look Inside the Creative World of Frank Zappa

in Film, Music | June 19th, 2012

In the last years of his life, Frank Zap­pa spent much of his remain­ing time doing what he loved best: com­pos­ing.

The 1991 doc­u­men­tary Peefeey­atko, by Ger­man-born film­mak­er and com­pos­er Hen­ning Lohn­er, takes us inside Zap­pa’s seclud­ed world to watch and lis­ten as he cre­ates sym­phon­ic com­po­si­tions on an ear­ly dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­er called a Syn­clavier. The film was made not long after Zap­pa learned he had ter­mi­nal can­cer. Like its sub­ject, Lohn­er’s film is eccen­tric, with scenes from mon­ster movies spliced in with footage of Zap­pa work­ing and talk­ing. “Peefeey­atko,” we learn at the end, is Big­foot-lan­guage for “Give me some more Apples.”

Zap­pa talks about his wide range of musi­cal tastes–how from an ear­ly age he would lis­ten to rhythm and blues one minute and the French exper­i­men­tal com­pos­er Edgard Verèse the next. The film includes inter­views with his fel­low avant-garde com­posers John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Ian­nis Xenakis and Karl­heinz Stock­hausen. To describe his rad­i­cal eclec­ti­cism, Zap­pa says: “The eas­i­est way to sum up the aes­thet­ic would be: any­thing, any­time, any­place for no rea­son at all. And I think with an aes­thet­ic like that you can have pret­ty good lat­i­tude for being cre­ative.”

Peefeey­atko runs 59 min­utes, and will be added to our expand­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

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Salman Khan Returns to MIT, Gives Commencement Speech, Likens School to Hogwarts

in Graduation Speech, K-12, MIT | June 19th, 2012


This week, Salman Khan returned to his alma mater, MIT, to deliv­er the com­mence­ment speech to the 2012 grad­u­ates. As you know, MIT helped spark the open edu­ca­tion move­ment when it launched its Open­Course­Ware site in 2002. A decade lat­er, the uni­ver­si­ty has placed mate­ri­als for 2100 cours­es online (find many high­light­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es). So it’s fit­ting that the new face of open edu­ca­tion would deliv­er the big speech.

The talk is a bit inward­ly focused, a cel­e­bra­tion of MIT and its Hog­warts qual­i­ties. But the lat­ter half gets to Khan’s phi­los­o­phy of life, his recipe for liv­ing well in the world. It boils down to 1) being pos­i­tive and smil­ing when in doubt, 2) sur­ren­der­ing your ego dur­ing times of con­flict, 3) lis­ten­ing to oth­ers, 4) down­play­ing mate­r­i­al con­cerns and focus­ing on health and rela­tion­ships, and 5) using a num­ber of thought exper­i­ments to gain per­spec­tive on life. Those he explains along the way.…

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The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps — Peter Adamson’s Podcast Still Going Strong

in Philosophy, Podcasts | June 19th, 2012

Last August, we fea­tured Peter Adam­son’s pod­cast The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site), a chrono­log­i­cal­ly unin­ter­rupt­ed “look at the ideas and lives of the major philoso­phers (even­tu­al­ly cov­er­ing in detail such giants as Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant) as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.” Con­tin­u­ing at the rate of one episode a week, Adam­son and his guest philo­soph­i­cal experts have since cov­ered names like Lucretius, Seneca, and Plutarch. They’ve most recent­ly reached Alexan­der of Aphro­disias, an espe­cial­ly astute ancient com­men­ta­tor on Aris­to­tle and oppo­nent of Sto­ic atti­tudes toward fate; Quin­til­ian, Lucian, Themistius, and the inter­play between rhetoric and phi­los­o­phy in the Roman Empire; and the emer­gence of astron­o­my, ush­ered in by Ptole­my dur­ing a time when observers still had much to say about astrol­o­gy.

Don’t miss the episodes where Adam­son brings in spe­cial­ists on the par­tic­u­lar philoso­pher, philo­soph­i­cal sub­field, or quirk in philo­soph­i­cal his­to­ry to which his pod­cast­ing jour­ney brings him. Since our last post on the show, we’ve heard Richard Sorab­ji talk about time and eter­ni­ty in Aris­to­tle, James War­ren on Epi­cure­anism, and Raphael Wolf on Cicero, to name but a few. Such is Adamson’s atten­tion to detail — and ded­i­ca­tion to the Zeno’s Para­dox-rem­i­nis­cent cause of pure con­ti­nu­ity — that, after putting out 85 episodes, he remains in the ancient world. Imag­ine the boun­ty of dis­cus­sion when he reach­es, say, the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, let alone the twen­ti­eth. To pre­pare your­self for that, you’d bet­ter start lis­ten­ing now; a show express­ly cre­at­ed with­out gaps must, it seems only nat­ur­al, be expe­ri­enced with­out them.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

55 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Never a First Human Being

in Biology, Video - Science | June 19th, 2012

Last year, right before pub­lish­ing his illus­trat­ed chil­dren’s book The Mag­ic of Real­i­ty, Richard Dawkins appeared at The New York­er Fes­ti­val and walked the crowd through a short thought exper­i­ment. Imag­ine pulling out your fam­i­ly geneal­o­gy. Now snap a pho­to of each ances­tor going back 185 mil­lion gen­er­a­tions. What would it show? First off, your very dis­tant grand­fa­ther was a fish. Sec­ond­ly, you can nev­er put your fin­ger on the very first human being, a prover­bial Adam and Eve. 185,000,000 snap­shots can nev­er cap­ture that one moment.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

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

Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism

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Modern Masters: Watch BBC Series Introducing the Art of Warhol, Matisse, Picasso and Dali

in Art, Television | June 18th, 2012

Mod­ern art. Like it or not, it’s had a pro­found impact on the way our world looks. As crit­ic Alas­tair Sooke explains in this four-part series from the BBC, the great art­works of the past cen­tu­ry have exert­ed an influ­ence that extends far beyond muse­um walls.

Mod­ern Mas­ters, first broad­cast in 2010 on the main­stream chan­nel BBC One, looks at the life, work, and abid­ing influ­ence of Hen­ri Matisse, Pablo Picas­so, Sal­vador Dali and Andy Warhol. “Art dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry was rad­i­cal, intox­i­cat­ing, and immense­ly influ­en­tial,” says Sooke, deputy art crit­ic of The Dai­ly Tele­graph. “Matisse, Picas­so, Dali and Warhol did­n’t just change art his­to­ry; they changed the world.”

Episode one, Andy Warhol: For a series exam­in­ing the influ­ence of 20th cen­tu­ry art through the prism of celebri­ty artists, it’s fit­ting that Sooke should begin with an artist obsessed with celebri­ty. Sooke fol­lows Warhol (see above) from his impov­er­ished child­hood in Pitts­burgh to New York City, where he strug­gled as a com­mer­cial artist before becom­ing famous as a pop artist. Along the way he shows how Warhol’s aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty now per­me­ates our cul­ture. The oth­er three episodes pro­ceed along sim­i­lar lines. Each is just under an hour long.

Episode two, Hen­ri Matisse:

Episode three, Pablo Picas­so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU5TDkjhLNs#t=09

Episode four, Sal­vador Dali:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robert Hugh­es, Famed Art Crit­ic, Demys­ti­fies Mod­ern Art: From Cézanne to Andy Warhol

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Begin­ning of Mod­ern Art

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