The National Emergency Library Makes 1.5 Million Books Free to Read Right Now

The coro­n­avirus has closed libraries in coun­tries all around the world. Or rather, it’s closed phys­i­cal libraries: each week of strug­gle against the epi­dem­ic that goes by, more resources for books open to the pub­lic on the inter­net. Most recent­ly, we have the Inter­net Archive’s open­ing of the Nation­al Emer­gency Library, “a col­lec­tion of books that sup­ports emer­gency remote teach­ing, research activ­i­ties, inde­pen­dent schol­ar­ship, and intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion while uni­ver­si­ties, schools, train­ing cen­ters, and libraries are closed.” While the “nation­al” in the name refers to the Unit­ed States, where the Inter­net Archive oper­ates, any­one in the world can read its near­ly 1.5 mil­lion books, imme­di­ate­ly and with­out wait­lists, from now “through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US nation­al emer­gency, whichev­er is lat­er.”

“Not to be sneezed at is the sheer plea­sure of brows­ing through the titles,” writes The New York­er’s Jill Lep­ore of the Nation­al Emer­gency Library, going on to men­tion such vol­umes as How to Suc­ceed in Singing, Inter­est­ing Facts about How Spi­ders Live, and An Intro­duc­tion to Kant’s Phi­los­o­phy, as well as “Beck­ett on Proust, or Bloom on Proust, or just On Proust.” A his­to­ri­an of Amer­i­ca, Lep­ore finds her­self remind­ed of the Coun­cil on Books in Wartime, “a col­lec­tion of libraries, book­sellers, and pub­lish­ers, found­ed in 1942.” On the premise that “books are use­ful, nec­es­sary, and indis­pens­able,” the coun­cil “picked over a thou­sand vol­umes, from Vir­ginia Woolf’s The Years to Ray­mond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, and sold the books, around six cents a copy, to the U.S. mil­i­tary.” By prac­ti­cal­ly giv­ing away 120 mil­lion copies of such books, the project “cre­at­ed a nation of read­ers.”

In fact, the Coun­cil on Books in Wartime cre­at­ed more than a nation of read­ers: the Amer­i­can “sol­diers and sailors and Army nurs­es and any­one else in uni­form” who received these books passed them along, or even left them behind in the far-flung places they’d been sta­tioned. Haru­ki Muraka­mi once told the Paris Review of his youth in Kobe, “a port city where many for­eign­ers and sailors used to come and sell their paper­backs to the sec­ond­hand book­shops. I was poor, but I could buy paper­backs cheap­ly. I learned to read Eng­lish from those books and that was so excit­ing.” See­ing as Muraka­mi him­self lat­er trans­lat­ed The Big Sleep into his native Japan­ese, it’s cer­tain­ly not impos­si­ble that an Armed Ser­vices Edi­tion count­ed among his pur­chas­es back then.

Now, in trans­la­tions into Eng­lish and oth­er lan­guages as well, we can all read Murakami’s work — nov­els like Nor­we­gian Wood and Kaf­ka on the Shore, short-sto­ry col­lec­tions like The Ele­phant Van­ish­es, and even the mem­oir What I Talk About When I Talk About Run­ning — free at the Nation­al Emer­gency Library. The most pop­u­lar books now avail­able include every­thing from Mar­garet Atwood’s The Hand­maid­’s Tale to the Kama SutraDr. Seuss’s ABC to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Sto­ries to Tell in the Dark (and its two sequels), Chin­ua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart to, in dis­con­cert­ing first place, Sylvia Browne’s End of Days: Pre­dic­tions and Prophe­cy About the End of the World. You’ll even find, in the orig­i­nal French as well as Eng­lish trans­la­tion, Albert Camus’ exis­ten­tial epi­dem­ic nov­el La Peste, or The Plague, fea­tured ear­li­er this month here on Open Cul­ture. And if you’d rather not con­front its sub­ject mat­ter at this par­tic­u­lar moment, you’ll find more than enough to take your mind else­where. Enter the Nation­al Emer­gency Library here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

The Inter­net Archive “Lib­er­ates” Books Pub­lished Between 1923 and 1941, and Will Put 10,000 Dig­i­tized Books Online

11,000 Dig­i­tized Books From 1923 Are Now Avail­able Online at the Inter­net Archive

Free: You Can Now Read Clas­sic Books by MIT Press on Archive.org

Enter “The Mag­a­zine Rack,” the Inter­net Archive’s Col­lec­tion of 34,000 Dig­i­tized Mag­a­zines

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Spring Break vs. COVID-19: Mapping the Real Impact of Ignoring Social Distancing

Yes­ter­day, the Unit­ed States sur­passed Chi­na, becom­ing the world leader in COVID-19 infec­tions. It’s not hard to under­stand why. Social dis­tanc­ing remains very uneven. Domes­tic trav­el con­tin­ues unchecked. Asymp­to­matic car­ri­ers stay on the move. Start­ing on the coasts, COVID-19 is now mov­ing inex­orably across the nation, com­ing to a city or town near you.

If you want to get a glimpse of how COVID-19 can spread, watch this clip from Tec­tonix GEO. It uses data from anonymized mobile devices to trace the move­ment of Spring Break partiers who con­gre­gat­ed at one sin­gle Ft. Laud­erdale beach, then moved back across the Unit­ed States, in each case poten­tial­ly bring­ing the virus with them. It’s a quick case study show­ing how an infec­tious dis­ease can spread through a coun­try that wants to remain mobile come hell, pan­dem­ic, or high water.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

How a Virus Spreads, and How to Avoid It: A For­mer NASA Engi­neer Demon­strates with a Black­light in a Class­room

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Watch Bac­te­ria Become Resis­tant to Antibi­otics in a Mat­ter of Days: A Quick, Stop-Motion Film

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

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Watch a Sweet Film Adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Story, “Long Walk to Forever”

Shame, shame to have lived scenes from a women’s mag­a­zine. —Kurt Von­negut

In his intro­duc­tion to Wel­come to the Mon­key House, a col­lec­tion of his short fic­tion pub­lished in 1968, Kurt Von­negut shows no com­punc­tion about throw­ing its most main­stream entry under the bus:

In hon­or of the mar­riage that worked I include in this col­lec­tion a sick­en­ing­ly slick love sto­ry from The Ladies Home Jour­nal, God help us, enti­tled by them “Long Walk to For­ev­er.” The title I gave it, I think, was “Hell to Get Along With.”

The sim­ple tale, pub­lished, as not­ed, by Ladies Home Jour­nal in 1960, bears a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties to events of Vonnegut’s own life. After WWII, hav­ing sur­vived the bomb­ing of Dres­den as a POW, he made his way back to Indi­anapo­lis, and invit­ed Jane Cox, the friend he’d known since kinder­garten, who was engaged to anoth­er man, to take a walk, dur­ing which he sug­gest­ed she should mar­ry him instead.

Direc­tor Jes­si­ca Hes­ter’s recent, Kurt Von­negut Trust-sanc­tioned adap­ta­tion, above, plays it pret­ty straight, as do sev­er­al oth­er unau­tho­rized ver­sions lurk­ing on the Inter­net.

She ups Newt’s rank to cor­po­ral from pri­vate, and replaces the glossy bridal mag­a­zine Cather­ine is thumb­ing through when Newt knocks with a coterie of atten­tive brides­maids and lit­tle girls, appar­ent­ly get­ting a jump on their nup­tial fuss­ing.

The mag­a­zine’s omis­sion is unfor­tu­nate.

In the sto­ry, Newt asks to see “the pret­ty book,” forc­ing Cather­ine to bring up the impend­ing wed­ding. Its phys­i­cal real­i­ty then offers Newt a handy emo­tion­al refuge, from whence he can crack wise about rosy brides while pre­tend­ing to read an ad for flat­ware.

With­out that prop, he’s preter­nat­u­ral­ly aware of the names of sil­ver pat­terns.

And as an Indi­anapo­lis native who went to school in the orchard where the sto­ry is set, and who can con­firm that it’s in earshot of the bells from the Indi­ana School for the Blind, I found it jar­ring to see the action trans­posed to New York’s Westch­ester Coun­ty. (For those keep­ing score, it was shot on loca­tion in Cro­ton State Park and the Rock­e­feller State Park).

(Break­ing Away’s rock quar­ry aside, the Hoosier State just doesn’t have those sorts of high-up water views.)

Hes­ter hon­ors Vonnegut’s dia­loguenear­ly every­thing that comes out of the char­ac­ters’ mouths orig­i­nat­ed on the page, while pro­vid­ing a young female director’s spin on this mate­r­i­al, half a cen­tu­ry removed from its pub­li­ca­tion.

As she describes it on the sto­ry­telling plat­form Fem­i­nist Wednes­day, the film gen­tly sat­i­rizes the insti­tu­tion of mat­ri­mo­ny and the impor­tance placed upon it. It is also, she says:

…a sto­ry about courage, as the female has to face her­self, her ideas, and her val­ues… Catherine’s jour­ney is so raw, ter­ri­fy­ing in the most hon­est way, and heart­felt yet extreme­ly fun­ny because it is so relat­able. 

Some­thing tells me the author would­n’t have put it that way … his Mon­key House intro, maybe.

But his admi­ra­tion for his less-than-tra­di­tion­al muse, avid read­er and writer Jane Cox, from whom he split after 26 years of mar­riage, was immense.

Gin­ger Strand’s pro­file in The New York­er quotes the house­hold con­sti­tu­tion Cox draft­ed after their 1945 mar­riage:

We can­not and will not live in and be hogtied by a soci­ety which not only has not faith in the things we have faith in, but which reviles and damns that faith with prac­ti­cal­ly every breath it draws.

Hester’s crowd-fund­ed film, which the Kurt Von­negut Muse­um and Library includ­ed as part of a COVID-19 cri­sis Vir­tu­al Von­negut Fun Pack(“Have a box of Kleenex at the ready!”)was shot in 2014.

Had pro­duc­tion been delayed by a few years, one won­ders if the film­mak­ers would have come under  intense pres­sure to frame Newt’s refusal to take Catherine’s rejec­tions at face val­ue, his insis­tence that she con­tin­ue the walk, and that unvet­ted kiss as some­thing per­ni­cious and inten­tion­al.

If so, we’re glad the film made it into the can when it did.

And we con­fess, we don’t real­ly share Vonnegut’s avowed dis­taste for the sto­ry, though New York Times crit­ic Mitchel Lev­i­tas did, in an oth­er­wise favor­able review of Wel­come to the Mon­key House:

This Von­negut is obvi­ous­ly a lov­able fel­low. More­over, he’s right about the sto­ry, which is indeed a sick­en­ing and slick lit­tle noth­ing about a sol­dier who goes A.W.O.L. in order—How to say it?—to sweep his girl from the steps of the altar into his strong and lov­ing arms.

Here’s to future adap­ta­tions of this Ladies Home Jour­nal-approved sto­ry by one of our favorite authors. May they cap­ture some­thing of his tart­ness, and for­go a sen­ti­men­tal sound­track in favor of a chick­adee whose cameo appear­ance after the School for the Blind’s bells pre­fig­ures Slaughterhouse-Five’s famous “Poo-tee-weet?”

“*chick-a-dee-dee-dee*,” went a chick­adee.

This adap­ta­tion of  Von­negut’s “Long Walk to For­ev­er” will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries (and Amus­ing­ly Graphs the Shapes Those Sto­ries Can Take)

The Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Com­ing Out This Year

A New Kurt Von­negut Muse­um Opens in Indi­anapo­lis … Right in Time for Banned Books Week

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain is on COVID-19 hia­tus. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Nine Inch Nails Releases 2 Free Albums: They’re Now Ready to Download

Image by via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

FYI: Nine Inch Nails has released two new albums to help you weath­er the glob­al storm. Down­load them for free here.

The offer comes pref­aced with these words from the band…

FRIENDS-

WEIRD TIMES INDEED…

AS THE NEWS SEEMS TO TURN EVER MORE GRIM BY THE HOUR, WE’VE FOUND OURSELVES VACILLATING WILDLY BETWEEN FEELING LIKE THERE MAY BE HOPE AT TIMES TO UTTER DESPAIR – OFTEN CHANGING MINUTE TO MINUTE. ALTHOUGH EACH OF US DEFINE OURSELVES AS ANTISOCIAL-TYPES WHO PREFER BEING ON OUR OWN, THIS SITUATION HAS REALLY MADE US APPRECIATE THE POWER AND NEED FOR CONNECTION.

MUSIC – WHETHER LISTENING TO IT, THINKING ABOUT IT OR CREATING IT – HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE THING THAT HELPED US GET THROUGH ANYTHING – GOOD OR BAD. WITH THAT IN MIND, WE DECIDED TO BURN THE MIDNIGHT OIL AND COMPLETE THESE NEW GHOSTS RECORDS AS A MEANS OF STAYING SOMEWHAT SANE.

GHOSTS V: TOGETHER IS FOR WHEN THINGS SEEM LIKE IT MIGHT ALL BE OKAY, AND GHOSTS VI: LOCUSTS… WELL, YOU’LL FIGURE IT OUT.

IT MADE US FEEL BETTER TO MAKE THESE AND IT FEELS GOOD TO SHARE THEM. MUSIC HAS ALWAYS HAD A WAY OF MAKING US FEEL A LITTLE LESS ALONE IN THE WORLD… AND HOPEFULLY IT DOES FOR YOU, TOO. REMEMBER, EVERYONE IS IN THIS THING TOGETHER AND THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AGAIN SOON.
BE SMART AND SAFE AND TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER.

WITH LOVE,
TRENT & ATTICUS

Patrick Stewart Is Reading Every Shakespeare Sonnet on Instagram: One a Day “to Keep the Doctor Away”

He is a “geek cul­tur­al icon”: Cap­tain Picard and Pro­fes­sor X. We’ve heard him game­ly voice a ridicu­lous ani­mat­ed char­ac­ter in Amer­i­can Dad. We know him as an advo­cate for vic­tims of domes­tic vio­lence, a trag­ic real­i­ty he wit­nessed as a child. There are many sides to Patrick Stew­art, but at his core, Shake­speare nerds know, he’s a Shake­speare­an. Maybe you’ve seen him in 2010’s Ceaușes­cu-inspired Mac­beth or the 2012 BBC pro­duc­tion of Richard II, or as Claudius in 2009’s tele­vised Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny Ham­let, with David Ten­nant in the title role?

Only the most envi­able nerds, how­ev­er, have seen him live on stage with the RSC, in any num­ber of roles, minor and major, that he has played since join­ing the com­pa­ny in 1966. He’s as august a Shake­speare­an actor as Olivi­er or Giel­gud. So, imag­ine Olivi­er or Giel­gud read­ing a Shake­speare son­net to you every day, right in the com­fort of your own home. Maybe even bet­ter (some might say), we have the mel­liflu­ous Stew­art deliv­er­ing the goods, to soothe us in our days of iso­la­tion.

After receiv­ing a very enthu­si­as­tic response when he “ran­dom­ly and ele­gant­ly recit­ed Shakespeare’s Son­net 116 to his fans on social media,” writes Laugh­ing Squid, Stew­art “decid­ed to read one Shake­speare son­net aloud each day in hopes of ‘keep­ing the doc­tor away.’” Think of it as pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine for the itchy, cooped-up soul. On his Insta­gram, Sir Patrick shows up loung­ing com­fort­ably in casu­al clothes, fur­ther­ing the illu­sion that he’s joined us in our liv­ing rooms—or we’ve joined him in his.

 

View this post on Insta­gram

 

A post shared by Patrick Stew­art (@sirpatstew) on


Where the inti­ma­cy of celebri­ty social media can some­times feel cloy­ing and insin­cere, Stew­art seems to feel so gen­uine­ly at home with his set­ting and his text that we do too. The actor occa­sion­al­ly adds some brief com­men­tary. In his read­ing of Son­net 2, above, he says before begin­ning, “this is one of my favorites.”

When forty win­ters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trench­es in thy beau­ty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud liv­ery so gazed on now,
Will be a tot­ter’d weed of small worth held: 
Then being asked, where all thy beau­ty lies,
Where all the trea­sure of thy lusty days; 
To say, with­in thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eat­ing shame, and thrift­less praise.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beau­ty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’
Prov­ing his beau­ty by suc­ces­sion thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

Maybe we all feel we’re grow­ing old in the bore­dom and anx­i­ety of our new siege-like con­di­tions. The poet urges us to make the most it. Sure, plen­ty of peo­ple are already engaged in mak­ing chil­dren, with­out any help from Shake­speare or Patrick Stew­art, but those who aren’t might decide to work on oth­er lega­cies that will out­live them.

Stew­art tells Vari­ety that his only regret dur­ing his time with the RSC is that he “might have per­haps been a rather bold­er, pushi­er and more extrav­a­gant actor.” But it’s his under­state­ment and sub­tle­ty that make him so com­pelling. He also says that his first year with the RSC was, “at that point, the hap­pi­est year of my work­ing life,” though he was only cast to play small roles until he was made an Asso­ciate Artist in 1967, just one year after join­ing.

 

View this post on Insta­gram

 

A post shared by Patrick Stew­art (@sirpatstew) on


He worked along­side a “new nucle­us of tal­ent” that includ­ed Helen Mir­ren and Ben Kings­ley and remained exclu­sive­ly with the com­pa­ny until 1982. (See a young Stew­art as Oberon in A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream pro­duc­tion from 1977.) Stew­art returned to the stage with the RSC often, and while his Insta­gram read­ings are hard­ly com­pa­ra­ble in scope and inten­si­ty to his Shake­speare­an work on stage and screen, they have proven a true balm for lovers of Shake­speare’s poet­ry, as read by Patrick Stew­art as a love­ably book­ish home­body, which turns out to be an unsur­pris­ing­ly large num­ber of peo­ple.

If you’re in dire need of such a thing—or just can’t miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see one of the great­est liv­ing Shake­speare­an actors read all of the Son­nets in his sweats—check in with Stewart’s Insta­gram to get caught up and for the lat­est install­ment, and fol­low along with poems here. For even more Shake­speare­an Stew­art geek­ery, read his rec­ol­lec­tion of his 1965 Roy­al Shake­speare Com­pa­ny audi­tion—in which com­pa­ny co-founder John Bar­ton had him per­form Hen­ry V’s famous Agin­court speech four times in a row before invit­ing him to join.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Inno­cent Christ­mas Typo Caus­es Sir Patrick Stew­art to Star as Satan In This Ani­mat­ed Hol­i­day Short

Patrick Stew­art Talks Can­did­ly About Domes­tic Vio­lence in a Poignant Q&A Ses­sion at Comic­palooza

Sir Patrick Stew­art & Sir Ian McK­ellen Play The New­ly­wed Game

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

How to Teach and Learn Philosophy During the Pandemic: A Collection of 450+ Philosophy Videos Free Online

The term phi­los­o­phy, as every intro­duc­to­ry course first explains, means the love of wis­dom. And as the old­est intel­lec­tu­al dis­ci­pline, phi­los­o­phy has proven that the love of wis­dom can with­stand the worst human his­to­ry can throw at it. Civ­i­liza­tions may rise and fall, but soon­er or lat­er we always find ways to get back to phi­los­o­phiz­ing. The cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, the most fright­en­ing glob­al event most of us have seen in our life­times, does­n’t quite look like a civ­i­liza­tion-ender, though it has forced many of us to change the way we live and learn. In short, we’re doing much more of it online, and a new col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tion­al videos free online is keep­ing phi­los­o­phy in the mix.

“In order to aid phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors dur­ing the pan­dem­ic as they tran­si­tion from in-per­son to online teach­ing, Liz Jack­son (ANU) and Tyron Gold­schmidt (Rochester) cre­at­ed a spread­sheet of vide­o­record­ed phi­los­o­phy class­es and lec­tures,” writes Dai­ly Nous’ Justin Wein­berg. At the time of Wein­berg’s post on Mon­day, the spread­sheet, avail­able as an open Google doc­u­ment, con­tained more than 200 videos, a num­ber that has since more than dou­bled to 457 and count­ing.

You’ll find an abun­dance of intro­duc­to­ry cours­es to the entire sub­ject of phi­los­o­phy as well as to sub­fields like log­ic and ethics, and also spe­cial­ized lec­ture series on every­thing from Hume and Niet­zsche to Sto­icism and meta­physics to death and the prob­lem of evil.

Wein­berg adds that “any­one can add their own videos or ones that they know about,” so if you’re aware of any video phi­los­o­phy cours­es that haven’t appeared on the spread­sheet yet, you can con­tribute to this ongo­ing effort in at-home phi­los­o­phy by insert­ing them your­self. Even as it is, Jack­son and Gold­sh­midt’s course col­lec­tion offers more than enough to give your­self a rich philo­soph­i­cal edu­ca­tion in this time of iso­la­tion — or, if you’re a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor your­self, a way to enrich any remote teach­ing you have to do right now. Putting as it does so close at hand lec­tures by such fig­ures pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture as Nigel War­bur­ton, Michael SandelPeter Adam­son, and the inim­itable Rick Rod­er­ick, it reminds us that the love of wis­dom is best expressed in a vari­ety of voic­es.

In addi­tion to the spread­sheet, can find many more phi­los­o­phy videos in our col­lec­tion, Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es.

via Dai­ly Nous

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn Phi­los­o­phy with a Wealth of Free Cours­es, Pod­casts and YouTube Videos

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: From Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times

350 Ani­mat­ed Videos That Will Teach You Phi­los­o­phy, from Ancient to Post-Mod­ern

Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Nov­el the Coro­n­avirus Has Made a Best­seller Again

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Stream All 18 Hours of Ken Burns’ Baseball for Free on What Would Have Been Opening Day

Base­ball sea­son won’t start today, on what would have been Open Day. So here’s your next best bet. As Sam Barsan­ti writes at AV Club, “PBS and the world’s pre­em­i­nent direc­tor of extreme­ly watch­able and extreme­ly long doc­u­men­taries have a spe­cial treat: The entire­ty of Ken Burns’ Base­ball—over 18 hours—is now avail­able to stream for free on the PBS web­site and all of its relat­ed apps.”

It’s no coin­ci­dence that Burns’ doc­u­men­tary becomes free dur­ing COVID-19. On Twit­ter, Burns adds: “With events can­celed & so much closed, I asked @PBS to stream BASEBALL for free so we can par­tic­i­pate in the nation­al pas­time togeth­er. Watch at the link below or on any stream­ing device. And please look out for those with greater needs. Play ball.”

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What’s the Function of Criticism? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #36 with Critic Noah Berlatsky

Do we need pro­fes­sion­al crit­ics reg­u­lat­ing our enter­tain­ment intake?  Noah has writ­ten for numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing The Wash­ing­ton Post, The Atlantic, NBC News, The Guardian, Slate, and Vox, and his work has come up for dis­cus­sion in mul­ti­ple past Pret­ty Much Pop episodes.

He was invit­ed to join hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt in spelling out the func­tions of crit­i­cism, the idea of crit­i­cism as art, ide­o­log­i­cal vs. aes­thet­ic cri­tique, and whether there’s any­thing wrong with being neg­a­tive about oth­er peo­ple’s art. While we talk most­ly about film, Noah also writes about TV, comics, music and more.

First, read some arti­cles by Noah about crit­i­cism:

Oth­er authors speak­ing on the util­i­ty of crit­ics:

Here are some exam­ples of Noah’s crit­i­cal work rel­e­vant to what came up in the inter­view and our recent episodes:

Includ­ed here with Noah’s per­mis­sion, here’s some crit­i­cism direct­ed at Noah:

At the end, after Noah leaves, Mark lays out a tax­on­o­my of crit­i­cism: sup­port­er, decoder, taste enforcer, and hater. Noah prac­tices all of these! Fol­low him on Twit­ter @nberlat and get scads of his writ­ing by sup­port­ing him at patreon.com/noahberlatsky.

Watch Mel Brooks’ depic­tion of the very first crit­ic.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

Free: Austin City Limits Opens Up Video Archives During COVID-19 Pandemic

Austin City Limits–an PBS music pro­gram record­ed live in Austin, Texas–has decid­ed to open its archives “as a gift to music fans dur­ing the cur­rent live music mora­to­ri­um.” They write: “Start­ing March 23, the peren­ni­al tele­vi­sion series will make fan-favorite episodes from the recent­ly broad­cast Sea­son 45 avail­able for stream­ing, in addi­tion to the entire slate of pro­grams from the pre­vi­ous two sea­sons of the acclaimed con­cert show­case. Over 35 ACL install­ments will be avail­able to stream free online at https://www.pbs.org/show/austin-city-limits/ offer­ing a wide vari­ety of music’s finest from every genre. here’s some­thing for every­one: an elec­tri­fy­ing hour with gui­tar hero Gary Clark Jr.; an epic stage jour­ney with 2020’s Gram­my-win­ning glob­al pop phe­nom Bil­lie Eil­ish; super­group The Racon­teurs, fea­tur­ing Jack White and Bren­dan Ben­son, in an all-out hour of pure rock and roll.”

Get more infor­ma­tion here, and stream episodes here.

Above you can watch Robert Plant on Austin City Lim­its dur­ing a show record­ed in 2016.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Watch Curat­ed Playlists of Exper­i­men­tal Videos & Films to Get You Through COVID-19: Miran­da July, Jan Švankma­jer, Guy Maddin & More

The Met Opera Stream­ing Free Operas Online to Get You Through COVID-19

Bruce Spring­steen Releas­es Live Con­cert Film Online: Watch “Lon­don Call­ing: Live In Hyde Park” and Prac­tice Self Dis­tanc­ing

Take a Virtual Tour of the Paris Catacombs

The Paris Cat­a­combs is “one of those places,” wrote pho­tog­ra­ph­er Félix Nadar, “that every­one wants to see and no one wants to see again.” If any­one would know, Nadar would. He spent three months in and out of the under­ground city of death, with its macabre piles of skulls and cross­bones, tak­ing pho­tographs (see here) that would help turn it into an inter­na­tion­al­ly famous tourist attrac­tion. In these days of quar­an­tine, no one can see it; the site is closed until fur­ther notice. But if you’re the type of per­son who enjoys tour­ing necrop­olis­es, you can still get your fix with a vir­tu­al vis­it.

Why would any­one want to do this, espe­cial­ly dur­ing a glob­al out­break? The Cat­a­combs have attract­ed seek­ers after mor­bid curiosi­ties and spir­i­tu­al and philo­soph­i­cal truths for over two hun­dred years, through rev­o­lu­tions, mas­sacres, and plagues.

A stark, haunt­ing reminder of what Nadar called “the egal­i­tar­i­an con­fu­sion of death,” they wit­ness mute­ly, with­out euphemism, to the future we are all assured, no mat­ter our rank or posi­tion. They began as a dis­or­dered pile of bones in the late 18th cen­tu­ry, trans­ferred from over­crowd­ed ceme­ter­ies and became a place where “a Merovin­gian king remains in eter­nal silence next to those mas­sa­cred in Sep­tem­ber ‘92” dur­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion.

Con­tem­pla­tions of death, espe­cial­ly in times of war, plague, famine, and oth­er shocks and crises, have been an inte­gral part of many cul­tur­al cop­ing mech­a­nisms, and often involve med­i­ta­tions on corpses and grave­yards. The Cat­a­combs are no dif­fer­ent, a sprawl­ing memen­to mori named after the Roman cat­a­combs, “which had fas­ci­nat­ed the pub­lic since their dis­cov­ery,” as the offi­cial site notes. Expand­ed, ren­o­vat­ed, and rebuilt dur­ing the time of Napoleon and lat­er dur­ing the exten­sive ren­o­va­tions of Paris in the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, the site was first “con­se­crat­ed as the ‘Paris Munic­i­pal Ossuary’ on April 7, 1786” and opened to the pub­lic in 1809.

It is a place that reminds us how all con­flicts end. To the “litany of roy­al and impov­er­ished dead from French his­to­ry,” writes Alli­son Meier at the Pub­lic Domain Review, Nadar added in his essay on the Cat­a­combs “the names of rev­o­lu­tion­ary vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors like Max­im­i­lien Robe­spierre and Jean-Paul Marat.” Rumi­na­tions on the uni­ver­sal nature of death may be an odd diver­sion for some, and for oth­ers an urgent reminder to find out what mat­ters to them in life. Learn more about the fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry of the Paris Cat­a­combs here and begin your vir­tu­al vis­it here.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold Félix Nadar’s Pio­neer­ing Pho­tographs of the Paris Cat­a­combs (1861)

Notre Dame Cap­tured in an Ear­ly Pho­to­graph, 1838

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

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

What Happened to U.S. Cities That Practiced–and Didn’t Practice–Social Distancing During 1918’s “Spanish Flu”

Amer­i­cans have long been accused of grow­ing social­ly dis­tant, bowl­ing alone, as Robert Put­nam wrote in 2000, or worse becom­ing rad­i­cal­ized as “lone wolves” and iso­lat­ed trolls. But we are see­ing how much we depend on each oth­er as social dis­tanc­ing becomes the painful nor­mal. Not quite quar­an­tine, social dis­tanc­ing involves a semi-vol­un­tary restric­tion of our move­ments. For many peo­ple, this is, as they say, a big ask. But no mat­ter what cer­tain world lead­ers tell us, if at all pos­si­ble, we should stay home, and stay a safe dis­tance away from peo­ple who don’t live with us.

Peo­ple in the U.S. have done this before, of course, just a lit­tle over a hun­dred years ago dur­ing the influen­za epi­dem­ic called the “Span­ish Flu,” though the buzzy term “social dis­tanc­ing” wasn’t used then. As the short VOA News video above explains, dur­ing the spread of the dis­ease, city offi­cials in St. Louis did what cities all over the coun­try are doing now: shut down schools, play­grounds, libraries, church­es, pub­lic offices, and parks and banned gath­er­ings of over 20 peo­ple. Philadel­phia, on the oth­er hand, refused to do the same. The city “allowed a major World War I sup­port parade to take place that attract­ed 20,000 peo­ple.”

The refusal to shut down large gath­er­ings cost thou­sands of lives. “Three days lat­er, every bed in Philadelphia’s 31 hos­pi­tals was filled with sick and dying Span­ish flu patients.” COVID-19 may be a far milder ill­ness in chil­dren and most healthy peo­ple, but this is exact­ly what makes it so insid­i­ous. One per­son can infect dozens before show­ing any symp­toms, if ever. Dur­ing the “Span­ish” flu pan­dem­ic, “the best approach­es were lay­ered,” writes Ger­man Lopez at Vox. “It wasn’t enough to just tell peo­ple to stay home, because they might feel the need to go to school or work, or they could just ignore guid­ance and go to events, bars, church or oth­er big gath­er­ings any­way.”

The com­par­i­son between St. Louis and Philadel­phia stress­es the need for city offi­cials to inter­vene in order for social dis­tanc­ing strate­gies to work. How­ev­er we might feel in ordi­nary cir­cum­stances about gov­ern­ments ban­ning pub­lic gath­er­ings, the glob­al spread of a dead­ly virus seems to war­rant a coor­di­nat­ed pub­lic response that best con­tains the spread. “In prac­ti­cal terms,” Lopez points out, “this meant advis­ing against or pro­hibit­ing just about every aspect of pub­lic life, from schools to restau­rants to enter­tain­ment venues (with some excep­tions for gro­cery stores and drug­stores).”

Lopez cites sev­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies of the 1918 influen­za out­break as evi­dence of the effec­tive­ness of social dis­tanc­ing. For even more data on our cur­rent pan­dem­ic, see Tomas Pueyo’s exten­sive Medi­um essay com­pil­ing data and sta­tis­tics on COVID-19’s spread and pre­ven­tion. And if you’re still hav­ing a lit­tle trou­ble fig­ur­ing out what exact­ly “social dis­tanc­ing” involves, see this excel­lent guide from Asaf Bit­ton, physi­cian, pub­lic health researcher, and direc­tor of the Ari­adne Labs at Brigham and Women’s Hos­pi­tal and the Har­vard T.H. Chan School of Pub­lic Health.

As Bit­ton tells Isaac Chotin­er in a recent New York­er inter­view, “social dis­tanc­ing isn’t some exter­nal con­cept that applies only to work and school. Social dis­tanc­ing is real­ly extreme. It is a con­cept that dis­con­nects us phys­i­cal­ly from each oth­er. It pro­found­ly reori­ents our dai­ly life habits. And it is very hard.” No mat­ter how polar­ized we become, or how glued to our var­i­ous screens, we are “social crea­tures” who need con­nec­tion and com­mu­ni­ty. When we make the tran­si­tion out of life at a dis­tance, maybe the mem­o­ry of that need will help us over­come some of our pre-virus social alien­ation.

Relat­ed Con­tent:   

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Watch “Coro­n­avirus Out­break: What You Need to Know,” and the 24-Lec­ture Course “An Intro­duc­tion to Infec­tious Dis­eases,” Both Free from The Great Cours­es

How to Pro­tect Your­self Against COVID-19/­Coro­n­avirus

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


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