Tom Petty Takes You Inside His Songwriting Craft

Briefly not­ed: Give this wide-rang­ing inter­view with Tom Pet­ty some time. Record­ed in 2014, Pet­ty talks with inter­view­er Jian Ghome­shi about his song­writ­ing craft. The writ­ing of songs, the rehearsal and record­ing process, the work in the stu­dio, it all gets cov­ered here. As he talks, one thing comes across: What­ev­er tal­ents he had, Pet­ty put in the hard work. He and the Heart­break­ers mas­tered their instru­ments, kept get­ting bet­ter, and did­n’t take short cuts, to the point where they could do mag­i­cal things togeth­er in the record­ing stu­dio.

Watch Part 1 above, and Part 2 below, where, at one point he says, “I’m doing the best I can. You can’t say I did­n’t try real­ly hard because I’m real­ly try­ing hard to be good.” The val­ue of trying–trying consistently–can nev­er be under­stat­ed.

Note: Some of the same themes get echoed in Tom Pet­ty’s final inter­view, which he gave to the LA Times last week. You can stream it here.

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:

A 17-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Jour­ney Through Tom Petty’s Music: Stream the Songs That Became the Sound­tracks of Our Lives

Watch Tom Pet­ty (RIP) and the Heart­break­ers Per­form Their Last Song Togeth­er, “Amer­i­can Girl”: Record­ed on 9/25/17

Prince, Joined by Tom Pet­ty, Plays a Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solo On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps”

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The Hummingbird Whisperer: Meet the UCLA Scientist Who Has Befriended 200 Hummingbirds

Com­mon wis­dom, and indeli­ble mem­o­ries of The Birds, warn that feed­ing seag­ulls, pigeons and oth­er crea­tures who trav­el in flocks is a can of worms best left unopened.

But what about hum­ming­birds?

Melanie Bar­boni is research geo­chemist in UCLA’s Depart­ment of Earth, Plan­e­tary and Space Sci­ences. Near the UCLA Court of Sci­ences she took a break from vol­canos and the moon long enough to hang a feed­er filled with sug­ar water out­side her ground floor office win­dow.

This com­pli­men­ta­ry buf­fet proved such a hit, she hung up more.

Two years lat­er, Bar­boni is serv­ing a colony of over 200 hum­ming­birds from four 80-ounce feed­ers. Their metab­o­lism requires them to con­sume 8 to 10 times their body weight on a dai­ly basis.

Barboni’s ser­vice to her tiny jew­el-toned friends extends well beyond the feed­ers. She’s divert­ed cam­pus tree trim­mers from inter­fer­ing with them dur­ing nest­ing sea­son, and giv­en pub­lic talks on the habi­tat-destroy­ing effects of cli­mate change. She’s col­lab­o­rat­ing with anoth­er pro­fes­sor and UCLA’s Chief Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Offi­cer Nurit Katz to estab­lish a spe­cial gar­den on cam­pus for hum­ming­birds and their fel­low pol­li­na­tors.

The inti­ma­cy of this rela­tion­ship is some­thing she’s dreamed of since her bird­watch­ing child­hood in Switzer­land where the only hum­ming­birds avail­able for her view­ing were the ones in books. Her dream came true when a fel­low­ship took her from Prince­ton to Los Ange­les, where hum­ming­birds live year-round.

Some long­time favorites now perch on their benefactor’s hand while feed­ing, or even per­mit them­selves to be held and stroked. A few like to hang out inside the office, where the warm glow of Barboni’s com­put­er mon­i­tor is a com­fort­ing pres­ence on inclement days.

She’s bestowed names on at least 50: Squeak, Star­dust, Tiny, Shy…

(Show of hands from those who wish she’d named them all after not­ed geol­o­gists: Mary Anning, Eugene Mer­le Shoe­mak­erCecil­ia Hele­na Payne-Gaposchkin…)

Get to know the UCLA hum­ming­birds bet­ter through Melanie Barboni’s up-close-and-per­son­al doc­u­men­tary pho­tos. Learn more about the species itself through the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic doc­u­men­tary below.

via The Kids Should See This

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

Google Uses Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Map Thou­sands of Bird Sounds Into an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion

Free Enter­tain­ment for Cats and Dogs: Videos of Birds, Squir­rels & Oth­er Thrills

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

People Walked a Little Differently During Medieval Times: A Quick Primer

Roland Warzecha runs a Youtube chan­nel where he delves into the world of medieval weapons and com­bat. If you want to learn some­thing about Viking shields and swords, medieval spears and com­bat tech­niques, spend some time there.

Above, Roland departs from his reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled pro­gram­ming and explores anoth­er facet of medieval life. Walk­ing. That’s right, walk­ing. It turns out that, as Boing Boing sum­ma­rizes it, “before struc­tured shoes became preva­lent in the 16th cen­tu­ry … peo­ple walked with a dif­fer­ent gait, push­ing onto the balls of our feet instead of rock­ing for­ward on our heels.” And that’s your les­son on medieval body mechan­ics for today…

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:

Fash­ion­able 2,000-Year-Old Roman Shoe Found in a Well

What’s It Like to Fight in 15th Cen­tu­ry Armor?: A Sur­pris­ing Demon­stra­tion

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

See The Guidon­ian Hand, the Medieval Sys­tem for Read­ing Music, Get Brought Back to Life

Wear­able Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Man­u­scripts & Turned Them into Clothes

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

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Enter the The Cornell Hip Hop Archive: A Vast Digital Collection of Hip Hop Photos, Posters & More

The music and the cul­ture of hip-hop are insep­a­ra­ble from the Bronx, Queens, Harlem, and Brook­lyn, NY. And now that the form is a glob­al cul­ture that exists in online spaces as much as it does where peo­ple meet and shake hands, its doc­u­men­tary his­to­ry may be more valu­able than ever. Hip-Hop began, unques­tion­ably, as a region­al phe­nom­e­non, and its for­mal qual­i­ties always bear the traces of its matrix, a con­flu­ence of African-Amer­i­can, Caribbean, and Latin Amer­i­can socio-cul­tur­al expe­ri­ences and cre­ative streams, meet­ing with new con­sumer audio tech­nol­o­gy and a dri­ve toward coun­ter­cul­tur­al exper­i­ments that took hold all over New York amidst the urban decay of the 70s.

Pho­to by Joe Con­zo, Jr.

We know the sto­ry in broad strokes. Now we can immerse our­selves in the dai­ly life, so to speak, of ear­ly hip hop, thanks to a par­tial dig­i­ti­za­tion of Cor­nell University’s vast hip hop col­lec­tion. The phys­i­cal col­lec­tion, housed in Itha­ca New York, con­tains “hun­dreds of par­ty and event fly­ers ca. 1977–1985; thou­sands of ear­ly vinyl record­ings, cas­settes and CDs; film and video; record label press pack­ets and pub­lic­i­ty; black books, pho­tog­ra­phy, mag­a­zines, books, cloth­ing, and more.”

Pho­to by Joe Con­zo, Jr.

While this impres­sive trove of phys­i­cal arti­facts is open to the pub­lic, most of us won’t ever make the jour­ney. But whether we’re fans, schol­ars, or curi­ous onlook­ers, we can ben­e­fit from its cura­to­r­i­al largesse through online archives like that of Joe Con­zo, Jr., who “cap­tured images of the South Bronx between 1977 and 1984, includ­ing ear­ly hip hop jams, street scenes, and Latin music per­form­ers and events.”

Pho­to by Joe Con­zo, Jr.

While still in high school, Con­zo became the offi­cial pho­tog­ra­ph­er for the ear­ly influ­en­tial rap group the Cold Crush Broth­ers. The posi­tion gave him unique access to the “local­ized, grass­roots cul­ture about to explode into glob­al aware­ness.” Cornell’s site remarks that “with­out Joe’s images, the world would have lit­tle idea of what the ear­li­est era of hip hop looked like, when fabled DJ, MC, and b‑boy/girl bat­tles took place in parks, school gym­na­si­ums and neigh­bor­hood dis­cos.”

Anoth­er of Cornell’s col­lec­tions, the Bud­dy Esquire Par­ty and Event Fly­er Archive, pre­serves over 500 such arti­facts, the “largest known insti­tu­tion­al col­lec­tion of these scarce fly­ers, which have become increas­ing­ly val­ued for the details they pro­vide about ear­ly hip hop cul­ture.” Local, grass­roots scenes like this one seem increas­ing­ly rare in a glob­al­ized, always-online 21st cen­tu­ry. Archives like Cornell’s not only tell the sto­ry of such a cul­ture, but in so doing they doc­u­ment a crit­i­cal peri­od in New York City, much like punk or jazz archives tell impor­tant his­to­ries of Lon­don, New York, D.C., Paris, New Orleans, etc.

The third dig­i­tal col­lec­tion host­ed by Cor­nell, the Adler Hip Hop Archive, comes from jour­nal­ist and Def Jam Record­ings pub­li­cist Bill Adler. The mate­ri­als here nat­u­ral­ly skew toward the indus­try side of the cul­ture, doc­u­ment­ing its leap from the New York streets to “glob­al aware­ness” and a spread to cities nation­wide, through mag­a­zine pho­to spreads, ads, pro­mo­tion­al pics, press clip­pings, and much more.

Some of these col­lec­tions are eas­i­er to nav­i­gate than others—you’ll have to wade through many non-hip-hop pho­tos in the huge Joe Con­zo, Jr. archive, though most of them, like his Puer­to Rican por­traits and land­scapes for exam­ple, are of inter­est in their own right. Con­zo’s pho­to jour­nal­ism of the Bronx in the late 70s and 80s has all the inti­ma­cy and can­dor of a fam­i­ly album or col­lec­tion of year­book pictures—charmingly awk­ward, exu­ber­ant, and a stark con­trast to the high-pro­file glam­our of com­mer­cial hip-hop eras to fol­low.

The core of Cornell’s col­lec­tion came from author, cura­tor, and for­mer record exec­u­tive Johan Kugel­berg, who donat­ed his col­lec­tion in 1999 after pub­lish­ing Born in the Bronx: A Visu­al His­to­ry of the Ear­ly Days of Hip Hop with Joe Con­zo, Jr. It has since expand­ed to 13 dif­fer­ent col­lec­tions from the archives of some of the cul­ture’s ear­li­est pio­neers and doc­u­men­tar­i­ans. Hope­ful­ly many more of these will soon be dig­i­tized. But we might want to heed Jason Kottke’s warn­ing in enter­ing the three that have: “don’t click on any of those links if you’ve got press­ing things to do.” You could eas­i­ly get lost in this incred­i­bly detailed trea­sury of hip-hop—and New York City—history.

Pho­to by Joe Con­zo, Jr.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Found­ing Fathers, A Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed By Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D, Presents the True His­to­ry of Hip Hop

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Hip Hop Hits Sung Won­der­ful­ly in Sign Lan­guage: Eminem’s “Lose Your­self,” Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yel­low” & More

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

How Marilyn Monroe Helped Break Ella Fitzgerald Into the Big Time (1955)

Think of movie stars, and you’ll almost cer­tain­ly think of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe; think of jazz singers, and you’ll almost cer­tain­ly think of Ella Fitzger­ald. Their skills as per­form­ers, their inher­ent icon­ic qual­i­ties, the time of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry in which they rose to fame, and oth­er fac­tors besides, have ensured that these two women still define the images of their respec­tive crafts. But before their ascen­sion to cul­tur­al immor­tal­i­ty, the Ange­leno Mon­roe and the New York­er Fitzger­ald’s paths crossed down here on Earth in 1955, and, when they did, the movie star played an inte­gral role in break­ing the jazz singer into the big time.

If you want­ed to play to an influ­en­tial crowd in Hol­ly­wood back in the 1950s, you had to play the Mocam­bo, the Sun­set Strip night­club fre­quent­ed by the likes of Clark Gable, Humphrey Bog­a­rt, Lana Turn­er, Bob Hope, Sophia Loren, and Howard Hugh­es. But at the time, a singer of the reput­ed­ly scan­dalous new music known as jazz did­n’t just waltz onto the stage of such a respectable venue, espe­cial­ly giv­en the racial atti­tudes of the time. But as luck would have it, Fitzger­ald found an advo­cate in Mon­roe, who, “tired of being cast as a help­less sex sym­bol, took a break from Los Ange­les and head­ed to New York to find her­self,” writes the Inde­pen­dent’s Ciar Byrne.

There Mon­roe “immersed her­self in jazz,” rec­og­niz­ing in Fitzger­ald “the cre­ative genius she her­self longed to pos­sess.” Togeth­er with Fitzger­ald’s man­ag­er, jazz impre­sario and Verve Records founder Nor­man Granz, Mon­roe pres­sured the glam­orous Hol­ly­wood club to book Ella. “I owe Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe a real debt,” Fitzger­ald said lat­er, in 1972. “She per­son­al­ly called the own­er of the Mocam­bo, and told him she want­ed me booked imme­di­ate­ly, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night.” He agreed, and true to her word, “Mar­i­lyn was there, front table, every night. The press went over­board. After that, I nev­er had to play a small jazz club again.”

Though Mon­roe’s efforts did­n’t make Fitzger­ald the first black per­former to take the Mocam­bo’s stage — Herb Jef­fries, Eartha Kitt, and Joyce Bryant had played there in 1952 and 1953 — she did use it as a plat­form to ascend to unusu­al­ly great career heights, com­pa­ra­ble to the way Frank Sina­tra launched his solo career there. The sto­ry has remained com­pelling enough for sev­er­al retellings, includ­ing Bon­nie Greer’s musi­cal Mar­i­lyn and Ella and, more recent­ly, through the hilar­i­ous unre­li­a­bil­i­ty of an episode of Drunk His­to­ry. As real his­to­ry would have it, Fitzger­ald would go on to enjoy a much longer and more var­ied career than the trag­ic Mon­roe, but she did her own part to repay the favor by adding nuance to Mon­roe’s super­fi­cial pub­lic image: “She was an unusu­al woman — a lit­tle ahead of her times. And she did­n’t know it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ella Fitzger­ald Sings ‘Sum­mer­time’ by George Gersh­win, Berlin 1968

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Go-Get­ter List of New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions (1955)

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Recounts Her Har­row­ing Expe­ri­ence in a Psy­chi­atric Ward in a 1961 Let­ter

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

The Smithsonian Presents a Gallery of 6,000+ Rare Rock ‘n Roll Photos on a Crowdsourced Web Site, and Now a New Book


Rock pho­tog­ra­phy is an art form in itself, as demon­strat­ed by books and exhi­bi­tions of some of its mas­ters like Mick Rock, Jen­ny Lens, Pen­nie Smith, and so many oth­ers. But two years ago, the Smith­son­ian turned to the crowd, to the fan, to the ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er, with a call to sub­mit pho­tos from over six decades of rock and roll that weren’t hang­ing on gallery walls, but sit­ting in a shoe­box some­where. From fans with insta­mat­ic cam­eras to ama­teurs cov­er­ing con­certs for their school paper, the Smith­son­ian want­ed anoth­er angle on our cul­tur­al obses­sion.

Many of the con­tri­bu­tions now live on a crowd­sourced web­site. And a result­ing book Smith­son­ian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen col­lects the best of these in a chrono­log­i­cal his­to­ry of the genre, from post-war blues to the late 20th cen­tu­ry. It will be offi­cial­ly released on Octo­ber 24, though you can pre-order now.

Web­sites Mash­able and Dan­ger­ous Minds present a selec­tion of pho­tos from the book, such as a shot of Sly Stone at the height of his pow­ers (and belt buck­le size), a pic of the Talk­ing Heads on stage in Berke­ley, 1977; a dark and mys­te­ri­ous glimpse of Bon­nie Raitt, cir­ca 1974; and a shot of Cream play­ing the Chica­go Col­i­se­um tak­en from the side of the stage, with Gin­ger Baker’s head a com­plete blur. Also find Joni Mitchell at Klein­hans Music Hall. And The Ramones in Tempe, Ari­zona, cir­ca 1978.

Bon­nie Raitt at the Har­vard Square The­atre, by Bar­ry Schneier/Smithsonian Books

It’s a reminder of how unpre­ten­tious these live shows could be, hap­pen­ing in a world with the sim­plest of light­ing rigs and decades from the big screen pro­jec­tions even up-and-com­ing bands now indulge in. For the most part, this was an inti­mate con­tract between the artist and the audi­ence, all crammed into small clubs with smoke, sweat, heat, and, most impor­tant­ly, elec­tric­i­ty in the air.

The new book also fea­tures tales from the peo­ple who took the pho­tos, along with some more pro­fes­sion­al pho­tos to “flesh out this overview of rock and roll,” accord­ing to the intro­duc­tion by orga­niz­er Bill Bent­ley. He adds: “The results, span­ning six decades, aim for nei­ther ency­clo­pe­dic author­i­ty nor com­pre­hen­sive final­i­ty, but rather an index of supreme influ­ence.”

The Ramones in Tempe, Ari­zona, by Dori­an Boese/Smithsonian Books

That supreme influ­ence con­tin­ues to be felt, for sure. Although the sub­mis­sion win­dow is now closed, the Smith­so­ni­an’s web­site allows you to look through the hun­dreds of sub­mis­sions to the project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

UC San­ta Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grate­ful Dead Archive is Now Online

Bea­t­les, Friends & Fam­i­ly: Pho­tos by Lin­da McCart­ney

Judy!: 1993 Judith But­ler Fanzine Gives Us An Irrev­er­ent Punk-Rock Take on the Post-Struc­tural­ist Gen­der The­o­rist

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Depeche Mode Releases a Goosebump-Inducing Cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

40 years ago, David Bowie record­ed “Heroes,” a song that tells the sto­ry of two lovers who embrace in a kiss by the Berlin Wall. How the song was record­ed gets won­der­ful­ly retold by pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti, in a post/video we fea­tured in Jan­u­ary 2016. Don’t miss it.

Above, you can watch Depeche Mod­e’s new cov­er of “Heroes,” record­ed to com­mem­o­rate the 40th anniver­sary of the song’s offi­cial release (Sep­tem­ber 23, 1977). “ ‘Heroes’ is the most spe­cial song to me at the moment,” Depeche Mode front­man Dave Gahan told NME. “Bowie is the one artist who I’ve stuck with since I was in my ear­ly teens. His albums are always my go-to on tour and cov­er­ing ‘Heroes’ is pay­ing homage to Bowie.”

In anoth­er inter­view with Rolling Stone, Gahan talked more about the expe­ri­ence of record­ing this song: “I was so moved, I bare­ly held it togeth­er, to be hon­est.” Watch­ing the per­for­mance, I got a few goose­bumps, I have to admit.

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:

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

David Bowie Per­forms a Live Acoustic Ver­sion of “Heroes,” with a Bot­tle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keep­ing the Beat

David Bowie & Bri­an Eno’s Col­lab­o­ra­tion on “Warsza­wa” Reimag­ined in a Com­ic Ani­ma­tion

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Three Blade Runner Prequels: Watch Them Online

Even if you’ve spent each and every day since you first saw Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner wait­ing for a sequel, you still might not be ful­ly pre­pared for Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s Blade Run­ner 2049 when it opens in the­aters this Fri­day. The 1981 orig­i­nal took place in the Los Ange­les of the then-far-flung future of 2019, mean­ing that 30 years have elapsed in the Blade Run­ner uni­verse between its first fea­ture film and its sec­ond. Much has tak­en place over those three decades, some of it por­trayed by the three offi­cial short pre­quels released to the inter­net over the past month. Today we present them all in chrono­log­i­cal order to catch you up with what hap­pened after Har­ri­son Ford’s Blade Run­ner Rick Deckard picked up that origa­mi uni­corn and left the build­ing.

In 2020, the year after Blade Run­ner, the arti­fi­cial-being-mak­ing Tyrell Cor­po­ra­tion intro­duces a new mod­el of repli­cant, with a longer lifes­pan, called the Nexus 8S. Two years lat­er comes “the Black­out,” an elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse attack that destroys all tech­nol­o­gy with­in its reach. You can see it hap­pen in Blade Run­ner Black Out 2022, the short at the top of the post direct­ed by respect­ed Japan­ese ani­ma­tor Shinichi­ro Watan­abe (and fea­tur­ing a score by Fly­ing Lotus as well as a reprisal of the role of the qua­si-Esperan­to-speak­ing police offi­cer Gaff by Edward James Olmos).

Repli­cants hav­ing tak­en the blame for the Black­out, their pro­duc­tion gets legal­ly pro­hib­it­ed until the efforts of an orga­ni­za­tion called the Wal­lace Cor­po­ra­tion get the ban over­turned in 2030. The man at the top of the Wal­lace Cor­po­ra­tion, a cer­tain Nian­der Wal­lace, first appears in 2036: Nexus Dawn (mid­dle video), direct­ed by Rid­ley Scot­t’s son Luke.

In that pre­quel we see Wal­lace, who rose to promi­nence on his com­pa­ny’s solu­tion to glob­al food short­ages, sub­mit­ting for approval his lat­est repli­cant, the Nexus 9 (although his nego­ti­a­tion strat­e­gy leaves lit­tle room for com­pro­mise). The younger Scot­t’s 2048: Nowhere to Run (below), which intro­duces a new and impos­ing repli­cant char­ac­ter by the name of Sap­per Mor­ton, takes place just a year before the sequel, by which time, accord­ing to the time­line unveiled at this past sum­mer’s Com­ic-Con, “life on Earth has reached its lim­it and soci­ety divides between repli­cant and human.” Enter Ryan Gosling’s K, one of a new gen­er­a­tion of repli­cant- hunters, who goes out in search of a pre­de­ces­sor who went miss­ing some 30 years ago. All of this, of course, still leaves ques­tions unan­swered. Chiefly: will Blade Run­ner 2049 deliv­er what we’ve been wait­ing even more than three dea­cades for?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the New Ani­me Pre­quel to Blade Run­ner 2049, by Famed Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Shinichi­ro Watan­abe

Jared Leto Stars in a New Pre­quel to Blade Run­ner 2049: Watch It Free Online

Blade Run­ner 2049’s New Mak­ing-Of Fea­turette Gives You a Sneak Peek Inside the Long-Await­ed Sequel

The Offi­cial Trail­er for Rid­ley Scott’s Long-Await­ed Blade Run­ner Sequel Is Final­ly Out

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.

The Philosophy & Music of Devo, the Avant-Garde Art Project Dedicated to Revealing the Truth About De-Evolution

The chief dif­fi­cul­ty for any­one want­i­ng to make an assault on our munic­i­pal the­atre… is that there can be no ques­tion of reveal­ing a mys­tery. He can­not just point a stumpy fin­ger at the theatre’s ongo­ings and say, “You may have thought this amount­ed to some­thing, but let me tell you, it’s a sheer scan­dal; what you see before you proves your absolute bank­rupt­cy; it’s your own stu­pid­i­ty, your men­tal lazi­ness and your degen­er­a­cy that are being pub­li­cal­ly exposed.” No, the poor man can’t say that, for it’s no sur­prise to you; you’ve known it all along; noth­ing can be done about it.

–Berthold Brecht, “A Reck­on­ing”

Have you ever felt like Net­work’s Howard Beale? Rant­i­ng to any­one who’ll lis­ten about how mad as hell you are? “I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Every­body knows things are bad.”

Or maybe agreed with the weary cyn­i­cism of his boss, Max Schu­mach­er? “All of life is reduced to the com­mon rub­ble of banal­i­ty.”

Faced with the cru­el, stu­pid the­ater of mass pol­i­tics and cul­ture, we begin to feel a blan­ket of over­whelm­ing futil­i­ty descend. All of the pos­si­ble moves have been made and absorbed into the programming—including the out­raged crit­ic point­ing his fin­ger at the stage.

Avant-garde artists since the late 19th cen­tu­ry have cor­rect­ly sized up this depress­ing real­i­ty. But rather than seize up in fits of rage or suc­cumb to cyn­i­cism, they made new forms of the­ater: Jar­ry, Dada, Debord, Artaud, Brecht—all had designs to dis­rupt the oppres­sive banal­i­ty of mod­ern stage- and state-craft with mock­ery, sadism, and shock.

And so too did DEVO, the authors of “Whip It.”

Their 80s New Wave antics seemed like a juve­nile art-school prank. Behind it lay the­o­ret­i­cal sophis­ti­ca­tion and seri­ous polit­i­cal intent. “When we first start­ed Devo,” says Mark Moth­ers­baugh in the “Cal­i­for­nia Inspires Me” video above, “we were artists who were work­ing in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent media. We were around for the shoot­ings at Kent State. And it affect­ed us. We were think­ing, like, ‘What are we observ­ing?’ And we decid­ed we weren’t observ­ing evo­lu­tion, we were observ­ing de-evo­lu­tion.”

Won­der­ing how to change things, the band looked to Madi­son Avenue for inspiration—intent on tak­ing the tech­niques of mass per­sua­sion to sub­vert the enchant­ments of mass per­sua­sion, “report­ing the good news of De-Evo­lu­tion” in a joy­ous the­ater of mock­ery. The phi­los­o­phy itself evolved over time, first tak­ing shape in 1970 when Moth­ers­baugh and Ger­ald Casale met at Kent State. Casale had already coined the term “De-Evo­lu­tion”; Moth­ers­baugh intro­duced him to its mas­cot, Jocko-Homo, the 1924 cre­ation of anti-evo­lu­tion fun­da­men­tal­ist pam­phle­teer B.H. Shad­duck.

Fas­ci­nat­ed by Shadduck’s bizarre, pro­to-Jack Chick, illus­trat­ed freak-outs, Moth­ers­baugh and his band­mates adopt­ed the char­ac­ter for the first sin­gle from their 1978 debut album (top). Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! announced their car­ni­va­lesque gospel of human stu­pid­i­ty. Devo proved noth­ing we didn’t already know. Instead, they showed us the ele­va­tion of idio­cy to the sta­tus of a civ­il reli­gion. (Lat­er in the 80s, they would express­ly par­o­dy the nation­al reli­gion with their Evan­gel­i­cal satire DOVE.)

The the­ater of Devo was weird­ly com­pelling then and is wierd­ly com­pelling now, since the banal­i­ty and casu­al vio­lence of late-cap­i­tal­ism that threat­ened to swal­low up every­thing in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry has, if any­thing, only become more bloat­ed and grotesque. “As far as Devo was con­cerned,” writes Ray Pad­gett at The New York­er, “Devo wasn’t a band at all but, rather, an art project… inspired by the Dadaists and the Ital­ian Futur­ists, Devo’s mem­bers were also cre­at­ing satir­i­cal visu­al art, writ­ing trea­tis­es, and film­ing short videos.”

One of those videos, “In the Begin­ning Was the End: The Truth About De-Evo­lu­tion,” fea­tured their “first ever cover”—Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man”—before they re-invent­ed (or “cor­rect­ed,” as they put it), the Rolling Stones’ “Sat­is­fac­tion.” They would screen the 9‑minute film, with its footage of two men in mon­key masks spank­ing a house­wife, before gigs.

The con­cepts are aggres­sive­ly wink-nudge ado­les­cent, reflect­ing not only Devo’s take on the regres­sive state of the cul­ture, but also Casale’s belief that “high-school kids know every­thing already.” But amidst the synths and shiny suits, we still hear Howard Beale’s cri de coeur, “I’m a human being dammit! My life has val­ue!” Only in Devo’s hands it turns to dark comedy—as in the title of a song from their 2010 come­back record Some­thing for Every­body, tak­en from words print­ed on the back of a hunter’s safe­ty vest that call back to the band’s begin­nings at Kent State: “Don’t Shoot, I’m a Man.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Shows Off His Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

New Wave Music–DEVO, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello–Gets Intro­duced to Amer­i­ca by ABC’s TV Show, 20/20 (1979)

Devo’s Mark Moth­ers­baugh & Oth­er Arists Tell Their Musi­cal Sto­ries in the Ani­mat­ed Video Series, “Cal­i­for­nia Inspires Me”

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

How Buddhism & Neuroscience Can Help You Change How Your Mind Works: A New Course by Bestselling Author Robert Wright

Bud­dhist thought and cul­ture has long found a com­fort­able home among hip­pies, beat­niks, New Age believ­ers, artists, occultists and mys­tics. Recent­ly, many of its tenets and prac­tices have become wide­ly pop­u­lar among very dif­fer­ent demo­graph­ics of sci­en­tists, skep­tics, and athe­ist com­mu­ni­ties. It may seem odd that an increas­ing­ly sec­u­lar­iz­ing West would wide­ly embrace an ancient East­ern reli­gion. But even the Dalai Lama has point­ed out that Buddhism’s essen­tial doc­trines align uncan­ni­ly with the find­ings of mod­ern sci­ence

The Pali Canon, the ear­li­est col­lec­tion of Bud­dhist texts, con­tains much that agrees with the sci­en­tif­ic method. In the Kala­ma Sut­ta, for exam­ple, we find instruc­tions for how to shape views and beliefs that accord with the meth­ods espoused by the Roy­al Soci­ety many hun­dreds of years lat­er.

Robert Wright—best­selling author and vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of reli­gion and psy­chol­o­gy at Prince­ton and Penn—goes even fur­ther, show­ing in his book Why Bud­dhism is True how Bud­dhist insights into imper­ma­nence, delu­sion, igno­rance, and unhap­pi­ness align with con­tem­po­rary find­ings of neu­ro­science and evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy.

Wright is now mak­ing his argu­ment for the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of Bud­dhism and sci­ence in a new MOOC from Cours­era called “Bud­dhism and Mod­ern Psy­chol­o­gy.” You can watch the trail­er for the course, which you can take any time, just above.

The core of Bud­dhism is gen­er­al­ly con­tained in the so-called “Four Noble Truths,” and Wright explains in his lec­ture above how these teach­ings sum up the prob­lem we all face, begin­ning with the first truth of dukkha. Often trans­lat­ed as “suf­fer­ing,” the word might bet­ter be thought of as mean­ing “unsat­is­fac­tori­ness,” as Wright illus­trates with a ref­er­ence to the Rolling Stones. Jag­ger’s “can’t get no sat­is­fac­tion,” he says, cap­tures “a lot of the spir­it of what is called the First Noble Truth,” which, along with the Sec­ond, con­sti­tutes “the Buddha’s diag­no­sis of the human predica­ment.” Not only can we not get what we want, but even when we do, it hard­ly ever makes us hap­py for very long.

Rather than impute our mis­ery to the dis­plea­sure of the gods, the Bud­dha, Wright tells Lion’s Roar, “says the rea­son we suf­fer, the rea­son we’re not endur­ing­ly sat­is­fied, is that we don’t see the world clear­ly. That’s also the rea­son we some­times fall short of moral good­ness and treat oth­er human beings bad­ly.” Des­per­ate to hold on to what we think will sat­is­fy us, we become con­sumed by crav­ing, as the Sec­ond Noble Truth explains, con­stant­ly cling­ing to plea­sure and flee­ing from pain. Just above, Wright explains how these two claims com­pare with the the­o­ries of evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy. His course also explores how med­i­ta­tion releas­es us from crav­ing and breaks the vicious cycle of desire and aver­sion.

Over­all, the issues Wright address­es are laid out in his course descrip­tion:

Are neu­ro­sci­en­tists start­ing to under­stand how med­i­ta­tion “works”? Would such an under­stand­ing val­i­date meditation—or might phys­i­cal expla­na­tions of med­i­ta­tion under­mine the spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance attrib­uted to it? And how are some of the basic Bud­dhist claims about the human mind hold­ing up? We’ll pay spe­cial atten­tion to some high­ly coun­ter­in­tu­itive doc­trines: that the self doesn’t exist, and that much of per­ceived real­i­ty is in some sense illu­so­ry. Do these claims, rad­i­cal as they sound, make a cer­tain kind of sense in light of mod­ern psy­chol­o­gy? And what are the impli­ca­tions of all this for how we should live our lives? Can med­i­ta­tion make us not just hap­pi­er, but bet­ter peo­ple?

As to the last ques­tion, Wright is not alone among sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-mind­ed peo­ple in answer­ing with a resound­ing yes. Rather than rely­ing on the benef­i­cence of a super­nat­ur­al sav­ior, Bud­dhism offers a course of treatment—the “Noble Eight­fold Path”—to com­bat our dis­po­si­tion toward illu­so­ry think­ing. We are shaped by evo­lu­tion, Wright says, to deceive our­selves. The Bud­dhist prac­tices of med­i­ta­tion and mind­ful­ness, and the ethics of com­pas­sion and non­harm­ing, are “in some sense, a rebel­lion against nat­ur­al selec­tion.”

You can see more of Wright’s lec­tures on YouTube. Wright’s free course, Bud­dhism and Mod­ern Psy­chol­o­gy, has been added to our list of Free Reli­gion Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Mind­ful­ness Makes Us Hap­pi­er & Bet­ter Able to Meet Life’s Chal­lenges: Two Ani­mat­ed Primers Explain

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

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

The Famously Controversial “Monty Hall Problem” Explained: A Classic Brain Teaser

When the news broke last week of the death of game-show host Mon­ty Hall, even those of us who could­n’t quite put a face to the name felt the ring of recog­ni­tion from the name itself. Hall became famous on the long-run­ning game show Let’s Make a Deal, whose best-known seg­ment “Big Deal of the Day” had him com­mand­ing his play­ers to choose one of three num­bered doors, each of which con­cealed a prize of unknown desir­abil­i­ty. It put not just phras­es like “door num­ber three” into the Eng­lish lex­i­con but con­tributed to the world of stumpers the Mon­ty Hall Prob­lem, the brain-teas­er based on the much-con­test­ed prob­a­bil­i­ty behind which door a con­tes­tant should choose.

Let’s Make a Deal pre­miered in 1963, but only in 1990, when Mar­i­lyn vos Savant wrote one of her Q&A columns about it in Parade mag­a­zine, did the Mon­ty Hall Prob­lem draw seri­ous, frus­trat­ed pub­lic atten­tion.

“Behind one door is a car; behind the oth­ers, goats,” went the ques­tion, set­ting up a Let’s Make a Deal-like sce­nario. “You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens anoth­er door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, ‘Do you want to pick door No. 2?’ Is it to your advan­tage to switch your choice?” Yes, replied the unhesi­tat­ing Savant and her Guin­ness World Record-set­ting IQ, you should switch. “The first door has a 1/3 chance of win­ning, but the sec­ond door has a 2/3 chance.”

This log­ic, which you can see bro­ken down by Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley sta­tis­tics pro­fes­sor Lisa Gold­berg in the Num­ber­phile video at the top of the post, drew about 10,000 let­ters of dis­agree­ment in total, many from aca­d­e­mics at respectable insti­tu­tions. Michael Sher­mer received a sim­i­lar­ly vehe­ment response when he addressed the issue in Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can eigh­teen years lat­er. “At the begin­ning of the game you have a 1/3rd chance of pick­ing the car and a 2/3rds chance of pick­ing a goat,” he explained. “Switch­ing doors is bad only if you ini­tial­ly chose the car, which hap­pens only 1/3rd of the time. Switch­ing doors is good if you ini­tial­ly chose a goat, which hap­pens 2/3rds of the time.” Thus the odds of win­ning by switch­ing becomes two out of three, dou­ble those of not switch­ing.

Use­ful advice, pre­sum­ing you’d pre­fer a Brick­lin SV‑1 or an Opel Man­ta to a goat, and that the host opens one of the uns­e­lect­ed doors every time with­out fail, which Hall did­n’t actu­al­ly do. When he did open it, he lat­er explained, the con­tes­tants made the same assump­tion many of Savant and Sher­mer’s com­plainants did: “They’d think the odds on their door had now gone up to 1 in 2, so they hat­ed to give up the door no mat­ter how much mon­ey I offered. By open­ing that door we were apply­ing pres­sure.” Ulti­mate­ly, “if the host is required to open a door all the time and offer you a switch, then you should take the switch. But if he has the choice whether to allow a switch or not, beware. Caveat emp­tor. It all depends on his mood” — a rare con­sid­er­a­tion in any­thing relat­ed to math­e­mat­ics, but when deal­ing with the Mon­ty Hall prob­lem, one ignores at one’s per­il the words of Mon­ty Hall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Are You One of the 2% Who Can Solve “Einstein’s Rid­dle”?

Can You Solve These Ani­mat­ed Brain Teasers from TED-Ed?

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

A Young Hunter S. Thomp­son Appears on the Clas­sic TV Game Show, To Tell the Truth (1967)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.


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