What a Lack of Social Contact Does to Your Brain

in Psychology | October 3rd, 2025

To many of us, the con­cept of soli­tary con­fine­ment may not sound all that bad: final­ly, a reprieve from the siege of social and pro­fes­sion­al requests. Final­ly, a chance to catch up on all the read­ing we’ve been mean­ing to do. Final­ly, an envi­ron­ment con­ducive to this med­i­ta­tion thing about whose ben­e­fits we’ve heard so much. (Per­haps we made those very assur­ances to our­selves when the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic set in.) But accord­ing to the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above, writ­ten by psy­chi­a­trist and cor­rec­tion­al men­tal health expert Ter­ry Kupers, the neg­a­tives of the expe­ri­ence would well out­weigh the pos­i­tives. It all comes by way of answer­ing the ques­tion, “What hap­pens to your brain with­out any social con­tact?”

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, per­haps, iso­la­tion takes its great­est toll when imposed against the will of the iso­lat­ed, and even more so when imposed for an indef­i­nite dura­tion. “Ear­ly on, stress hor­mones may spike, and as time pass­es, that stress can become chron­ic,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor.

With­out the avail­abil­i­ty of social inter­ac­tions as “a sound­ing board where we can gauge how ratio­nal our per­cep­tions are,” one’s “sense of iden­ti­ty and real­i­ty becomes threat­ened.” The stage is there­fore set for “depres­sion, obses­sions, sui­ci­dal ideation, and, for some, delu­sions and hal­lu­ci­na­tions.” Sleep­ing dif­fi­cul­ties can man­i­fest on the more strict­ly phys­i­cal end, poten­tial­ly accom­pa­nied by “heart pal­pi­ta­tions, headaches, dizzi­ness, and hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ty.”

While trav­el­ing in the Unit­ed States, Charles Dick­ens bore wit­ness to the pun­ish­ment by soli­tary con­fine­ment already in effect in Amer­i­can pris­ons, com­ing away with the impres­sion that it was “worse than any tor­ture of the body.” He wrote that after a vis­it to a Philadel­phia pen­i­ten­tiary, whose very name reflects the the­o­ry, held by the Quak­er groups who intro­duced the prac­tice in the late eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, that it could “bring about reflec­tion and pen­i­tence.” After much research on the mat­ter, Kupers has come to the con­clu­sion that, in fact, it “does immense dam­age that is con­trary to reha­bil­i­ta­tion, while fail­ing to reduce prison vio­lence.” If you’re read­ing this, you may not be espe­cial­ly like­ly to be sen­tenced to invol­un­tary con­fine­ment. But the next time you start feel­ing out of sorts for rea­sons you can’t pin down, con­sid­er how long it’s been since you’ve spent real time with real peo­ple.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Hap­pens When You Spend Weeks, Months, or Years in Soli­tary Con­fine­ment

How Lone­li­ness Is Killing Us: A Primer from Har­vard Psy­chi­a­trist & Zen Priest Robert Waldinger

Mod­ern Art Was Used As a Tor­ture Tech­nique in Prison Cells Dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War

What an 85-Year-Long Har­vard Study Says Is the Real Key to Hap­pi­ness

On the Pow­er of Teach­ing Phi­los­o­phy in Pris­ons

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Foot-Licking Demons & Other Strange Things in a 1921 Illustrated Manuscript from Iran

in Art, History | October 3rd, 2025

Few mod­ern writ­ers so remind me of the famous Vir­ginia Woolf quote about fic­tion as a “spi­der’s web” more than Argen­tine fab­u­list Jorge Luis Borges. But the life to which Borges attach­es his labyrinths is a librar­i­an’s life; the strands that anchor his fic­tions are the obscure schol­ar­ly ref­er­ences he weaves through­out his text. Borges brings this ten­den­cy to whim­si­cal employ in his non­fic­tion Book of Imag­i­nary Beings, a het­ero­ge­neous com­pendi­um of crea­tures from ancient folk­tale, myth, and demonolo­gy around the world.

Borges him­self some­times remarks on how these ancient sto­ries can float too far away from rati­o­ci­na­tion. The “absurd hypothe­ses” regard­ing the myth­i­cal Greek Chimera, for exam­ple, “are proof” that the ridicu­lous beast “was begin­ning to bore peo­ple…. A vain or fool­ish fan­cy is the def­i­n­i­tion of Chimera that we now find in dic­tio­nar­ies.” Of  what he calls “Jew­ish Demons,” a cat­e­go­ry too numer­ous to parse, he writes, “a cen­sus of its pop­u­la­tion left the bounds of arith­metic far behind.

Through­out the cen­turies, Egypt, Baby­lo­nia, and Per­sia all enriched this teem­ing mid­dle world.” Although a less­er field than angelol­o­gy, the influ­ence of this fas­ci­nat­ing­ly diverse canon only broad­ened over time.

“The natives record­ed in the Tal­mud” soon became “thor­ough­ly inte­grat­ed” with the many demons of Chris­t­ian Europe and the Islam­ic world, form­ing a sprawl­ing hell whose denizens hail from at least three con­ti­nents, and who have mixed freely in alchem­i­cal, astro­log­i­cal, and oth­er occult works since at least the 13th cen­tu­ry and into the present. One exam­ple from the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, a 1902 trea­tise on div­ina­tion from Isfa­han, a city in cen­tral Iran, draws on this ancient thread with a series of water­col­ors added in 1921 that could eas­i­ly be mis­tak­en for illus­tra­tions from the ear­ly Mid­dle Ages.

As the Pub­lic Domain Review notes:

The won­der­ful images draw on Near East­ern demono­log­i­cal tra­di­tions that stretch back mil­len­nia — to the days when the rab­bis of the Baby­lon­ian Tal­mud assert­ed it was a bless­ing demons were invis­i­ble, since, “if the eye would be grant­ed per­mis­sion to see, no crea­ture would be able to stand in the face of the demons that sur­round it.”

The author of the trea­tise, a ram­mal, or sooth­say­er, him­self “attrib­ut­es his knowl­edge to the Bib­li­cal Solomon, who was known for his pow­er over demons and spir­its,” writes Ali Kar­joo-Ravary, now an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of Islam­ic his­to­ry at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. Pre­dat­ing Islam, “the depic­tion of demons in the Near East… was fre­quent­ly used for mag­i­cal and tal­is­man­ic pur­pos­es,” just as it was by occultists like Aleis­ter Crow­ley at the time these illus­tra­tions were made.

“Not all of the 56 paint­ed illus­tra­tions in the man­u­script depict demon­ic beings,” the Pub­lic Domain Review points out. “Amongst the horned and fork-tongued we also find the archangels Jibrāʾīl (Gabriel) and Mikāʾīl (Michael), as well as the ani­mals — lion, lamb, crab, fish, scor­pi­on — asso­ci­at­ed with the zodi­ac.” But in the main, it’s demon city. What would Borges have made of these fan­tas­tic images? No doubt, had he seen them, and he had seen plen­ty of their like before he lost his sight, he would have been delight­ed.

A blue man with claws, four horns, and a pro­ject­ing red tongue is no less fright­en­ing for the fact that he’s wear­ing a can­dy-striped loin­cloth. In anoth­er image we see a mous­ta­chioed goat man with tuber-nose and pol­ka dot skin mani­a­cal­ly con­coct­ing a less-than-appetis­ing dish. One recur­ring (and wor­ry­ing) theme is demons vis­it­ing sleep­ers in their beds, scenes involv­ing such pleas­ant activ­i­ties as tooth-pulling, eye-goug­ing, and — in one of the most engross­ing illus­tra­tions — a bout of foot-lick­ing (per­formed by a rep­til­ian feline with a shark-toothed tail).

There’s a play­ful Boschi­an qual­i­ty to all of this, but while we tend to see Bosch’s work from our per­spec­tive as absurd, he appar­ent­ly took his bizarre inven­tions absolute­ly seri­ous­ly. So too, we might assume, did the illus­tra­tor here. We might won­der, as Woolf did, about this work as the prod­uct of “suf­fer­ing human beings… attached to gross­ly mate­r­i­al things, like health and mon­ey and the hous­es we live in.” What kinds of ordi­nary, mate­r­i­al con­cerns might have afflict­ed this artist, as he (we pre­sume) imag­ined demons goug­ing the eyes and lick­ing the feet of peo­ple tucked safe­ly in their beds?

See many more of these strange paint­ings at the Pub­lic Domain Review.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

700 Years of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

2,178 Occult Books Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Thanks to the Rit­man Library and Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

160,000 Pages of Glo­ri­ous Medieval Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized: Vis­it the Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

See Beethoven’s Entire 9th Symphony Visualized in Colorful Animations

in Animation, Music | October 2nd, 2025

While report­ing on the Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test, the New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane “asked a man named Sep­po, from the sev­en-hun­dred-strong Euro­vi­sion Fan Club of Nor­way, what he loved about Euro­vi­sion. ‘Broth­er­hood of man,’ he said — a slight­ly ambigu­ous answer, because that was the name of a British group that entered, and won, the con­test in 1976.” And the con­cept has a longer his­to­ry in Euro­pean music than that: Friedrich Schiller claimed to be cel­e­brat­ing it when he wrote his poem “An die Freude,” or “To Joy,” which Lud­wig van Beethoven adapt­ed a few decades there­after into the final move­ment of his Sym­pho­ny No. 9. Lat­er still, in 1972, that piece of music was adopt­ed by the Coun­cil of Europe as the con­ti­nen­t’s anthem; in 1985, the Euro­pean Union made it offi­cial as well.

In a sense, “Ode to Joy” is a nat­ur­al choice for a musi­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Europe, not just for its explic­it themes, but also for the obvi­ous ambi­tion of the sym­pho­ny that includes it to cap­ture an entire civ­i­liza­tion in musi­cal form.

Its com­plex­i­ty and con­tra­dic­tion may be eas­i­er to appre­ci­ate through these videos, which con­sti­tute a visu­al­iza­tion by Stephen Mali­nows­ki, cre­ator of the Music Ani­ma­tion Machine, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his ani­mat­ed scores of every­thing from Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons to Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to no. 4 to Debussy’s Clair de lune. As one of the most fre­quent­ly per­formed sym­phonies in the world, Beethoven’s 9th comes to us laden with a fair amount of cul­tur­al bag­gage, but Mali­nowski’s spar­e­ly ele­gant ren­der­ing lets us lis­ten while keep­ing our mind on the essen­tials of its struc­ture.

That struc­ture, as the view­ing expe­ri­ence empha­sizes, is not a par­tic­u­lar­ly sim­ple one. Though already deaf, Beethoven nev­er­the­less com­posed this final com­plete sym­pho­ny with lay­er after ever-chang­ing yet inter­lock­ing lay­er, draw­ing from a vari­ety of musi­cal tra­di­tions as well as pieces he’d already writ­ten for oth­er pur­pos­es. At its 1824 pre­miere in Vien­na, Sym­pho­ny No. 9 received no few­er than five stand­ing ova­tions, though over the cen­turies since, even cer­tain of its appre­ci­a­tors ques­tion whether the final move­ment real­ly fits in with the rest. Indeed, some even regard “Ode to Joy” as kitschy, an exer­cise unbe­com­ing of the sym­pho­ny as a whole, to say noth­ing of the man who com­posed it. But then, it’s unde­ni­able that Euro­pean cul­ture has since achieved heights of kitsch unimag­in­able in Beethoven’s day.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”

The Sto­ry of How Beethoven Helped Make It So That CDs Could Play 74 Min­utes of Music

“A Glo­ri­ous Hour”: Helen Keller Describes The Ecsta­sy of Feel­ing Beethoven’s Ninth Played on the Radio (1924)

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Remembering Jane Goodall (RIP): Watch Jane, the Acclaimed National Geographic Documentary

in Film, Life, Science | October 1st, 2025

Jane Goodall, the revered con­ser­va­tion­ist, passed away today at age 91. In her hon­or, we’re fea­tur­ing above a Nation­al Geo­graph­ic doc­u­men­tary called Jane. Direct­ed by Brett Mor­gen, the film draws “from over 100 hours of nev­er-before-seen footage that has been tucked away in the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic archives for over 50 years.” The doc­u­men­tary offers an inti­mate por­trait of Goodall and her chim­panzee research that “chal­lenged the male-dom­i­nat­ed sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus of her time and rev­o­lu­tion­ized our under­stand­ing of the nat­ur­al world.” It’s set to an orches­tral score by com­pos­er Philip Glass.

You can find Jane added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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 

Ani­mat­ed: The Inspi­ra­tional Sto­ry of Jane Goodall, and Why She Believes in Big­foot

Google Street View Lets You Walk in Jane Goodall’s Foot­steps and Vis­it the Chim­panzees of Tan­za­nia

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Discover the Oldest, Weirdest Instrument On Earth: The Lithophone

in Music, Nature | October 1st, 2025

Sta­lac­tites hang tight to the ceil­ing, and sta­lag­mites push up with might from the floor: this is a mnemon­ic device you may once have learned, but chances are you haven’t had much occa­sion to remem­ber it since. Still, it would sure­ly be called to mind by a vis­it to Luray Cav­erns in the Amer­i­can state of Vir­ginia, home of the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ. As its name sug­gests, that attrac­tion is an organ made out of sta­lac­tites, the geo­log­i­cal for­ma­tions that grow from cave ceil­ings. Not long after the dis­cov­ery of Luray Cav­erns itself in 1878, its sta­lac­tites were found to res­onate through the under­ground space in an almost musi­cal fash­ion when struck — a prop­er­ty Leland W. Sprin­kle took to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion in the mid-nine­teen fifties.

“Dur­ing a tour of this world-famous nat­ur­al won­der, Mr. Sprin­kle watched in awe, which was still cus­tom­ary at the time, as a tour guide tapped the ancient stone for­ma­tions with a small mal­let, pro­duc­ing a musi­cal tone,” says Luray Cav­erns’ offi­cial site. “Mr. Sprin­kle was great­ly inspired by this demon­stra­tion and the idea for a most unique instru­ment was con­ceived.”

Con­cep­tion was one thing, but exe­cu­tion quite anoth­er: it took him three years to locate just the right sta­lac­tites, shave them down to ring out at just the right fre­quen­cy, and rig them up with elec­tron­i­cal­ly acti­vat­ed, key­board-con­trolled mal­lets. For the tech­ni­cal­ly mind­ed Sprin­kle, who worked at the Pen­ta­gon as a math­e­mati­cian and elec­tron­ics sci­en­tist, this must not have been quite as tedious a labor as it sounds.

The result was the biggest, the old­est (at least accord­ing to the age of the cave itself), and arguably the weird­est musi­cal instru­ment on Earth, a litho­phone for the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s hero­ic age of engi­neer­ing. You can see the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ in the video from Ver­i­ta­si­um at the top of the post, and hear a record­ing of Sprin­kle him­self play­ing it below that. In the video just above, YouTu­ber and musi­cian Rob Scal­lon gets a chance to take it for a spin. View­ers of his chan­nel know how much expe­ri­ence he has with exot­ic instru­ments (includ­ing the glass armon­i­ca, orig­i­nal­ly invent­ed by Ben Franklin, which we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), but even so, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play a cave — and to make use of its sur­round sound avant la let­tre — hard­ly comes every day. Here we have proof that the old, weird Amer­i­ca endures, and that the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ is its ide­al sound­track.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­phone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Ancient Musi­cians Play Real Clas­sic Rock

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Saturday Night Live & They Got Banned from the Show (1981)

in Comedy, Music | October 1st, 2025

Punk rock has a robust tra­di­tion of gross-out, offen­sive comedy—one car­ried into the present by bands like Fat White Fam­i­ly and Diar­rhea Plan­et, who may not exist were it not for Fear, an unsta­ble L.A. band led by an obnox­ious provo­ca­teur who goes by the name Lee Ving. Like fel­low L.A. punks the Germs, Cir­cle Jerks, and Black Flag, Fear gets cred­it for pio­neer­ing a Cal­i­for­nia punk sound known for ado­les­cent brat­ti­ness and a total lack of pre­ten­sion to any kind of art­ful­ness or cool.

Like many of their peers, Fear rose to promi­nence when Pene­lope Spheeris fea­tured them in her 1981 punk doc­u­men­tary The Decline of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion, Part I. But before that sem­i­nal film’s release, Fear was dis­cov­ered by John Belushi, who first caught the band on a local L.A. music show called New Wave The­atre in 1980. He tracked down Ving, who tells Rolling Stone, “we had a cou­ple of beers and became fast friends.” At the time, Belushi was at work on his com­e­dy Neigh­bors with Dan Aykroyd and con­tract­ed the band to record a song for the film (his last before his death in 1982).

The film’s pro­duc­ers, Rolling Stone writes, “were appalled” by the song “and refused to use it,” so to make it up to Ving and com­pa­ny, Belushi pushed to have the band booked on Sat­ur­day Night Live on Hal­loween, 1981. The result­ing per­for­mance has become leg­endary for what hap­pened, and what didn’t, and led to Fear becom­ing, says Ving, “one of the esteemed mem­bers of the per­ma­nent­ly banned.” You can watch a clip above of the band play­ing “Beef Boloney” and “New York’s Alright if You Like Sax­o­phones” (intro­duced by Don­ald Pleas­ance), and just below see Ving in a clip from an inter­view show dis­cussing the ill-fat­ed gig.

Belushi stage-man­aged the band’s appear­ance, striv­ing for authen­tic­i­ty by bring­ing into the stu­dio what Ving calls “an actu­al punk rock audi­ence rather than just Mr. and Mrs. Mis­souri.” (That audi­ence includ­ed now-leg­ends Ian MacK­aye of Minor Threat and Fugazi, mem­bers of New York hard­core band the Cro-Mags, and Tesco Vee of the Meat­men.)  The result­ing mosh pit was noth­ing out of the ordi­nary for the typ­i­cal punk show. But, unsur­pris­ing­ly, “the real audi­ence at Sat­ur­day Night Live was scared to death,” says Ving, “They didn’t know what was hap­pen­ing with all the may­hem.”

Dur­ing the riotous pro­ceed­ings, SNL pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol “got hit in the chest with a pump­kin,” some equip­ment was dam­aged, and dur­ing the final song, “Let’s Have a War,” an audi­ence mem­ber grabbed the micro­phone and yelled out “F*ck New York!” The pro­fan­i­ty freaked out NBC, who cut the broad­cast short and shelved the footage for sev­er­al years. The New York Post lat­er quot­ed an unnamed NBC tech­ni­cian as say­ing, “This was a life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion. They went crazy. It’s amaz­ing no one got killed.” The paper also quot­ed a fig­ure of $400,000 for dam­ages to the Rock­e­feller Cen­ter set.

But as Bill­board report­ed two weeks lat­er, the fig­ure was total­ly erro­neous (sup­plied to the Post by Ving as a prac­ti­cal joke, as he says above). “We had to pay $40 in labor penal­ties. That was the extent of it,” said SNL spokesman Peter Hamil­ton. As for the shock to view­ers, it seems the net­work received “all of 12 com­plaints” after the broad­cast. Ving him­self found the over­re­ac­tion ridicu­lous, and NBC’s long shelv­ing of the footage—only recent­ly made avail­able in a trun­cat­ed version—a humor­less mis­take. “They seem to be… los­ing the sense of humor about the whole idea,” he told Rolling Stone, “I had a sense of humor at the whole idea of start­ing Fear. It was extreme­ly humor­ous to me, and I think John saw that humor.”

Indeed he did, but Belushi’s appre­ci­a­tion for Fear’s antics was ahead of its time. Now we can see, at least in part, what all the fuss was about. And we can also final­ly hear the long-shelved sin­gle for Neigh­bors that Belushi record­ed with the band.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live (1977)

The Birth of the Blues Broth­ers: How Dan Aykroyd & John Belushi Start­ed Intro­duc­ing a New Gen­er­a­tion to the Blues

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

An Introduction to Moebius, the Comic Artist Who Influenced Blade Runner and Miyazaki

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | September 30th, 2025

The work of the com­ic artist Jean Giraud, bet­ter known as Moe­bius (or, more styl­ish­ly, Mœbius), has often appeared on Open Cul­ture over the years, but even if you’ve nev­er seen it here, you know it. Grant­ed, you may nev­er have read a page of it, to say noth­ing of an entire graph­ic nov­el­’s worth, but even so, you’ve absorbed it indi­rect­ly through gen­er­a­tions of inter­na­tion­al pop­u­lar cul­ture. If you enjoy Blade Run­ner, Aki­ra, the man­ga and ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki, and even the Star Wars movies, you must, on some lev­el, enjoy Moe­bius, so deeply did his com­ic art shape the look and feel of those major works, to say noth­ing of all it has inspired at fur­ther remove.

The new video above by Youtu­ber matttt goes in depth on the bio­graph­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and psy­cho­log­i­cal force that shaped the artist’s vision on the page, whose sheer imag­i­na­tive force and per­sis­tent­ly strange sub­lim­i­ty looked like noth­ing else in comics when he hit his stride in the nine­teen-sev­en­ties. It helped that he was French, and thus an inher­i­tor of the grand Fran­coph­o­ne tra­di­tion of the bande dess­inée, an art form tak­en much more seri­ous­ly than com­ic strips and books in Amer­i­ca. Bel­gian comics like Spirou and Tintin caught his atten­tion ear­ly on, and time spent as a teenag­er amid the vast desert land­scapes of Mex­i­co instilled him with a taste for spir­i­tu­al grandeur.

An appren­tice­ship under the Bel­gian com­ic artist Joseph “Jijé” Gillain, whom he idol­ized, helped Giraud — who had not yet become Moe­bius — to refine his style. His cre­ation of the Jean Paul Bel­mon­do-look­ing cow­boy Blue­ber­ry in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties pro­duced what turned out to be his most lucra­tive fran­chise.  But it was­n’t until his encounter with taboo-break­ing Amer­i­can “under­ground” comics that flour­ished lat­er in that decade, and espe­cial­ly the work of Robert Crumb, that he found it with­in him­self to let loose, explor­ing tech­no­log­i­cal, mytho­log­i­cal, and psy­cho­sex­u­al realms hith­er­to unknown in his medi­um.

It was with the launch of the comics-anthol­o­gy mag­a­zine Métal Hurlant in 1974, lat­er repack­aged in the Unit­ed States as Heavy Met­al, that Moe­bius’ work found its way to a much wider pub­lic. Notable read­ers includ­ed William Gib­son, Rid­ley Scott, Luc Besson, George Lucas, Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, and the Wachowskis: some imi­tat­ed Moe­bius, and oth­ers hired him. Through the Japan­ese edi­tion of Star­log mag­a­zine in the late sev­en­ties, his art re-shaped the aes­thet­ics of man­ga­ka like Aki­ra cre­ator Kat­suhi­ro Oto­mo and Stu­dio Ghi­b­li co-founder Hayao Miyaza­ki. Moe­bius him­self lat­er took on Oto­mo as one of his own influ­ences, and in trib­ute to Miyaza­ki, named his daugh­ter Nau­si­caa. For Jean Giraud, inspi­ra­tion was­n’t a one-way street; it was more like a Möbius strip.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece The Incal Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

The Long Tomor­row: Dis­cov­er Mœbius’ Hard-Boiled Detec­tive Com­ic That Inspired Blade Run­ner (1975)

Watch Moe­bius and Miyaza­ki, Two of the Most Imag­i­na­tive Artists, in Con­ver­sa­tion (2004)

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists

The Dis­ney Artist Who Devel­oped Don­ald Duck & Remained Anony­mous for Years, Despite Being “the Most Pop­u­lar and Wide­ly Read Artist-Writer in the World”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Musician Plays the Last Stradivarius Guitar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

in Music | September 30th, 2025

Last night, while the home team lost the big game on TVs at a local dive bar, my noisy rock band opened for a cham­ber pop ensem­ble. Elec­tric gui­tars and feed­back gave way to clas­si­cal acoustics, vio­lin, piano, accor­dion, and even a saw. It was an inter­est­ing cul­tur­al jux­ta­po­si­tion in an evening of cul­tur­al jux­ta­po­si­tions. The sports and music did­n’t gel, but an odd sym­me­try emerged from the two bands’ con­trast­ing styles, to a degree. The instru­ment above, on the oth­er hand, would have fit right in with the sec­ond act, whose old world charm would sure­ly find a place for a 1679 guitar—one craft­ed by the leg­endary mas­ter luthi­er Anto­nio Stradi­vari, no less.

If you know noth­ing at all about music or musi­cal instru­ments, you know the name Stradi­vari and the vio­lins that bear his name. They are such cov­et­ed, valu­able objects they some­times appear as the tar­get of crime capers in the movies and on tele­vi­sion. This Stradi­var­ius gui­tar, called the “Sabionari,” is even rar­er than the vio­lins. The Stradi­vari fam­i­ly, writes For­got­ten Gui­tar, “pro­duced over 1000 instru­ments, of which 960 were vio­lins.” Yet, “a small num­ber of gui­tars were also craft­ed, and as of today only one remains playable.” High­ly playable, you’ll observe in these videos, thanks to the restora­tion by luthiers Daniel Sinier, Fran­coise de Rid­der, and Loren­zo Frig­nani.

In the clip just above, Baroque con­cert gui­tarist Rolf Lisl­e­vand plays San­ti­a­go de Mur­ci­a’s “Taran­tela” on the restored gui­tar, whose sonorous ring­ing tim­bre recalls anoth­er Baroque instru­ment, the harp­si­chord.

So unique and unusu­al is the ten-string Stradi­var­ius Sabionari that it has its own web­site, where you’ll find many detailed, close-up pho­tos of the ele­gant design as well as more music, like the piece above, Ange­lo Michele Bar­tolot­ti’s Suite in G Minor as per­formed by clas­si­cal gui­tarist Krish­na­sol Jiménez, who, along with Lisl­e­vand, has been entrust­ed with the instru­ment for many live per­for­mances. Owned by a pri­vate col­lec­tor, the Sabionari very often appears at lec­tures on restora­tion and con­ser­va­tion of clas­si­cal instru­ments, as well as in per­for­mances around Europe. You’ll find on sabionari.com many more videos of the gui­tar in action (like that below of gui­tarist Ugo Nas­truc­ci impro­vis­ing), links to exhibits, descrip­tions of the chal­leng­ing­ly long neck and Baroque tun­ing, and a sense of just how much the Sabionari gets around for such a rare, antique instru­ment.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Sci­en­tists Can’t Recre­ate the Sound of Stradi­var­ius Vio­lins: The Mys­tery of Their Inim­itable Sound

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

Watch Price­less 17-Cen­tu­ry Stradi­var­ius and Amati Vio­lins Get Tak­en for a Test Dri­ve by Pro­fes­sion­al Vio­lin­ists

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically & Knowing Pseudoscience When You See It

in Books, Science | September 29th, 2025

Though he died too young, Carl Sagan left behind an impres­sive­ly large body of work, includ­ing more than 600 sci­en­tif­ic papers and more than 20 books. Of those books, none is more wide­ly known to the pub­lic — or, still, more wide­ly read by the pub­lic — than Cos­mos, accom­pa­nied as it was by Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, a com­pan­ion tele­vi­sion series on PBS. Sagan’s oth­er pop­u­lar books, like Shad­ows of For­got­ten Ances­tors or Con­tact (the basis of the 1997 Hol­ly­wood movie) are also well worth read­ing, but we per­haps ignore at our great­est per­il The Demon-Haunt­ed World: Sci­ence as a Can­dle in the Dark. Pub­lished in 1995, the year before Sagan’s death, it stands as his tes­ta­ment to the impor­tance of crit­i­cal, sci­en­tif­ic think­ing for all of us.

The Demon-Haunt­ed World is the sub­ject of the Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied Skep­tic video above, whose host Drew McCoy describes it as his favorite book. He pays spe­cial atten­tion to its chap­ter in which Sagan lays out what he calls his “baloney detec­tion kit.” This assem­bled metaphor­i­cal box of tools for diag­nos­ing fraud­u­lent argu­ments and con­struct­ing rea­soned ones involves these nine prin­ci­ples:

  • Wher­ev­er pos­si­ble there must be inde­pen­dent con­fir­ma­tion of the “facts.”
  • Encour­age sub­stan­tive debate on the evi­dence by knowl­edge­able pro­po­nents of all points of view.
  • Argu­ments from author­i­ty car­ry lit­tle weight — “author­i­ties” have made mis­takes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Per­haps a bet­ter way to say it is that in sci­ence there are no author­i­ties; at most, there are experts.
  • Spin more than one hypoth­e­sis. If there’s some­thing to be explained, think of all the dif­fer­ent ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­prove each of the alter­na­tives.
  • Try not to get over­ly attached to a hypoth­e­sis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way sta­tion in the pur­suit of knowl­edge. Ask your­self why you like the idea. Com­pare it fair­ly with the alter­na­tives.
  • See if you can find rea­sons for reject­ing it. If you don’t, oth­ers will.
  • If what­ev­er it is you’re explain­ing has some mea­sure, some numer­i­cal quan­ti­ty attached to it, you’ll be much bet­ter able to dis­crim­i­nate among com­pet­ing hypothe­ses. What is vague and qual­i­ta­tive is open to many expla­na­tions.
  • If there’s a chain of argu­ment, every link in the chain must work (includ­ing the premise) — not just most of them.
  • Occam’s Razor. This con­ve­nient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypothe­ses that explain the data equal­ly well to choose the sim­pler. Always ask whether the hypoth­e­sis can be, at least in prin­ci­ple, fal­si­fied…. You must be able to check asser­tions out. Invet­er­ate skep­tics must be giv­en the chance to fol­low your rea­son­ing, to dupli­cate your exper­i­ments and see if they get the same result.

As McCoy points out, these tech­niques of mind have to do with can­cel­ing out the man­i­fold bias­es present in our think­ing, those nat­ur­al human ten­den­cies that incline us to accept ideas that may or may not coin­cide with real­i­ty as it is. If we take no trou­ble to cor­rect for these bias­es, Sagan came to believe, we’ll become easy marks for all the trick­sters and char­la­tans who hap­pen to come our way. And that’s just on the micro lev­el: on the macro lev­el, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to delu­sion can bring down entire civ­i­liza­tions.

“Like all tools, the baloney detec­tion kit can be mis­used, applied out of con­text, or even employed as a rote alter­na­tive to think­ing,” Sagan cau­tions. “But applied judi­cious­ly, it can make all the dif­fer­ence in the world — not least in eval­u­at­ing our own argu­ments before we present them to oth­ers.” McCoy urges us to heed these words, adding that “this kit is not some per­fect solu­tion to the world’s prob­lems, but as it’s been uti­lized over the last few cen­turies” — for its basic pre­cepts long pre­date Sagan’s par­tic­u­lar artic­u­la­tion — “it has enabled us to cre­ate tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions and use­ful explana­to­ry mod­els of our world more quick­ly and effec­tive­ly than ever before.” The walls of baloney may always be clos­ing in on human­i­ty, but if you fol­low Sagan’s advice, you can at least give your­self some breath­ing room.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Carl Sagan on the Impor­tance of Choos­ing Wise­ly What You Read (Even If You Read a Book a Week)

Carl Sagan’s Syl­labus & Final Exam for His Course on Crit­i­cal Think­ing (Cor­nell, 1986)

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

Richard Feyn­man Cre­ates a Sim­ple Method for Telling Sci­ence From Pseu­do­science (1966)

How to Spot Bull­shit: A Man­u­al by Prince­ton Philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt (RIP)

Crit­i­cal Think­ing: A Free Course

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Meryl Streep’s First Film Role Was in an Animated Film on Erik Erikson’s Stages of Life (1976)

in Animation, Life, Psychology | September 29th, 2025

Dif­fi­cult as it may be to remem­ber now, there was a time when Meryl Streep was not yet syn­ony­mous with sil­ver-screen star­dom — a time, in fact, when she had yet to appear on the sil­ver screen at all. Half a cen­tu­ry ago, she was just anoth­er young stage actress in New York, albeit one rapid­ly ascend­ing the rungs of the­atri­cal pres­tige, doing three Shake­speare plays and then star­ring in Weill, Haupt­mann, and Brecht’s Hap­py End on Broad­way. The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs. Kramer, Out of Africa, Post­cards from the Edge, The Bridges of Madi­son Coun­ty: all this lay in her future in 1976, the year of her fea­ture debut.

Streep made that debut in Every­body Rides the Carousel, a now-obscure ani­mat­ed film that dra­ma­tizes post-Freudi­an psy­chol­o­gist Erik Erik­son’s eight stages of psy­choso­cial devel­op­ment. First pub­lished in his book Child­hood and Soci­ety in 1950, this scheme cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of the mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can pub­lic, grow­ing ever hun­gri­er as it was for clear, leg­i­ble sys­tems of self-under­stand­ing.

Erik­son con­ceived of each age of man as a strug­gle for res­o­lu­tion between two oppos­ing forces: in infan­cy, for exam­ple, trust ver­sus mis­trust; in ado­les­cence, iden­ti­ty ver­sus role con­fu­sion; and so on.

The young Meryl Streep, or rather her voice, appears in the sixth stage, ear­ly adult­hood, whose theme is love. She acts out that age’s con­test of inti­ma­cy and iso­la­tion with Charles Levin, anoth­er up-and-com­er who would go on to achieve wide recog­ni­tion on tele­vi­sion shows like Alice, Hill Street Blues, and (just once, but mem­o­rably) Sein­feld. In char­ac­ter as a young cou­ple unsteadi­ly feel­ing their way through their rela­tion­ship, the two engage in a remark­ably nat­u­ral­is­tic con­ver­sa­tion, all ani­mat­ed in a sev­en­ties water­col­or style in the vision of direc­tor John Hub­ley. A pro­lif­ic ani­ma­tor who’d worked on Dis­ney’s Fan­ta­sia, Hub­ley was known as the cre­ator of Mr. Magoo: a man who pro­vid­ed us all with an exam­ple of how to nav­i­gate late adult­hood’s path between ego integri­ty and despair, how­ev­er myopi­cal­ly.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Meryl Streep Have Fun with Accents: Bronx, Pol­ish, Irish, Aus­tralian, Yid­dish & More

Social Psy­chol­o­gist Erich Fromm Diag­noses Why Peo­ple Wear a Mask of Hap­pi­ness in Mod­ern Soci­ety (1977)

Mas­ter of Light: A Close Look at the Paint­ings of Johannes Ver­meer Nar­rat­ed by Meryl Streep

Mar­cel Marceau Mimes the Pro­gres­sion of Human Life, From Birth to Death, in 4 Min­utes

Meryl Streep Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech at Barnard

Hear Meryl Streep Read Sylvia Plath’s “Morn­ing Song,” a Poem Writ­ten After the Birth of Her Daugh­ter

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Gilded Age: A Free Historical Documentary That Helps Make Sense of Our Own Fraught Times

in Film, History | September 25th, 2025

Ever-increas­ing eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, rapid tech­no­log­i­cal change, the cre­ation of dom­i­nant cor­po­ra­tions con­trolled by a small busi­ness elite, politi­cians in the pock­et of big busi­ness lead­ers, and the rise of pop­ulism and nativism. These are all fea­tures of Amer­i­can life in 2025. But our nation has also seen this movie play before, most notably back in the Gild­ed Age, which ran from the 1870s through the late 1890s. Above, we have a free two-hour doc­u­men­tary on the Gild­ed Age cre­at­ed by PBS. They write:

In the clos­ing decades of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, dur­ing what has become known as the Gild­ed Age, the pop­u­la­tion of the Unit­ed States dou­bled in the span of a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion. The nation became the world’s lead­ing pro­duc­er of food, coal, oil, and steel, attract­ed vast amounts of for­eign invest­ment, and pushed into mar­kets in Europe and the Far East. As nation­al wealth expand­ed, two class­es rose simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, sep­a­rat­ed by a gulf of expe­ri­ence and cir­cum­stance that was unprece­dent­ed in Amer­i­can life. These dis­par­i­ties sparked pas­sion­ate and vio­lent debate over ques­tions still being asked in our own times: How is wealth best dis­trib­uted, and by what process? Does gov­ern­ment exist to pro­tect pri­vate prop­er­ty or pro­vide balm to the inevitable casu­al­ties of a churn­ing indus­tri­al sys­tem? Should the gov­ern­ment con­cern itself chiefly with eco­nom­ic growth or eco­nom­ic jus­tice? The bat­tles over these ques­tions were fought in Con­gress, the courts, the polling place, the work­place and the streets. The out­come of these dis­putes was both uncer­tain and momen­tous, and marked by a pas­sion­ate vit­ri­ol and lev­el of vio­lence that would shock the con­science of many Amer­i­cans today. The Gild­ed Age presents a com­pelling and com­plex sto­ry of one of the most con­vul­sive and trans­for­ma­tive eras in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

To a cer­tain degree, this doc­u­men­tary will help you make bet­ter sense of our own fraught times and per­haps feel more opti­mistic about where we might end up. (It’s worth keep­ing in mind that the dis­rup­tions of the Gild­ed Age even­tu­al­ly gave way to the reforms of the Pro­gres­sive Era.) What’s more, if you’re watch­ing the excel­lent HBO series, The Gild­ed Age, the film pro­vides his­tor­i­cal back­ground that will direct­ly add to your appre­ci­a­tion of the show. You can watch the film online above, or find it in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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!

 

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |


| Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast