"The Depression was not fun," the late YouTube star, Clara Cannucciari, states in the very first episode of her Great Depression Cooking web series, above. Her first recipe—Pasta with Peas—would likely give your average urbane foodie hives, as would her knife skills, but Clara, who started making these videos when she was 93, takes obvious satisfaction in the outcome. Her filmmaker grandson Christopher Cannucciari wisely kept Clara in her own kitchen, rather than relocating her to a more sanitized kitchen set. Her plastic paper towel holder, linoleum lined cabinets, and teapot-shaped spoon rest kept things real for several years worth of step-by-step, low budget, mostly vegetarian recipes. Her fruit-and-gingham ceramic salt and pepper shakers remained consistent throughout. How many television chefs can you name who would allow the camera crew to film the stained tinfoil lining the bottom of their ovens? Nonagenarian Clara apparently had nothing to hide. Each episode includes a couple of anecdotes about life during the Great Depression, the period in which she learned to cook from her thrifty Italian mother. She initially disliked being filmed, agreeing to the first episode only because that was grandson Christopher’s price for shooting a pre-need funeral portrait she desired. She turned out to be a natural. Her celebrity eventually led to a cookbook (Clara’s Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories, and Recipes from the Great Depression), as well as a video wherein she answered viewer questions with characteristic frankness. To what did she attribute her youthful appearance? Clean living and large quantities of olive oil (poured from a vessel the size and shape of a coffee pot). How to avoid another Great Depression? "At my age, I don’t really care," Clara admitted, "But for the younger generation it’s bad." In the worst case scenario, she counsels sticking together, and not wishing for too much. The Depression, as we’ve mentioned, was not fun, but she got through it, and so, she implies, would you. The series can be enjoyed on the strength of Clara’s personality alone, but Great Depression Cooking has a lot to offer college students, undiscovered artists, and other fledgling chefs. Her recipes may not be professionally styled, but they’re simple, nutritious, and undeniably cheap (especially Dandelion Salad). Homemade Pizza—Clara’s favorite—is the antithesis of a 99¢ slice. The tight belts of the Great Depression did not preclude the occasional treat like holiday biscotti or Italian Ice. Those on a lean Thanksgiving budget might consider making Clara’s Poor Man’s Feast: lentils and rice, thinly sliced fried steak, plain salad and bread. Right up until her final, touching appearance below at the age of 96, her hands were nimble enough to shell almonds, purchased that way to save money, though cracking also put her in a holiday mood. Foodies who shudder at Pasta with Peas should find no fault with her wholesome recipe for her mother’s homemade tomato sauce (and by extension, paste). You can watch all of Clara’s video’s on the Great Depression Cooking channel. Or find Seasons 1 and 2 below. Season 1: Season 2: via Kottke Related Content: The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Available Online: Japanese, Italian, Thai & Much More Science & Cooking: Harvard’s Free Course on Making Cakes, Paella & Other Delicious Food MIT Teaches You How to Speak Italian & Cook Italian Food All at Once (Free Online Course) Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. She recently co-authored a comic about epilepsy with her 18-year-old daughter. Follow her @AyunHalliday Great Depression Cooking: Get Budget-Minded Meals from the Online Cooking Show Created by 93-Year-Old Clara Cannucciari is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Creative Commons image by Paul Boxley John Cleese, you say, a spokesman for the American Philosophical Association? Why would such a serious organization, whose stated mission is to foster the "broader presence of philosophy in public life," choose a British comedian famous for such characters as the overbearing Basil Fawlty and ridiculous Minister of Silly Walks as one of their public faces? http://puffin.creighton.edu/phil/audio/01.mp3 They chose him, I imagine, because in his various roles—as a onetime prep school teacher and student of law at Cambridge, as a comedy writer and Monty Python star, and as a post-Python comedian, author, public speaker, and visiting professor at Cornell—Cleese has done more than his part to spread philosophy in public life. Monty Python, you’ll remember, aired a number of absurd philosophy sketches, notable for being as smart as they are funny. Cleese has presented his personal philosophy of creativity at the World Creativity Forum; he’s explained a common cognitive bias to which media personalities and politicians seem particularly susceptible; and he had his own podcast in which, among other things, he explained (wink) how the human brain works. http://www.publicphilosophy.org/media/100YearsofPhilosophyInAmerica/09-MLK-Addams-DeBeauvoir.mp3 Given these credentials, and his ability to apply his intelligence, wit, and comic timing to subjects not often seen as particularly exciting by the general public, Cleese seems like the perfect person for the job, even if he isn’t an American philosopher. The APA, founded in 1900, has recently hosted conferences on religious tolerance and "Cultivating Citizenship." In 2000, as part of its centennial celebration, the organization had Cleese record 22 very short "Public Service Announcements" to introduce novices to the important work of philosophy. These range from the very general "What Philosophers Do" at the top of the post to the influence of philosophy on social and political reformers like Martin Luther King, Jr., Jane Addams, and Simone de Beauvoir (above), showing philosophy’s "bearing on the real world." http://www.publicphilosophy.org/media/100YearsofPhilosophyInAmerica/19-TwentyFirstCentury.mp3 In this PSA, Cleese makes the controversial claim that "the 21st century may belong far more to philosophy than to psychology or even traditional religion." "What a strange thought," he goes on, then explains that philosophy "works against confusion"—certainly a hallmark of our age. There’s not much here to argue with—Cleese isn’t formulating a position, but giving his listeners provocative little nuts to crack on their own, should they find his PSAs intriguing enough to draw them into further study. They might as well begin where most of us do, with Socrates, whom Cleese introduces below. http://www.publicphilosophy.org/media/100YearsofPhilosophyInAmerica/13-Socrates.mp3 Hear the rest of Cleese’s philosophy PSAs at the American Philosophical Association’s website, or click here to download a zipped file containing all of these audio clips. And should you wish to dig deeper, you’ll find an abundance of resources in our archives, which includes big lists of Free Online Philosophy Courses and Free Philosophy eBooks. Related Content: Monty Python’s Best Philosophy Sketches John Cleese Explains the Brain — and the Pleasures of DirecTV Learn The History of Philosophy in 197 Podcasts (With More to Come) Download 100 Free Philosophy Courses and Start Living the Examined Life Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness John Cleese Touts the Value of Philosophy in 22 Public Service Announcements for the American Philosophical Association is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Last year we featured artwork from the Dune movie that never was, a collaboration between Alejandro Jodorowsky, the mysticism-minded Chilean director of such oft-described-as-mind-blowing pictures as El Topo and The Holy Mountain, and the artist Jean Giraud, better known as Mœbius, creator of oft-described-as-mind-blowing comics as Arzach, Blueberry, and The Airtight Garage. If ever a meeting of two creative minds made more sense, I haven’t heard about it. Alas, Jodorowsky and Mœbius’ work didn’t lead to their own Dune movie, but it didn’t mark the end of their artistic partnership, as anyone who’s read The Incal knows full well. Telling a metaphysical, satirical, space-operatic story in the form of comic books originally published throughout the 1980s (with sequel and prequel series to come over the following 25 years), The Incal on the page became the fullest realization of Jodorowsky and Mœbius’ combined vision. Its success made it a logical candidate for film adaptation, and so director Pascal Blais brought together artists from Heavy Metal magazine (in which Mœbius first published some of his best known work) to make it happen. It resulted in nothing more than a trailer, but what a trailer; you can watch a recently revamped edition of the one Blais and his collaborators put together in the 1980s at the top of the post. Any Incal fan who watches this spruced-up trailer will immediately want nothing more in this life than to see a feature-film version of dissolute private investigator John DiFool, his concrete seagull Deepo, and the titular all-powerful crystal that sets the story in motion. And anyone not yet initiated into the science-fiction "Jodoverse" for which The Incal forms the basis will want to plunge into the comic books at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps Blais will one day fully revive the project; until then, we’ll have to content ourselves with Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (with its Mœbius-developed production design, similar enough to The Incal‘s to have sparked a lawsuit) and maybe, just maybe, a live-action adaptation from Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn. Related Content: Moebius’ Storyboards & Concept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune The Inscrutable Imagination of the Late Comic Artist Mœbius Moebius Gives 18 Wisdom-Filled Tips to Aspiring Artists (1996) French Student Sets Internet on Fire with Animation Inspired by Moebius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyazaki Mœbius Illustrates Paulo Coelho’s Inspirational Novel The Alchemist (1998) Mœbius Illustrates Dante’s Paradiso Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Masterpiece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tantalizing Animation is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Formally Trained as an avant-garde, abstract expressionist painter, Stan Herd went on to become something a little different — an earthworks artist who takes fields where crops are grown and turns them into sprawling canvases on which he makes art of his own. It has been said about him: "Herd is an unusual artist. His medium is the earth itself; his palette consists of soil, wheat, sunflowers, and corn; his brush is a tractor; and his images can be seen only from an airplane." Image by The Minneapolis Institute of Art Many of his early creations can be revisited in his 1994 book Crop Art and Other Earthworks. To see his latest work, just click play on the video above. Commissioned by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, this earthwork features a rendering of an "Olive Tree" painting that Van Gogh completed as part of a larger series of Olive Tree paintings created while living in an asylum in Saint-Rémy in 1889. Mr. Herd started work on the project last spring, planting different crops in a field owned by Thomson Reuters. By fall, passengers flying into Minneapolis could catch a view of Herd’s Van Gogh-like the one you see above. via This is Colossal Related Content: Van Gogh’s 1888 Painting, "The Night Cafe," Animated with Oculus Virtual Reality Software The Unexpected Math Behind Van Gogh’s "Starry Night" Download 35,000 Works of Art from the National Gallery, Including Masterpieces by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Rembrandt & More Artist Turns a Crop Field Into a Van Gogh Painting, Seen Only From Airplanes is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet many incredible musicians in person, and I’ve always enjoyed watching them do something better than I ever could, whether it’s wailing away on the drums, guitar, keyboards, bass… whatever the instrument, it’s great fun to see a master in action. And I’ve met a few multitalented individuals who could do a little, or a lot, of everything. But I’ve never met anyone as talented as Jim, the musician in these videos, who goes by the name of Friday Night Lullaby, and who recreates nearly every note and nuance in classic rock songs from Yes, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, the Who, CSNY, and more. His one-man-band motto is "we are one person," and you can see why. With the benefit of recording technology, he can turn himself into an orchestra. At the top of the post, see a teaser video in which Jim gives us snippets of the 60 songs he’s remade. And above, see his version of Yes’s "Roundabout." Now you can argue that no matter how good he is, he could never reproduce the musical personalities of, say, Steve Howe or Jon Anderson, and that’s fair enough, but beside the point, really. The guy is good beyond belief, and I’m certainly in awe watching these videos of him at work in his home studio, playing all 43 tracks of "Roundabout." Or, if Yes isn’t your bag, let him wow you below with the vocal harmonies in CSNY’s "Carry On." Still not impressed? Check his version of Stairway to Heaven here, or alternatively A-Ha’s "Take On Me," below. It’s a departure from the classic rock material he’s clearly more comfortable with, and he handles it with the same deftness and skill, including that mid-song high note, showing off some pretty keen video editing skills to boot. For even more mind blowing covers, check out the Friday Night Lullaby Youtube channel. via Laughing Squid Related Content: Fourteen-Year-Old Girl’s Blistering Heavy Metal Performance of Vivaldi Dutchman Masters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s "Stairway to Heaven" Backwards The 15 Worst Covers of Beatles Songs: William Shatner, Bill Cosby, Tiny Tim, Sean Connery & Your Excellent Picks Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness One Man-Band Plays Amazing Covers, Note-for-Note, of Yes, CSNY, Zeppelin & More is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Much has been made of Mark Twain’s financial problems—the imprudent investments and poor management skills that forced him to shutter his large Hartford estate and move his family to Europe in 1891. An early adopter of the typewriter and long an enthusiast of new science and technology, Twain lost the bulk of his fortune by investing huge sums—roughly eight million dollars total in today’s money—on a typesetting machine, buying the rights to the apparatus outright in 1889. The venture bankrupted him. The machine was overcomplicated and frequently broke down, and "before it could be made to work consistently," writes the University of Virginia’s Mark Twain library, "the Linotype machine swept the market [Twain] had hoped to corner." Twain’s seemingly blind enthusiasm for the ill-fated machine makes him seem like a bungler in practical matters. But that impression should be tempered by the acknowledgement that Twain was not only an enthusiast of technology, but also a canny inventor who patented a few technologies, one of which is still highly in use today and, indeed, shows no signs of going anywhere. I refer to the ubiquitous elastic hook clasp at the back of nearly every bra, an invention Twain patented in 1871 under his given name Samuel L. Clemens. (View the original patent here.) You can see the diagram for his invention above. Calling it an "Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments," Twain made no mention of ladies’ undergarments in his patent application, referring instead to "the vest, pantaloons, or other garment upon which my strap is to be used." The device, writes the US Patent and Trademark Office, "was not only used for shirts, but underpants and women’s corsets as well. His purpose was to do away with suspenders, which he considered uncomfortable." (At the time, belts served a mostly decorative function.) Twain’s inventions tended to solve problems he encountered in his daily life, and his next patent was for a hobbyist set of which he himself was a member. After the soon-to-be bra strap, Twain devised a method of improvement in scrapbooking, an avid pursuit of his, in 1873. Previously, scrapbooks were assembled by hand-gluing each item, which Twain seemed to consider an overly laborious and messy process. His invention—writes The Atlantic in part of a series they call "Patents of the Rich and Famous"—involved "two possible self-adhesive systems," similar to self-sealing envelopes, in which, as his patent states, "the surfaces of the leaves whereof are coated with a suitable adhesive substance covering the whole or parts of the entire surface." (See the less-than-clear diagram for the invention above.) The scrapbooking device proved "very popular," writes the US Patent Office, "and sold over 25,000 copies." Twain obtained his final patent in 1885 for a "Game Apparatus" that he called the "Memory-Builder" (see it above). The object of the game was primarily educational, helping, as he wrote, to "fill the children’s heads with dates without study." As we reported in a previous post, "Twain worked out a way to play it on a cribbage board converted into a historical timeline." Unlike his first two inventions, the game met with no commercial success. "Twain sent a few prototypes to toy stores in 1891," writes Rebecca Onion at Slate, "but there wasn’t very much interest, so the game never went into production." Nonetheless, we still have Twain to thank, or to damn, for the bra strap, an invention of no small importance. Twain himself seems to have had some contradictory attitudes about his role as an inventor, and of the singular recognition granted to individuals through patent law. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the US Patent Office claims that Twain "believed strongly in the value of the patent system" and cites a passage from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court in support. But in a letter Twain wrote to Helen Keller in 1903, he expressed a very different view. "It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing," Twain wrote, "and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple." Related Content: Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Written With a Typewriter Play Mark Twain’s "Memory-Builder," His Game for Remembering Historical Facts & Dates Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Special Friendship: He Treated Me Not as a Freak, But as a Person Dealing with Great Difficulties Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Mark Twain’s Patented Inventions for Bra Straps and Other Everyday Items is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Pablo Picasso, as you may know, produced a fair few memorable works in his long lifetime. He also came up with a number of quotable quotes. "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction" has particularly stuck with me, but one does wonder what an artist who thinks this way actually does when he creates — or, rather, when he first destroys, then creates. Luckily for us, we can watch Picasso in action, in vintage footage from several different films-first, at the top of the post, in a clip from 1950’s Visite à Picasso by Belgian artist and filmmaker Paul Haesaerts (which you can watch online: part one, part two). In it, Picasso paints on glass in front of the camera, thus enabling us to see the painter at work from, in some sense, the painting’s perspective. Just above, you can watch another, similarly filmed clip from Visite à Picasso. Both of them show how Picasso could, without much in the way of apparent advance planning or thought, simply begin creating art, literally at a stroke — on which would follow another stroke, and another, and another. "Action is the foundational key to all success," he once said, words even more widely applicable than the observation about creation as destruction, and here we can see his actions becoming art before our eyes. It also happens in the clip above, though this time captured from a more standard over-the-shoulder perspective. "The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls," Picasso also said, and one senses something of that ablutionary ritual (and not just because of how little clothing the man has chosen to wear) in the footage below, wherein he lays down lines on a canvas the size of an entire wall. It comes from Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1956 documentary The Mystery of Picasso, which offers a wealth of close looks at Picasso’s process. You can watch the film online here, or see a few Picasso paintings come together in time-lapse in the trailer above. "The paintings created by Picasso in this film cannot be seen anywhere else," the crawl at the end of the trailer informs us. "They were destroyed upon completion of the film." So it seems that at least some acts of creation, for Picasso himself, not only began with an act of destruction, but ended with one too. Related Content: Vintage Footage of Picasso and Jackson Pollock Painting … Through Glass Iconic Artists at Work: Watch Rare Videos of Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky, Renoir, Monet and More Guernica: Alain Resnais’ Haunting Film on Picasso’s Painting & the Crimes of the Spanish Civil War The Postcards That Picasso Illustrated and Sent to Jean Cocteau, Apollinaire & Gertrude Stein Behold Pablo Picasso’s Illustrations of Balzac’s Short Story "The Hidden Masterpiece" (1931) Pablo Picasso’s Tender Illustrations For Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (1934) Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. Travel Back in Time and See Picasso Make Abstract Art is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Given the efforts of people like Malcolm McLaren to turn punk rock into a viable commercial product—or at least a quick cash grab—it’s a little surprising it took as long as it did for "pop punk" to find its profitable 90s/oughties teenage niche. Always a catch-all term for an eclectic variety of styles, punk instead further diversified in the eighties into various kinds of post-punk, hardcore, and new wave. The latter development, however, quickly found a commercial audience, with its successful fusion of 70s pop, reggae, and disco elements with punk’s wry, arty-outsider sensibility. Artists like Gary Numan, Blondie, DEVO, Talking Heads, and even The Clash emerged from the 70s with highly danceable hits that set the tone for the sound of the next decade. But first the public had to learn what new wave was, and many of them did in a surprisingly mainstream way, in the 1979 special produced by ABC’s 20/20 in two parts here. By comparison with the number of awkwardly clueless or blatantly sensationalistic news reports on emerging youth cultures over the decades, the show is "impressively astute," writes Dangerous Minds, "for a news segment on new music from one of the major TV networks." It features a number of the above-named artists—DEVO, Blondie, Talking Heads—and makes an interesting attempt to situate the music on a continuum with Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and the Rolling Stones. The segment claims that new wave both satirized and updated rock and pop—with DEVO’s cover of "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction" as Exhibit A. And while new wave would eventually glam it up with the best of the 70s disco acts—think Duran Duran or the bubblegum pop of Flock of Seagulls or Kajagoogoo—in its first, post-punk phase, the music stripped things down to 50s simplicity. Elvis Costello gets called in to represent the revivalism inherent in the nascent form, heralding a "rediscovery of the rock and roll audience." There are problems with the history: punk gets labeled "an extreme element of new wave" and "a British phenomenon," where it makes more sense to call it a precursor with roots in Detroit and New York. It’s a nitpicky point, and one shouldn’t expect too much accuracy in a top-down network news report. The real treat here is the performance clips and rare interviews. Even with the poor video quality, they’re all well worth watching, especially the extended focus on the Talking Heads in the second part above. As Dangerous Minds writes, "it takes an effort of will to remember how weird David Byrne… must have seemed to a mainstream audience in 1979." Or not. He still comes off as pretty odd to me, and the music still fresh and inventive. Note: Elvis Costello has just published a new autobiography, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink. And he narrates the audiobook version, which you can download for free (along with another audiobook) if you join Audible.com’s 30-day Free Trial program. Get details on the 30-day trial here. And get Elvis Costello’s audiobook, by clicking here and then clicking the "Try Audible Free" button in the upper right. via Dangerous Minds Related Content: Take a Virtual Tour of CBGB, the Early Home of Punk and New Wave See Very Early Concert Footage of the B-52s, When New Wave Music Was Actually New (1978) The Talking Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975) Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness New Wave Music-DEVO, Talking Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello-Gets Introduced to America by ABC’s TV Show, 20/20 (1979) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Tony Zhou’s video essay series, Every Frame a Painting, returns with "Buster Keaton: The Art of the Gag." Although his series never disappoints, this particular installment may be one of Tony’s best, taking you inside the comedic gags of Buster Keaton, a founding father of visual comedy. If you’ve ever found it hard to appreciate the artistry of filmmakers from the silent era, then you will definitely want to give this a watch. And once you’ve taken it all in, you’ll likely want to spend time with our previous post: The General, "Perhaps the Greatest Film Ever Made," and 20 Other Buster Keaton Classics Free Online. Also don’t miss this collection featuring another founding father of visual comedy: 65 Free Charlie Chaplin Films. Related Content: The Art of Making Intelligent Comedy Movies: 8 Take-Aways from the Films of Edgar Wright The Geometric Beauty of Akira Kurosawa and Wes Anderson’s Films The Filmmaking Craft of David Fincher Demystified in Two Video Essays The Power of Silent Movies, with The ArtistDirector Michel Hazanavicius Buster Keaton: The Wonderful Gags of the Founding Father of Visual Comedy is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

"I started playing the guitar about 6 or 7, maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I was influenced by everything at the same time, that’s why I can’t get it together now." When you listen to Jimi Hendrix, one of the last things you’re ever likely to think is that he couldn’t "get it together" as a guitarist. Hendrix made the characteristically modest statement in 1968, in a free form discussion about his influences with Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner and Baron Wolfman. "I used to like Buddy Holly," he said, "and Eddie Cochran and Muddy Waters and Elvin James… B.B. King and so forth." But his great love was Albert King, who "plays completely and strictly in one way, just straight funk blues." Since Hendrix’s death and subsequent enshrinement in pop culture as the undisputed master of psychedelic rock guitar, a number of posthumous releases have performed a kind of revisionism that situates him not strictly in the context of the hippie scene but rather in the blues tradition he so admired and that, in a sense, he came of age within as a session and backing guitarist for dozens of blues and R&B artists in the early 60s. In 1994 came the straightforwardly-titled compilation album Blues, which celebrated the fact that "more than a third of [Hendrix’s] recordings were blues-oriented," writes Allmusic’s Richie Unterberger, whether originals like "Red House" and "Hear My Train a Comin’" or covers of his heroes Muddy Waters and Albert King. Martin Scorsese devoted a segment of his documentary series The Blues to Hendrix, and an ensuing 2003 album release featured even more Hendrix blues originals (with "pretty cool" liner notes about his blues record collecting habits). Prolific director Alex Gibney has a documentary forthcoming on Hendrix on the Blues. It’s safe to say that Hendrix’s blues legacy is in safe hands, and it may be safe to say he would approve, or at least that he would have preferred to be linked to the blues, or classical music, than to what he called "freak-out psychedelic" music, as a Guardian review of Hendrix autobiography Starting at Zero quotes; "I don’t want anybody to stick a psychedelic label around my neck. Sooner Bach and Beethoven." Or sooner, I’d imagine, blues legends like Albert King, Buddy Guy, and B.B. King, of whom Hendrix sat in awe. At the top of the post, you can see Hendrix flex his Delta blues muscles on a 12-string acoustic guitar. Then in the video below it from 1968, Hendrix gets the chance to jam with Buddy Guy, after watching Guy work his magic from the audience. (Hendrix joins Guy onstage to jam at 6:24.) The audio just above captures a jam session with B.B. King and Hendrix from the same year at New York’s Generation Club, and below, see Guy and King reminiscing a few years ago about those days of meeting and playing with Hendrix. During their conversation, you’ll learn where Hendrix picked up one of his stage tricks, playing the guitar behind his head—and learn how little Guy knew about Hendrix the rock star, coming to know him instead as a great blues guitarist. Related Content: Jimi Hendrix Unplugged: Two Great Recordings of Hendrix Playing Acoustic Guitar The Jimi Hendrix Experience Plays "Hey Joe" & "Wild Thing" on The Band’s Very First Tour: Paris, 1966 Jimi Hendrix’s Final Interview on September 11, 1970: Listen to the Complete Audio B.B. King Changes Broken Guitar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Jimi Hendrix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Guitar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Buddy Guy & B.B. King is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Having moved to Korea a couple weeks ago, I won’t have the chance to partake this year in the beloved institution of American culture known as Thanksgiving. (Korea has its own Thanksgiving, but it happened two months ago.) Maybe you live in the United States and thus almost certainly have a Thanksgiving dinner of some kind, big or small, coming soon. Or maybe you, like me, live elsewhere in the world, and thus in a place without the same tradition. Either way, you can surely partake this Thanksgiving in the beloved institution of American culture known as the work of William S. Burroughs. Here we have a short film of Burroughs, best known as the author of a body of controversial and experimental literature, including books like Junky and Naked Lunch, shot by Gus Van Sant, best known as the director of films like Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho, and Drugstore Cowboy, the last of which includes a memorable appearance by Burroughs himself. It captures Burroughs reading his poem "Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986," also known as his "Thanksgiving Prayer." Van Sant shot it two Thanksgivings after that one, in 1988, the year before Drugstore Cowboy (and six years after adapting Burrough’s story "The Discipline of D.E." into an early short film). Burroughs, a lifelong critic of America, fills his prayer with bitterly sarcastic "thanks" for things like "a continent to despoil and poison," "Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger," "the KKK," and "Prohibition and the war against drugs" (about which his character in Drugstore Cowboy had some particularly choice words). He ends by expressing ironic, Great Gatsby-quoting gratitude for "the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams." Like him — like most everybody — I have my own, if less deep-seated, frustrations with our homeland, and perhaps in leaving I subconsciously emulated his stretches of expatriatism in Mexico, England, France, and Morocco. But I sincerely doubt that I’ve had my last Thanksgiving on U.S. soil; for all its failings, America remains too interesting to stay away from entirely. After all, what other country could possibly produce a writer, a personality, or a critic like William S. Burroughs? Related Content: The Making of Drugstore Cowboy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989) William S. Burroughs Teaches a Free Course on Creative Reading and Writing (1979) The Discipline of D.E.: Gus Van Sant Adapts a Story by William S. Burroughs William S. Burroughs Reads His First Novel, Junky Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. William S. Burroughs Reads His Sarcastic "Thanksgiving Prayer" in a 1988 Film By Gus Van Sant is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

In ostensibly liberal democracies in the West, attitudes towards free speech vary widely given different historical contexts, and can shift dramatically over time. We’re living in the midst of a generational shift on the issue in the U.S.; a recent Pew survey found that 40 percent of millennials—18-34 year olds—favor government bans on offensive speech. The usual caveats apply when reading this data; New York magazine’s Science of Us blog breaks down the demographics and points out problems with definitions, particularly with that of the word "offensive." They write, "plenty of folks freak out about anti-cop sentiments but are fine with racially loaded language—or insert your own examples." As commentators note almost daily, various free speech advocates show all manner of partiality when it comes to whose speech they choose to defend and whose they, unwittingly perhaps, suppress. European countries, of course, already have all sorts of laws that curb offensive speech and impose harsh penalties, from large fines to jail time. Those laws are extending to the internet as well, a speech domain long censored by Chinese authorities. Whether European measures against racist and xenophobic speech actually lessen racism and xenophobia is an open question, as is the problem of exceptions to the laws that seem to allow certain kinds of prejudices as they strongly censor others. Much more extreme examples of the suppression of free speech have recently come to light under autocratic regimes in the Middle East. In Syria, software developer and free speech advocate Bassel Khartabil has been held in prison since 2012 for his activism. In Saudi Arabia, artist, poet, and Palestinian refugee Ashraf Fayadh has been sentenced to death for "renouncing Islam." We could add to all of these examples hundreds of others, from all over the world, but in addition to the statistics and the disturbing individual cases, it is worth asking broader, more philosophical questions about free speech as we draw our own conclusions about the issues. What exactly do we mean by "free speech"? Should all speech be protected, even that meant to libel individuals or whole groups or to deliberately incite violence? Should we tolerate a public discourse made up of lies, misinformation, prejudicial invective, and personal attacks? Should citizens and the press have the right to question official government narratives and to demand transparency? https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/D.J.-Taylor-on-Orwell-and-Free-Speech.mp3 To help us think through these politically and emotionally fraught discussions, we could listen to Free Speech Bites, a podcast sponsored by the Index on Censorship and hosted by freelance philosopher Nigel Warburton, who also hosts the popular podcast Philosophy Bites. The format is identical to that long-standing show, but instead of short conversations with philosophers, Warburton has brief, lively discussions with free speech advocates, including authors, artists, politicians, journalists, comedians, cartoonists, and academics. In the episode above, Warburton talks with DJ Taylor, biographer of the man considered almost a saint of free speech, George Orwell. Of his subject, Taylor remarks, "I think it’s true to say that most of Orwell’s professional life, large amounts of the things that he wrote, are to do with the suppression of the individual voice." At the same time, he points out that Orwell’s "view of free speech is by no means clear cut." The "whole free speech issue became much more delicately shaded than it would otherwise have been" during the extraordinary times of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Taylor refers to the "classic liberal dilemma: how far do we tolerate something that, if tolerated, will cease to tolerate us…. If you are living in a democracy and somebody’s putting out fascist pamphlets encouraging the end of that democracy, how much rope do you give them?" https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Irshad-Manji-on-Islam-and-Free-Expression.mp3 In another episode, Irshad Manji—feminist, self-described "Muslim refusenik," and author of The Trouble with Islam Today—talks free speech and religion, and offers a very different perspective than what we’re used to hearing reported from Islamic thinkers. When Warburton says that Islam and free expression sound "like two incompatible things," Manji counters that as a "person of faith" she believes "free expression is as much a religious obligation as it is a human right." In her estimation, "no human being can legitimately behave as if he or she owns a monopoly on truth." Anything less than a society that tolerates civil disagreement, she says, means that "we’re playing God with one another." In her religious perspective, "devoting yourself to one god means that you must defend human liberty." Manji sounds much more like Enlightenment Christian reformers like John Locke than she does many interpreters of Islam, and she is well aware of the unpopularity of her point of view in much of the Islamic world. https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Jonathan-Dimbley-on-Free-Speech-and-Censorship.mp3 Addressing the question of why free speech matters, broadcaster and writer Jonathan Dimbleby—former chair of the Index on Censorship—inaugurated the podcast in 2012 with a more classically philosophical discussion of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and the liberal argument against censorship Mill and others articulated. For Dimbleby, "freedom of expression [is] not only a right but a defining characteristic of what it means to be a civilized individual." It’s a view he holds "very strongly," but he admits that the valid exceptions to the rule are "where the difficult territory starts." Dimbleby points to "very obvious circumstances when you don’t have freedom of expression and should not have freedom of expression." One of the exceptions involves "laws that say that if you express yourself freely, you are directly putting someone else’s life at risk." This is not as clear-cut as it seems. The "dangerous territory," he argues, begins with circumscribing language that incites anger or offense in others. We are back to the question of offense, and it is not a uncomplicated one. Although activists very often need to be uncivil to be heard at all, there’s also a necessary place for public discussions that are as thoughtful and careful as we can manage. And for that reason, I’m grateful for the intervention of Free Speech Bites and the international variety of views it represents. For more of those views, see the Index on Censorship’s website to stream or download seven more Free Speech Bites podcasts. Related Content: What "Orwellian" Really Means: An Animated Lesson About the Use & Abuse of the Term George Orwell’s Final Warning: Don’t Let This Nightmare Situation Happen. It Depends on You! Introduction to Political Philosophy: A Free Yale Course Great Writers on Free Speech and the Environment Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness   Free Speech Bites: Nigel Warburton, Host of Philosophy Bites, Creates a Spin Off Podcast Dedicated to Freedom of Expression is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Moderate coffee consumption may decrease your risk of dying prematurely from cardiovascular disease, reduce your risk of letting colon cancer take you to the grave, possibly help you stave off dementia, and maybe, writes The New York Times, dodge a number of other bullets-"Type 2 diabetes, basal cell carcinoma (the most common skin cancer), prostate cancer, oral cancer and breast cancer recurrence." Pour me a cup, please. These days, I’m feeling pretty good about my last remaining vice. But, as always, too much of anything is not a good thing. And that includes coffee too. Just ask Honoré de Balzac, who, according to legend, met an untimely death by drinking 50 cups per day. Or ask the fellow featured in the French animation called Le café-or simply Coffee in English. Up top, you can find a subtitled version of the riotous film directed by Stephanie Marguerite and Emilie Tarascou. Beneath, we have a non-subtitled but higher resolution version. Enjoy, and remember to drink coffee responsibly. More creative shorts can be found in the Animation section of our collection, 725 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc.. Follow Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts definitely appear in your Facebook newsfeed, just follow these simple steps. Related Content: Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard David Lynch Directs a Mini-Season of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japanese Coffee Commercials J.S. Bach’s Comic Opera, "The Coffee Cantata," Sings the Praises of the Great Stimulating Drink (1735) "The Virtues of Coffee" Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethargy, Scurvy, Dropsy, Gout & More A Rollicking French Animation on the Perils of Drinking a Little Too Much Coffee is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

What work of American poetry has proven more irresistible than Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven? Certainly we can seldom refrain ourselves from featuring it here on Open Culture. We’ve posted illustrations by Édouard Manet and Gustave Doré, readings by Christopher Walken, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee (all available here), James Earl Jones, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed, who offered his own modernized take on Poe’s words. Even notables primarily noted for something other than their recitation ability have got in on The Raven: just above, for instance, you can see a reading by none other than Marvel Comics mastermind Stan Lee. We recognize Stan Lee, of course, as an icon of American culture for his achievements in the field of comics: doing his part to create enduring characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the X-Men, fighting censorship from the Comics Code Authority, introducing the concept of coherent — or at least coherent-enough — fictional "universes," and much more besides. But a decent portion of Lee’s fame also owes to his seemingly bottomless well of enthusiasm, from which he continues to draw, at the age of 92, for every public address to the "true believers," and he doesn’t leave that enthusiasm behind when it comes time to interpret Edgar Allan Poe. Having previously gone on the record in interviews naming Poe as one of his favorite authors in childhood (alongside other such high-, low-, and middle-browed literary immortals as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, O. Henry, and Shakespeare), he makes a certain kind of sense as a Raven-reader. (And hasn’t, say, Spider-Man’s origin story passed into American myth in much the same way as Poe’s tale of a lamenting lover tormented by a talking bird?) He also sets a high bar with his endearing performance itself, which should get you thinking: if you, too, one day become an icon of American culture, how will you approach your inevitable Raven-reading turn? You can find Lee’s reading in our collection, 700 Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free. Poe’s text lives here: 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices. Related Content: Édouard Manet Illustrates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edition Translated by Stephane Mallarmé (1875) Gustave Doré’s Splendid Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven" (1884) Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven," Read by Christopher Walken, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven" and Walt Whitman’s "Song of Myself" Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven." See Readings by Reed and Willem Dafoe 7 Tips from Edgar Allan Poe on How to Write Vivid Stories and Poems Download the Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe on His Birthday Download 55 Free Online Literature Courses: From Dante and Milton to Kerouac and Tolkien Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. The Great Stan Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Raven" is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

If you’re thirsty, a vending machine is usually close by. (Especially if you’re in Japan. You’re probably standing right next to one right now!) But what if you have time to kill and you’re thirsty for literature? Then the Short Édition vending machine might be for you. Choose one of three buttons—one minutes, three minutes, or five minutes—and the cylindrical machine, currently available in France, will print out an appropriately-long short story to read on a receipt-like piece of paper. Short Édition co-founder Quentin Pleple says the idea came to him, where else, at a vending machine, while on break with co-workers."We thought it would be cool to have it for short stories. Then, a couple of days later we decided to hack a prototype." Though people spend a lot of their free time on their pocket devices, the Short Édition is another attempt-like the short stories Chipotle printed on the side of its drinking cups-to free us from a life of staring at glowing rectangles. It’s tangible yet disposable at the same time. At the turn of the 20th century automation and vending machines looked to be the wave of the future, where everything would be done for us on command. And that has happened in a totally different way, through the microprocessor. It just didn’t happen through the vending machine, at least not in America, where they mostly dispense food, drink, and cigarettes. Like high speed rail, Japan has picked up the slack and made the world rethink the machine’s possibilities all over again. It now looks like France and Poland (where you can find Haruki Murakami novels being sold in vending machines) are catching on. The Short Édition vending machines, currently only available in eight locations in Grenoble, France, draw from a database of 600 stories chosen by the community at Short Édition’s website, which counts 1,100 authors as members. Presumably, all these stories are in French. While new, the machines have gathered enough media attention to attract inquiries from Italy and the United States. So look out, you might find one in your area soon. via Huff Po Related Content: Support "Green Reads," a Program That Finances Libraries by Distributing Used Books in Eco-Friendly Vending Machines Haruki Murakami Novels Sold in Polish Vending Machines Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Story 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. French Vending Machines Fill Your Mind with Nourishing Short Stories, Not Your Body with Junk Food is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Fitting, I suppose, that the only creative meeting of the minds between two of the twentieth century’s best-known film directors took place on a project about the problem of nonhuman intelligence and the dangerous excesses of human ingenuity. For both Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg, these were conflicts rich with inherent dramatic possibility. One of the many important differences between their approaches, however, is a stark one. As many critics of AI: Artificial Intelligence—the film Kubrick had in development since the 70s, then handed off to Spielberg before he died—have pointed out, Kubrick mined conflict for philosophical insights that can leave viewers intriguingly puzzled, if emotionally chilled; Spielberg pushes his drama for maximum emotional impact, which either warms audiences’ hearts or turns their stomachs, depending on their disposition. In the latter camp, we can firmly place Monty Python alumnus and cult director Terry Gilliam. In the short clip at the top of the post, Gilliam explicates "the main difference" as he sees it between Spielberg and Kubrick. Spielberg’s films are "comforting," they "give you answers, always, the films are… answers, and I don’t they’re very clever answers." Kubrick’s movies, on the other hand, always leave us with unanswerable questions—riddles that linger indefinitely and that no one viewer can satisfactorily solve. So says Gilliam, an infamously quixotic director whose pursuit of a vision uniquely his own has always trumped any commercial appeal his work might have. Most successful films, he argues, "tie things up in neat little bows." For Gilliam, this is a cardinal sin: "the Kubricks of this world, and the great filmmakers, make you go home and think about it." Certainly every fan of Kubrick will admit as much—as will those who don’t like his films, often for the very same reasons. To make his point, Gilliam quotes Kubrick himself, who issued an incisive critique of Spielberg’s Nazi drama Schindler’s List, saying that the movie "is about success. The Holocaust was about failure"—the "complete failure," Gilliam adds, "of civilization." Not a subject one can, or should, even attempt to spin positively, one would think. As an example of a Kubrick film that leaves us with an epistemological and emotional vortex, Gilliam cites the artificial intelligence picture the great director did finish, 2001: A Space Odyssey. To see in action how these two directors’ approaches greatly diverge, watch the endings of both Schindler’s List and 2001, above. Of course the genre and subject matter couldn’t be more different—but that aside, you’ll note that neither could Kubrick and Spielberg’s visual languages and cinematic attitudes, in any of their films. Despite this vast divide—between Spielberg’s "neat little bows" and Kubrick’s headtrips—it might be argued that their one collaboration, albeit a posthumous one for Kubrick, shows them working more closely together than seems possible. Or so argues Noel Murray in a fascinating critical take on AI, a film that perhaps deserves greater appreciation as an "unnerving," existentialist, and Kubrick-ian turn for Spielberg, that master of happy endings. Related Content: Terry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Monty Python Animations: A 1974 How-To Guide Stanley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Interview with The New Yorker In 1968, Stanley Kubrick Makes Predictions for 2001: Humanity Will Conquer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn German in 20 Minutes Auschwitz Captured in Haunting Drone Footage (and a New Short Film by Steven Spielberg & Meryl Streep)   Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Terry Gilliam on the Difference Between Kubrick & Spielberg: Kubrick Makes You Think, Spielberg Wraps Everything Up with Neat Little Bows is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Alice’s Restaurant. It’s now a Thanksgiving classic, and something of a tradition around here. Recorded in 1967, the 18+ minute counterculture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, starting on Thanksgiving Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we hear all about how a hippie-bating police officer, by the name of William "Obie" Obanhein, arrested Arlo for littering. (Cultural footnote: Obie previously posed for several Norman Rockwell paintings, including the well-known painting, "The Runaway," that graced a 1958 cover of The Saturday Evening Post.) In fairly short order, Arlo pleads guilty to a misdemeanor charge, pays a $25 fine, and cleans up the thrash. But the story isn’t over. Not by a long shot. Later, when Arlo (son of Woody Guthrie) gets called up for the draft, the petty crime ironically becomes a basis for disqualifying him from military service in the Vietnam War. Guthrie recounts this with some bitterness as the song builds into a satirical protest against the war: "I’m sittin’ here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug." And then we’re back to the cheery chorus again: "You can get anything you want, at Alice’s Restaurant." We have featured Guthrie’s classic during past years. But, for this Thanksgiving, we give you the illustrated version. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who plans to celebrate the holiday today. Follow Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts definitely appear in your Facebook newsfeed, just follow these simple steps. Related Content: Bed Peace Revisits John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Vietnam War Protest Willie Nelson, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie at Occupy Wall Street The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Features 17,000 Recordings Alice’s Restaurant: An Illustrated Version of Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture Classic is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Code.org, a non-profit dedicated to expanding access to computer science, has created a fun way for students to learn the basics of coding. Teaming up with Disney and Lucasfilm, they’ve launched Star Wars: Building a Galaxy with Code, a tutorial designed to teach students to write JavaScript as they guide Star Wars characters through a fun mission. The module is designed for kids 11 and up. (Adults, that could definitely apply to you.) There’s also a separate beginner’s tutorial for kids between the ages of 6 and 10. If Star Wars doesn’t hold appeal, then you can always learn to code through the ever-popular video game Minecraft. The Minecraft tutorial, created in partnership with Microsoft, got some pretty nice reviews over on Motherboard. More Code.org tutorials can be found here. And you’ll find other introductory coding courses (some designed with an older demographic in mind) in the Relateds below. Related Content: Harvard’s Free Computer Science Course Teaches You to Code in 12 Weeks Codecademy’s Free Courses Democratize Computer Programming Free Online Computer Science Courses Learn to Code with Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Minecraft is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Heathcliff, it’s me-Cathy. (and 300 Kate Bush impersonators…) Let (us) in-a-your windo-o-ow! I will never forget my first hearing of singer-songwriter Kate Bush’s " Wuthering Heights." My college boyfriend was a fan, but nothing he told me in advance prepared me for the shocking lunatic squeak of that voice. Was that how Emily Brontë conceived of her otherworldly Gothic heroine, Catherine Earnshaw? Surely no. Had such an unholy screech issued from the lips of Merle Oberon in the 1939 film adaptation, Lawrence Olivier would have bolted for the moors… It’s an acquired taste, but a lasting one. Bush’s debut single, written on a full moon night at the tender age of 18, has become a classic in its own right.  (SPOILER: its life span has proved longer than Heathcliff’s). It’s weird, tragic, compelling… just like the novel that inspired it. It’s also perennially ripe for parody. Not just because of the voice. Two music videos Bush released seal that deal. The UK version, above, features the sort of over-the-top theatrics rarely displayed outside the privacy of bedroom mirrors, as Bush pirouettes, cartwheels, and emotes in a gauzy white frock. (Some young teens of my acquaintance nailed that one at summer camp, with little more than white bed sheets and fifteen minutes of advance preparation.) When it came time for the American release, below, Bush painted her nails, rouged her lips, and took to the great outdoors in a bright red gown and tights, below. Comedian Noel Fielding camped his way through that version in 2011, raising money for charity with a nearly 30-year-old reference. But for sheer numbers, nothing trumps the Shambush! stunt at the top of the page. In May, 2013, the self-proclaimed "ludicrous performance troupe" invited all interested Bush fans to join them in a Brighton park to recreate the famous video en masse. (Gowns and wigs were available onsite.) More than 300 participants heeded the call, allowing Shambush! to achieve its goal of setting the world’s record for the most number of people dressed as Kate Bush. (As one of the organizers pointed out, they would’ve set the world’s record even if it had only been the three of them.) What a wonderful, ridiculous moment in music history to be a part of! For those inspired to recreate the madness with their own crew, Shambush! breaks down (and names) some of the most iconic moves in an instructional video, below. Related Content: 2009 Kate Bush Documentary Dubs Her "Queen of British Pop" Ai Weiwei’s Parody of ‘Gangnam Style’ Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday 300 Kate Bush Impersonators Pay Tribute to Kate Bush’s Iconic "Wuthering Heights" Video is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

With dependable frequency, the religious views of Albert Einstein get revised and re-revised according to some re-discovered or re-interpreted quotation from his scientific work or personal correspondence. It’s not especially surprising that Einstein had a few things to say on the subject. As the pre-eminent theoretical physicist of his age, he spent his days pondering the mysteries of the universe. As one of the most famous public intellectuals in history, and an immigrant to a country as highly religious as the United States, Einstein was often called on to voice his religious opinions. Like any one of us over the course of a lifetime, those statements do not harmonize into a neat and tidy confession of belief, or unbelief. Instead, at times, Einstein explicitly aligns himself with the pantheism of Baruch Spinoza; at other times, he expresses a much more skeptical attitude. Often he seems to stand in awe of a vague deist notion of God; Often, he seems maximally agnostic. Einstein rejected the atheist label, it’s true. At no point in his adult life, however, did he express anything at all like a belief in traditional religion. On the contrary, he made a particular point of distancing himself from the theologies of Judaism and Christianity especially. Though he did admit to a brief period of "deep religiousness" as a child, this phase, he wrote "reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve." As he writes in his Autobiographical Notes, after a "fanatic orgy of freethinking," brought on by his exposure to scientific literature, he developed a "mistrust of every kind of authority… a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment—an attitude that has never left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections." In contrast to the "religious paradise" of his youth, Einstein wrote that he had come to find another kind of faith—in the "huge world… out yonder… which stands before us like a great riddle." Einstein’s rejection of a personal God was undeniably final, such that in 1954, a year before his death, he would write the letter above to philosopher Erik Gutkind after reading Gutkind’s book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt on the recommendation of a mutual friend. The book, Einstein tells its author, is "written in a language inaccessible to me." He goes on to disparage all religion as "the most childish superstition": The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and whose thinking I have a deep affinity for, have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power… You can read a full transcript at Letters of Note, who include the letter in their second volume of fascinating correspondence from famous figures, More Letters of Note. The letter went up for auction in May of 2008, and a much more dogmatically anti-religious scientist had a keen interest in acquiring it: "Unsurprisingly," Letters of Note point out, "one of the unsuccessful bidders was Richard Dawkins." Related Content: "Do Scientists Pray?": A Young Girl Asks Albert Einstein in 1936. Einstein Then Responds Albert Einstein Reads ‘The Common Language of Science’ (1941) Einstein for the Masses: Yale Presents a Primer on the Great Physicist’s Thinking Albert Einstein​ & Sigmund Freud​ Exchange Letters and Debate How to Make the World Free from War (1932) Free Online Physics Courses 50 Famous Academics & Scientists Talk About God Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Albert Einstein On God: "Nothing More Than the Expression and Product of Human Weakness" is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Last year, I posted about The City in Cinema, my series of video essays exploring cities as revealed and re-imagined by the films set in them — or rather, at that time, about one city in particular: Los Angeles, birthplace of Hollywood cinema and endlessly fascinating urban phenomenon in its own right. But ever since I first began the project, I knew I’d want to extend it to other cities. When first I stepped beyond Los Angeles with The City in Cinema, I stepped into the city I’ve long considered my favorite to visit in America. And what city, exactly, would that be? "Portland, Oregon: one of the nation’s most beautiful cities, with Mount Hood rising in the distance, majestic, serene, white with eternal snow," a "city of wide streets, modern buildings" whose citizens "attend many fine churches" and live in "beautiful homes," a city where "in the soft climate, gardens grow lush and green throughout the year" with roses "everywhere in profusion," a "family town, a good place to bring up children." Or so, in any case, goes the opening of Portland Exposé, a 1957 true-crime morality play, one of the very first films to use Portland as a setting, and the one that opens my latest long-form video essay, Portland, the City in Cinema. At that time not much more than a small-to-medium-sized town in the woods, Portland claims only a scant cinematic history up through the 1970s. But every Portland movie that came out then, such as the CBS nuclear-strike dramatization A Day Called X and the bohemian land-use satire Property, boasts its own sort of interest. And then, in the 1980s, emerges Gus Van Sant, unquestionably the foremost Portland auteur of his generation. His black-and-white debut feature Mala Noche, which deals humorously with themes of homosexuality on Portland’s former Skid Row (now the thoroughly gentrified Pearl District) drew the Hollywood attention that would ultimately get him making mainstream features like Good Will Hunting and Milk. But Van Sant has, in parallel, led another career as a thoroughly independent filmmaker, and one who shoots most of those thoroughly independent films in Portland. That track of Van Sant’s work has led to such formidable Portland movies, central to a project like this, as Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, and Paranoid Park. During the 1990s, the time of the "Indiewood" boom in America, other filmmakers discovered Portland’s potential as a rich and underused urban setting: Annette Haywood-Carter for her adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ novel Foxfire, for instance, or Jake Kasdan for his unconventional detective story and black romantic comedy Zero Effect. Albert Pyun, perhaps the last great B-movie auteur, also came to Portland of the 1990s for his Andrew Dice Clay vehicle Brain Smasher… a Love Story. And not much later, the city hosted the likes of Body of Evidence, a highly unerotic erotic thriller starring Willem Dafoe and Madonna. But it, too, reveals the the city’s potential (or potential for misuse) as a setting, as does the more recent Untraceable, a bland compromise between techno-thriller and torture horror that at least had the money to shoot Portland from some impressive angles. As the city of Portland has developed in a way appreciated by urbanists for its compact downtown, useful transit system, mostly well-executed architectural preservation, and overall "smart" growth (by American standards, anyway), the cinema of Portland has developed in a way appreciated by critics. The 21st century has so far seen such well-crafted, thoughtful Portland pictures as Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, Aaron Katz’s Dance Party USA and Cold Weather, and Matt McCormick’s Some Days Are Better than Others. But if Portland, the City in Cinema remains, in its current version, the definitive examination of the cinema of Portland, I’ll be terribly disappointed. I intend it in part as an appreciation of the Portland movies already made, certainly, but in larger part as a call for more Portland movies in the future. Related Content: The Making of Drugstore Cowboy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989) The City in Cinema Mini-Documentaries Reveal the Los Angeles of Blade Runner, Her, Drive, Repo Man, and More Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook. Portland, the City in Cinema: See the City of Roses as it Appears in 20 Different Films is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Cartoonist turned educator Lynda Barry is again permitting the world at large to freely audit one of her fascinating University of Wisconsin-Madison classes via her Tumblr. (To get to the start of the class, click here and then scroll down the page until you reach the syllabus, then start working your way backwards.) The topic this fall is "Graphic Vices, Graphic Virtues: Making Comics," a subject with which Barry is intimately acquainted. In the professor’s own words, this class is "a(n academically rigorous) blast!" As in previous classes, the syllabus, above, spells out a highly specialized set of required supplies, including a number of items rarely called for at the college level.   It’s become a time honored tradition for Barry’s students to adopt new names by which to refer to each other in-class, something they’ll enjoy hearing spoken aloud. For "Making Comics," Barry is flying under the handle Professor SETI (as in "search for extraterrestrial intelligence"), telling the class that "images are the ETI in SETI." The students have responded with the following handles: Chef Boyardee, Ginger, Lois Lane, Rosie the Riveter, Regina Phalange, Arabella, Snoopy, Skeeter, Tigger, Arya Stark, Nala, Nostalgia, Akira, Lapus Lazuli, The Buffalo,Mr. November, The Short Giraffe, Nicki Minaj, Neko, Vincent Brooks, Regular Sized Rudy, and Zef. (Sounds like a rough and ready crew. What name would you choose, and why?) As usual, Barry draws inspiration from the dizzying bounty of images available on the net, bombarding her pupils with findings such as the lobed teeth of the crab-eater seal, above. Science and music remain pet subjects-Afrofuturist bandleader Sun Ra serves as class oracle this go round. Professor SETI keeps the "graphic vice" of the class’ official title front and center with assignments pertaining to the 7 deadly sins, asking students to examine modern equivalents of the horrors depicted by Heronimus Bosch above and 16th-century engraver Pieter van der Heyden, below. What to do with all of these images? Draw them, of course! As Barry tells her students: Drawing is a language. It’s hard to understand what that really means until you’ve ‘spoken’ and ‘listened’ to it enough in a reliable regular way like the reliable regular way we will have together this semester. That’s an important definition for those lacking confidence in their drawing abilities to keep in mind. Barry may revere the inky blacks of comics legend Jaime Hernandez, but she’s also a devotee of the wild, unbridled line that may be a beginner’s truest expression. (Stick figures, however, "don’t cut it.") To her way of thinking, everyone is capable of communicating fluently in visual language. The current crop of student work reveals a range of training and natural talent, but all are worthy when viewed through Barry’s lens. The teacher’s philosophy is the binding element here, but don’t fret if you are unable to take the class in person: We rarely speak directly about the work we do in our class though we look at it together. We stare at it and sometimes it makes us laugh or we silently point out some part of it to the classmate beside us.  To be able to speak this unspoken language we need to practice seeing (hearing) the way it talks. That earlier-alluded-to rigor is no joke. Daily diary comics, 3 minute self portraits on index cards, pages folded to yield 16 frames in need of filling, and found images copied while listening to prescribed music, lectures, and readings are a constant, non-negotiable expectation of all participants. Her methodology may sound goose-y but it’s far from loose-y. In other words, if you want to play along, prepare to set aside a large chunk of time to complete her weekly assignments with the vigor demanded of non-virtual students. Those who aren’t able to commit to going the distance at this time can reconstruct the class later.  Barry leaves both the assignments and examples of student work on her Tumblr for perpetuity. (You can see an example here.) For now, try completing the 20 minute exercise using the assigned image above, or by choosing from one of her "extra credit" images, below: Set timer for three minutes and begin this drawing using a yellow color pencil. Try to draw as much of the drawing as you can in three minutes. You can draw fast, and in a messy way, The important thing is to get as much covered as you can in three minutes. You can color things in if you like. Look for the darkest areas of the photo and color those in. Set a timer for another three minutes and using your non-dominant hand, draw with orange or color pencil to draw the entire drawing again, drawing right on top of the first drawing layer. The lines don’t have to match or be right on top of each other, you can change your mind as you add this layer. You can move a bit to the right rather than try to draw directly onto the first set of lines. Set a timer for another 3 minutes and use a red pencil and draw it again, using you dominant hand, adding another layer to the drawing. Again, you don’t have to follow your original lines. Just draw on top of them. Set a timer for another 3 minutes and use a dark green pencil to draw the entire drawing one more time on top of all the others.  Set a timer for 8 minutes and use a dark blue pencil to draw it one more time. Spend the last 8 minutes inking the image in with your uniball pen. Remember that solid black is the very last thing you’d do given your time limit. You want to make sure to draw all the parts of the picture first. Related Content: Cartoonist Lynda Barry Shows You How to Draw Batman in Her UW-Madison Course, "Making Comics" Lynda Barry’s Wonderfully Illustrated Syllabus & Homework Assignments from Her UW-Madison Class, "The Unthinkable Mind" Watch Lynda Barry’s Graduation Speech; Give a Shout Out to the Teachers Who Changed Your Life 1150 Free Online Courses from Top Universities Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday Lynda Barry’s Illustrated Syllabus & Homework Assignments from Her New UW-Madison Course, "Making Comics" is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Creative Commons image via Wiki Art We might as well get the self-writing joke about a 65-hour John Cage playlist out of the way up front: that’s a whole lot of silence! But of course, such a joke about the work of John Cage inevitably ends up as a joke about how little so many of us know about the work of John Cage. Most of us learn, at one time or another, of "4’33"," his famous 1952 composition — or perhaps anti-composition — which instructs its players to, for the length of time reflected by its title, play nothing at all. But dig a little deeper into Cage’s motivations, and you find that he wanted the audience of "4’33″" to listen not to the silence, but to whatever sounds happen to remain in the absence of music — so that those incidental noises, in effect, become the music. Many more such unconventional compositional ideas and resulting listening experiences await you in John Cage: A Chronological Collection, this decidedly non-silent Spotify playlist above (and if you don’t have Spotify’s free software yet, download it here) by Ulysses Classical, author of several of our favorite playlists, including this 50-hour classical compilation we featured in August. If you find yourself still in need of more of Cage’s salutary effect on your perception of not just music and art but of the world itself, you can hear Ulysses Classical’s playlist of only Cage’s "Number Pieces" below, which "has a cleansing effect on the mind, as if it paints the walls of the room I’m sitting in with soothing colors." Ulysses Classical’s background post on the big chronological playlist opens with a quote from Cage that neatly incapsulates what we might call his philosophy of composition, or maybe of life itself: "What I’m proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude — that you act as though you’ve never been there before. So that you’re not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before." This playlist, which spans Cage’s six-decade career from 1932 to 1992, showcases just what rich musical places Cage found when he acted as though he’d never been there before. Listening to it will certainly take you to musical places you’ve never been before — and, assuming you’ve been to "4’33"," it doesn’t take you there, but I suppose you can go to that particular patch of musical territory any time you like. Related Content: The Music of Avant-Garde Composer John Cage Now Available in a Free Online Archive John Cage Performs Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960) 10 Rules for Students and Teachers Popularized by John Cage Listen to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapted from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Watch a Surprisingly Moving Performance of John Cage’s 1948 "Suite for Toy Piano" 10 Rules for Students and Teachers Popularized by John Cage See the Curious Score for John Cage’s "Silent" Zen Composition 4’33" Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer, the video series The City in Cinema, and the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future? Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.   Stream a Free 65-Hour Playlist of John Cage Music and Discover the Full Scope of His Avant-Garde Compositions is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

To say that most political discussions on social media lack nuance seems tantamount to pointing out that most pornography lacks romance. The thrusts, parries, and asides of the Facebook comment skirmish and the Twitterfight generally constitute performative acts rather than thoughtful interpersonal engagement. It’s more the nature of the medium than the fault of the participants; ever-churning controversy keeps the machines running. One controversial subject now trending on a network near you is the issue of Cultural Appropriation—broadly defined as the use of the symbols, language, dress, hairstyles, music, art, and other signifiers of one culture by another. A problem arises when we leave the subject broadly defined. Power dynamics are key, but to condemn all acts of cultural appropriation as theft leaves us in a bind. How do we generate culture without it? Not all acts of borrowing are equally respectful, but without them, we could not have had the musical revolutions of rock and roll—with its appropriation of the blues—or of hip-hop, with its appropriation of disco, pop, Kung Fu movies, and everything else in a DJ’s record and video collection. Negative and positive examples can easily get jumbled together under these rubrics. To avoid getting tangled in analytical brambles, why don’t we turn instead to what I would consider a positive example of cultural appropriation: the pieces you hear in the videos here, interpretations of blues songs performed by musician Luna Lee on a Gayageum, a traditional Korean zither-like instrument. We’ve featured Luna’s Gayageum covers before—of Jimi Hendrix’s "Voodoo Chile" and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s take on Hendrix’s "Little Wing." Both Hendrix songs demonstrate the degree to which the rock guitarist borrowed heavily from blues idioms. Traditional blues artists themselves, of course, created and innovated through borrowing from each other and from myriad traditional sources. Are Luna’s blues performances any different? She clearly demonstrates a love and respect for the source material, and she plays it with deftness and skill, taking pleasure in musicianship, not salesmanship. Her blues covers don’t seem to have much commercial appeal, but they greatly appeal to listeners judging by the number of people her videos reach. At the top of the post, you can hear her play John Lee Hooker’s "Boom Boom." Below it, we have Albert King’s "Born Under a Bad Sign," and above, B.B. King’s "The Thrill is Gone."  Lower down, hear Muddy Waters "Rollin’ and Tumblin’" (first recorded by Hambone Willie Newborn) and Elmore James’ "Dust My Broom." Each interpretation relies on multitrack recording—Luna is either accompanied by a generic backing track or accompanies herself with a rhythm track that she plays over. Her covers of American blues classics on a traditional Korean instrument bring to the fore the intercultural accessibility of the songs and their adaptability to an instrumental context we might also consider "roots." But as you can see from Luna’s Youtube channel, she doesn’t only adapt "roots" music. She also covers Radiohead, Frank Sinatra, Led Zeppelin, and AC/DC. It’s likely my own bias for the blues—and for more traditional blues in particular—that makes me say so, but I think the covers represented here are her most successful. (Whether Messrs Hooker, King, King, Waters, and James would approve, I cannot say.) There’s something about hearing the Gayageum in dialogue with these songs that feels… well, if not exactly authentic at least less gimmicky than than a cover of One Republic. But ultimately, whatever your preference, if you can appreciate Luna’s instrumental skill and devotion to her source material, you’ll find something to love on her page. She’s not in it for the money, but like every struggling artist, Luna has dreams and bills to pay. To support her work, visit her Patreon page and help contribute to her goal of playing music full time and hiring additional collaborators. In the pitch video below, Luna gives us some of her musical background and explains how she adapted the traditionally acoustic Gayageum for more rocking contemporary tunes. Related Content: Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Performed on a Gayageum, a Traditional Korean Instrument With Medieval Instruments, Band Performs Classic Songs by The Beatles, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica & Deep Purple Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones & The Beatles Played on a 3-String Electric Mountain Dulcimer Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness Classic Blues Songs By John Lee Hooker, B.B. King & Muddy Waters Played on the Gayageum, a Traditional Korean Instrument is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.