CULTURE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYNzqgU7na4 When they make their first transocean­ic voy­age, more than a few Amer­i­cans choose to go to Eng­land, on the assump­tion that, what­ev­er cul­ture shock they might expe­ri­ence, at least none of the dif­fi­cul­ties will be lin­guis­tic. Only when it’s...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTl6xVMbJ6Y Though he nev­er said so direct­ly, we might expect that Sit­u­a­tion­ist Guy Debord would have includ­ed Sat­ur­day Night Live in what he called the “Spec­ta­cle”—the mass media pre­sen­ta­tion of a total­iz­ing real­i­ty, “the rul­ing order’s non­stop dis­course about itself,...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7mO3ilVHa8 Bri­an Eno was think­ing about the pur­pose of art a decade ago, as evi­denced by his 2015 John Peel Lec­ture (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). But he was also think­ing about it three decades ago, as evi­denced by...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRPey4Hy_ZM 50 years of Sat­ur­day Night Live. It all start­ed here with this first episode, aired on Octo­ber 11, 1975. George Car­lin host­ed the show. Bil­ly Pre­ston and Janis Ian served up the music. Jim Hen­son staged an elab­o­rate pup­pet...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgjVfHgN17o As Sat­ur­day Night Live cel­e­brates its 50th anniver­sary, Al Franken takes you inside the mak­ing of an SNL episode. He should know a thing or two about the sub­ject. Part of the orig­i­nal SNL writ­ing team, Franken spent 15 years...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG75cdOcE6M At first glance, Jesse Welles resem­bles noth­ing so much as a time trav­el­er from the year 1968. That’s how I would open a pro­file about him, but The New York Times’ David Peis­ner takes a dif­fer­ent approach, describ­ing him...

In a let­ter dat­ed May 31, 1960, Flan­nery O’Con­nor, the author best known for her clas­sic sto­ry, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (lis­ten to her read the sto­ry here) penned a let­ter to her friend, the play­wright Mary­at...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkiYy0i8FtA In the cred­its of Phil Collins’ No Jack­et Required appears the dis­claimer that “there is no Fairlight on this record.” Cryp­tic though it may have appeared to most of that album’s many buy­ers, tech­nol­o­gy-mind­ed musi­cians would’ve got it. In...

Before the word proces­sor, before White-Out, before Post-It Notes, there were straight pins. Or, at least that’s what Jane Austen used to make edits in one of her rare man­u­scripts. In 2011, Oxford’s Bodleian Library acquired the man­u­script of Austen’s...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG0lgnrGHv0 At least since The Can­ter­bury Tales, the set­ting of the medieval tav­ern has held out the promise of adven­ture. For their cus­tomer base dur­ing the actu­al Mid­dle Ages, how­ev­er, they had more util­i­tar­i­an virtues. “If you ever find your­self...